Design your own afterlife (RAR?)

[Eulogy]

For some reason, you are now in charge of creating an afterlife for the inhabitants of Earth.

What does this afterlife consist of, what rules would you have enforced, and who does what? After all, many deities have made such flawed afterlives for the people; how would a rational person go about setting up the place that creatures go to when they die?

[Starglider]

My first thought would just be to let everyone have everything they want, as in The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Past crimes are really no reason not to if you have infinite resources, but you'd warn people before they choose to interact with former criminals. No one would be able to do anything to other people that they didn't choose to allow of course.

However, although I think TMOPI vastly overrated the 'oh noes everyone will be bored and life is meaningless without an arbitrary externally imposed challenge' aspect, there is a certain amount of truth in that. So I would in fact impose some kind of 'advancement' structure, created in a process rather similar to MMORPG design. Participation would be almost optional though, so you could spend long periods just thinking or amusing yourself.

Of course in actual fact neither I nor any other human is genuinely qualified to design such a thing, so I would create an appropriately designed superintelligent entity and let that design the afterlife, taking weighted input from all extant humans. In actual fact, that is the theoretical ultimate goal of the work I am doing in real life.

[Singular Intellect]

*snip*

I would submit pretty much what Starglider posted.

I also disagree on the whole "people would get bored" or "have seen everything before" concepts. Interaction with others would always present opportunities for challenges. In the event you really have experienced almost everything and nothing seems to surprise you anymore (assuming you're capale of that much memory storage), you can chose non existence or employ the simplistic concept of memory wipe and start over enjoying paradise.

[Alferd Packer]

Short answer: a nonstop fuck-and-suck fest, and everyone is young, good looking and in shape.

Other answer: I'd recurse, allowing each person to design their own paradise. The only limits I'd impose, I guess, would be that you can't use your paradise to damage someone else's paradise/soul/whatever. If your paradise is blowing up an army of your mother, that's fine, but you won't actually be hurting your mother in any way.

[Posner]

A bit like Valhalla, but with bourbon instead of mead and Halo tournaments instead of combat.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

If I were put in charge of creating an afterlife, I'd outlaw the whole concept as being patently absurd. You die, that's it, no more you. No kissing my ass to get into the good afterlife, because there isn't one. You want to do good, then do good because of the people living around you now. If you want to be an asshole and blow yourself, and innocent bystanders, up then, well, I'm sorry, but there'll not be any virgins for you. If you want an afterlife-like experience, I suggest you get cracking on creating that whole post-Singularity data overmind thing, complete with mind uploading.

[Solauren]

Simple:
If you're an asshole, you get oblivion. Otherwise, Reincarnation (as a human or a genetic descedent).
When Earth is no longer inhabitable, that's what alien species are for....

And I make damn sure everyone knows about this.

That way, they start cleaning up the planet. I mean, what a choice eh?
Either
#1 - Clean up the planet to keep it livable, and therefore not have to worry about future lives.
#2 - Let the planet rot, and be stuck being reincarnated on it until it's no longer inhabitable
#3 - Find technology to get the hell off of it and find someplace better to live.
#4 - Do something horrible so you don't have to worry about it.

[Rye]

I don't think human minds could deal very well with infinity, I suspect the only way to make it tolerable would be periodic memory loss. People could ask for certain situations to repeat after each memory loss and that'd be pretty decent. Other than that, I would make it pretty similar to normal life, except a bit better, making really abusive stuff impossible and having a sort of random event generator to produce new memories. Hopefully that will make a means to produce the best possible experience for people that they'll live over and over again until they get as close to perfect as doable.

[Guardsman Bass]

I kind of like the "Five People You Meet in Heaven" type of afterlife, followed by reincarnation.

[ray245]

Simple:
If you're an asshole, you get oblivion. Otherwise, Reincarnation (as a human or a genetic descedent).

Why is reincarnation better than oblivion? You can't control your action if you got reincarnated. Your reincarnated self could be an asshole for all you know.

[open_sketchbook]

All I want is a movie theater that functions on the infinite worlds quantum theory thing. Why watch Firefly when you can watch the 'verse for real? Of course eventually I'd want to actually interact with something, so I'd imagine you'd be able to insert your consciousness into these universes and play around a bit.

[Johonebesus]

Simple:
If you're an asshole, you get oblivion. Otherwise, Reincarnation (as a human or a genetic descedent).

Why is reincarnation better than oblivion? You can't control your action if you got reincarnated. Your reincarnated self could be an asshole for all you know.

If I were a god, I could determine at least some of the conditions into which the person is reincarnated. For example, someone who suffers a brief life of poverty, abuse, and suffering could get reincarnated into a healthy and safe environment. If I can control the genetic and at least some of the environmental context of the person's conception and development, I could prevent the person from possessing a sociopathic or narcissistic personality disorder. The guy might still turn out to be a creep, but at least it wouldn't be congenital, and he'd have every opportunity for happiness.


However, I would go with the VR paradise worlds with periodic memory wipes (obviously only of some of his experience post death, for otherwise I would only be preserving a blank soul or some sort of "mental essence" and not the actual person). I could make a great many worlds with different themes. There could be fantasy worlds where people could be elves or dragons, sci-fi worlds where they can meet aliens or even be aliens, maybe even furry worlds or all male worlds or all female worlds or all hermaphrodite worlds. People could live a while as the Doctor or Lt. Colombo or Wally Cleaver, etc.

I don't know what to do with bad people. My first thought would be a sort of purgatory: people would be punished with some pain proportional to their crimes, then they get reincarnated with a chance to do better. The problem is what to do with congenital flaws or other mental illnesses. A sociopath might not deserve paradise, but if I correct his mental defect, would he still be the same person? I would have to possess far more intelligence, perception, and knowledge to figure out how much of a person's behavior is influenced by qualities not under the person's control.

I would also set up some other agent to judge souls and create afterlives. I expect that overseeing the hereafter for everyone else for all eternity would get unpleasant. I'd rather get my own paradise to experience.

[Solauren]

Simple:
If you're an asshole, you get oblivion. Otherwise, Reincarnation (as a human or a genetic descedent).

Why is reincarnation better than oblivion? You can't control your action if you got reincarnated. Your reincarnated self could be an asshole for all you know.

Asshole from a divine point of view.

I'm going on the basis of a soul is a soul is a soul. If a soul is good, it will remain good. If a soul goes 'asshole', it will stay an asshole. Therefore, it has become defective and needs to be destroyed.

Unless it turns out souls can be recycled or repaired (outside of reincarnation).

However, if that's the case, I'd design my afterlife accordingly.

However, reincarnation is still up there. The entire 'eternal bliss after some time on earth' is one of the biggest demotivators I can think of.

[Tolya]

I'm going on the basis of a soul is a soul is a soul. If a soul is good, it will remain good. If a soul goes 'asshole', it will stay an asshole. Therefore, it has become defective and needs to be destroyed.

Unless it turns out souls can be recycled or repaired (outside of reincarnation).

However, if that's the case, I'd design my afterlife accordingly.

However, reincarnation is still up there. The entire 'eternal bliss after some time on earth' is one of the biggest demotivators I can think of.

You are bordering here with predestination. How can a soul become good or evil? Is it "born" that way, or is there actually a chance that someone can redeem past mistakes and turn "good"? Or a soul that is "asshole" stays that way for eternity? Lutherans believe that, that there are people who are "elected". Of course everyone thought that their own souls are "elect" while everyone else goes to hell.

You mentioned that a sould could be repaired - by whom? A deity or maybe the soul can mend itself?

[Solauren]

Ah, you see my point now in a way.

The OP is vague enough that concreate answers are not possible for me, beyond 'reincarnate the good, scrap the unredemable/unrepairable'.

So, a more detailed would be

Soul is 'created' clean + good
If a soul stays good, it keeps getting reincarnated
if a soul gets 'damaged' and goes evil, then it gets repaired
If a soul goes evil of it's own accord, and there is no way to correct this, it gets scrapped.

[Tolya]

Ah, you see my point now in a way.

The OP is vague enough that concreate answers are not possible for me, beyond 'reincarnate the good, scrap the unredemable/unrepairable'.

So, a more detailed would be

Soul is 'created' clean + good
If a soul stays good, it keeps getting reincarnated
if a soul gets 'damaged' and goes evil, then it gets repaired
If a soul goes evil of it's own accord, and there is no way to correct this, it gets scrapped.

Im not asking about the mechanics, but rather the causality. The above doesn't answer my question of "HOW?". Please try harder

[Zor]

Those that die in infancy are simply re-incarnated. If there are no new sapient lifeforms that have not been taken up during the universe's history they get re-incarnated in another one.

Those who live good, normal lives and don't kill people get to spend time in a world without pain in which they modify their own little pocket of it which they can mold for a period of time (disconected with regular time) before getting re-incarnated (you can choose to have happen to you early) and can interact with other people who have died. The Better you lived your life, the longer you can stay.

Those people who commit evil acts get sent to a domain of Nothing. No fire, no brimstone just empty blackness for a period of time (the exact period is based on what they did, the worse the longer you stay) although they can think, they can't get out of it until their sentance is passed, at which point they are re-incarnated.

Zor

[Formless]

Here's my idea. Any soul that dies goes to a collective afterlife. Souls can interact, and can create most anything they desire or can think of, so long as someone else doesn't interfere. Rather than sort out who was good or bad in life and seek an appropriate punishment (what a load of pointless work that would be!), I would simply lay out the facts * to the community of souls present at the time (see below) and let the community decide what would be the proper thing to do with them. After all, if for example you murder someone, your victim is most likely going to be waiting for you when you die, so I imagine creating a special place to call hell would be rather... redundant . If the community wills it, they can override the usual rules about what a soul can or can't do in the afterlife, which encourages the society in the afterlife to remember the lessons it learned on earth. If you want the afterlife to be heaven, you and everyone must learn how to make it heaven for everyone, and the more people on Earth improve Earth, the more tested ideas they take with them into the next life.

Here's the rub. You can't stay in heaven forever. In my afterlife, souls who stay too long decay and disappear. But they CAN renew their lifetime by letting themselves be reincarnated. So as long as the universe permits life, a soul can theoretically continue living by being reincarnated periodically. This prevents boredom AND means that the afterlife experiences change and renewal over time. Plus, it gives souls who wish to cease existing that option should they chose it for whatever reason.

*Edit: I'm assuming I'm omniscient here, or that at least some proxy of me is.