virus: Re: alternative model

Ken Pantheists (kenpan@axionet.com)
Thu, 28 Nov 1996 13:30:40 +0000


From: "Martin Traynor" <m.traynor@ic.ac.uk>

> Prove that you do not also participate in it [virtual reality] unknowingly.

Well, barring any paranoid fantasy that would make "Total Recall" look
like "the Wizard of Oz", I would wake up one day and say--- hmm. nothing
on tv, I thnk I'll pop into Oprah's database and have virtual sex with
one of those transvestites that were on last week.

> reality that was created around you with subatomic resolution and
> rich and consistent would be subjectively indistinguishable from
> reality.

One can't prove that any more than one can't prove that you your life up
until now is nothing but a dream.

Arnold: I AM a spy! I tell you. I am A SPY! (blam blam blam)

I said earlier--

> -Subjective reality is a repository of your experience-- even virtual
> experience.

Then Martin said:

Agreed, but can you prove that it is composed of anything *other*
than virtual reality?

Again. I say with STRONG conviction. I am the author of my subjective
reality. I do not participate in it passively. I write it using the
memes that I encode into it.

Virtual reality is a very fancy, very precise CARTOON. It is a mutually
agreed upon, mutually shared Hallucination. It is not your mind.

I can change my mind about something. I author my own perceptions.

Someone wired up in a head set with a glucose IV and sitting on a
chemical toilet does not become part of the computer that serves the VR.

Are you suggesting that if a hypothetical person who was raised in a VR
and suddenly had the goggles taken off would have no more subjective
reality? The person would be shocked and his/her subjective reality (I
still don't know exactly what we mean by this term) would have to cope
with the experience of having what was once real suddenly ripped away.

I said:
> - The two are necessarily different because one can be used to construct
> the other.

Martin asked:
But can that difference be shown formally? I don't think it can.

YES Seeing is not thinking.

-- 
Regards
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  Ken Pantheists                    
http://www.lucifer.com/~kenpan           
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