Hmph, this actually happened to me last week. Twice. First time it happened, it was some big dragon creature. The second time it was a giant jellyfishy blob. It didn't give me time to mention that the current universe I inhabit is infact populated with fakes. I think they're fighting. The second time it happened, I looked around wondering why a world of simulacrums would be worth the trouble.

But then I thought about it further and realized that in point of fact I was someone else's simulacrum anyway; I've only existed for three weeks.

On a more serious note, to everyone who says they'd stay, you're saying you could tell the difference? I'm impressed.

Choices make you real even if you started as a fake or an imitation or a copy.
Our current world/immediate environment has been touched by our choices to an extend.
Even if those changes and their possible outcomes were included into that new world, your future choices will surely change mostly because of you knowing it's another world but also because of existence's uniqueness so it wouldn't be the same even if you did not know you woke up into that new world. Knowing this, makes me want to stay behind and preserve what I feel is "my" reality now.

As a sidenote.. I find it interesting some people would move on to a new reality. Makes me feel like I've become such an idealist that it will be my demise! But any day, is a good day to die fighting for your beliefs.

How very Phillip K Dick!



Hey, I'd challenge Mr Dragon God Thing to put his money where his mouth was and offer me some evidence. For all I know he could just be messing with my mind, leading to the situation mentioned above.

In fact, who's to say this hasn't happened to someone already? There's always some crazy who goes on a murderous rampage and then afterwards says of his victims "they weren't real anyway." Maybe we are all mere imitations of an imitation, fractal illusions far removed from true reality with only our perceptions and memories to tell us otherwise.

<Cue Twilight Zone music>



- trag, "you swerve, narrowly avoiding...The Scary Door"

I think I would go to the artificial world... simply because I would find the proposition interesting... Far be it for me to ever pass up an interesting experience.

Everyone would eventually die anyway, so why should I feel guilty for not dying along side them? I'd be joining them too some day.

Someone with overwrought delusions of reality and possible homicidal tendencies prime moderator material? Only on goth.net.

Back on topic, out of curiosity, how many people who could live on Pseudo-Earth have Existentialist tendencies? There is no reality but the perception of reality, and that sort of thought?

A bit, I guess. It's not that so much as the fact that if there actually was an entity powerful enough to construct a world of simulacrums for you to inhabit, wouldn't it also be powerful enough to ensure you didn't know the difference? And if you don't know the difference, does it matter where you are?

The up-shot is, Mr. Dragon would not be stupid enough to ask a Goth, unless he/she/it was willing to settle down while the debate over reality, perception, and willingly embracing death raged...

Hmm, considering I'm not overly attached to anyone at the moment (teenage drama thing) I would say I'd stay on the real Earth... I want to see how it will be destroyed... But then again I've been called 'unstable' and 'psycho'... hmm. Seriously, I'd like to see the end. And even if I really cared intensely for someone, I'd still stay. I'm not entirely sure why, but I wouldn't want a world with even more fakes...



Edited By Schizo on 1120597161

HMMMMM let me think here....well it sounds like a dream

No shit Sherlock. Did you figure that out yourself? Maybe the part where the original poster said it came from a dream?

Next time, if you don't actually have anything to add apart from "hmm", just refrain from posting at all.

Pip 3. I warned you.

I would stay, because I'd rather die than live in a world I knew to be fake and phony, even if it felt real and was exactly the same. It's like turning your back on your world and everything. Plus, my loved ones,though they are few, would miss me on our trip up or down. Dying is better than living with that weight on my shoulders.

I'd go to the artificial reality, only I'd be even less civil to people there because whenever they'd complain, I'd be able to say, "You don't matter, you're only artificial, only literally this time, not figuratively."

Would these artificial people age? And what about the dragon, is he artificial or something? I'd then go on a Dungeons and Dragons-like quest to figure out and maybe slay the thing. Because let's face it, all reality has now changed, and in an artificial world, you begin to wonder things like "Are the morals here artificial too?" Can you ever really hurt anything in an artificial world? Basically, all of my reserve, all of my empathy, everything that keeps me civil in this world would most likely be abandoned in light of this, and almost purposefully so. Being the only non-artificial entity there, I'd designate myself lord of that realm. I'd fall under a power trip so extensive, entire epics are written about heroes who try to defeat me. I'm not lying. I'd go insane, and choose to because that's sometimes what you want to do except for the fact that there are consequences that no longer hold in an artificial world.

--PolarisDiB

concerning the "fake" people...

would it be justified to treat them amorally?

perhaps they're copies of the people on earth currently, with the same memories and all that stuff, not knowing they're not the original product...

however, does this make them unreal? "artificial"?

it strikes me that if you made a supposedly "artificial" version of all the people on earth, who are so terribly like the people around now... it strikes me that such people would probably accurately be also as sentient as the folk here. To make such copies, so that you wouldnt know the difference if not for the dragon having told you, it seems to me that - whether those people are made out of flesh and bone or metals and plastics and other synthetics which approximate human flesh/etc, they'd have to be considerably complex creations, and i would imagine they'd be just as diserving of moral regard as anyone currently alive.

And, afterall... since each of us only truly knows for *sure* that you, as an individual, is truly conscious - since each of us are the only ones who can know our thoughts and emotions first-hand - it's not all that far off from the dragon-scenario. Despite that we are only truly sure of our own thoughts and emotions, we readily give the benefit of the doubt to all other humans (and some humans also give it to various non-humans), simply by observing the various signs which strongly point to other people having thoughts and feelings... signs that the others are also conscious, and aware, and real. Why do dragons get to define what reality is?

-Undecided

I'd go, for sure.

If it were someone else that gets to be saved, I'd want them to. But since it's me, well, the hell with it.

Gotta save as many as you can. Just so happens that "many" is me ???