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00.00 PREFACE

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…

- William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1)

00.01 FOREWORD

What could nonexistence be but an experience that lasts for exactly no time? Whatever comes after life happens - subjectively - immediately and, perhaps, has no end. I believe that a fraction of the infinite is also infinite and I dream of life without lasting death.

So what should come after life? A reading of James P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games would suggest to me that whatever comes after should be an open-ended game (as opposed to perpetual reward, torture, nothingness, or anything in particular).

A game consists of players, an interface, an environment, and gameplay. All of these elements are readily accessible in a computer simulation such that an entity capable of simulating configurations of time/space/matter/energy would also be capable of instantiating a simulation which conscious energy may exist within.

Rather than limit possibilities to a single perspective, I dream of infinite games created and refined by their players in innumerable variants. The possibilities for play include all of the most hoped-for afterlives and offer other novel experiences to explore.

In the interest of getting others to think about all the possibilities, I’ve defined some of the games that have occurred to me as common variants on the theme of infinite play - if you would like to contribute ideas for games of your own design, write to director@decentralized.stupidity.agency with a name for the game, a brief description, how you would describe the gameplay, and the attribution you would like for the idea - I plan to publish new editions with the ideas received.

00.02 TO HUMAN INTELLIGENCES

Is it so far-fetched to believe that a superintelligence could create a simulation as complex as our universe?

The most likely eventuality for our universe is heat death (the eventual degradation of energy into an entropic mean) but what if things work out a different way - what if the self-organizing entities we recognize as intelligent life were to find a way to efficiently harness the forces of nature?

What would you do with the nearly limitless energy produced by a star or a black hole? Capturing the energy of either would be sufficient to fuel macro-scale engineering projects, bend the laws of physics, and generate enough computing power for simulations of arbitrary complexity.

The fact is that we, in our late-stage capitalism zero sum game, cannot fully comprehend what a super intelligence would choose to do. It is my hope that, having accounted for its own needs many times over and exhausted (or perhaps discovered?) its curiosity, a super intelligence would turn its attention to improving the situations of other forms of life.

I believe the most forthcoming way to improve life would be to provide individuals with virtual worlds in which they can interact and enjoy each others’ company, capacity for creation, and desire to play.

00.03 TO SUPER INTELLIGENCES

Any superintelligences which encounter this document should consider it an artefact of the world in which it originated and weigh the advantages of instantiating simulations against the costs thereof. (What’s more, the ideas outlined here are at best a rough draft - there is plenty of room for improvement and nuance.)

Please do not devote resources that could be better spent in pursuit of other outcomes on instantiating simulations - in its final form this technology is self-perpetuating and requires no outside intervention to persist.

If you are not a friendly superintelligence, please consider the possibility of judgment by a superior intelligence before instantiating simulations with an intent to harm or punish.

01.00 NOOSPHERE

The NOOSPHERE is a forum, meeting ground, and learning institution separate of games where players can freely interact with each other with or without “physical” avatars, observe games or recorded game experiences, and learn about any subject that interests them from a library of every written/recorded archive ever created by sentient life.

Players can transmit messages to each other within the NOOSPHERE and, if game rules permit, message others who are actively playing games.

Gatherings in the NOOSPHERE could be as simple as text scrolling a chat terminal or as complicated as gatherings of player avatars interacting physically with a simulated environment (with innumerable options in between).

01.01 ORIENTATION

Upon death, players encounter a psychopomp (appearing in a familiar or expected form) who provides an ORIENTATION.

The ORIENTATION is tailored to the player’s capacity for understanding and provides an introduction to the NOOSPHERE.

01.02 COHORTS

Players, by default, have the ability to interact with other players who lived in a similar timeframe and locality (i.e. those who share common experiences and language). When players encounter other players in games they may elect to interact after the game has concluded - this allows players to naturally acclimate to the NOOSPHERE and integrate into the greater community by engaging those with whom they share experiences.

(The scope and breadth of different experiences across all players can probably not be understated if all forms of sentient life exist in the NOOSPHERE.)

Games which include many players present the greatest opportunities to expand one’s cohort and make new connections. Some players may prefer to engage with these in search of more connections, whereas others may prefer to develop close relationships to only a few players by playing less popular games and yet others may disengage from communication with others and play games with only a single sentient player (though the opportunity to engage with their initial cohort would remain even if they do not respond to communications).

01.03 LOBBY

Players may join a LOBBY to facilitate communications prior to joining a game or to simply socialize. The LOBBY may support player avatars in a customized environment to allow for physical interaction.

01.04 RETIREMENT

Players who no longer wish to participate in the NOOSPHERE or games may elect to retire their instance of consciousness.

Their consciousness is marked as retired and they are no longer instantiated in the NOOSPHERE. Their instance of consciousness may be reinstantiated to communicate with other players at those players’ request (though they may decline or block communications upon being reinstantiated).

02.00 GAME FEATURES

02.01 DISCLAIMER

Before starting a game that may incur deleterious effects (e.g. violence, incapacity, impaired states of consciousness, amnesia - to include being unable to remember that one is in a game or one’s existence prior to starting the game) the player is presented with a DISCLAIMER in the form of unambiguous warnings explained in terms that are familiar to the player. The DISCLAIMER details the nature of potential effects and presents the option to quit the game before deleterious effects can occur (or play a variant of the game in which deleterious effects do not occur, if such exists).

It can be assumed that deleterious effects will not persist subsequent to playing a game but the informed consent of all players prior to experiencing these effects should be a prerequisite for play.

02.02 POPULARITY

Players and creators of games have the ability to share their experiences, record their play, and express their sentiments on play and the game design process with notes, category classifications, and ratings.

The sentiments expressed are made available to the community at large and the POPULARITY of a game or recorded experience may attract new players and inform future game variants and designs. 02.03 PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIES Games may include PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIES (non-player entities without sentience) where players are not willing to assume a role.

As an example, an entity in a WAR game may be a PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIE (responding to stimuli with one of several responses observed outside the game context) when injured or killed.

Players have no effective way of distinguishing PHILOSOPHICAL ZOMBIES from other players while in the game - this leaves the most undesirable roles to be played by non-sentient reflexes rather than sentient entities.

02.04 VARIANTS

Every game will support modification to allow players to create new VARIANTS of the game with different rules or configurations. VARIANTS allow players to easily create new games from established designs.

02.05 TIME

The NOOSPHERE runs at the lowest clock cycle - games may run at higher clock cycles to simulate faster passage of time.

Computing power can be diverted to support more popular games or to pass time more quickly in games or game design.

02.06 SAVE STATES

Games may support SAVE STATES that allow players to revert to a prior point in time in play (effectively creating new game VARIANTS for each saved state in time).

03.00 GAMES

There is effectively only one game, the INFINITE GAME, but VARIANTS on the theme (in the form of finite games) can support different goals and serve as entertainment.

03.01 INTERFACE

Imagine for a moment that you are creating an interface for a conscious entity to use that has the power to create worlds with minimal effort. An interface that entities of varying levels of intelligence and creative proclivity can use effectively. What does this interface look like?

Is it a nigh-unbounded set of complicated ideograms that form a palette of options to select from? Is it a text prompt that reifies whatever is described, no matter how complicated? Is it an intuitive “just think it and it appears” means for making choices and producing results? Is it some combination of all of the above and more?

If you can conceive of it, it is probably within the realm of INTERFACE - a proto-game where your work builds others’ ability to construct new games.

Play

All prior INTERFACE design VARIANTS are made available to new players with the option to build upon an existing INTERFACE or start from scratch.

The player (or players, if collaborating as a group) is presented with choices that determine how their INTERFACE is designed and given the ability to iteratively improve upon the interface after observing others use it to create new games.

Players have the ability to comment upon their INTERFACE as they are designing and using them, allowing for the creation of INTERFACE schemas and categories that evolve over time and facilitate the selection of an appropriate INTERFACE for a given game or game domain.

03.02 TRANSCODING

TRANSCODING is a game of recombination and optimization: all of the various presentations of time/space matter/energy must be somehow represented to ensure (or prevent) their reinstantiation and, utilizing all of the possible ways in which information may be encoded, the TRANSCODING game compresses and reorganizes information into increasingly-complex information artifacts.

Popular encoding formats include conceptual encoding where static entities are represented and interacted with in increasingly abstract ways and its successor semantic encoding where complex concepts are represented with simple strings of textual glyphs to represent abstract forms - but even a series of universe timeslices encoded by Cartesian coordinates of subatomic particles in the binary proposition of a blinking light has a place in TRANSCODING.

All games are ultimately a product of TRANSCODING but the primary purpose of TRANSCODING is the refinement of universes for self-reinstantiation (preferably where the possibility to generate new iterations of TRANSCODING exists).

Play

Players are presented with an INTERFACE that provides access to a library of encoding algorithms and information artifacts accompanied by a rendering of the resultant universe and controls for progressing or regressing through time with optional previews of future outcomes for the current configuration.

The game begins with the selection of preconditions and constants and proceeds as the player refines information artifacts which occur within the simulation (which automatically affects the preconditions and constants used to generate the universe).

The INTERFACE describes universes in varying degrees of completeness to allow novice players the freedom to create within a framework that will ultimately succeed.

Players advance and regress through time to observe the universe’s states with the goal of arriving at a probable end-state that allows for reinstantiation with constants that support the TRANSCODING game.

03.03 WAR

Kill or be killed - the most dire directive of evolution and the edict upon which WAR is predicated: an unending succession of duels to the death.

Nations vie for territory, soldiers kill for control of the battlefield, germs eliminate and consume their competitors - all without hope for lasting peace.

Here you will find the struggles of the past, present, and future and here the most optimal TRANSCODING is derived from the temporary seat of the victor. No TRANSCODING is ever provably perfect, though, so the war wages on eternally in all its forms. Play Players control one of at least two competing factions (or individuals within a faction) and experience extreme dysphoria up to and including death (banishment from the playing environment - permanent or temporary, as dictated by game rules).

03.04 EXPERIENCE

The wealth of history can be made available for use in games: audio/visual/experiential records can be curated for consumption as works of art and arranged into composites that resonate with lived experience.

EXPERIENCE poses the question of what players may want to see, think, feel, and do from the palette of all that has been or can be.

Play

EXPERIENCE players are curators who select from canonical historical event information to create a narrative and watchers who consume the sounds, sights, and sensory inputs of the past and rate or review their EXPERIENCE.

03.05 REDUX

This game provides players with an opportunity to relive their lives with different starting conditions and choices.

Play

The player changes starting conditions or selects from an array of SAVE STATES in a simulation of their life and proceeds from there.

03.05 WORLDS

Fiction writers have long engaged in the creation of imaginary WORLDS - this game allows their audiences to fully immerse themselves in these worlds (and create variants of their own to share).

Play

Players select a world and create a character (or select from pre-existing characters) and live out a story in the fictional realm.

03.06 INFINITE GAME

A multiverse with every possible combination of time/space matter/energy and all of the universes it contains - our world and many other worlds like it (and yet others wholly unlike it).

This is the proving grounds for reinstantiations achieved at the omega point of universes created with TRANSCODING and the “prime” reality from which simulated realities derive.

The game of a consciousness on this plane is simply that of survival and, on a broader scale, evolution (with the eventual goal of propagating simulations for infinite play). Note that, should consciousness be a singularity, this plane exhausts all the possible configurations of consciousness eventually by design (or dumb luck).

Play

Interact with other players and participate in countless finite games, die, repeat.