NationStates

Suppose one day on your way home from work, you are stopped by a magical cat who offers you a choice: a life with unlimited pleasure and no pain or responsibilities. According to Ms. Magical Cat (whose name is Luna, by the way), you would be immersed in a simulation which is so perfectly created that you would never be able to tell the different between real life and simulation world. However, in simulation world, your life will be completely different. No more pain, no more sadness, no more working overtime, no more anxiety. Luna promises all of those displeasures will be replaced with nothing but your dreams being fulfilled in every way. Simply wish for something, and the laws of simulation universe will bend to accommodate your desire.

Do you accept Luna's offer?

I would accept

Hell yeah! Take me away from this nightmare we call reality.

Would you like to make a contract?

／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼

Sounds like a Slaaneshi trap!

Dogmeat wrote:Would you like to make a contract?

／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼

Go away QB, I'm not that desperate.

Reality can suck at times, but we know it can be better and how to make it better, it will just take time. Besides, it's not all bad, and you need the stuff that isn't good sometimes to appreciate what makes you happy in life.

However, if I could just go for a while sometimes, I'd be happy with that. A vacation from reality in moderation is always nice

There's no way there isn't a catch of some sort. This funny creature is probably a robot created to lure me to a gang of organ thieves.

Never!

Partially for the same reason why I refuse god or afterlife and similar nonesense.
A life gains all it's heights from the deepest lows. Fullfillment only stems from overcoming hurdles, not hiding from them. Each life is our own personal eternity.

This forsaken torture-turned-reality is the place where I will fight and may die for the emancipation of the unemancipated.

If i'm gonna be god yes

I remember watching this little short animated video. I can't exactly remember where I watched it or what it was called.
It started off with a girl who decided to go adventuring or something. She stumbles upon a massive, bleak-looking building. She enters and is prompted with a question.
"Would you like to live a life full of adventure?" or something like that.
She accepts and is ushered into a room with a chair. She's strapped into the chair and is hooked up to a machine or something like that. The machine does something like pouring chemicals into her brain and then she's in a fantasy world.
I remember the screen then panning out of her dream world to view the building, where you can see hundreds of other similar rooms with people in them.

I know this sounds bad, but I don't think I would mind something like that. I remember saying something like 'just stick the needles into my brain and let me live a life of wonder'.

So, naturally, I think I would accept the offer.

Voted no, for three reasons:

1: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

2: Existing is too weird and awesome to sequestrate oneself permanently from the universe in this way. If you did do this, then you're basically already dead.

3: Pleasure would lose perspective without at least a random microscopic speck of hardship once in a while.

Now if I could disconnect myself from this simulation anytime that I felt like it, I would absolutely go for that. I am a gamer, so I already do somewhat similar stuff on a regular basis. If you can get out anytime you want, it's just immersive VR with cheat codes enabled!

I accept the offer and then what? I have nothing more to strive for. No more aspirations. Life no longer has meaning. If everything is great and fantastic than what even is the point of doing anything? Sooner or later happiness will loose its meaning and pleasure won't be pleasure. Reality would bend to prevent you from suffering from bordom but in turn would only cause more stagnation. It turns into a horrifying and incomprehensible paradox.

So no, I would never accept the offer.

If everything is pleasure, than nothing is.

No, I would not accept, but not because I don’t be find the offer appealing.

But rather because I will have a hard time taking such an offer seriously. An offer without a downside is not an offer, it’s a con and I’m not falling for one.

I would also book an appointment at my hospital. A talking cat? Clearly I’m seeing things.

I voted no, because if someone offers to grant you your every whim on a plate (no catch), there is always a horrible catch, and because in a life of never-ending hollow wish-and-it's-yours pleasure, there is no space for real pleasure, or achievement, or fulfilment.

A life like that sounds pretty empty. Even if it wasn't an offer too good to be true (which it pretty much certainly is).

I would leave this offer for later. It might be some sort of a con, but still... I'd leave this as a last resort leap of faith, when things go south and desperate. A strategic permanent escape would still be useful.

Sengoku Americas wrote:Suppose one day on your way home from work, you are stopped by a magical cat who offers you a choice: a life with unlimited pleasure and no pain or responsibilities. According to Ms. Magical Cat (whose name is Luna, by the way), you would be immersed in a simulation which is so perfectly created that you would never be able to tell the different between real life and simulation world. However, in simulation world, your life will be completely different. No more pain, no more sadness, no more working overtime, no more anxiety. Luna promises all of those displeasures will be replaced with nothing but your dreams being fulfilled in every way. Simply wish for something, and the laws of simulation universe will bend to accommodate your desire.

Do you accept Luna's offer?

I might have to seriously consider her offer, and even accept in certain cases.

I grab the cat.

I now have a cat.

Why would I want to change that reality?

I don't accept, nothing about that sounds appealing tbh. My life might not be perfect but it has purpose and that's enough for me.

Rusozak wrote:Sounds like a Slaaneshi trap!

PURGE THE XENOS
THE EMPEROR PROTECTS

The Blaatschapen wrote:I grab the cat.

I now have a cat.

Why would I want to change that reality?

Win, /thread.

Sengoku Americas wrote:Do you accept Luna's offer?

I wouldn't mind the core promise - being taken to a realistic simulation that's much better than the real world. But there are three things which would make me refuse the stated proposal :

1. I don't want to be cut from the people I like/love. If it's a one-way ticket to "paradise" that means leaving them behind, then no. They need me and I need them.
2. That actually applies to the world as a whole - it's pretty f*cked up place, with all the xenophobia/biggotery/rampant fascism, the criminally high level of inequality, the breaking down of the environment in the name of profit. It can't give up the struggle for a fairer, more humane world.
3. Pure pleasure and no sadness and no anxiety ? But that implies no meaning, nothing important. No one to love. No cause to fight for. No challenge. Even in fiction (books, movies, video games) we self-inflict moderate amount of sadness and anxiety. I agree a perfect world should have no overwhelming pain/sadness, but none at all? That's not an utopia, but more of an empty void.

I do not really love anyone in this world enough to say no to this offer. I will miss the friends that I have made on and off this site.

But I would give it a second thought, and I would take it all the same.

I'd accept while acknowledging hedonistic adaptation.

It sounds like a meaningless and selfish existence. I'd say no. Feeling that my life serves a greater purpose is more important to me than the absence of suffering.

Sengoku Americas wrote:Suppose one day on your way home from work, you are stopped by a magical cat who offers you a choice: a life with unlimited pleasure and no pain or responsibilities. According to Ms. Magical Cat (whose name is Luna, by the way), you would be immersed in a simulation which is so perfectly created that you would never be able to tell the different between real life and simulation world. However, in simulation world, your life will be completely different. No more pain, no more sadness, no more working overtime, no more anxiety. Luna promises all of those displeasures will be replaced with nothing but your dreams being fulfilled in every way. Simply wish for something, and the laws of simulation universe will bend to accommodate your desire.

Do you accept Luna's offer?

I might have to seriously consider her offer, and even accept in certain cases.

No, I've already finished Skyrim. After awhile it sinks in that none of the things you've done actually matter.