Its much safer here than you think. They keep trying to revoke my
right to keep and bear arms, but I find a bloody and well-used set of
vivisectionist tools frightens off the criminals just as well as a
.38.
> > That's true. We just have to keep you on the narrow edge where you
> > /think/ you're going to die and wish you would but don't get that
> > lucky. :)
>
> But on drugs, and in a desparate state, I may react violently, and in the
> process of restraining me, I might end up injured, or even dead. This
> would be one point to me, WRT to killing myself.
Oh, we'd /never/ restrain you. Restraint is for pansies. No, much
more fun to bloodily hack your arms and legs off (in a private clinic
with all the ameneties, of course) before addicting you ...
> I suppose, yes. Unfortunately, there'll always be those people who don't
> care about the well being of others, and will just use it as an excuse
> for extra violence. And what is there to stop them? Prison? Just hack
> your way out, and if you die in the process, so what? Just start from the
> beginning again, presumably.
So, how does that differ from /now/? You don't have to prove reality
is virtual to get these people.
> Perhaps, there are even "levels" in this "game". Mayhap you start as, say,
> an amoeba, then get upgraded to something like Plankton, then up to being a
> worm or maggot, the a politician, then up to a domestic pet, culminating
> in passing through being human, and becoming an Angel. The last level is
> heaven, and the final gaurdian is God !
Of course, the last test is Neitzchean, in that you have to deny God
in His face and, in so doing, destroy Him only to usurp the heaveanly
palace. Once that's done they reset the game and we start over from
the stone age.
> Freaky idea. Can you imagine the simple shock if, one day, you're walking
> down the road, doing your shopping with your friends, and suddently, everything
> stops happening. You can't hear a thing, the birds have frozen in the skies, and
> the people around you have stopped also. The only thing you can hear is the
> 15KHz hum. Then a voice: MALFUNCTION... SYSTEM SHUTDOWN. Then blackness ...
Actually, this entire discussion was the plot of a SF novel not
terribly long ago. It involved a couple of company contractors from
`beyond reality' sabotaging the game-machine with a `chaos generator'
that kept escalating the level of nasty things going on in the world.
In the end, they left it in but tweaked not to escalate any more
because chaos made the game more `fun.'