RE: How to tell if you are a nice person (The VR Solipsist)

From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@msx.upmc.edu)
Date: Sat Jun 22 2002 - 15:35:19 MDT


Colin Hales [mailto:colin@versalog.com.au] wrote:

'real thing'. This means that they are all 'shells' with whatever drives
them located 'outside'. I propose that whatever it is 'outside' that
drives the puppets is as sentient as the poor VR solipsist.

### I think we might be conflating two important issues here - awareness and
human-like emotions. I agree that the device animating the puppets would
have to be aware, and to some extent self-aware. However, this does not mean
that there would be human emotions involved - as Lee wrote, the godlike
sentience (whose subprograms pull the strings in your world) does not have
human feelings. Crushing a puppet's leg will not cause a subjective feeling
of pain, although the controlling sentience will move the puppets so as to
produce convincing howling. Even for a human there is no need to have
feelings to make a convincing show, so a god will not have the slightest
problem with it.

Rafal



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