Ok, this is a slight departure from my usual, light-hearted take on life. I've been in a bit of a Nostradamus mood recently, so thought I'd share my musings.
The whole concept of simulation has been bugging me. Like many of my fellow brethren, I enjoy the odd play on my Xbox. I don’t spend hours on the thing, but I've done my share of running around and killing baddies. I don’t buy into the idea that violent games have a harmful psychological affect on otherwise normal people. Yet. If you look at the evolution of game simulations over the last 25 years, you’ll see a change from square blobs moving jerkily across black screens, to the movie quality games available now. Advancement in quality will doubtless continue and the inevitable end point is an entirely immersive 3D environment, virtually indistinguishable from reality. Proper virtual reality. I reckon that running around in this environment shooting people in the head is likely to be a much more harrowing and damaging proposition than Grand Theft Auto. Scary even.
This leads to interesting questions for moral philosophers. Games are already developing in the direction of free roam worlds and increasing customisation. What happens when the ‘game’ player can customise the almost-real simulations of the future? What if you found out someone had created a simulation of you? How will we feel about people who do very bad things in these almost-real simulations? Will punishing or vilifying someone for engaging in distasteful simulations or customisations be the same as punishing someone for their thoughts?
I think almost-real simulation challenges the line between thought and action.
So, what does all of this mean? No idea. Smarter people than me will need to work it out. What is certainly true is that we are heading into an increasingly tricky world for the ethics leaders and law-makers to decipher.
The whole concept of simulation has been bugging me. Like many of my fellow brethren, I enjoy the odd play on my Xbox. I don’t spend hours on the thing, but I've done my share of running around and killing baddies. I don’t buy into the idea that violent games have a harmful psychological affect on otherwise normal people. Yet. If you look at the evolution of game simulations over the last 25 years, you’ll see a change from square blobs moving jerkily across black screens, to the movie quality games available now. Advancement in quality will doubtless continue and the inevitable end point is an entirely immersive 3D environment, virtually indistinguishable from reality. Proper virtual reality. I reckon that running around in this environment shooting people in the head is likely to be a much more harrowing and damaging proposition than Grand Theft Auto. Scary even.
This leads to interesting questions for moral philosophers. Games are already developing in the direction of free roam worlds and increasing customisation. What happens when the ‘game’ player can customise the almost-real simulations of the future? What if you found out someone had created a simulation of you? How will we feel about people who do very bad things in these almost-real simulations? Will punishing or vilifying someone for engaging in distasteful simulations or customisations be the same as punishing someone for their thoughts?
I think almost-real simulation challenges the line between thought and action.
So, what does all of this mean? No idea. Smarter people than me will need to work it out. What is certainly true is that we are heading into an increasingly tricky world for the ethics leaders and law-makers to decipher.
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