To say that we are going to have to be really careful about how we go about instituting ever more high fidelity representations of what we can imagine, processed through calculations, and then interfaced with the brain in ever more clever ways, is something that ought to be obvious, but isn't always; mostly, I think, because the temptation to go full tilt Bozo down that path is often overpowering. How could it not be. Completely interactive reality printing for the brain? It's a wet dream's wet dream.
That
this would then pose serious addiction possibilities goes without
saying, but perhaps more insidious is this horrifying assumption that
the creation of these calculations, and whatever linkage
methodologies to the brain thus employed, might be so high fidelity
as to be in any way an equivalent to experience mediated via the
mechanisms evolution selected for us is hubris of unbelievable
proportions.
Just
because we can start from the notion that all we are talking about,
when we discuss experience, is energy exchange by the various layers
of abstraction we call molecules, atoms, and the sub parts of atoms,
doesn't automatically make artificial pathways to experience exactly
the same, let alone provide the same essentials, as what billions of years of trial and error has created.
This too ought to be obvious but that's where the hubris comes
in. In becoming very adept at seeing what outside stimulus creates in
the context of electrochemical transmission inside our bodies we
think, in typical mechanistic simplicity, that this is all there is
to experience. Duplicate the message that we see in the brain body
interlink and we have created a de facto copy of what natural
occurrence would have done. What else is the left to talk about,
right?
What
about all of the exchange channels we cannot measure fully, even if,
absurd or not, we have identified all of the channels in the first
place? What kinds of exchange occur outside of filtered
consciousness. Outside of all objectified interpretation? So much of
what the "Simpletons of the Brain" work with occur below
conscious thought. Do the brain waves we can measure now reflect all
of that? Can we measure all of the chemicals involved with feeling to
the degree of precision that might be necessary? Remembering that the
very act of observation, and how we go about it, affect the results?
One
of the best ways I've come up with in considering this is to imagine
that we have come into possession of holodeck technology as depicted
in Star Trek Next Generation. Suppose further that, instead of
bringing along a huge array of plant and animal life with us for the
purely recreational usage of, we instead choose to simply spend time
in recreated park environments; all in quite extensive detail. Would
the transporter, and photonic mix master thus engaged give us all of
the energies of interaction that the original provided? Would you
want to be your sanity on it, not to mention your complete
physiological well being? Do you really think that billions of years
of life spent awash in a soup of unimaginably complex energy
interactions could be duplicated down to the last sub atomic
particle? It is, after all, the small inputs in complex systems, that
can have the largest effects.
And
yet, even before we have gotten anywhere even close to Trek
technology, we begin to consider that VR would be a way to allow the
poor to have a good life. It certainly might give them a much more
enjoyable distraction, but a better life? Can the people making these proposals even begin
to consider this in good conscience? Any more than they would in
giving poor people heroine? When I hear things like this the urge to
start slapping people repeatedly is hard to resist.
One of my favorite, private sayings is: Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to receive, our fictions. It isn't like we're all that good at keeping reality and fiction separated now. But who cares about that when you can pretend to have what ever your mind can conceive of, and in the highest fidelity that money can buy. And so what if money itself is involved, with new realms of averice that might be in play. Why would there be any need to think about whether this will be for our best benefit or not? There won't be any worries. We'll be much too pleasantly distracted to care.
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