Thing is, universal computation emerges from systems implementing extremely simple rules. Equally simple starting state allows such a system to generate all possible programs and simulatable universes. Effectively everything can emerge from extremely simple initial state.
What's to say that general intelligence requires extremely complex end products of millions years of natural selection? It's pretty easy to conceive that general intelligence may emerge from extremely simple set of rules even on simple initial state. If so a godlike entity could easily emerge. This is also ignoring ideas like boltzmann brains which suggest that highly complex objects can actually emerge out of the vacuum fully formed given infinite time and space.
While on the subject of boltzmann brains, it is conceivable that a boltzmann simulation computer could pop out of the vacuum with countless virtual inhabitants or brains in vats if brains have special uncomputable properties.
That said, as a determinist, I believe there is no free will, and all that can be is simply to experience sensations including the sensation of will. Even a being in a godlike state may not actually be able to influence anything. Changing the computations you're performing, may be like changing dvds in a dvd player, you change the movie being played but the characters and events remain unchanged in each individual movie.
A pattern can exist in an infinite number of places, I just don't see how writing down a pattern in a piece of paper or in computer memory, how that changes in any way the pattern or sequence of patterns. Any instance of the pattern seems to be fundamentally changeless and atemporal, independent of any physical copies and changes made to said copies.
That;s the thing with simulations, at least digital simulation rest on patterns. The same exact simulation is probably running in an infinity of places, even if one copy shuts down, it doesn't affect the actual sequence of events. Like a dvd of say terminator 2 being burnt, that doesn't actually destroy the actual characters or story.
What happens if you take a simulation down an unlikely set of paths, say godlike interactions, well that always existed as a possibility. Like the concept of alternate timelines, where the time changes were always there, these interactions were always part of that particular path, and are probably occurring in an infinite number of places. It's like fanfiction of a particular work, it is a possible trajectory.
If digital physics is true, if we've also got determinism and patterns are essentially changeless and atemporal in nature. Then there can be no morality if such is the case, doing something in the real world would be no different from doing it in a virtual world, not only that but there would be no choice just the illusion of choice. And in the end, writing numbers or patterns down, simulating an experience in a computer, would be no different than an interactive movie, all that could be is was and will always be. No matter the actions taken within a digital simulation there would fundamentally not be anything wrong with them, as it'd be simply a transition between pre-existent atemporal patterns not the actual creation of patterns(branching and adding).- source thread
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