From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Jun 14 2002 - 14:34:13 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> >
>
> Did I say I react exactly to same to one as to the other? No.
> Sometimes it feels as if you assume whatever you wish to make
> the person you see as your "opponent" look as foolish as
> possible. The focus of my dislike of the gore variety of video
> games (esp. where that is the main attraction) is not in caring
> for the a/v characters as in witnessing the psychological stance
> and changes of the human being thus "entertained". At least
> this side of real sentients in the virtual world, I expect that
> will continue to be the primary source of my consternation at
> such entertainment.
What you said was:
"It is not the violence itself that turns me off so much as the
gratuitous indulgence in violence and abhorrent attitudes that
many of the players would never display or want any part of in
real life. It is all so one-sided. One can engage in rage and
murder endlessly with no risk to oneself and often not even much
real gore from the act to give one a moment's pause."
You have also said: "Personally I have never found "virtual space"
violence any more palatable than the physical space variety. I abhor
both."
Using terms like 'palatable' and 'abhor' implied to me that your
visceral gut reaction was quite severe. I suppose I should have
pre-filtered what you said, assuming that you didn't really mean what
you said, that the adjectives and adverbs chosen were selected more for
the intended reaction in the reader rather than your own real emotional
response. It is common tendency to hyperbolize.
>
> >
> >>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?
>
> My take is that all sentient beings have some level of rights
> and thus ethical constraints on how they may be treated by
> virtue of being sentient beings. It does not matter on what
> sort of strata they are implemented.
Why? A virtual being on a substrata has no more real existence here than
we would on a higher meta level. If our world is a simulation, then it
is rather obvious that the ethics of our creators are that our lives are
of no real consequence to them, other than as 'soul' points in some
cosmic game. We are no more 'real' to them than the average street
mutant is to a Duke Nukem player.
> > 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?
> >
>
> If your slaves are sentient, feeling entities then it is wrong
> to enslave them just as in the strata we normal think of as real.
Characters is a work of fiction are sentient within the construct of the
plot and setting. That does not make them real in our universe. Authors
are under no obligation to treat their characters kindly.
> >
> > But is bottling up those primitive and potentially dangerous parts of
> > ourselves really healthy? The leftie pshrink world says that people
>
> It is a popular myth that we must give an outlet to such in
> order to stay healthy. There are studies that give evidence
> that "safely" expressing anger and rage (as opposed to
> therapeutically dealing with it) increase anger and rage
> experienced rather than dissipating it like a safety valve. Not
> expressing some of our primitive and dangerous parts does not
> have to make us unhealthy either. With training these impulses
> can be overcome and/or their energy channeled in ways more in
> our interest.
What studies, pray tell, are these? I have seen some, and they are all
nothing but unscientific case studies of specific criminals. Purely
anecdotal evidence with no statistical comparison or causal correlation.
> > are first person shooter games any different from you and I swatting at
> > each other with foam bats, or couples playing out bondage scenarios?
> >
>
> Bondage scenarios have many aspects, most of them not
> particularly violent in any really negative way. Now, I have
> known a little about that scene in my checkered past. There are
> things learned there. There are also a lot of people who get
> addicted to the endorphin high. There are situations where some
> such actions actually do lead to learning new ways of dealing
> with the raw energies and may uncover things deeper behind the
> rage and energy. It is not a complete either or. But it is one
> thing to do such working out in a therapeutic setting and
> another, I believe, to go fragging away just to get your jollies
> or probably worse still, because you feel powerless about some
> real world situations. The point of exercises with the bats is
> not enjoyment of the rush of battling.
But SMBD activities are causing real pain to real people, yet you claim
that these activities are 'acceptable' but completely unreal virtual
violence is not?
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