Philosophers have long-debated whether humans have free will. When we look at lesser animals it would seem that they do not – they have set responses to scenarios and with enough computing power (as in enough to predict weather perfectly) we could 100% predict animal behaviour.
But we are special, because we are conscious, and we can override whatever instincts we have, if we want. But then, isn’t that overriding still just instinct, but exponential.
Ultimately everything boils down to physics, including our brain cells, and that can mean a presumption that we are predictable, and the future is pre-determined.
Which means in a simulated human world, there are two ways it can work, to actually get results and insights.
Varying Inputs – tweak all the starting parameters and see how it turns out. That might mean giving Earth 1% more water, or tweaking our ancestral ape DNA.
Randomness – that means running the same simulation with the same starting parameters repeatedly, but introducing randomness at some small junctures, especially when it comes to human decisions. You might only need 0.1% of the population making random decisions once a decade to massively change the ultimate outcome of the world.
Or, of course, a mix of both, but I would suggest that would be counter-productive.
Of course if our simulated selves were making random decisions occasionally, we would not know that, we would think we simply decided. Even if others might point out it is a poor choice.
The problem with random is that it isn’t. Any random number created in the world of standard physics is ultimately predictable. So every time you ran the simulation, that random number would be the same number, causing the same result.
The only way to get around that is using quantum physics to generate the random number. A quantum computer. If the actual world running the simulation has quantum physics, then all good, they can use that with us. But if they don’t, if quantum physics is only something that exists in our simulation, then it is actually programmed and won’t work.
Possibly, maybe, quantum physics lives in the actual world, and our simulation pulls that into out world from outside.
Three possibillities
- Real world has quantum, we think we do but it is computed normally
- Real world has quantum, and they feed it into our world
- Real world doesn’t have quantum, we think we do but it is computed normally
Only #2 means we have at least a pretence of free will in a simulation. Only if we are not in a simulation is true free will possible, which also covers players in our simulation that exist physically outside of it.
Maybe, possibly, the only randomness in our world happens when we here start using a quantum computer random number generator to inform our decisions. And maybe that is what our Simulation Gods are hoping for or expecting. So get to it!
Read The Dice Man.
Use Randonautica.