good and evil

The possibility of creating intelligent beings on a non-biological basis opens up the possibility for man not only to live side by side with his creations, but to create new, artificial worlds, worlds that will be inhabited by these creatures.

By artificial worlds, here we mean the models of the virtual world performed on computers. Ideally, it would be possible to create a model in which physical laws are defined and in which the condition and condition of each brick of the universe of this world — an elementary particle or possibly a quark — is monitored (in a probabilistic version of the model). By launching such a model from a state in which all the matter of this world is maximally compressed, it is possible to reproduce an analogue of the process of birth and development of the world in which we exist, provided that the hardware of the model allows it to be done in an acceptable period of time.

When modeling a virtual world, a person (creator) will stand outside the time and causality of the world created by him. During the lifetime of one person in the virtual world, all events can occur that are comparable to the birth and destruction of his own world. The ability to interfere with the causality of the virtual world created by him gives a person properties that we attribute to God in the real world. From the position of the creatures of the virtual world, man will be a god, the creator of their world.

Consider the question: what goals may arise before us when creating models of virtual worlds with artificial intelligent creatures inhabiting them? A partial list of these goals will be as follows:

1. Gaming, entertainment moment modeling. People enjoy watching movies and television films. Here, in front of them will be unfolded pictures of the birth, flourishing and decline of civilizations. Those who wish can take part in the life of some part of the virtual world. The tempo of the time of the virtual world can be reduced to the pace of the world in which we live, and the methods of interaction with the virtual world can in principle be the same as when a person is driving a virtual plane on a simulator. Similarly, a person can manage their virtual body.
2. Research moment modeling. Conduct research on the example of a model of their own world. The following aspects of research suggest themselves: - social; - philosophical; - linguistic; - evolutionary; - ...
3. Replenishment bright, brilliant personalities of our world. The virtual world in which individuals form and develop can be viewed as a kind of cage similar to the cage in which young fish are bred.

Consider the moral aspect of the problem of creating virtual worlds. I will repeat the idea that I expressed at one of the conferences.

Do we have the moral right to create intelligent creatures in virtual worlds and experiment with them? The first thing that comes to mind is inhuman, it cannot be done. However, how would you react to such a thought.

Suppose that humanity is also created by someone (in the image and likeness), and that experiments are being made on it. So, I don’t know about you, but I prefer to be part of someone’s experiment than not to be at all.

In the following, attempts will sometimes be made to spread the ideas that arise when constructing virtual worlds to the world in which we live, as well as to use the ideas that have arisen in the study of our world (for example, in physics, genetics, theology, ...) when constructing models of virtual worlds.

Let us turn to an attempt to answer the question of what values ​​we can have (receive) from the worlds we create?

We will not dwell on the gaming models of the virtual world. The value of models of this kind is obvious. Traveling to new countries, other worlds, exotic customs ... always attracted people.

Consider the worlds we create for research purposes. The value of these worlds for us lies in the knowledge and understanding of the processes of virtual worlds that we will get by exploring them. This knowledge will give us an understanding of our world. It is simply impossible to experiment on some processes in our world because of their long time duration. Models of virtual worlds can be created with the expectation that time in these worlds will flow much faster than in our world. The rate of time flow of the virtual world will depend, to a large extent, on the performance of the hardware (computer) on which the model will run.

Obvious value for us will also be models in which individuals will be cultivated, intended to replenish the world in which we live. These extraordinary personalities will probably give new impulses to the development of our world.

We ask ourselves, and what kinds of rational beings we have created would we like to see in our world?

First of all, no one will have anything against creatures oriented to activities in certain areas of the social and industrial spheres of humanity. That is, hardly anyone will be against creatures with built-in limiters of free will and perception. These creatures can be called the well-known word - robots.

Secondly, to feed our civilization with new ideas, morality, other spiritual values, it would be imprudent to refuse the opportunity to communicate with intelligent beings that we created, which have no restrictions on free will, beings that we recognize as equal to us. However, in connection with beings that do not have restrictions on free will, a number of questions arise.

Is it possible and necessary to artificial artificial creatures created by us and who will live in our space-time continuum (in our reality), to give such an opportunity, as reproduction? The answer to this question probably should be dictated by our common sense. It should be borne in mind that the creatures we create are, in principle, immortal in our world. After all, carriers of artificial personalities - computers, with breakdowns, can be easily replaced. The individuals themselves are not, like a person to a body, tied to their hardware, to a computer. The personality determines information about its organization and its knowledge, which is stored in the computer memory.

Therefore, if artificial rational beings will have the ability to reproduce, then this, sooner or later, will inevitably lead to social conflicts between them and humanity (meaning the demographic factor). Why do we need it? Why create a competitor to the human race? Even if you programmatically limit the lifespan of artificial personalities, the problem remains.

So, the question of endowing artificial personalities with the ability to reproduce themselves has become clearer. To endow them with this opportunity will be just imprudent. But in connection with this, the question arises, how then to carry out the emergence and formation of new artificial personalities?

Their inner world will be determined by education. Who will bring them up? After all, as was shown, the motivation of artificial personalities should not introduce a tendency (orientation) to recreate their own kind, and after all, the education complex of rational beings as an indispensable component includes the education of young people. It is important to introduce a restriction on the education of one’s own kind in artificial personalities, too, since the act of reproduction itself can be accomplished by such an elementary act as copying oneself, and by mashing most of the knowledge that has been acquired by an artificial person by this point in time.

Some married couples can take on the education of new artificial personalities, but there is another way of creating artificial personalities.

The best source of bright, brilliant artificial personalities in our world can be virtual worlds created by us. These personalities will be products of evolution, perhaps in terms of our time of very long, virtual worlds. We will be able to select them according to the criteria that we will establish ourselves.

Let's look at the worlds that we are going to create from the point of view of the impacts that need to be made from our world to the virtual one. In accordance with the goals that were set during the creation of the virtual world, several types of impacts can be proposed.

Their combinations are also possible.

• Non-interference (observation, research).
• Intervention in the causal relations of the virtual world, but without setting a goal to direct the development of this world along some path (game).
• Intervention in causality, with the aim to direct the world created by us along some path. Our goals in this case, for example, can be:
• Elimination of evil (exploratory altruism), see what it can lead to;
• To achieve the maximum scope between good and evil in the artificial reality created by us. There is an assumption that it makes civilization develop rapidly, not allowing it to fall into stagnation. After all, the idea that there is no good without evil is obvious, if only because a comparison is simply necessary. Therefore, the devil is probably as necessary in every world as the angel;
• To influence the model of the virtual world, achieving the most consistent and complete development of the outlined original evolutionary line. For example: technical civilization, aesthetic civilization ...;

The development and existence of virtual worlds entirely depend on our will, our assessments, that is, in the end, on what we consider good and what we consider evil. By our extra-causal influences on the virtual worlds created by us, we voluntarily, or unwittingly, in some of them, form our idea of ​​good and evil. In fact, the existence of virtual worlds created by us is determined only by the purpose for which each particular world was created by us, and by how fully this world corresponds to this goal. Therefore, by no means all virtual worlds will we try to bring to a state corresponding to our concept of good and evil. Achieving a goal by the virtual world, good from our point of view, will not necessarily be considered good from the point of view of the inhabitants of this world. This is possible. Good and evil are relative. In our world, too: what is good for one can be evil for another.

This raises the question. To which kind of worlds does our world belong, the world in which we exist, if it was created by someone? And what kind of impact on our world is taking place?

If we extrapolate the possible interactions of our world with the models of the worlds created by us to our world and the world of which we are possibly a model, then the thought of the possibility of the disappearance of our world as an ordinary event in research activity that gave rise to us is shocking. Yes, we are facing a picture of the possible ephemeral nature of our existence that has opened up to our gaze. Yes, the existence of many of us can be suddenly changed or terminated due to the slightest local impact on the causality of our world, and even the mention of our existence in the world that gave rise to us can be erased. This, as it can be assumed, depends on the results to which our civilization can bring the creators of our world (a developmental line of events in the virtual world on the tree of all possible development options) and on their will.

Without pretending to unconditional truth, the idea that, like the virtual worlds we create, our world is a model created by someone, allows us to give a rational explanation to many miracles, as well as to divine phenomena that have been observed in our world. Proceeding from what was written above, such a statement, accepted by many, as "the Divine is inaccessible to our understanding," is not true. The goals of our creator may well coincide with the goals that we will set, creating our own virtual worlds. We can analyze these goals, make observations, explore the history of our world and make a conclusion about the possible meaning of our existence, about why our world was created.

The most desirable for us, the most flattering to our vanity is the assumption that our world is a cage for the emergence and development of those individuals who will find their place in the world that gave birth to us, that is, the assumption that our world is intended to replenish the population of the world of our god . However, other options are possible.