Re: virus: Re:virtuality

Alexander Williams (thantos@alf.dec.com)
Fri, 27 Dec 1996 14:27:17 -0500


middletn@gatwick.geco-prakla.slb.com wrote:
> Alex Williams wrote:
>
> >From the memetic PoV: Does it matter? If reality is virtual it still
> >engenders the same memes and meme-complexi into your brain as if you
> >were experiencing it.
>
> To me it does matter because it means that everything you have ever lived
> through and experienced,since being born to the present seconds, does not
> really exist.

But you can only feel `cheated' in such a way /after/ you learn that all
you've experienced is virtual. Its forward-propogative in your
meme-structure, not backward-propogative. In a sense, the knowledge of
virtuality is merely another meme which will have wide-reaching impact
in your memetic-niches, but until its verified, its not condusive or
`revealatory' (to use my own term) to contemplate.

The /possibility/ of virtuality isn't impactive any more than the
possibility that you're a butterfly dreaming you're a man is.

> The idea may not be provable but it is possible to speculate to such a
> point using ideas that we do already know that we can come to a very
> accurate assumption or even a worthwhile conclusion. Technology will
> destroy man.

Technology may `destroy' man, but what it creates will be something
better and `more.' (Can you tell I'm rabidly anti-Luddite?)

Assumptions are just that, assuming facts not in evidence. Without
facts, which would demonstrate provability, you can come to no
conclusion.

To sum up in my own inimitable way: `Even if the world is virtual, if I
drop a rock on my foot it hurts like a motherfucker.'

-- 
   Alexander Williams {thantos@alf.dec.com / zander@photobooks.com}
  Prefect of the 8,000,000th Terran Overlord Government Experimental
      Strike Legion, Primary Transport TOG "Bellatores Inquieti"
======================================================================
   You ride in 250 tons of molecularly aligned crystalline titanium
wedded to a ceramic ablative matrix.  You carry a 200mm Gauss
cannon, two massive 10-gigawatt lasers, two SMLM fire-and-forget
missiles, a Vulcan IV point defense anti-missile system, and a
deadly assortment of other equally lethal weapons.
   Your vehicle is the ultimate product of 4,000 years of armored
warfare.
   Your life expectancy is less than two minutes.
					-- RENEGADE LEGION:
					   CENTURION