[ExI] YES! Hard-core transhumanist splinter groups yearning for cyber-heaven

[Damien Broderick]

On 6/17/2010 6:19 PM, Spike Jones wrote:

>Nearby orbiting nodes could
> simulate the child, the flower, the unexpected bug, the gentle breeze,
> the sunshine. The simulated joy would be as real as that which we now
> feel, if not moreso.
> If we do it right, plenty of the simulated beings would seldom (if ever)
> need to trouble themselves, or even be aware that they are sims

Spike, my brother--it pains me to say this, but that proposition about 
simming a child seems to me to be fundamentally depraved.

I'd find it hard to justify my denunciation (except for the assumption 
that any program capable of rewarding a real consciousness in reciprocal 
relationship with it would have to *be* an equal consciousness) but that 
is my response. Contra argument: we might all be in a simulation right 
now, we might all be counters and look-up tables, blah blah, and even if 
we're not we are just quantum computations within a Seth Lloyd universe 
that is a Really Big Quantum Computation. Reply: yeah, and Descartes 
allegedly flung cats out of his upstairs window to perish when they 
struck the ground because his philosophy made much the same claim about 
them.

Damien Broderick