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Comment by gcau | Hacker News Reader

I've pondered: if you were given an envelope, written inside it is the deepest and darkest secret of the universe/humanity, would you want to read it? It could say that we're just in a simulation, it could say all politicians are aliens, it could say we're totally alone in the universe because any sufficiently advanced planet destroys itself from the inside, it could say all your family and friends are just Synths and You're in a Truman show scenario. Or something worse we can't imagine. If you read it and found out something like this you'd go crazy.

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Nah. Even assuming it's true, I'd still be motivated by the mystery of who wrote it and why he gave it to me.

How would you know that what it says is actually true?

That seems to be stipulated as part of the thought experiment.

Otherwise, it's a different thought experiment. ;)

All the situations you mentioned I would want to know about.

Same. Those scenarios point to more of a "meaning of life" and "reason behind it all" types of scenarios, assuming that the message-deliverer is trustworthy/ accurate. Knowing such weighty matters might heavily shift the way you live, the choices you make, and the things you invest your energy and time into.

The universe's deepest darkest secret just sounds interesting and I must already be living with the consequences of it in some way.

I think a more localized version (your spouse or family's darkest secret) might be a more difficult decision.

I think I would like to know most of those. Except my family being fake, I guess.

If the letter told me the exact date and time of my own death, I might go crazy, though.

That's a superpower! You can be as risky as you want if you know the fixed date of your death.

How you react to knowing the date of your death influences the date of your death in the universe where you learn the date.

The mechanism behind it should be able to calculate the new date in advance though

It's already taking into account billions of variables (if the date is sufficiently far away), billions + 1 should be easy

Then the date would have to be re-calculated because knowing this new date could cause the date to change in a different way, requiring another recalculation, etc. I guess it really depends in practice, might only be a few loops before it gets stuck on one date, could see it being an infinite loop though

Now I'm imagining a tablet that continually updates with the date and time of your death. Could be an interesting short story.

Rick and Morty did something similar in the episode "Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat". Morty got ahold of a crystal that showed him what his final moments would look like, and the vision updated as his actions changed his future.

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." George Orwell

As soon as we know any of those truths, we can get started on the actual work of doing something about it.

Unfortunately we know exactly what’s happening: the climate is warming at a non-linear rate, chemical pollution is at or near extinction levels, fresh water supplies are becoming more scarce and privatized, the few own the majority, and war is on the horizon. What exactly are we doing about this?

The real problem is hyper-normalization. Humans will one day soon normalize their own extinction.

How many of them would be able to get by the "That's a conspiracy theory [and therefore false]!" (or newer versions like "Russian propaganda") subconscious heuristic filters that seems to have "somehow" been installed into so many minds?

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