Is Life A Recursive Video Game?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2018/12/12/is-life-a-recursive-video-game/#2bae555137d3
This article provides an interesting discussion about simulation theory and what can happen in the future with hyper-realistic video games. Alex Zhavoronkov argues that for video games to succeed at approaching realism, they must be “sticky.” Put simply, the player must be “convinced that he or she belongs to the new world, while more or less forgetting about the world outside.” He also observes that many games are already recursive–you can play a game within a game.
Zhavoronkov also argues that “Economic forces are making video games necessary” because labor is being replaced by AI and the world’s population is living dramatically longer. Thus, he says there must be a system in place to occupy these bored people. And with these people playing video games, Artifical General Intelligence (AGI) can develop and flourish as video games in the future can be used to train AGI. Then this new and improved AGI can put more people out of work and create even more realistic video games for training data, leading more of the world’s population to be absorbed into a video game universe. And this cycle will continue and AGI will, “develop and clone the games themselves—and the humans within them.”
In the end, Zhavoronkov offers a dominant strategy of sorts on how to play life’s video game– “Live this life as if you’re in a video game.” That is, live life as if everyone can see your player stats when you leave. Thus, you should adhere to strict moral and ethical guidelines and make every decision with the common good in mind. This, paradoxically, is exactly what many religious zealots do–live their lives as if God is always watching and taking a tally of every decision.