From: Karen Rand Smigrodzki (Karen@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Tue May 20 2003 - 00:47:16 MDT
From Mike Lorrey:
>
> --- 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 movie Natural Born Killers was accused of being the cause of
a violent murder in Louisiana in 2002. The decision was an appellate level
court, and it affirmed the lower court decision that the movie did not
incite the violence. I would not be surprised if there have been other
movie cases, and also cases involving the violence of video games.
> 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 can imagine that happening, but not until, as you say, our
technology advances more. I imagine that if we were at the level of the
Matrix then there would be perhaps such a problem.
>
> Always interested in your response, Karen. You are consistently an
> intelligent poster.
^^^^^^Excuse me while I make sure Rafal reads that! ;)
> What concerns me is whether this will be accepted as an excuse or not,
> and what the results will be.
^^^^^^^Back to discussing our current level of VR technology and the use of
the Matrix (for example) as a defense. In our current state of tech, I
don't see this as any different a defense than blaming video games or movies
or rock'n roll. It won't work; I don't believe any case has succeeded on the
merits of one of those arguments. The only way I see such arguments coming
in to play at all would be as evidence to bolster the affirmative defense of
legal insanity (the test for which is not altered by the Matrix defense).
However, if a jury is really not convinced by the defense medical expert's
testimony that the accused was insane at the time of the crime, then adding
the argument that "S/He was insane: s/he really believed we were in the
Matrix" is very unlikely to sway the jury.
In sum, for any claim that the Matrix played a role in the crime to
succeed, it needs to be given not as the primary evidence that the person
was insane, but as secondary evidence. The primary evidence will always be
given by expert medical witness testimony, prior medical/psych history, and
behavior. I don't believe we are anywhere near accepting such arguments as
primary evidence (a term I am making up, btw).
> For example, if Virtuality Syndrome
> becomes as serious a problem as I think it will,
^^^^^^^At first, I thought you meant in the near future; now I don't think
you do. Although I would like your guess to be over-reaching, there are a
few facts that make me unsure if it will become a problem of some severity
or not. The first is the human tendency toward suspicion of what it does
not understand. That suspicion doesn't lead most people to seek truth or
understanding, but to fabricate, and then to believe what they fabricate,
which leads to a second fact. The human mind's ability to fool itself (I am
getting sleepy here at 234AM, but I think you know what I mean here). Third,
a news story which I cannot find right now on Google.
Sometime around the year 2000, a group of Believers sold all their
belongings and moved to Israel believing that Christ was returning in the
year 2000. Among the reports coming from that region at that time, one was a
medical report. There is an occurrence in Israel which is so common among
tourists that the Israeli doctors have named it. I Googled, but I couldn't
find the story anywhere. The medical condition is a mental/psych condition
characterized by the person's belief (new belief upon being in Israel) that
they are actually living in biblical times. It is "cured" with a short time
in the hospital.
This is scary; and depressing. It makes me think that you may be
right Mike.
>
> 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.
>
>
Musn't we do that then even if we are not a simulation?
--karen
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue May 20 2003 - 00:55:42 MDT