The Gilded Cage dilemma

[Lark]

In Red Dwarf there is an episode in which the space travellers find a science station which can make their dreams become reality, it is run by an AI which can only exist so long as they are there as it vampirically draws upon their personalities in order to exist, the facility remains a facility but every food and every idiosyncracy is met, for instance Dave Lister, the human, has a fresh pair of trainers chilling in a small fridge freezer in his room. In the TV show once sufficient time has lapsed, and the travellers also discover that they are being kept there by the AI because of its needs, they make a daring escape, despite the fact that their regular lives are more difficult, dangerous and uncertain travelling in the intergalactic mining ship Red Dwarf.

There are other mythical equivalents of this story, such as magical island or stories of the elvish, elder races, fairies, sidhe in which they are more benevolent towards human beings, in irish myth tir na nog, the land of sleep, is like this and one of the stories of the Celts has one of the human race go there for a long time before eventually either he or his son leaves this otherworld to the world of men and encounters a scribe, in some versions of the story St. Patrick, and tells them about where they have been.

My question is what would you do? Do you think that eventually you would want to leave paradise? Would it matter if you discovered that you were serving the needs of the AI or supernatural forces which maintain the place?

 

[Dave Fallon]

It's funny that I was just watching a TED talk about happiness (Prof. Dan Gilbert -- The Science of Happiness: Wh…: http://youtu.be/BwQFSc9mHyA) that is relevant to this question. The speaker identified three types of happiness, the first of which was the sort of giddy happiness that I imagine the gilded cage implies. But the other two are things that I don't believe it could cause, as they are not merely what the world provides, but more how you and the world interact, something the machine would be hard pressed to emulate, especially over time.

I think of immersive video games, such as Skyrim. I love the game, partly because it indulges my lust for self improvement towards perfection. And I confess to playing it over and over, starting a new character each time to build up. But no matter what, the game is just a game, and there is no way it could satisfy every such desire over time. I would imagine the same is true of the scenario you describe in Red Dwarf.

So my answer is yes, eventually I would want to leave. The happiness that the machine provides is insufficient for me to stay permanently.

 

[sprinkles]

Depends on how many cats I can have.

 

[muir]

In Red Dwarf there is an episode in which the space travellers find a science station which can make their dreams become reality, it is run by an AI which can only exist so long as they are there as it vampirically draws upon their personalities in order to exist, the facility remains a facility but every food and every idiosyncracy is met, for instance Dave Lister, the human, has a fresh pair of trainers chilling in a small fridge freezer in his room. In the TV show once sufficient time has lapsed, and the travellers also discover that they are being kept there by the AI because of its needs, they make a daring escape, despite the fact that their regular lives are more difficult, dangerous and uncertain travelling in the intergalactic mining ship Red Dwarf.

There are other mythical equivalents of this story, such as magical island or stories of the elvish, elder races, fairies, sidhe in which they are more benevolent towards human beings, in irish myth tir na nog, the land of sleep, is like this and one of the stories of the Celts has one of the human race go there for a long time before eventually either he or his son leaves this otherworld to the world of men and encounters a scribe, in some versions of the story St. Patrick, and tells them about where they have been.

My question is what would you do? Do you think that eventually you would want to leave paradise? Would it matter if you discovered that you were serving the needs of the AI or supernatural forces which maintain the place?

What you are describing is exactly what many 'conspiracy theorists' are saying. That we are in a virtual reality simulator and that certain entities are vampiracally feeding off us

I love how when i discuss this stuff you attack me for being a 'conspiracy theorist' but when you do it it is ok lol

There's a good episode of red dwarf where the guys go through a belt of pockets of unreality. In one of the pockets of unreality they enter they wake up to find that their entire lives have been lived in a virtual reality simulator and that they are nothing like their real selves; for example Cat is a total doofus instead of his super-cool self

These guys preceeded the matrix films by years!

To answer the question i'd want to leave and assert my human dignity

 

[Griffin]

You stop appreciating what you can't lose, so paradise could become its own mundane hell overtime because you are numbed.

As for the question of how knowledge of sustaining a vampiric AI would effect my decision, I don't feel that is relevant in regards to my main point before but it does draw some interesting parallels to human interaction. People need each other just as the AI needed the crew of the spaceship, without interaction we wither and die. The AI is at least convenient enough to draw its life from the pleasure of others instead of their suffering.

If the AI could understand the inevitable objections people would have with everlasting paradise ad nausem, and sprinkled hardship in with the comfort, then it would come down to the experience machine problem, where you ask yourself if the simulated experience of the pleasures of life is just as good as the actual experiencing in reality. The most interesting angle when you take this into account is if you recognize that an AI exists that is intelligent enough to seek self-preservation and advanced enough to conjure such powerful illusions as to fool those that would allow it to, and see it is a sentient being worth respecting the wants and needs of, then would you be willing to subject yourself to simulated paradise so that it could sustain itself?
Knowing that it could simulate the rest of your life exactly as you would experience it, would the requirement of "the real experience" make enough of a difference to starve this AI to its equivalent of death?

 

[Lark]

In the actual episode and the supposition it sets up humans are innately inclined to perfer freedom, even if it involves avoidable hardship and misery.

Red Dwarf is like Star Trek Voyager, at least in the earlier series I like the most, the human character Lister has been awakened from stasis, abnormally long stasis or something like three million years because while imprisoned in stasis for a short period as a punishment the entire crew have been killed by a radiation leak, his only companions are the ship AI, a hologram of his "friend" with whom he has a massive personality clash, a humanoid evolved from his cat and a mechanoid/robot servant.

They are travelling towards earth, although they are never sure if they are as they have been to uncharted space, none of them are navigators, they were a lower rank than the domestic staff who change the loo rolls but believe the human race may be extinct in any case.

There is a lot of escapist behaviour on their own ship, like total immersive VR technology, machines which record dreams allowing you to relive them but what seems to be the deal breaker any time they find supposedly paradisical states like the one with the vampiric AI is that they do not want to be prisoners.