Asklemmy

1454 readers

83 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Could you resist a true virtual reality and should you? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago by Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

92 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Lets assume we develop the capacity to create virtual worlds that are near indistinguishable from the real world. We hook you up into a machine and you now find yourself in what effectively is a paraller reality where you get to be the king of your own universe (if you so desire). Nothing is off limits - everything you've ever dreamt of is possible. You can be the only person there, you can populate it with unconscious AI that appears consciouss or you can have other people visit your world and you can visit theirs aswell as spend time in "public worlds" with millions of other real people.

Would you try it and do you think you'd prefer it over real world? Do you see it as a negative from individual perspective if significant part of the population basically spend their entire lives there?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think it matters in this case. I decided that they are not consciouss and only seem to be because I didn't want this thread to turn into debate about wether it's immoral to abuse AI systems or not.

[–] pileghoff@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it matters a great deal! I would like to believe that not only would I not use such a system, I would actively fight to have it made illegal.

[–] Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Why? That's like making it illegal to kick your roomba

[–] pileghoff@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No. I'm very certain that my Roomba is not conscious. But If we can't tell whether or not these people are conscious or not, then I don't think it's right to have this power over them. A better parallel than a Roomba would be an animal.

[–] Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No. I wrote the premise myself and I specifically said they appear consciouss, not that they are consciouss. I get what you're saying but that does not apply here. In this specific case we know for a fact that they're not consciouss. The only other consciouss being there on top of you are the other real people in the simulation. Not the AI characters.

[–] pileghoff@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm saying that appears conscious and is conscious could very well be the same thing, we don't know, so in this imaginary world, I would not trust anyone who told me "don't worry, you can torture them, they are not actually conscious".

[–] Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

If we have technology that enables such virtual reality there's a good chance we have an answer to the hard problem of consciousness aswell. Again, that's why I said that they appear consciouss. They're programmed in such way but we know it's just an illusion.

I totally see where you're coming from though and I agree with you. There's also that even if we knew for absolute certain that they're not consciouss it would still take a literal psychopath to treat them the way they do on West World for example and even if you're not morally doing anything wrong I'd still think twice wether I want to hang with someone that's capable of acting that way. However if you are that kind of person then I'd rather have you take out your anger and fulfill your sadistic needs on a unconsciouss AI than real people.