However, as I just posted, that impact would be forward-propogative, it
wouldn't have /real/ bearing on your perceptions or existance until
then.
As a gedanken experiment, /what if/ you were convinced that all
existance is virtual, but you're wrong? How does that differ from any
other class of delusion? What if you're right, but no one else believes
you save a small number and you start the Church of the Virtual?
> As I understand it, memes affect the way we act and think. This means that
> there is a meme preventing us from going out and killing one another
wantonly,
> is that correct? Now if we were to discover that killing someone has no
> effect on their "real life" then that meme becomes redundant. This, in
turn,
> would have far reaching implications on all forms of morality memes, and
> any kind of law-memes (made up term).
Maybe there's a meme keeping /you/ from going out and killing people
wantonly, but ... Oops, almost gave away too much, there.
What /if/ all reality is virtual and all the humans surrounding you are
just people that put in their `virtual quarter' and get to `play out the
game of Life,' until they're either killed or die of old age. Further,
what if all the suffering and pain they feel is `real' in that when
/you/ hurt you know you feel it, so why shouldn't they? Would that
`change the rules' enough for you to go around gunning people down,
indiscriminately?
What if the Christian extremist sects are right, the same ones that led
to people going into abortion clinics and shooting pregnant women dead
before they could damn their souls to Hell by commiting murder? Doesn't
saving someone from eternal torment `change the rules'? Can you prove
its /not/ the case?
> > If reality is virtual it still
> > engenders the same memes and meme-complexi into your brain as if you
> > were experiencing it.
>
> But only if you are unaware that you are in a Virtual World (IMO).
It doesn't matter if you believe it or not, really. What do the masses
think?
> > The question of whether all reality is virtual is simply
> > unprovable, one way or another.
>
> Is it possible, though?
Its /possible/ the Old Testament fire-and-brimstone God/Allah is real
and science an elaborate sham of Lucifer's to distract humanity from the
One True Way. Is it `revealatory' to accept that premise?
--
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