I need to know if you would create the universe

[andrewducker]

Assume for a moment that you are a being with the power to create universes. However, once you have created them you can't tamper with them, you can only set up the initial conditions and then watch them play out.

You've created many universes, but none have ever developed life.

And then you come across (in the celestial equivalent of a library) the initial seed conditions to create a universe which will contain life. Along with a detailed record of one tiny fragment of it - the planet Earth, as it is up until the year that (many of) the inhabitants call "2017".

Considering what you know of life, the universe and everything...

Poll #18917

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

View Respondents

Would you create our universe?

View Answers

YES
31 (70.5%)

NO
9 (20.5%)

Something else which I will explain in comments
4 (9.1%)

Comments

[andrewducker]

I really don't know.

It's a lot of responsibility for a lot of pain and suffering, and I'm not at all sure that the happiness in the world so far has outweighed the unhappiness.

(I think we have a lot of potential though.)

[maia]

My thoughts exactly.

[franklanguage]

I wish you had put a "Fuck, no!" option in the questionnaire.

[rhythmaning]

Why not? There's nothing to lose. And since once it's set up you can tamper with it, it's no work either!

[rhythmaning]

Also, since we observe the universe through our brains, I reckon we do create it, all the time!

[andrewducker]

Congrats - you are now responsible for insects laying eggs which then burrow into the eyes of children.

[rhythmaning]

Nope. I'm responsible for a huge range of life throughout the universe. Including insects burrowing into the eyes of children, though if humanity had got it's act together it could have easily reduced poverty that would have eradicated that.

I'm also responsible for puppies and kittens. And tardigrades. And artists and other creators.

But my favourite life forms can be found on the planet I call Tharg. Man, that would impress you!

Oh, and don't forget the fjords!

[andrewducker]

So you think that the amount of happiness in the universe outweighs the amount of unhappiness?

[rhythmaning]

The universe isn't emotional. It's physics, which becomes chemistry, which becomes biology.

Some of the outcomes of that physics-chemistry-biology can feel emotions. But in general they'd rather be alive than not.

[lilysea]

I would, but I would like to get rid of smallpox, Influenza, measles, malaria, Tuberculosis, Syphilis, HIV, etc

and also make it so that women couldn't get pregnant unless they genuinely wanted to,

before I pressed "GO."

[andrewducker]

That's not the question though - you don't have seed conditions for *that* universe.

So would you create this one, if that was the only option you had?

[lilysea]

If it was this universe, or no universe at all?

I think I would. There are lots of terrible things about this planet's ecosystem and its history and cultures,

but there are lots of wonderful things about this planet's ecosystem and its history and cultures also.

I saw your comment above re the parasites that affect childrens eyes, and, yes, that is terrible, as is the holocaust, what Europeans did to Native Americans, and slavery in the USA (just to think of the first three examples to come to mind)

but I wouldn't wish the blue whale, or the flamingo, or giant redwoods, or coral reefs, or every painter, sculptor, writer, playwright, musician, actor, architect, academic that has ever been out of existence.

People who are Disabled usually say that they would much rather be Disabled-and-alive than be dead, and I think that is true of our universe, also.

[andrewducker]

Blue Whales are pretty awesome.

[lilysea]

I mean, can you imagine how utterly appalled

David Attenborough
Jane Goodall
Birutė Galdikas
Dian Fossey

would be if you said to them

"I think rather than have the pain and suffering that we've had over the course of history and have now, it would be better if every single plant, fungi, fish, reptile, and mammal species had never even existed" ?

[andrewducker]

Depends on how they feel about suffering, and whether they'd condemn people to suffering in order to gain a sense of awe at the existence of wildlife.

[lilysea]

I didn't mean the sense of awe - I meant that they (and I) would argue that the wildlife has a right to exist, just as people have a right to exist.

[aldabra]

Now, what I want to do is create 800.000 universes with minute deviations from those seed conditions, and *see what happens*, (Obsessive Civ player here.)

I'm not sure I believe in determinism enough to believe the universe plays out the same way the second time someone creates it. (And so I think I create it and see.) But I think this question has to assume that it does, and has to assume that these "detailed reports" cover the subjective experience of having insect eggs in your eyes, rather than just the objective sweep of history as it could be observed in a simulation.

The detailed reports suggest it's been done before. Everything has happened already, but I didn't get to watch it last time, and I don't know how it ended.

I think no. I think we've seen enough of this one by 2017. And I think the subjective costs are additional, even if they're qualitatively indistinguishable. But I don't think I could resist blundering round universe-space looking for others...

[How do I observe the universes I make? Do I have to experience everything that's experienced in them, or can I just check the video later?]

[andrewducker]

I'd also want to create millions of variations to see what would happen.

I'm assuming your viewing device can fast forward to wherever you fancy :-)

[reverancepavane]

One nice thing about this universe (or at least this tiny portion of it [disclaimer void in the World of Tiers multiverse]) is that it is a rich source of creative fictional seeds to create further universes. I suspect it is the innate tension and uncertainty of the human condition - the stress and pain creating great art, something we immortal universe creators don't really have any more. We can create, but we tend not to be creative.

[doug]

I totally want to make a small one that doesn't matter much to practice on.

It's possible that's what has happened here already.

[mme_n_b]

It is not said that I am immortal, and implied that I am not all-knowing, and no cost is given. Therefore, of course I would! It's not likely to hurt me, and might prove interesting.

[andrewducker]

But what about the people it does hurt?

[mme_n_b]

And ants, and wolves, and lichens, and bacteria, and lizards, and eagles... From the point of view of an immortal being capable of creating universes these are pretty much all the same thing and about equally irrelevant.

[hilarita]

I wouldn't. I don't think it's ethical to create a universe with life forms that think they are sentient without also trying to make that universe the best it can possibly be for them.

[elf]

Sure. The universe is doing fine.

We may be arranging the planet so that it's incompatible with human life, but from a universe's perspective, that's not important.

[snippy]

Our universe contains possibilities; it's up to individuals with agency to choose what happens.

[darkoshi]

Knowing what I know, from my perspective, I wouldn't do it.
But if I were just some being, it would depend on that being's perspective. Like is it lonely? Does it hope to gain some kind of companionship by creating life, through any means necessary? Does it have any kind of comprehension of pain? Would it see "life" as anything other than self-reproducing objects without feelings scurrying around doing things? (if so, why not, they would just be a curiosity to observe)

[autopope]

I would do it if and only if in so doing I could include, somewhere inside it, the same capability that permits me to create universes myself.

In other words, only do it if the universe I create (for creatures to live in) is not more restrictive than the one I, myself, exist in.

(This is not the only reservation I'd have about engaging in miniature acts of creation, but it's an important boundary condition: don't create prisons.)

[birguslatro]

I'm taking the something else option, which is to create a universe of my own design that could create life, just not as we know it. It'd have physics that'd divide any possible matter into that which is or can become sentient, and that which can't. And the non-sentient matter could not modify the sentient matter. And vice-versa. (Or something like that - needs a bit of thinking.) The object of the exercise being so that any sentient life that evolves would only be able to prey on the non-sentient life.

Not sure how to cheat Malthus with such a universe, or death for that matter, but I'm sure something could be worked out. Maybe the end of the universe could be preceded by the sentient matter all going to sleep, so no one would see it coming.