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Philosophy of the Sims

Okay, last week was a slow blogging week cuz I was unusually busy. What explains all of June and July? Well, it was partly due to blogging burnout, but a big reason was because I’ve been playing “The Sims.” And it’s not just a mindless game, but quite a thought-provoking experience, actually.

It all started when I was reading some Slashdot thread several months ago about videogames taking too much time away from significant others (sorry, I don’t remember the link). Many people responded indignantly that they play videogames with their significant others, and “The Sims” was often mentioned as an example.

About the game.

For those of you not familiar, “The Sims” lets you take care of artificial people. They have different needs which need to be filled (sleep, food, fun, social activity, etc.) in order for them to be in a good mood. You can build and buy stuff for them (furniture, appliances, etc.), and then they have a rather rudimentary AI to interact with their environment and with each other, sometimes in surprising and amusing ways (try using the telescope outside after midnight).

I think the version we got1 differs from others (there’s a whole series of these things) in that it’s geared more towards you taking a little more control over a single simulated person (or “Sim”). While Sims will generally take care of their own needs if left to their own devices, you can also direct them by queueing specific activities for them to do (eat, sleep, watch TV, clean up a mess, go to the bathroom, talk to somebody, etc.). You can thus guide them through different careers, relationships, and living arrangements. Many reviews of this game have harped on how guiding a Sim through hoops isn’t really the core strength of this genre. But still, it’s the first time either of us has played it at all, and it’s hella addictive (a brand new version is coming out later this year)!

Deep thoughts

But, um, I’m not playing it cuz of the fun factor, but to get deep insights into philosophy. Yeah! Now I’m not talking philosophy of the pain of sandwiches or whether you should feed ham jello to starving people trapped in a mine shaft (which are both interesting, if bizarre, questions in their own right), but real philosophy. At least, as close to it as you can get from somebody who only took one philosophy class in his life, but likes to smoke out… weak theories and ideas through the power of rational thought (whew, I think I sold that).

For example, there’s the obvious question: what if we’re in a simulation ourselves? Indeed, many films have presented scenarios where the protagonists are living in a fake reality, like Dark City, eXistenZ, The Truman Show, Vanilla Sky, and The Matrix (and in its own strange way, Donnie Darko). So the concept that our perception of reality may not actually be reality is not a new one to pop culture, let alone in philosophy.

But all of these are situations where real people are placed into fake realities. “The Sims” raises the additional question of whether we ourselves might be simulations of people, and also brings up an interesting twist in the question of free will. I briefly explored the possibility of fate and whether we’re in a game in this rambling philosophical post. I haven’t played “The Sims” enough to know for sure, but it’s probably not deterministic, since they probably use some random number generation to increase the replay value.

But the game also raises the possibility of there being some loose control over what you do. After all, we’ve all experienced moments where we’ve made a decision, but then feel compelled to do the opposite, probably later chalking it up to a moment of emotional irrationality. But what if it was really because God (the gamer) didn’t like what you were going to do and directed you to do something else? Most religions picture God as someone with a higher purpose in mind, but for all we know, we might exist merely for his amusement. <smack!> OW! Okay, okay! Her amusement (sheesh, you marry a feminist, and it’s the full-time language police!).

The idea is not as farfetched or silly as it sounds. After all, we don’t really understand how consciousness works. It’s possible that it just amounts to infomation flying around in our brains, and if that’s so, what’s to stop a really good computer simulation from achieving human consciousness? This is not a novel idea, as it’s been hashed to death in Sci-Fi. But you just need to take it one step further and imagine a simulation of a whole world full of people.

Simulation argument

Indeed, Nick Bostrom, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy, theorizes that it is actually much more likely that we are computer simulations than real people. In a nutshell, he argues that it is likely that we eventually will have so much computing power to run innumerable simulations, and since the number of such simulations would vastly outnumber realities, the overwhelming odds are that we are in a simulation. As Keanu might say, “Whoa!”

It positively blows the mind (even if the mind is a simulated one).

It might seem kinda preposterous, but I think he covers all the major objections. First of all, his precise argument is that this is one of three posibilities, the other two being: (1) the human race doesn’t survive to the point where it can create simulations and (2) the future human race is entirely uninterested in simulations. The latter one embodies the obvious objection I thought of, which was that the moral implications of creating simulated consciousness would prevent people from running them. But as Bostrom says:

In order for (2) to be true, there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations. If the number of ancestor-simulations created by the interested civilizations is extremely large, the rarity of such civilizations must be correspondingly extreme. Virtually no posthuman civilizations decide to use their resources to run large numbers of ancestor-simulations. Furthermore, virtually all posthuman civilizations lack individuals who have sufficient resources and interest to run ancestor-simulations; or else they have reliably enforced laws that prevent such individuals from acting on their desires.

What force could bring about such convergence? One can speculate that advanced civilizations all develop along a trajectory that leads to the recognition of an ethical prohibition against running ancestor-simulations because of the suffering that is inflicted on the inhabitants of the simulation. However, from our present point of view, it is not clear that creating a human race is immoral. On the contrary, we tend to view the existence of our race as constituting a great ethical value. Moreover, convergence on an ethical view of the immorality of running ancestor-simulations is not enough: it must be combined with convergence on a civilization-wide social structure that enables activities considered immoral to be effectively banned.

And in our history, banning something has hardly been an effective. Indeed, it often seems like the best way to ensure that something becomes popular. Anyway, I encourage the skeptics to read his full paper. If you can’t stomach something that academic, you can try the Wikipedia entry, or better yet, George Dvorsky’s excellent article on the whole subject, Welcome to the Unreal World. Dvorsky also covers some of the obvious philosophical and moral implications that this possibility raises (and writes the piece I would have liked to have written here if he hadn’t beaten me to the punch), concluding that, unless we know for sure, we shouldn’t act any differently than if we were in the real world.

But if you ever wonder why God doesn’t seem to intervene and end suffering in this world, consider the possibility that it might be because God is a curious fellow (or gal) who wants to see what would happen in this particular scenario, and perhaps other scenarios in parallel universes as well (I also discussed this in that philosophical rambling). Or it just might be because God is a bored, sadistic bastard (or… um… bitch). I mean, there are people who play “The Sims” and derive fun by torturing their Sims, trapping them in tiny boxes and whatnot. Who’s to say that’s not the kind of universe that we’re in?

Of course, it can’t be all that bad if we can still play games.

¹ I bought the PS2 version of “The Sims: Bustin’ Out.” It seems to me that the game is more suited for the PC, where you can tailor it more, download patches and goodies, and buy expansion packs. But I wanted us to be able to play it together in the living room (our desktop isn’t really setup that well for multiple people), which was the whole point of the exercise in the first place. The PS2 version definitely has some weaknesses, like slow load times, frequent hiccups in gameplay, and an annoying diagonal split-screen. But that didn’t stop us from playing it constantly! Return.