Immortality on earth--err, sort o'

[Gangstawombatninja]

We all saw the Matrix and it was pretty awesome. But what about when we actually do have the technology to create computer generated worlds? I mean, it they can put you in cg world, why can't they leave you there, in cyberspace, for all eternity? And if things get boring you just say "Mr. Wizard, I need a bottle of soma and a happiness download."

Would you let yourself die or stay in cyberspace in eternal programmed bliss? Or maybe just a hundred years of it? Or thousand? Million? Then die? Never die?

Boy, I hope I'm alive when cg worlds come out. Vacation in Middle-earth. Take a space ship to Pern. Travel back in time. Ooh, goody, I wanna meet Gandalf!

[ST88]

We all saw the Matrix and it was pretty awesome. But what about when we actually do have the technology to create computer generated worlds? I mean, it they can put you in cg world, why can't they leave you there, in cyberspace, for all eternity? And if things get boring you just say "Mr. Wizard, I need a bottle of soma and a happiness download."

I thought that the point of the Matrix was that humans were existing in two planes simultaneously, the actual physical plane, in which their electric body impulses were farmed for the machines; and the virtual plane, which was an illusion projected directly into their brains. Correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't remember it all that well, but people still had their lifespans in the actual world reflected in the virtual world -- no one lived forever, they were just brought up to believe that the virtual world was the real one.

But as to your question, I would assume that you are talking about preserving human consciousness in digital form, more like the case in The 13th Floor or any number of the Star Trek:NG "holodeck" episodes. If this is your question, whether or not I would want to be preserved in this artificial world indefinitely, I would first want to know whether or not I was being made to consciously choose my immortality or if this was a situation I wouldn't mind being in if it happened to turn out that way.

The difference is that the choice to be digitized does not guarantee that I will emerge on the "other side" as the same ME that I was beforehand. Essentially, I don't believe that I as a being can be digitized and still remain myself. It would be a copy or a clone of me, enjoying (or suffering through) all my thoughts and my experiences in this other form. I would still be on the outside. In that case, I wouldn't really care, because it wouldn't be ME.

The second part -- if I somehow found out that I was already in this situation, and that I was the immortal (clone) stuck in a virtual world, I probably wouldn't mind. This would also be my answer if the ME of my thought patterns and experiences could somehow be squeezed inside a virtual world can. But there would have to be ground rules. Some of the problems in the Matrix were that 1) the machines could be corrupted by knowing humans, 2) the actual Matrix wasn't all that perfectly rendered, and 3) any unplanned event on the actual physical plane (like an asteroid strike, to take an extreme example) would not be preventable or forseeable yet would have immediate, direct impacts. If this world were human-controlled, I might be in constant fear that someone was messing with me. Or that I was being watched or monitored on a terminal somewhere.

I might want exclusive access to a control center within this VR world where I could alter unforseen bugs in the system (I would have to learn the programming), effectively making me a minor deity in this world. I could see that as kind of fun & interesting. I couldn't say if it would get dull after a while. The progress of civilization up to now has been very interesting, and could be just as interesting in a virtual future with as many variables as exist IRL. And I would be just as taken by surprise by events in the VR as I would be IRL. It would be tempting to act like the minor deity I would be -- like a superhero or something, who knows what one would do in that situation? But if there were a way to make a VR world indistinguishable from the real world, I would have little problem with it. I don't know if an actual immortality is possible, given the limitations of the universe, and, if so, the coming of death, though a long way off, would not be known. I have to wonder if it wouldn't be worth it to be stuck in such a realistic simulation for an effective eternity just to see how everything turns out.

By the way, I wouldn't really want to go to Pern until they get that whole "threads of fire" thing worked out.