Pat @Pat@qoto.org

@johnabs @freemo

Yes, I appreciate your considered answers. too.

>”...going to ignore the whole multiverse thing...”

The multiverse reference was not meant to be a claim that they actually exist, but more of a way to express the possible hypothetical outcomes of moral decisions and opportunity costs – that if we allow a person to be born, it has consequences that mean that some other yet-to-exist person will not be born as a consequence.

>”... “what is sufficiently complex” to even warrant this consideration?”

I’m not sure that complexity on its own is the attribute that determines consciousness or a level of consciousness worthy of moral consideration. I think that consciousness is multi-dimensional and it’s a very active area of research, in philosophy and science. We haven’t figured it out yet.

>“In that case, we truly are just automata, our sense of self/free-will is an illusion, and we’re back to the whole “no intrinsic value” problem as there is no self in which to refer.”

I’m not sure I understand the connect between free will and intrinsic value. I think that even if the universe is deterministic and we only appear to have free will, we still need to make decisions and those decisions are based on our perceptions and experience even if those experiences are already “baked in the cake”. So our findings regarding the existence of intrinsic value are still consequential even if those findings and the consequences of our decisions are predetermined.

>>“’If life has no meaning and someone only cares about themselves,
>>they’re not going to be reading this book anyway, or even considering
>>the question.’”

>”But here is where the crux of my argument lies. By skipping over this question and just assuming its validity, we leave the door open...”

I was paraphrasing Regan there. I said it was ironic. The irony is that the guy spend ~700 pages talking about all this stuff, but skipped over one of the important antecedent steps in the development of his thesis. Of course that question needs to be addressed in developing moral philosophies. (But perhaps not directly when making laws.) Many authors address it. Shermer addresses it in his book, which is a soup-to-nuts argument for a moral system.

>I agree that many of these questions don’t need to be answered to legislate;
>however, I think it’s foolish (not you) to believe that all current legislation
>actually follows anything remotely resembling moral principles, which is another >problem….
>Like slavery, for example, was practiced by everyone in the world for a very, very
>long time. That didn’t make it morally reasonable though, despite the nearly
>universal consensus.

This is a process. We continue to learn more, develop more, philosophically and scientifically. We progress. But we need to make decisions and laws based on what we know at the time, and then revise them when we learn more. As a practical matter, laws always lag knowledge, but they eventually catch up -- we eventually banned slavery.

It just takes so damn long. I don’t like it. I wish we could progress more quickly. I wish people could recognize more quickly when something needs changing, but it is what it is.

Perhaps it’s a never-ending process and we will always be able to look back at how foolish and backward we were in the past…

****SPOILERS*****
(Virtuosity, The Matrix Series)

The main problem with Virtuosity was the writing. The characters weren’t really developed very well (other than Washington’s character which I think is due in large part to his acting ability), and the characters lacked motivation, among many other issues, including unrealistic dialog.

Performances of the lead actors were great. Denzel Washington was amazing, even this early in his acting career. (And we get to see him in dreadlocks!) Kelly Lynch and Russell Crowe each did a fantastic job with the material they were given. Some of the supporting actors also gave great performances. (Kaley Cuoco from “The Big Bang Theory” TV series appears as a kid actor in this film, her second film). Crowe played the stilted super-villain and just went so far over the top with his portrayal, which I’m sure is how he was directed to play it. I don’t particularly like the stilted super-villain character, but it has become a pervasive staple in many film genre, including many scifi films.

Although The Matrix was much better produced, Virtuosity had amazing CG for the time it was made, and the overall production design of the virtual world was top notch. Some of the technical details of the narrative were kind of goofy, like the computer having separate plug-in cartridges for each virtual character and that exploding implant – those were unrealistic.

But The Matrix also had those issues, such as using humans for energy. Human batteries? Really? They couldn’t think up a better excuse to explain why people were kept as comatose matrix dreamers?

I think The Matrix performed better at the box-office because of the attention to detail in the writing, especially the dialog; and the overall quality of production, which the Wachowskis are famous for. It also had much more Hollywood-style action which makes it more appealing to a wider audience.

However, I think The Matrix was much more detrimental to society, because the protagonists were violent bad guys who killed a lot of cops under a contemporary punk-rock score. They also worn black trench coats (Trench Coat Mafia style), which is significant because the Columbine mass shooters were also caught up in that Trench Coat Mafia culture. I don’t think The Matrix made those kids go out and do all that killing, but the film came out just a few weeks before the mass shooting, and The Matrix glorified that whole evil side of the cyberpunk culture.

Virtuosity, on the other hand, while containing quite a bit of violence, didn’t promote the evil side of the protagonist. The bad guy (Crowe) is really bad, and the protagonist (Washington) has generally good intent and does mostly good deeds in the film.

@kmic

I don't think the kangaroo is the one who needs the tranquilizer.

@kmic

Spot vs. Spot

@peterdrake

That's so... funny!

@johnabs @freemo

>”...how do we define harm?...”
>”...can you say I’ve truly harmed someone by ending their life while they’re unconscious?”

Regan goes into great detail about this in his writings. Certainly causing pain is harm. The forbearance of the continuation of an individual’s life and future experiences can also be considered harm in most cases. Preventing someone from even coming into existence (contraception/early abortion) is an interesting case which Regan also addresses. I think that nearly anytime someone is born, that event itself forebears the existence of some others who will not come into existence simply as a result of that individual being born. (Think multiverses, counterfactuals, butterfly effect – each potential multiverse has a different mix of individuals in it.)

>”...If I can kill a bug, or a cow, etc, why does killing a person matter?”

Regan wrote an entire book about this question and goes into excruciating detail about it (about 700 pages, if I remember – it’s been a few decades since I’ve read his stuff), and the conclusion is that it is wrong to harm someone even if they are not human.

>”...intrinsic value...”
>”...how does this apply across species (or does it at all)?”

Regan uses the criteria of whether an individual experiences a subjective life or not (among many other criterion). He calls it “subject-of-a-life”. I think intrinsic value can be derived from that.

>”[In] what cases is it reasonable to cause harm to human/non-human entities?...”

A lot folks have written on that one. Self-defense is the obvious example. This also brings up the question of whether the action prevents net harm for the individual or for everyone (Mills, Utilitarianism).

>”...why are any of these actions morally objectionable in such a universe?”
>”...transcendent meaning…”

Shermer presents a coherent counter-nihilism argument in his book, as do many other authors. Ironically, Regan just skips over the question and basically says, “If life has no meaning and someone only cares about themselves, they’re not going to be reading this book anyway, or even considering the question.” (paraphrased)

Fortunately, many of these questions, like nihilism and existentialism, don’t need to be resolved to come up with a law addressing abortion. Approaches via objectivism or materialism often end up with similar answers as those from religion because the same human brains that invented, developed, or selected a religion are the same ones who consider materialism. So I think a consensus, or at least a substantial majority can be reached on the question either way.

(#2that means that I used the word “that” two times consecutively somewhere in the toot.)

@peterdrake

I guess you need to follow the thread backwards to the OP (original post). But that's kind of a pain isn't it. I'll try to remeber next time to include the title in the CW.

(The titles are at the beginning of the spoiler post, along with another in-text warning just in case folks have the "auto-open-CWs" feature enabled, but of course folks wouldn't know that until they peek. Duh! 😅

@johnabs @freemo
- - -
The problem of using humanness as a determinant for the acquisition of rights is that it is arbitrary and limited. The reason why it is wrong to violate someone’s rights is not because they are a biological entity with a particular sequence of DNA. It’s wrong because that individual can be harmed by the violation.

There are, or could be, individuals who may not be human (or may not even be biologically based) who may be capable of being harmed and who’s rights should be respected, for example, an AI who becomes sentient, or people in the future who have modified their DNA beyond the human species, or possibly sentient life who are not from Earth and not human. (Not to say that sentience is necessarily a determining attribute for assessing the existence of the potentiality of harm.)

For the same reason, just because something has the chemicals cytosine, guanine, adenine, thymine bound together in a particular sequence does not mean that that macromolecule(s) could experience moral harm. So whether or not something or someone does or doesn’t have a human sequence of DNA doesn’t automatically include or excuse an obligation of respecting a right not to be harmed.

If you’d like to learn more about this, I suggest reading works by Tom Regan, who has written volumes on who is, or who becomes, a moral patient; and Michael Shermer’s “The Moral Arc”, which develops a coherent, reasoned, and science-based framework for why we should respect rights at all, and how to determine who or what those rights-respecting obligations should be extended to. (Remember that irrespective of each of our own religious beliefs, the law needs to be based on rational that doesn’t favor one religion over another, and is based on reasoned, evidence-based arguments.)

#2that

@freemo @johnabs

I probably shouldn’t have used the word “personhood” in my explanation because: 1) an individual doesn’t need to be a definite “person” to have their interests respected; 2) that particular term has been used by pro-life proponents for a specific purpose, which is not how I used it; and 3) the term personhood is often confused in ordinary speech to mean “human”, which is it not.

Also, determining an exact definition to describe an individual who has acquired rights doesn’t necessarily resolve the issue of competing rights between the individuals involved. That is, if an individual acquires rights while in the body of another individual, then each of them have rights which may be in conflict. (Not to say either way whether or not an individual actually acquires those rights at that time, only “if”.)

****SPOILERS*****

Virtuosity (1995) isn’t the best in this genre, but it’s certainly entertaining and innovative. It brought together several elements that came to dominate the subgenre of mind films. The Matrix Series borrowed many of these elements. They include:

- The film begins in the virtual world in a manner that leads the audience to believe that it is real life, then later reveals that it is actually a virtual world

- The use of generic, suit-wearing, identical virtual characters

- A stilted super-villain

- Real life characters who sit in special chairs in order connect to the virtual world

- Subjects in real life can experience real life injuries from events that occur in the virtual world

- The protagonist is a bad guy; in Virtuosity he’s a bad cop in real life but a good cop in the virtual world. In The Matrix, the protagonists are bad guys (Trench Coat Mafia) who kill cops in the virtual world, but in the real world they’re the good guys fighting off evil, repressive robot war lords.

- Virtuosity and The Matrix each prominently feature the use of automatic weapons in the virtual world

- The super-villain is able to become an actual human-like being in real life

- The protagonist is implanted with an exploding tracking device

I don’t think Virtuosity was the first to use any of these elements, but it was the first to bring them all together in a film from the mind subgenre.

Virtuosity really hasn’t gotten the praise it deserves and was completely overshadowed by The Martix Series, which was much better written and produced, and included much more action (and unfortunately more violence), and benefited from the improved CG technology that was available when it was produced four years later.

Patsplaining..

This one is partially true…

It makes four claims:

1. Lincoln gave famous fireside chats (not true)
2. The chats were not heard in Illinois (true)
3. Lincoln’s home state is Illinois (not true)
4. The chats were not broadcast in Illinois. (true)

Lincoln did not give famous fireside chats (at least they weren’t famous if he ever did). The famous fireside chats were given by FDR in 1930s and broadcast on the new medium of radio, which many people listened to because they didn't have TV yet.

Radio had not yet been invented when Lincoln was alive, so nothing he said was ever broadcast at that time by radio because there was no radio, so of course they were not heard in Illinois because they didn’t exist and there was no radio.

Lincoln’s home state is Kentucky, not Illinois.

(The “s” in Illinois is silent, but many people still pronounce the “s” anyway, so now either pronunciation has become acceptable, however, some say the first pronunciation, (silent "s") is preferred.)

#Patsplaining
#TruthBeTold

Patsplaining..

This one is 100% true, literally. However, it uses the date "1931", which is way before the first person walked on the moon (1969), which makes it seem like people were walking on the moon earlier in the 20th century. Also, it says, "fewer than 1800 people" which is technically true, but much fewer than that have actually walked on the moon (only 12), so the statement makes it seem like many more people have walked on the moon than actually have.

#Patsplaining
#TruthBeTold

No one ever responds to my #TruthBeTold toots (almost), so I don't know if people understand them or not. So I'm going start Patsplaining some of my old #truthbetold toots...

@lupyuen

We don't have to write different versions for each OS. Instead we have to write different versions for each browser.

Gee, what an improvement!

#sarcasm

@freemo

The Roe opinion was a total mess. Privacy? That’s just absurd. It should have been based purely on the liberty clause of the 14th Amendment without reference to privacy. Casey wasn’t much better. The overarching problem is Congress shirks its responsibility so they don’t have to face voter backlash and they just push everything onto the Court, which is unaccountable to the voters. Then SCOTUS ends up twisting and tweaking itself into a corner trying to legislate.

Also, as you have noted elsewhere, we a need a clear definition as to personhood, which would resolve the issue definitively.

Well, now the ball’s in Congress’ court (pun intended) so let’s see if they have the balls (pun intended) to fix it.

Shinzo Abe shot during speech...

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-ex-prime-minister-abe-may-have-been-shot-taken-hospital-nhk-2022-07-08/

@lupyuen

>'"Racist videos about Africans fuel a multimillion-dollar Chinese industry"'

Racist content also fuels much of Hollywood.
For exposes, see:
Bamboozled (2000)
Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

(I think that China story is probably just another battle-front in the war between great powers about who will control Africa's natural resources.)

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #film #movie #telepathy #virtual #crime #supervillain #technology #mind #control #hivemind #neural #AI #future #FTW

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Virtuosity (1995)

Films about the mind comprise a huge chunk of the science fiction genre. They trace their roots all the way back to the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the 19th century. Themes include mind alteration, mind control, telepathy, direct neural links, the hive mind, virtual worlds and much more.

Virtuosity marked a turning point and a refresh of this subgenre. Although this isn’t the best example of mind films, it’s significant because it began to pull together the elements of the next major phase of the subgenre. This led directly to “The Matrix (1999)”, and later to “Inception (2010), “Time Sleeper (2020)” and many other groundbreaking films about the mind and virtual worlds.

Predecessors influencing this film include “Altered States (1980)”, “Brainstorm (1983)”, “Max Headroom (1987)”, and “Lawnmower Man (1992)”. Most of the earlier influential works were tied more to the “hardware” of the brain, such as “Spock’s Brain” (from ST:OS) and “The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962)”.

When Virtuosity first came out, it looked like the subgenre had finally jumped the shark, but the somewhat goofy features in this film came to define the next phase of this subgenre. (I’ll highlight some of those elements under a spoiler content warning in this thread.)

(Image: low-res movie poster, fair use)