Fw: Proposal 196:G

From: Ed Murphy (emurphy42_at_socal.rr.com)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 18:49:35 PST


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Murphy" <emurphy42_at_socal.rr.com>
To: "FRC" <frc_at_trolltech.com>
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 7:29 PM
Subject: Re: Proposal 196:G


> I vote AGAINST 196:G.
>
>
> --
> Ed Murphy <emurphy42_at_socal.rr.com>          "I'm not sure I can go through
> http://members.fortunecity.com/emurphy/      with it.  Leave, I mean."
>
>

Now some random filler text to appease the mailing list software.

http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98
.html

Physical fundamentalists, however, must agree with René Descartes that the world
we perceive through our senses could be an elaborate hoax. In the seventeenth
century Descartes considered the possibility of an evil demon who created the
illusion of an external reality by controlling all that we see and hear (and
feel and smell and taste). In the twenty-first century, physical science itself,
through the technology of virtual reality, will provide the means to create such
illusions. Enthusiastic video gamers and other cybernauts are already strapping
themselves into virtual reality goggles and body suits for brief stints in
made-up worlds whose fundamental mechanisms are completely different from the
quantum fields that (best evidence suggests) constitute our physical world.

Today's virtual adventurers do not fully escape the physical world: if they bump
into real objects, they feel real pain. That link may weaken when direct
connections to the nervous system become possible, leading perhaps to the old
science-fiction idea of a living brain in a vat. The brain would be physically
sustained by life-support machinery, and mentally by connections of all the
peripheral nerves to an elaborate simulation of not only a surrounding world but
also a body for the brain to inhabit. Brain vats might be medical stopgaps for
accident victims with bodies damaged beyond repair, pending the acquisition,
growth, or manufacture of a new body.

The virtual life of a brain in a vat can still be subtly perturbed by external
physical, chemical, or electrical effects impinging on the vat. Even these weak
ties to the physical world would fade if the brain, as well as the body, was
absorbed into the simulation. If damaged or endangered parts of the brain, like
the body, could be replaced with functionally equivalent simulations, some
individuals could survive total physical destruction to find themselves alive as
pure computer simulations in virtual worlds.

--
Rule Date: 2002-11-17 02:52:52 GMT


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