[ExI] Story part 2 yet again.

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 11:11 PM, Alan Grimes <ALONZOTG at verizon.net> wrote:

> # How will VR environments be provisioned? How much work will be required
> of the user to create a VR? Where would the terminally incompetent get
> their VRs?
>

That last forms the baseline.  So line as there are VRs for even the
terminally incompetent, the more competent can afford to be lazy - and,
well, human nature tends toward laziness here.  Someone goes to the effort
of making a good, or at least acceptable, standard VR interface that anyone
can use, and many people use it.

Of course, users can put in as much work as they want.  Note the amount of
effort that goes into building Minecraft worlds - even those that are never
seen by more than a few.  (Although, fame to those who both make good
product and share it widely; some small fortune to those who figure out how
to turn a profit without turning away most of their audience.)


> # How large of a VR would a user be allowed to build?
>

That strongly depends on who's setting the limits - and why.  It may well
be that there are no limits, beyond how much hardware a user can gather;
that would be the case if today's laws were applied.


> # What limitations on creating sentient characters to populate the VR?
> (this is obviously deeply problematic on many fronts).
>

Again, who's setting the limits, and what's their agenda?  Again, if
today's laws were applied, there would be no limits.  Some may soon come
into effect once this happens, depending on how the legislators come to
learn of this...or it may be viewed as a modern form of slavery without the
drawbacks, if the sentient characters can simply be programmed for loyalty
and slave mentalities (or, more importantly, if the legislators believe
this to be the case).


> # What rights/limitations would a user have in a public VR?
>

Depends entirely on who's paying for it, and their relationship to the
user.  Most likely it'd be akin to the rights/limitations people have on
any public property, including a limitation against trashing the place
(without special permit, which usually involves working for or with the
government).


> # Would the user be guaranteed unalienable rights to exist and communicate
> in public VRs?
>

Depends on the local government, and whether they give similar rights in
meatspace.


> # Would private VR spaces be considered a natural right?
>

Probably not, any more than homes are considered natural rights.  They're
property, and it's a good thing if most people have one, but this is
distinct from a right to have one.  (Though it helps that making an eyesore
out of one's private VR does not impact other peoples' private VRs.)


> # What limitations would there be on how a user manafests himself in a
> public VR environment?
>

Again, depends entirely on who's paying for it, and their relationship to
the user.  "Public VR" can be considered to be "VR that is owned and
operated by the government, which gives most people certain access rights",
similar to public roads today.


> # What limitations would a user have on the type of avatar that could be
> attached to his emulated humanoid nervous system?
>

Same answer.


> # Is there any alternative to the following mode of self modification
> beyond basic tuning parameters:   --> You load a copy of yourself from a
> backup made a few moments ago, modify it, attempt to run it, if it seems to
> work, you then delete yourself.
>

Yes.  Many alternatives:

* You modify your currently running copy on the fly, without backup, much
like how self modification works today.  (More dangerous?  Yes.  Convenient
and therefore used widely anyway?  Probably.  Safe enough for small tweaks,
so that "more dangerous" rarely applies in practice?  Likely.  Does away
with the "there are briefly two yous" issue that some people might want to
deal with?  Yes.  And "this is similar to how people have done it for a
long time" is a compelling factor for many people.  Of course, one can also
copy a modification that someone else tested on someone else, thus trusting
that the modification is probably safe for yourself too.)

* You run several such modifications at once.

* You don't delete yourself, essentially forking for each modification.

* You run altered self in a simplified, sped up sim (sped up because of the
simplifications) and thereby evaluate long-term progress quickly.

Are those enough?

*** The current dominant theme, that of a heliocentric cloud of
> computronium bricks seems to imply a central authority that, at the very
> least, dictates communications protocols and orbital configurations.
>

Unless the protocols emerge by consensus, for lack of said authority (much
like how "international law" is not "what the single superpower  - USA -
wants", but "what enough of the major countries of the world agree on"),
and orbital configurations likewise (though likely recognizing orbitals
already claimed in practice).


> # What rights would the least privileged user to access base reality?
>

The least privileged users might access base reality and nothing else.
This is a common plot: the elites turn their attention to spaces only they
are aware of, and ignore the portion of reality that is the entire reality
for commoners.  VR vs. base reality is one expression of this, as is a
medieval tale of peasants whose only exposure to war is when knights come
through, demanding food and shelter, until the lords on both sides - who
had only thought to defeat one another - suddenly have their "civilized"
war interrupted by a peasant revolt.


> *** Assume that the overwhelming majority of the population was
> force-uploaded and re-answer the previous question.
>

It changes depending on two things:

* What noble aspirations the uploaders had when doing the force-uploading
and setting things up.

* What that grinds down to, in day-to-day practice after a sufficiently
long period of time.

Generally, why do the uploaders even care to run most people?  Access to
base reality likely costs at least minimal resources - whose, and is this a
large enough amount that anyone cares?


> # Are there any problems with the following scenario:   You detect a
> problem that will inevitably cause a cascade failure across the entire
> network but since you are on the ignore list of everyone connected with the
> central authority you can't even report your bug. The people in the central
> authority have been running human emulated brain patterns for subjective
> thousands of years and have become senile (due to the exhaustion of
> potential synapses between their neurons), and complacent and refuse to
> even acknowledge the possibility of such a problem... So basically everyone
> trapped in this nightmare tried to go around the simulator with a
> count-down clock to when everything would collapse hovering over their
> heads, trying to warn the few who could actually do something about it,
> until the clock reached zero and everything just stopped.
>

Yes.  If many people are convinced of imminent demise, and the powers that
be can not be convinced to help - perhaps some people would be content to
give passive warnings as you describe, but someone is going to try to take
more action than that.

Security crackers exist.  Exploits and social engineering exist.   If the
people in the central authority are indeed senile, that makes it more
likely that these things will develop, in time for those aware of the
problem to attempt a fix.  (Just last May, I was in a LARP about
essentially this very scenario.)

The bigger problem is assuming that everyone will act in the same way -
especially, in a way they have reason to believe will be utterly
ineffective (even if it does require little effort).  Over a large enough
population with the same concern, a wide variety of solutions will be
attempted.
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