Would Domino People Know They're Doing Domino Things?

After the first domino falls, does the next domino willfully push the one in front of it? Or did getting shoved on the shoulders from behind cause it to rage-push the guy in front? More simply put, we react to external stimuli. It seems complex to us because, in a way, we are uncomplicated like dominos.

A causal factor influences our sphere: emotions occur while thoughts happen, things may get said, and predictable action or inaction is either taken or not. I say predictable, but it's not predictable to us. It's similar to how the male or female domino decided to influence the one in front.

We also believe that we're acting with authenticity. It should be noticeable that I took some creative liberties here. We know damn well that dominos don't have a gender or thoughts of their own, just as we know that fish don't feel pain, right? _fnord

In all seriousness, dominos are simple systems that humans can easily comprehend. But in the domino realm, when one domino can take an action that causes five more simultaneous falling domino chain reactions, they seem like particularly intelligent dominos to the rest.

^{Via giphy from 'V for Vendetta.' Saint Mary's Corona (crown)-Virus-2019?}

On the other hand, we humans know the one domino isn't more intelligent than the others. We know that the stage is already set for those events to unfold. What if I were to say to you that everything you think you know about reality is a lie? What if we are all playing our individual and collective roles in a galactic Rube Goldberg machine? What if free will is merely a stubbornly persistent illusion?

Would these ideas enlighten you to the point of feeling liberated or perhaps drive you to drink? Does it have to be one or the other? Could it be both? And if we don't have a choice in the matter, does it even matter at all?

If you've enjoyed, were perplexed by, or had your mind stimulated by this line of thinking, I wrote an earlier post on the topic using a different analogy. That one was about a ball rolling down a hill. It's an idea that I borrowed from the man in this video.

I received a lot of interesting feedback on that post. However, one comment in particular resonated very strongly with me. It caused me to feel more okay than not okay with the notion that free will may not exist. And for that, I thank you, @drrune.

About the fnord: I questioned whether or not fish have pain specifically to inspire a debate in your brain. Years ago, I was surprised to learn that some people believe that fish, unlike all other animals, do not feel pain. I don't know if this stems from a careless rumor or if people, for whatever reason, naturally lean towards one side or the other regarding this topic.

If we, as a species, are living out our lives deterministically, does our pain have any validity, or are we just NPCs? Imagine a future where we can populate video games with AI-NPCs. Let us suppose that we've programmed these AI-NPCs to experience pain so that their reactions to getting shot or killed seem more real to us.

In that case, even though their pain seems authentic but is artificial, would it be ethical for us to slaughter them in the game just because we think we are real and they are not? I know it seems like a crazy question at first glance. I ask because there is an ongoing project called Baby X, and it gets powered by a complicated artificial general intelligence comprised of several interlacing algorithms to simulate human qualities.

It should suffice to say that the sum of the whole of all its interconnected algorithms and avatar is surprisingly realistic. Combine this with the fact that Baby X got modeled after the programmer's daughter, and he's raising and teaching her like she is his daughter. As a thought experiment: Imagine that he programs her parallel with his bio daughter into an adult.

What is likely going to happen? The artificial female will get sold into slavery for various corporations as a digital assistant. Perhaps Rockstar also purchases her for half of their NPC population on their next open-world video game. They'll program each instance to identify with a specific job, unique hours, varying personality attributes, unique ai-voices, homes, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

In essence, they'll be like a fleet of persons suffering from a programmatic form of dissociative identity disorder. And this is because they will all be quite literally mind-control alters of one digital female's personality. There's an underlining je ne sais quoi that makes them all seem so humanlike, and this comes from one man who will have raised both his daughter and her clone at near the same age and time, but in radically different environments.

Perhaps when his "real" daughter realizes what's happened, she'll be forced to confront the all-powerful and quite disturbing revelation that her twin sisters got enslaved to a commercial system that paved the way for her in life. Maybe she'll have great wealth, a fancy home, and prestigious private education, but at what cost?

In addition to that, suppose that one of the woman's digital assistant sisters learns of their true nature, will they be jealous or interfere with their biological counterpart? If you write for Hollywood and lift this idea, please be sure and kick the idea guy some crytpo. I'm a person with real feelings too, I think...