I do not believe you understand what I am referring to, John. When I say that they do not matter, I’m not describing their station as peons or peasant folk. I literally mean that their minds are not factually proven to exist. As to your claims about the motive behind my actions, I am not a physical entity. I am but a thought. I exist only to plague you, and to remind you of the futility of morality and ethics.
I understand quite well what you are referring to.
Lets, for the sake of argument, assume that everything except myself is indeed simply controlled as a roleplay of some single malevolent entity, some
mad thing
engineering all experience. All the persons I appear to see around me would simply be puppets role-played by this entity. In order to do this believably, with all the different personalities I see around me, this entity have to consider what the entity played would experience if they existed, and how they might react to that stimuli. This include imagining their thoughts, emotions, anguish, joys, actions, and reasoning about their subjective experience so they can appear to speak about it to me. In fact, in doing all this, and as an absolute requirement to making it believable at all, the entity would have to make an entire simulation in their mind, and each messing round with the results of tis simulation would reduce its believability. Thus, if there appears to be a person that show all the signs characteristic as such or even something whose non-personhood could be reasonably doubted, there must somewhere be a simulation of it, and one that is only manipulated rarely and subtly if at all. If the person appear to be in a certain state, and can be reasoned with about it and all the other subtle things I that can be observed and interacted with, that means the simulation in actuality IS in that state. If the person seems intelligent, the simulation needs to be intelligent. If the person seems to reason about "I think therefore I am", then the simulation would have had to reason about that. Such a simulation easily fit all my criteria for being a person, and as it is the thing I actually communicate when I consider myself to be communicating with the person, the simulation IS that person.
Not only cant you create something that appears to be a person under close inspection, but isn't, but the very notion of such a thing is nonsense, because the person IS the complicated behaviours I observe.
As for plaguing me, you are failing that to; this is both fun and rewarding, and I have no real worry of failure.
Morality is not futile, for it is directions and not a binary goal, so it can be followed no matter how far the distance travelled is. And it is internal to myself, not a light shining from above, and as such it is by definition, it as an axiom, not an answer.
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I will accept that I exist, and that something that is not me exist, although we seem to need a better definition of "me". For example, I would not count the past scavenger, whose memories I do not posses and who were evil and unlike me in many personality traits to be the same person in any meaning as the one speaking with you now. But considering an entity consisting of a blend of memories and traits from each, wich may well have existed or will come to exist at some time, I am not sure if to classify that as "me" or not, although upon observing the consequences of such a blend the classification would probably be obvious.
I will also accepts that no probability ever has a certainty of 1, for that is an infinite certainty, and thus would require an infinite amount of observations to ever reach.
There is always the possibility one might be a
Boltzman brain, but in that case the reasoning process used to reach all these conclusions is most likely invalid, and thus it is unhelpfull to consider it for most practical purposes.
What I do NOT agree on however is that this would entitle one to throw up ones hands and declare that existence is completely unpredictable. No probabilities are 0, but they may be arbitrarily small, and not all probabilities are the same. One can still say that MOST LIKELY I will not cease to exist the next second, MOST LIKELY my experiences are not the result of random noise because then they wouldn't be so orderly. MOST LIKELY the majority of my memories actually happened. And for each statement, the probability that one is wrong increases, but the probability that they all are wrong shrinks into irrelevance. No probability is 0, but it may well be one in a gogolplex, and in practice there is no difference.
Also you forgot a few axioms: in addition to me existing, and the other existing, what also exists is maths/logic, as it is a requirement for the complex process needed for there to be a me. There is also knowledge of certain PROPERTIES of the me; that I experience certain things, that I contain certain memories, and that I uphold certain beliefs and principles, and that I can reason according to certain laws of logic.
As per my previous argument, with a few irrelevant exception scenarios like being a Boltzman brain, having memories of something that clearly seems like people and the existence of the other together implies that people like that actually exist.
Giving this conclusion, as well as the axiom of me existing, as well as the contents of me, one can indeed conclude morality:
The contents of my mind, morality is defined as certain types of actions in interaction with other people, most importantly treating them like they would want to be treated if they knew everything I know at the moment and had their full mental capabilities. This morality is not some outside influence that "should" be followed; it is a simple property of my minds, I act acording to what I consider to be moral because I WANT to, not because it serves some higher purpose. Given this, I can and will indeed follow these principles as far as I can, "good" is only an empty label, I'm after
Utilons, and as long as I exist, some other sentient mind exist, and I have some way to influence that mind in any way, I can get at least some.
The thing that burned the world shared few properties with me save name and looks, in no way was that me. No guilt is necessary.
Love is strange, but not mysterious, for mystery exist only in the mind, and not one unusual thing has ever happened. If she will hurt me, only time will tell, if time exist. But I will never hurt her, for the moment I do I no longer qualify as me.
((OOC: The mad Engineer, I want to thank you deeply, for the first time since long, long ago I am in my own right element again. Also, you might want to read this as something more than a response to a game as well, and you will discover that you might have gotten much higher stakes than you bargained for...))