From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Jun 17 2002 - 08:34:09 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
> >
> > Once again you fail in your logic by already assuming a being is real.
> > As I said, *within the confines of a virtual universe*, any AI is
> > absolutely as real, and no more real, than a character in a novel.
> >
>
> Even in a virtual universe (which we might soon inhabit
> post-upload btw) if a being is sentient it should be granted
> rights because of that.
But rights where? Having executable rights on one computer doesn't give
me executable rights on every other one. Nor are parallel lines in a
non-euclidean universe parallel in a euclidean one.
A character in a novel in a book is no more an no less than printed
words until a person picks it up and reads the book. At that point, the
novel becomes a simulation in the mind (a wetware computer) of the
reader, and the characters become as real and sentient *Within the
confines of that imagined universe* as you and I are in this one, and as
real and sentient as an AI or uploaded personality in a hardware
computer. Such characters may live on in the minds of the reader. I
frequently imagine further adventures of characters in novels I have
read in the past. The characters are as intelligent as my mind is able
to make them (i.e. as intelligent as I am), thus they are as real and
sentient as any character, avatar, AI, or upload would be in a hardware
computer. If my first person character (the one whose eyes I see the
imagined world through) kills another character because I willed it to,
does that make me a murderer?
You claim that virtual violence is as unpalatable and abhorrent as real
violence to you. Why, then, are you not seeking out criminal charges
against those of us who have killed characters in simulations? If it is
truly as abhorrent, then you should be launching a vigilante crusade
against every FPS game user as serial killers.
>
>
> >
> >>Look at it like this. If you create
> >>a sentient biological creature in this world I think you would
> >>agree that it is wrong to abuse it. How does it become right
> >>just because you create your sentient living creatures within a
> >>VR? If it does become right there then when some of us upload
> >>is it alright for the non-uploads to consider us simply
> >>simulations of people who did themselves in in a most strange
> >>fashion and enslave us or simply terminate us? If not then why
> >>is it ok if the being within the computational matrix never had
> >>a biological life? There seems to be a bit of a double standard
> >>and contradiction here to say the least.
> >>
> >
> > There is, but you have yet to understand it, at least so far as you've
> > communicated here.
> >
>
> Then explain it without being a fucking snob who think I'm just
> being silly.
The explaination is that (only if we are living in a simulation) we are
as fictional as they are. Just as foreigners only have rights like
citizens as a matter of diplomatic reciprocity, we fictional simulacra
can accept *on faith*, that entities in other simulations are as
sentient as we, provided only that we *trust* that they do the same.
At this point in time, if we are living in a simulation, our
operators/users have not granted us similar rights.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:51 MST