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

[Damien Broderick]

On 6/17/2010 8:40 PM, Gregory Jones wrote:

> >assumption that any program capable of rewarding a real consciousness
> > in reciprocal relationship with it would have to *be* an equal
> > consciousness)...

> I don't see the problem here.  The child sim would be an equal
> consciousness in a sense.

Only "in a sense"? What sense is that?

Hmm. Possibly I misread you when you stated earlier:

"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, 
and not flesh and blood carbon beings"

I read this as something like "they would be philosophical zombies, to 
be switched on or off and manipulated at whim." I regard devoting one's 
love and care to a doll or toy, pretending that it is a person, to be a 
kind of depravity (with at least oneself suffering from it).*

Obviously this proves only that I am an olde farte who can't get with 
the program, as with my conviction that a copy is not an original (yawn).

*I'm not referring to masturbation with a sex doll.

Damien Broderick