Suppose there was invented a machine that could simulate any environment, any scenario- you could strap yourself in, and recieve a perfect simulation of sex, violence, whatever you wanted. Suppose this device became common enough that almost everybody could have one- they were about as common as a TV or telephone.
Suppose that due to this device, crime had completely stopped- nobody bothered to kill, rape, steal, or any of that, simply because the consequences of doing that sort of thing in reality are just too high, when you can go through the experience safely at home. The streets are safe, nobody has to lock their doors anymore.
Suppose further, that everybody who had this device used it to simulate raping old ladies, beating children to death, and whatever else you could classify as The Most Evil Acts. The gained great pleasure from this- there are millions, if not billions of people, who would tell you that simulating these acts are their greatest pleasures in life.
Would you consider a society like this to be an improvement over what we have today in reality, or a disaster? Or perhaps an even trade off?
If you never needed to venture outside of the machine then I’d call it a definite improvement.
Obw: Compare it to television- it’s something people do for a couple hours after work to unwind, maybe moreso on the weekends. Stories are exchanged around the water cooler the next morning about their exploits- but again, these things never happen in reality.
It would be a victory, for once, on the behalf of technology.
It would be a most abject failure, as usual, on the behalf of human virtue.
simulated old lady rape victims dont have dopamine or a lack thereof. what other measure is there?
do you know how many fake people i have violently killed in my life? thousands. and most of them actually had people controlling them on the internet, so it was almost real.
besides, theres rape porn today. if it causes less real rape, im all for it. i sure will have a lot less respect for anyone capable of being aroused by it, but ill be glad theres less real rape. period. trading more real rape for less fake rape is just silly.
Being rational animals, we have the capability to both have ‘urges’ but also to recognise some of them as ‘wrong’ or ‘immoral’ or similar. To deny we have them is the road to disaster, I feel. A society where they are actively indulged in a (physically and immediately) safe and private way would definitely be an improvement on the status quo where for some, such urges become so great that they need to act them out on other real people.
To those that would argue that such a device might encourage people to have ‘bad’ urges, I would say the job would be to show how such encouragement would lead to harm for others, assuming that the device is so real as to not be somehow an experience lacking some vital part. I would also want to look very closely at the assumption that having these urges was inherently bad in the first place.
Your feelings about this situation of real people doing virtual horrible things depends a lot on your religious beliefs.
For example, if you’re Christian, you’re probably okay with imprisoning certain dangerous people for life. The atheist and Christian would agree that this is a good thing to do. But they would disagree about whether it is good to give them virtual worlds to live in.
A virtual world would be a wonderful boon for prison management; it would prevent riots and unrest so long as the simulation is sufficiently real and engaging to keep the person in the simulation permanently. But a Christian would object because allowing prisoners to use these simulations is giving them the opportunity to sin which is a no-no (at least for catholics). By allowing them to corrupt themselves further rather than face reality you write them their ticket to hell.
But as an atheist, I have no problem with imprisoning certain undesirable people in the Matrix and using their bioelectricity to serve our own fiendish needs.
suppose we took all the criminals, rapists, murderers and murdered them all;
and also this completely stopped all crime. are we to suppose no more “immoral” people would be born? or even that the “moral” people of the day wouldn’t fill the void so to speak, and engage in criminal activity? the freedom we have as humans gives us the potential to do good as well as evil.
its human nature to value objects,actions,and feelings. what we value is up to ourselves, why would someone kill another? why not? there is such a diversity in the reasons behind any action that nobody can justify anyones actions until you’ve reasoned it yourself. personally i know i would never harm anyone else for pleasure but i wouldn’t go as far to say i’d never harm anyone for any other reason(self-defense, someone harms my family ect.)
all i can do is try to avoid situations that i believe will incur negative results. and also i will do what i believe to be the best action for any situation i find myself in.
suppose we took all the criminals, rapists, murderers and murdered them all;
and also this completely stopped all crime. are we to suppose no more “immoral” people would be born? or even that the “moral” people of the day wouldn’t fill the void so to speak, and engage in criminal activity? the freedom we have as humans gives us the potential to do good as well as evil.
its human nature to value objects,actions,and feelings. what we value is up to ourselves, why would someone kill another? why not? there is such a diversity in the reasons behind any action that nobody can justify anyones actions until you’ve reasoned it yourself. personally i know i would never harm anyone else for pleasure but i wouldn’t go as far to say i’d never harm anyone for any other reason(self-defense, someone harms my family ect.)
all i can do is try to avoid situations that i believe will incur negative results. and also i will do what i believe to be the best action for any situation i find myself in.
One of my assumptions in the example is that the accessibility of the device results in more people (many more) with these sorts of urges than exist in reality. The trade off is no actual harm done in exchange for a society of people with the mentality of Jeffrey Dalmer and so on.
I think Obw raises a good point- that someone would have to be able to show that urges are harmful, and with a machine like this, it’s clear they wouldn’t have to be. Does it harm people to give them the ability to explore their darkest desires, or to create new desires within them? Is the mental landscape of the people something with worth and needing consideration? Do people other than the individual bare responsibility for this landscape?
what measure is there other than the happiness created? someone said we would be creating sinners, and sinning is bad for some reason. well its not bad if you dont actually cause pain. like i said, ive killed thousands of fake people and this is not a sin becuase nobody actually got hurt. and if it is a sin because any kind of killing, even fake killing is frowned on by god, well then god is an idiot and he doesnt know what hes doing.
how much happiness would be created? would the users be less happy since they are now like jeffrey dahmer? would they be addicted and sad whenever they are away from the machine? would they be worse off because they are constantly thinking about eating their boss, and when they get home they create that scenario of eating a fake version of their boss? how does that make them worse off? what bad thing is subsequently caused as a result of the totally not bad act of fake killing? maybe if he indulges in his hatred of his boss more, he will actually hate his boss more, or actually want to rape more. but we are under the assumption that they never will do it in real life, and that the machine satisfies their entire desire for it, so relaly nothing bad can possibly come of this unless god is an idiot and punishes me for fake killing.
what does this mean? a life of poverty and hate causes someone to want to simulate crimes more often? of course it does.
The one clear possibility that has not been properly covered under this premise, (where’s Adlerian or pq…), is psychological fixation.
Once you give an aberrant individual free reign to engage these sorts of ill thoughts without fear of reprisal, it will likely become all consuming, and further detachment from reality, especially with respect to how their behavior will hurt a real person, versus the virtual persons.
Once “plugged in” to this scenario, it would no longer be feasible to allow them out, so basically you are suggesting an alternative incarceration, utterly devoid of justice.
Hello F(r)iends,
I am a big fan of the movie Matrix. But don’t hold that against me…
I have always been curious about the choices characters in the movie made. One in particular has fascinated me because I always thought it was in its unique way, one of the most important philosophical questions in the movie: Cypher (played by Joe Pantoliano) reject the real world and even betrays his fellow liberators so he can be reinserted into the Matrix, saying: “I will remember nothing. Nothing.”
(1) Why would anyone reject the Matrix?
(2) If you could live in a world where you could not tell the difference between the created reality and an uncreated reality, why choose one over the other?
(3) What makes the “really real” better than the “fake real”?
(4) Would you reject the really real in lieu of the fake real or vice versa?
-Thirst
It’s an interesting question, but I share Mastriani’s concern.
There are any number of studies conducted that suggest that for many people, role play and real life situations get blurred. While the percentage may be small, those who play in a machine may not be able to tell the difference between real life and their machine play. The lack of a reset button in real life could be a problem.
But beyond that, Is it wise to encourage the lowest common denominator of human behavior? What happens when a giant solar flare renders the machines incapacitated for a month or so? Do you want you mom walking to the grocery store? 
Interesting, I wasn’t expecting the Matrix to be related to it, though it’s obvious now. My example was intended to spark a discussion of the value of right action vs. right thinking. Does an action cease being wrong when it ceases having conseqences? Things like that. I like the direction it’s going, though.
how can we act wrongly without implying a moral standard? how can i think wrongly without moralizing an issue?
should i take the concept of right action/thought in the ethical sense?
how can you act without incurring consequences?
i’m of the belief that action implies physical motion, so i’d say an action ceases being when it ceases having consequences. the rightness or wrongness of an action should only concern the execution, effectiveness, or usefullness of the action. only when other people become involved in the action should morality come into play. if you’re action restricts the freedom of another, you’re imposing you’re will on them. if you impose you’re will on someone(impose implying something not mutually agreed upon) in a harmful way this is immoral. in this sense does physical action include speech? yes
is verbally harassing someone as controlling an element as physically assulting someone? no
in saying that i’m supposing that physical pain is a more controlling stimuli than mental anguish
why wld people want to steal in virtual reality. a lot of thieves don’t steal for the experience, they steal to get stuff. …like one a them machines!
…actually i already have one. i use it in bed at night b4 i go to sleep. keeps me out of jail.
Everything in the Mother Nature is just like scales - if a good reason is lifted, a bad one will appear. Yes, maybe this machine could improve the world somehow, when streets are going to be safer, life outside - easier and so on. But every family will detach the society and make it’s own reality. Is it the main object of a person? Simulators dulls the fealing of the real conversation and the real life. Just like the TV- just wasting time there alone at home. Or the ICQ conversations- as long as I have an ICQ number, I used it more frequently and go outside rearly.
Hello F(r)iends,
If thinking about doing something good is good, then how much more good is actually doing something good?
If doing something bad is bad, then how much less bad is thinking about doing something bad?
-Thirst
thinking is just a way of planning out actions, deliberating opinions, processing information, forming beliefs, once we find a course of action which
is logical, necessary, pleasurable we act on it. then, afterward, we decide if the result was as good(effective,useful,enjoyable) as it could have been, or good as we thought .if its not, we look for a way to correct the problem, if it is, this action re-affirms our prior belief. sympathy never helped anyone, a sympathetic act on the other hand can. but can we have a sympathetic act without a sympathetic thought prior?