I deleted his post that you replied to and banned him. If people do not want to listen to me, that's fine, but in that case they cannot post in my forum. I am not obliged to answer anyone's questions -- I will only answer the ones I want to. Whoever presumes to
demand answers from me, or anything else really, will simply be banned.
Back on topic, I'd like to offer a couple of clarifications. First off concerning this:
icycalm wrote:But to simulate death, to trick our senses to think that we are DEAD while we are not dead is impossible. WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT DEATH FEELS LIKE FOR FUCK'S SAKE -- HOW WOULD WE EVER BE ABLE TO SIMULATE IT?
In fact death, at least as we currently understand it (and we will never understand it better...), feels like
nothing -- and that is the problem. Death is not only a cessation of the flow of data from the sensory organs (which in itself
could, in fact, be simulated), but at the same time also the end of the functioning of the very instrument which accepts this data and interprets it (the brain). Death is a singularity -- it cannot be doubled, it cannot be exchanged -- it cannot be simulated. You are either alive and very well aware of this fact (or at least of
some facts -- even unconscious people are aware in many respects) -- or you are dead and aware of nothing. There is no middle state here. It is impossible to think that you are dead while not being so, because dead people don't think. "I think, therefore I am", said Descartes, but he might as well have said "I feel, therefore I am", and in fact feeling and thinking are one and the same thing -- but that is another long story...
On to the subject of pain.
I mentioned earlier that the only aspect of reality which could not be simulated is death, and then walrusdawg brought up pain. And indeed pain cannot be simulated, but for a very different reason -- for the same reason, for example, that hunger or cold or warmth, etc. cannot be simulated -- because they are
sensations, and as such constitute
the very object of simulation. The sensation can never be simulated -- what CAN be simulated is the real event that causes the sensation. For example: I can pinch you in the arm with a needle, and this event will generate an electrical signal that will travel from the appropriate nerve(s) in your arm all the way up to the brain. OR, I can hook up that nerve to a computer, and send a signal indicating the exact same level of pain that you would have felt if I had pinched you in the arm with a needle. In the first case the event is real, in the second it is simulated. But pain exists in both cases, and it remains the same -- indeed it HAS to remain the same for the illusion to be perfect.
So the object of simulation is never to simulate pain -- it is to simulate
the event which causes pain. It is never to simulate the sensation, it is
to simulate the event which causes the sensation.
Recreational drugs and anti-depressants do almost the same thing: they simulate joy. "Almost", because with them you are actually messing with the brain's chemistry instead of merely with the senses. No doubt the day will come when drugs will be unnecessary and it will all be done through computers. And if for some reason this day doesn't come for the beings on THIS planet, it will undoubtedly have already come or will come for beings on other planets.