What do you think of this argument for the existence of an afterlife? (Nothing to do with religion.)

According to the movie The Matrix, pain and suffering are deliberately included into the simulation to make it more ‘realistic’. They tried creating a blissful paradise, but nobody believed it.

That’s a good question. You might be the only one in the simulation, and everyone else is a non-player character; or we might all be there in the sim with you. There’s no way of knowing.

Note that I don’t particularly believe in the Simulation Hypothesis, or worry about it unduly; we could never know the difference. But a lot of people have the wrong impression about the Simulation Argument, and think they can dismiss it easily. No - it is more slippery than that.

But yet by the OP’s 3rd point I’m expected to believe in a blissful afterlife?

Quite.

True. But maybe future human could slow-down the perspectives of simulated people to the point that one real life minute is equivalent to trillions of years from the perspective of simulated people. Also, it might be possible for future humans to live in indefinitely thanks to a neverending energy source.

I think that one possiblity is that they create a simulation that is so good that the simulation creates a perfect simulation, and so and so forth to the point that there is nearly a 0% that the creators themselves are the original and not a simulation themselves.

In order for this to work, we would have to create a computer with infinite processing power, not to mention memory.

And if we had that, people would just use it to mine bitcoin.

I give some credence to the ancestor simulation, a little to the AI training scenario, a bit to the advanced Sim’s conjecture, and a small fraction to the gaming pod setting.

Between them, I still see them with a combined probability of much less than 1%, but they are still infinitely more probable than the “simulations all the way down” paradigm.

Neither of these is correct. Why don’t you just say humans can make their own afterlife if they want to, and that it doesn’t happen after life or eternally.

I would say, in the abstract, that the simulation hypothesis is useful in that it shows an afterlife doesn’t need to be contrary to the laws of physics.
You don’t need to posit magic, or ignore the physical reality of brain death, to consider the possibility of living on in some form.

That’s about as far as it goes though.

Arguments about what character the simulations would have don’t seem very convincing to me. We can conceive of an innumerable motivations for making any kind of simulation. Maybe for every heaven there’s a trillion hells, who knows?
And the elephant in the room is of course consciousness…while we have no model for how syntactic operations can bring pain or pleasure it seems a stretch to assert that strong AI is true and then use that as the basis for discussing afterlives.

Hmm; if ordinary silicon-based computers can’t produce consciousness (which may be the case) then it may be necessary to include biological processors in the circuit.

A human cortex, flattened out, would cover about two square metres. Perhaps we will eventually be reconstituted as flat, square biological subtrates on a shelf somewhere, supplied with nutrients and sensations from imaginary virtual bodies, inside imaginary virtual environments.

Future humans would understand that:

  • creating an afterlife for simulated beings would not improve the creators’ chances at a good afterlife.
  • in a world without an afterlife simulation, the beings do not know anything after the end of their consciousness, so there’s no point in trying to be humane to them.
  • in a world where nobody can communicate with the afterlife, there will be no customer complaints.

Every potential benefit of afterlife can be attained by fostering the myth of an afterlife. Tell people that existence has some greater purpose, that it doesn’t all end after death, that good acts will be rewarded while bad ones are punished. People will be comforted and govern themselves accordingly, which would benefit the simulated society (if they all have the same myth). You don’t actually have to build it out.