#simulating

Almost inevitable that we would be more likely to be inside such a mind, rather than the first minds on the "ground floor" of reality.

The only thing holding this at bay in my mind is the idea that surely there is no way for such grand minds to come into being spontaneously, without being built up to, first by long arduous natural selection, and then by more and more design as the minds get good enough to start deliberately striving to make artificial minds.

Then one day I was simulating some possible experiences that I would have if I was a Native American, and I caught a glimpse of what it would be like to live in this world, to know the history that got us here, to be surrounded by the people in better conditions whose people persecuted the shit out of my people in some pretty awful ways, to know that my people's culture is literally dying out due to various factors related to that, and then finally to see those other people playing with superficial scraps of my culture, to see them making up and believing shit which just wasn't true, to see them adopting just the bits they like, and to realize that their version might be the one that lives on while my actual version winks out and is forgotten forever.

It's easier to picture this scenario if you have any idea or practice or truth that you actually care about people not getting wrong, because then you can imagine that instead of some bullshit ~culture~ that you don't really care about. Because it's easy for some people to see "culture" as just that - as a bunch of bullshit superficial stuff that doesn't really matter. So find something that matters to you, something that it really digs under your skin to have twisted. Use that.

If you can put yourself in those shoes, that's somewhere between unpleasant and existential-crisis-level horrifying.

Of course, ideally I would either motivate myself in other ways or could simulate my way to feeling jealousy, but reality can be a powerful motivator and it costs me no effort for reality to play out.

There is a big difference between just imagining, and imagining to the point that you have a realistic, automatic reaction. I call the latter "simulating". Imagination that does not achieve simulation is hollow, flat - you drive it but it does not drive you. When I talk of rehearsing cognition or scenarios in the mind, I mean simulating.

Simulation is one of the biggest reasons why imagination is valuable. Probably the biggest. Sure, imagination can enable mildly recreational daydreaming, and it can aid mental skills such as spatial reasoning, memory, or problem solving. But simulation is basically cheating. It is a hack for speedrunning almost any growth which comes down to knowing or controlling your own mind, and for having all sorts of experiences without their usual "real life" requirements.