We continue to work the registers with Tobiah Panshin, going to places both weirdly metaphysical and painfully mundane.
First, Mike thinks it might actually be preferable to live in a hypothetical computer simulation than a “real” universe. What is real, anyways? Does that make our programmers gods? Is the act of creation inherently selfish — and if it is, does that even matter?
Then, we look at a recently unearthed-on-YouTube reality show, Airline, about ticket agents and flight attendants weathering often-drunken customer abuse and demands. It triggers all sorts of all-too-familiar customer service flashbacks. Plus, Mike remembers that one time he almost got into a fight at the airport.
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There are a lot of mundane problems in the world that that could be easily fixed, if there was enough will behind it. Any problem caused by humans can be solved by changes in human behavior, at least up to a point of no return. The pandemic could’ve been over in 28 days or less, if we stopped giving the virus ways to spread.
But I would say that the same barriers that exist in what appears to be reality, exist in a simulation as well. There are people who control more resources than others, and they’re able to use those resources to manipulate others to do their bidding for them.
I think Mike’s take relies on being the only sentient entity in the simulation. That there somehow wouldn’t be anyone else who could want to do something different with it, if they could hack it. Billionaires exist. They have superpowers, and they’re not using them responsibly.
On the topic of creators, I don’t see that there would be something owed to someone who created you, regardless of their motivations for creating you. Creating something or someone is a unilateral act. They’re the ones who know the world they’re sending you into. If they make the choice to create you, they’re the ones who decide what you have to put up with as you begin.
If your creator wants to feel like they deserve something in return, they have to earn it the same as anyone else, during your existence.
And for you to be deserving of punishment, it can’t be about something that you had no power to avoid happening. Like if it happened before you were born, or if you made mistakes because of the inherent limitations that you were made with. But also, if someone has ultimate power, how can there be a need to punish someone? If you have options, all the options, you can come up with something better than might makes right.
It’s good to hear from both Joe and Tobiah. I hope we don’t have to circumvent the laws of the universe to be able to recover the View from the Gutters episodes that aren’t available in the feed currently.