X-Message-Number: 11727
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Question to Saul Kent, plus some answers about virtual people
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 00:00:36 +1000 (EST)

Hi everyone!

And so the conversation about virtual people in virtual worlds goes on.

I will first add a few words about Saul Kent's message. In the last issue
of PERIASTRON I suggested that one way or another we should try to revive
the Prometheus project of Paul Wakfer. I don't really care what name it
has, but it's also quite clear that means to vitrify and preserve human
brains just aren't going to come until cryonicists raise the money and do
the work needed. And I hope that Saul's efforts succeed, and want to
learn more about them. He did not, for instance, actually ask for
donations. So for Saul: just what do you want from us?

And back to the discussion about virtual worlds and virtual people:

First of all, I meant what I said when I said that one major problem was
our inability to really create a virtual world as complex, unknown, and
changeable as the real one. The virtual person perceiving that virtual
world basically perceives almost nothing... if it can be said to perceive.
Nor can it really respond except in the sense that a computer program
"responds" to other events in the computer in which it is running.

Yes, we may argue that the virtual person has virtual consciousness, too,
but virtual consciousness remains quite different from REAL consciousness.
That complexity and lack of knowledge which we have of the world is just
as much a complexity and lack of knowledge of people in the world as of
any other feature. We have no more than a computer program working on
data provided to it before it runs.

The problem which George Smith raises doesn't really bear on this 
discussion. We are conscious, and yes, we can have dreams. It's far from
clear how this fact bears on the consciousness of virtual people living
in a virtual world.

Furthermore, the substitution of different brain parts by computer parts
(conceivable, but far more difficult than Daniel Crevier seems to believe)
does not incur this problem until the result actually starts living
only in the computer. I have said already and will say again that I am
not discussing the possiblity of creating a device which is conscious;
I am discussing the consciousness of virtual devices in virtual worlds.
And if you end up, as a result of this substitution, in a virtual world,
you have just died and are no longer conscious. Why? Because you have
become virtual yourself, and exist only in a virtual sense --- which is
not the same as existing in reality.

Finally, for Brook Norton I would say that the validity of such arguments
as to the existence of a Programmer remains just the same as that for
a God. An unspoken assumption behind Brook Norton's claims seems to be
that somehow the entire world we perceive can be the result of a program
running in a computer. I am doubting such a premise to begin with.

I will also add that cryonics (I very much hope) has a different status
from belief in either a God or a Programmer. It is something which we
aim to do by our own actions, though we have not done it yet. Scientific
arguments bear on the validity of cryonics as arguments about just how
we can achieve this aim and whether it is achievable (so far no one
has produced an argument tht it cannot be done no matter how long we
work on it, whether that argument is scientific or otherwise). An 
argument about the existence of God (or a Programmer) is an argument about
whether or not something is true. And the lack of empirical evidence
suggesting that there is a Programmer impugns the truth of that notion.

			Best wishes and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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