But you can only feel `cheated' in such a way /after/ you learn that all
you've experienced is virtual. Its forward-propogative in your
meme-structure, not backward-propogative. In a sense, the knowledge of
virtuality is merely another meme which will have wide-reaching impact
in your memetic-niches, but until its verified, its not condusive or
`revealatory' (to use my own term) to contemplate.
The /possibility/ of virtuality isn't impactive any more than the
possibility that you're a butterfly dreaming you're a man is.
> The idea may not be provable but it is possible to speculate to such a
> point using ideas that we do already know that we can come to a very
> accurate assumption or even a worthwhile conclusion. Technology will
> destroy man.
Technology may `destroy' man, but what it creates will be something
better and `more.' (Can you tell I'm rabidly anti-Luddite?)
Assumptions are just that, assuming facts not in evidence. Without
facts, which would demonstrate provability, you can come to no
conclusion.
To sum up in my own inimitable way: `Even if the world is virtual, if I
drop a rock on my foot it hurts like a motherfucker.'
--
Alexander Williams {thantos@alf.dec.com / zander@photobooks.com}
Prefect of the 8,000,000th Terran Overlord Government Experimental
Strike Legion, Primary Transport TOG "Bellatores Inquieti"
======================================================================
You ride in 250 tons of molecularly aligned crystalline titanium
wedded to a ceramic ablative matrix. You carry a 200mm Gauss
cannon, two massive 10-gigawatt lasers, two SMLM fire-and-forget
missiles, a Vulcan IV point defense anti-missile system, and a
deadly assortment of other equally lethal weapons.
Your vehicle is the ultimate product of 4,000 years of armored
warfare.
Your life expectancy is less than two minutes.
-- RENEGADE LEGION:
CENTURION