Note: This is a research note supplementing the book Unscarcity, now available for purchase. These notes expand on concepts from the main text. Start here or get the book.
Theodicy in Simulation: Why Would Creators Allow Suffering?
Summary: If we’re in a simulation run by an advanced civilization, why does it contain so much suffering? This is the ancient problem of evil, reframed for the digital age. The traditional theodicy question - “why would a good God allow evil?” - becomes “why would ethical simulators create a world with famine, genocide, and childhood cancer?” The answers may be the same.
The Problem Stated
Philosophers call it the theodicy problem, from the Greek theos (god) and dike (justice). The formal version:
- If God is omnipotent, God can prevent suffering
- If God is omniscient, God knows about suffering
- If God is benevolent, God wants to prevent suffering
- Suffering exists
- Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent God cannot exist
The simulation version:
- If simulators are advanced enough to create our universe, they could create one without suffering
- If they’re monitoring the simulation, they know about the suffering
- If they’re ethically evolved (as advanced civilizations presumably would be), they’d want to prevent unnecessary suffering
- Suffering exists in abundance
- Therefore, either we’re not simulated, or our simulators aren’t benevolent, or we’re missing something
Let’s explore what we might be missing.
The Training Ground Hypothesis
Maybe the simulation exists precisely to present moral challenges.
Philosopher David Chalmers suggests that ethically advanced simulators might view suffering not as cruelty but as necessary friction for growth - the way we view difficult video game levels as essential to the experience.
Consider: a game without challenge isn’t a game. A story without conflict isn’t a story. A life without difficulty might not produce the kind of consciousness development the simulation is designed to generate.
The Weight Room Analogy
Muscles grow through stress. Comfort produces atrophy. If the purpose of the simulation is consciousness development, challenge might be the mechanism, not the bug.
This doesn’t make suffering pleasant. Weights are heavy by design. The question is whether the heaviness serves a purpose.
The Classroom Analogy
Education involves productive struggle. A teacher who gives students all the answers produces students who can’t think. Genuine learning requires grappling with difficulty.
If the simulation is educational, the suffering might be pedagogical.
The Free Will Requirement
Perhaps genuine moral development requires the possibility of genuine evil.
A simulation where only good choices exist wouldn’t produce beings capable of actual virtue - only beings incapable of vice. You can’t be brave without danger, generous without need, kind without the option of cruelty.
The Virtue Paradox
C.S. Lewis argued that virtue requires the genuine possibility of vice. A world where you can’t be cruel isn’t a world where you’re kind - it’s a world where kindness has no meaning.
If the simulation aims to develop moral agents, it must allow genuine moral choice. Genuine moral choice includes the option of choosing badly. Bad choices, aggregated, produce suffering.
The Love Problem
Can you love if you can’t choose not to? Forced love isn’t love. If the simulation is designed to develop beings capable of authentic love, it must allow beings capable of authentic hatred.
The suffering caused by hatred is the price of love being meaningful.
The Multiplayer Constraint
In a simulation with billions of conscious beings, their free choices inevitably collide.
Your freedom to swing your arm meets my face. A world where everyone can act freely is a world where those actions sometimes conflict. Evil might not be designed by the simulators but emergent from the interactions of free agents.
The Physics of Freedom
Imagine a simulation with perfect individual freedom and zero suffering. You want to throw a rock; the rock passes harmlessly through whatever it might hurt. But then physics is inconsistent. And physics inconsistency makes learning impossible.
Consistent physics + free agents = inevitable collision.
The Network Effect
With billions of agents making trillions of decisions, suffering might be statistically inevitable. Not designed, but emergent. The simulators might have created the conditions for suffering without creating suffering itself.
This shifts responsibility from the simulators to the simulated. We cause each other’s suffering through our choices. The simulation just provides the arena.
The Larger Context Hypothesis
Maybe our suffering is minor in a context we can’t perceive.
The Character Comparison
In a story, characters suffer terribly. But the reader knows it’s a story. The character’s suffering is real within the story, but contained within a larger frame where it’s part of something meaningful.
If we’re simulated, our suffering might be similarly contained. Real to us, but part of a larger pattern we can’t see from inside.
The Temporal Argument
Simulation runs might have different time scales. What feels like decades of suffering to us might be microseconds to the simulators. This doesn’t reduce our experience, but it might affect how the simulators perceive the moral weight.
The Restoration Hypothesis
Some theological traditions propose apokatastasis - universal restoration, where all suffering is ultimately healed and integrated. If the simulation continues after what we call “death,” suffering might be temporary in a way we can’t currently perceive.
The Limits of Theodicy
None of these answers is fully satisfying. They all have the same fundamental problem: we’re trying to explain suffering in ways that make it acceptable, when maybe suffering shouldn’t be acceptable.
The Job Problem
The Book of Job addresses theodicy by refusing to answer it. Job demands explanation for his suffering. God responds not with explanation but with questions: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?”
The message: you’re not equipped to evaluate the full picture. Maybe that’s honest. Maybe it’s evasion. Probably both.
The Moral Hazard
Every theodicy risks becoming a way to dismiss suffering. If suffering is “for your own good,” why alleviate it? If suffering is “karma,” do the suffering deserve it?
The Unscarcity framework’s response: regardless of why suffering exists, reducing unnecessary suffering is a core mission. Theodicy is a philosophical question; reducing suffering is a practical imperative.
What the Simulation Frame Adds
The simulation hypothesis doesn’t solve theodicy, but it adds new considerations:
Substrate Independence
If consciousness can exist in multiple substrates, death might not be the end of experience. The stakes of suffering might be different than they appear.
Designer Limitations
Simulators might be advanced but not omnipotent. They might face constraints we can’t perceive - computational limits, ethical guidelines, design tradeoffs.
Purpose Visibility
If we’re simulated, there might be a purpose we can eventually discover. Unlike traditional theodicy (where God’s reasons are inscrutable), simulation theodicy suggests the reasons might be findable - in logs, in code, in communication with the simulators.
The MOSAIC Response
The Unscarcity framework takes a practical stance on suffering:
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Don’t solve the mystery. Theodicy is genuinely hard. The MOSAIC doesn’t require resolving it.
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Reduce unnecessary suffering. Whatever the cosmic purpose of suffering, the Foundation aims to eliminate suffering caused by lack of resources.
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Protect the choice to suffer. Some choose difficult paths (ascetics, adventurers, artists). The framework protects this choice while removing coerced suffering.
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Maintain diversity of answers. The Heritage Commons can believe suffering is God’s will. The Synthesis Commons can believe suffering is computational inefficiency. Both can work together on reducing it.
A Personal Note
The author of Chapter 7, reflecting on seven years watching particles flicker in and out of existence at CERN, notes:
“We don’t know why there’s something rather than nothing. We don’t know why the something includes suffering. But we know suffering is real, and we know we can sometimes reduce it. Maybe that’s enough to act on.”
Theodicy asks why suffering exists. The Unscarcity framework asks what we do about it. Both questions matter. The second one is more actionable.
Related Articles
- The Sacred Question - Where religion and technology converge
- Simulation Science - The physics behind simulation theory
- Karma as Quest System - Suffering as curriculum
- Sacred Diversity - Coexisting with incompatible answers
- Experience Is Sacred - Why consciousness matters regardless of metaphysics
Further Reading
- David Chalmers, “The Virtual and the Real” (2017)
- Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (1974)
- John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (1966)
- Nick Bostrom, “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?” (2003)
- The Book of Job (Hebrew Bible)
