From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Jun 12 2002 - 18:28:33 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> > Samantha Atkins wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Personally I have never found "virtual space" violence any more
> >>palatable than the physical space variety. I abhor both. I
> >>don't believe it is good for people psychological to spend their
> >>time fragging other people virtually. At least it doesn't
> >>actually kill people. But when/if we upload, then what? Where
> >>does reality end and virtuality begin?
> >>
> >
> > But is it proper to produce policy based on personal neurosis? So
>
> Is it proper to baldly claim my attitude is the result of
> neurosis??
Once more into the breach... Samantha, the fact that you have
palatability problems with merely *simulated* violence evinces signs of
a psychological source. A non-neurotic individual would have no
difficulty both delineating, differentiating, and reacting completely
differently to simulated versus real violence. Someone who feels the
pain of others, even those who are not really real (ergo the pain they
feel is self created), does have issues to work out.
>
> I did not say anything at all about policy. I do ask where the
> virtuality ends and a different aspect of current or future
> reality begins where such violence by really be as abhorrent as
> in the "real" world today.
But for who? You do raise an interesting question here, though. As
demonstrated in "The 13th Floor" there needs to be a dialog to develop
an ethics of virtuality, especially if it turns out that we are already
living in a simulation. Do our ethical systems not apply to the players
from a higher level metaverse, and do the ethical systems of simulacra
in our computers apply to us? Do they apply in reverse as well? If we
run simulations specifically to test different ethical systems or
problems on simulated beings, is this as wrong as experimenting on
humans in this universe?
Lets say, for example, that I develop a simulation game for people
called Slavemaster(tm), where the player can live out a simulated life
on the computer as the master of slaves on a plantation, in a factory or
dungeon or mine, or bordello. The player can select the characteristics
of their slaves, including skin color. Black players could make a world
where whitey was enslaved, Chinese can have Japanese slaves, and Scots
can have English serf maids to deflower as they wish.
In no way do I, or any player actually wish to life that life in
reality, and abor enslaving real people. Is this wrong? Why?
>
> > violence makes you gag, and the fact that fictional violence produces
> > the same result shows it's not a matter of actual people getting hurt,
> > or actual pain being inflicted, it's just in your head. You also
>
> It doesn't "make me gag". In the real world it is an incredible
> waste of sentient beings and I deeply abhor it. In the virtual
> world it sometimes appears to me (as I clarified elsewhere) to
> be a relaxing of real space considerations in order to indulge
> very primitive and potentially dangerous parts of ourselves.
> The second also seems questionable and perhaps pernicious in at
> least some circumstances.
But is bottling up those primitive and potentially dangerous parts of
ourselves really healthy? The leftie pshrink world says that people
should act out their emotions, play out their fantasies, no matter how
immoral such acts may be under primtive patriarchal ethical systems. How
are first person shooter games any different from you and I swatting at
each other with foam bats, or couples playing out bondage scenarios?
Mike
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