OK so this is a silly one but I thought it might be fun and interesting.
Scenario is that in the near future there is an incontestable revelation experienced at the same time by everyone in the world, it turns out that our reality really is a computer simulation and the beings running it have learned all they want to know. Not being jerks they say that they’re going to leave it running indefinitely but are giving all the simulated sentients (ie: us) access to the code.
They don’t really explain any more than this and don’t answer any questions, for everyone in the world the main effect seems to be that they can at will pull up a ‘user menu’ that appears as an understandable list of options hanging in the air in front of them, visible to the person using it but not to anyone else. The options on the list depend on what the person accessing it wants to see, no-one is quite sure what is or is not possible but what is clear that everyone is now capable of directly manipulating themselves, others, and the physical environment around them.
How would society adapt, and what would you try out to see if you can do it or not?
If everyone has the ability to manipulate the world, it’s likely to fuck up in fairly short order - because all it takes is one person with suicide bomber mentality to trash the whole thing.
If people are only capable of directly manipulating themselves and their immediate environs, then I guess we’ll see a bunch of people trying to turn themselves into gods, supermen, tycoons, Casanovas and Einsteins, with an unknown proportion of those going horribly wrong.
I guess a lot of it depends on the level at which the simulation is actually operating. If it’s simulating fundamental particles, then we’re in more or less the same position as now, just with additional tools - I still can’t make myself sprout antlers unless I can figure out the biology.
If, on the other hand, the simulation is operating at a high level (and the underlying chemistry/particle physics is being filled in as a fiction when we bother to look - which is consistent with quantum uncertainty etc), then the possibilities are a bit broader.
Many Worlds Theory could work in conjunction with the above-the madman manipulates himself into one timeline-yeah everybody else, in that timeline, goes whoosh right with him, but the other 99.9999999+% of the timelines are unaffected.
“The Ultimate Anthropic Principle,” which, if taken to an extreme, suggests that you are immortal. You will exist in any universe in which you can exist.
“You” (generic; every one of us) will be downloaded, or be involved in some other kind of event, preserving your consciousness. Forever.
(Hey, if you can’t take a philosophical thought-experiment to its extreme, what fun is it?)
