Re: virus: Re:virtuality

jonesr@gatwick.geco-prakla.slb.com
Thu, 2 Jan 97 16:53:48 GMT


Alex Williams wrote:

> They keep trying to revoke my
> right to keep and bear arms, but I find a bloody and well-used set of
> vivisectionist tools frightens off the criminals just as well as a
> .38.

Isn't it an irrevokable right of Americans to own and bear firearms (with a
liscence of course)?

Have you seen "Deliverance"?

> > But on drugs, and in a desparate state, I may react violently, and in the
> > process of restraining me, I might end up injured, or even dead. This
> > would be one point to me, WRT to killing myself.
>
> Oh, we'd /never/ restrain you. Restraint is for pansies. No, much
> more fun to bloodily hack your arms and legs off (in a private clinic
> with all the ameneties, of course)

You can put that on the company medical insurance too :)

> before addicting you ...

You're evil >;)

>
> > I suppose, yes. Unfortunately, there'll always be those people who don't
> > care about the well being of others, and will just use it as an excuse
> > for extra violence. And what is there to stop them? Prison? Just hack
> > your way out, and if you die in the process, so what? Just start from the
> > beginning again, presumably.
>
> So, how does that differ from /now/? You don't have to prove reality
> is virtual to get these people.

If someone tried to hack their way out of prison, without caring whether
they died or not, and assuming that the world is "real", then once they're
dead that's it. That's a fucking big detterrant for most people, although
not all, I concede :) If you know that you can come back again once you're
dead, it doesn't matter to a desperate man, does it?

>
> > Perhaps, there are even "levels" in this "game". Mayhap you start as, say,
> > an amoeba, then get upgraded to something like Plankton, then up to being a
> > worm or maggot, the a politician, then up to a domestic pet, culminating
> > in passing through being human, and becoming an Angel. The last level is
> > heaven, and the final gaurdian is God !
>
> Of course, the last test is Neitzchean, in that you have to deny God
> in His face and, in so doing, destroy Him only to usurp the heaveanly
> palace. Once that's done they reset the game and we start over from
> the stone age.

Perhaps we're only on difficulty setting 1, and when it is complete, we get
upgraded to level 2 and then level 3 (not any relation to the levels that
are often refered to on this list) etc....

>
> > Freaky idea. Can you imagine the simple shock if, one day, you're walking
> > down the road, doing your shopping with your friends, and suddently, everything
> > stops happening. You can't hear a thing, the birds have frozen in the skies, and
> > the people around you have stopped also. The only thing you can hear is the
> > 15KHz hum. Then a voice: MALFUNCTION... SYSTEM SHUTDOWN. Then blackness ...
>
> Actually, this entire discussion was the plot of a SF novel not
> terribly long ago.

AAARRGH, even scarier. Perhaps we're just part of the author's twisted
plot to see if we can follow his same line of thought....

> It involved a couple of company contractors from
> `beyond reality' sabotaging the game-machine with a `chaos generator'
> that kept escalating the level of nasty things going on in the world.

As in the virtual world?

> In the end, they left it in but tweaked not to escalate any more
> because chaos made the game more `fun.'
>

Of course, when it's only a game.

What's the book called, and who's it by?

Drakir
===============================================================================
Richard Jones "We are the New Breed
jonesr@gatwick.geco-prakla.slb.com We are the Future."
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