RE: God as computer
September 5, 2013 at 12:13 pm
(This post was last modified: September 5, 2013 at 12:14 pm by Mister Agenda.)
(September 5, 2013 at 11:50 am)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: Mister Agenda, if we're really living a simulation and manage to contact the users, I doubt they'll believe we're "living". If your character in a game stops responding to your commands and starts talking to you, would you think it's a malfunction or that it became self aware?
Presumably I would KNOW if the characters in my game are self-aware. If they are, aren't I beholden to treat them as people?
This is what I meant by the ethical implications of simulating conscious being on a computer.
In Star Trek: TNG, the holodeck character Moriarty figured out he was in a simulation and caused trouble by messing with the Enterprise. Rather than terminating Moriarty's simulated existence, they dealt with him by deceiving him into thinking he was free of the simulation. It may not have been honest, but it WAS dealing with Moriarty as a real person who had a right to not be summarily deleted or transfomed into a more tractable character.
