Re: MATRIX: Movie inspires murderers???

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon May 19 2003 - 21:48:34 MDT

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    --- Karen Rand Smigrodzki <karen@smigrodzki.org> wrote:
    > From: "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey@yahoo.com>
    > > It was a rhetorical question, Karen, to illustrate what I expect to
    > > become a new insanity defense. Since sociopaths are already
    > > recognised as not regarding their victims as people, this treads
    > > on well established areas of insanity defense case law. Whether
    > > there is any distiction between your three different analyses,
    > > and which one is accurate, apparently will be put to various
    > > juries.
    > >
    >
    > ^^^^^^^^^ Usually I find people who answer rhetorical questions to be
    > annoying. In spite of that, I thought real discussion of the answer
    > to this question might be interesting. Your question caught my
    > attention mainly because I did not know what you meant by a "new
    > sort of insanity defense".

    Well, while many suicides and murders have been blamed by their
    perpetrators and families of victims on certain rock music, I am not
    aware of any violent crimes blamed on a particular movie.

    The Matrix, with its extremely amazing special effects in a virtual
    reality, lends the suggestible to belief in the basic idea behind the
    movie: that we live in a simulation. Other movies have examined this
    thesis as well: Existenz and The 13th Floor, among others. They have
    also treated, to one extent or another, the question of whether
    violence in a simulation is really violence, whether murdering a
    character in a simulation is really murder.

    As our technology advances more and more, virtual realities will
    achieve ever greater levels of reality. Being able to distinguish
    between reality and virtuality will become a significant social
    problem, with the most extreme example being violent crime perpetrated
    by individuals who sincerely beleive they are acting within a
    simulation and not within reality. I would call this Virtuality
    Syndrome: the belief that one is living within a simulated universe,
    accompanied by dissociative disorders like sociopathy and
    schizophrenia.

    > I am only a law student, and criminal law will definitely not be the
    > area I enter into; however, neither the news article nor your
    > question seem to add anything new to formulations of the insanity
    > defense to criminal prosecution. I gather from your posts that
    > while you are very interested in some areas of law, you are not an
    > attorney. I also sense from this post that you are disturbed by a
    > perceived trend in criminal law to expand the insanity defense. I
    > also sense that you find people who answer rhetorical
    > questions to be annoying. (So if you didn't really want an answer,
    > feel free to ignore my response!) ;)

    Always interested in your response, Karen. You are consistently an
    intelligent poster. No, I'm not a lawyer, though I have taken a number
    of law classes and study it informally in my interest in 2nd amendment
    issues. I have never stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, though... ;)

    What concerns me is whether this will be accepted as an excuse or not,
    and what the results will be. For example, if Virtuality Syndrome
    becomes as serious a problem as I think it will, there may be
    significant legislative efforts to prevent AIs from existing within
    simulated realities, to restrict the amount of intelligence that can be
    programmed into simulation characters, and also to make combat or
    street crime simulation games illegal or restricted to adult use only,
    including restrictions on anyone taking drugs for mental disorders from
    using them.

    If we do, in fact, live within a simulation, as some like Nick Bostrom
    have posited, then we must also form a moral imperative to respect the
    rights of intelligent life in other simulated realities.

    =====
    Mike Lorrey
    "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                                        - Gen. John Stark
    Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.blogspot.com
    Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
    Pro-tech freedom discussion:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom

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