= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Strange7 comments on Local Ordinances of Fun - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (153)
Well, how would you answer my hypothetical?
And suppose I rephrased it thus: your friend needs help say, getting through a painful divorce, and you knew that this will be a difficult process taking many years. But you also know that if you put yourself in an experience machine for the rest of your life, you could soothe your (virtual) friend's wounded soul in half an hour. Supposing the move to the experience machine doesn't interfere with any of your other plans (they could be simulated too, of course), would you consider the experience machine simply a more efficient means to your end? Or would it fail to achieve your end at all?
With my friend's permission, I'd rent a two-seater experience machine for a month or so, sit myself down in the administrator position, and use it to play through various scenarios calculated to be useful for my friend's psychological well-being.
What the hell kind of a utopia only has a holodeck with a one-way door?
Don't fight the hypothetical!
Fighting the hypothetical is a legitimate tactic when there's a contradiction in the hypothetical premises. In this case, we're assuming a world where people have learned to create perfectly immersive virtual environments, but somehow forgotten how to charge money for valuable services or build a power switch that works on a timer, which seems contradictory based on what I know about technological development.
That's irrelevant to the question (hence, a case of fighting the hypothetical). Mass Driver said he would enter into an experience machine permanently (that's how I took the word 'lock') without much hesitation, if the machine-world were better but unreal. The purpose of my hypothetical was to show that while 'real' isn't quite the issue, there is something about one's own world that we're ethically attached to. And we're attached in such a way that an experientially identical world which is different only in being not our original world, is for that reason significantly different.