At 22:47 25-06-2002 +0100, Richard Baker wrote: >I posted this to the Culture earlier but thought people here on Brin-L >might like to think about it too: > >Suppose we have artificially intelligent and sentient programs. Somebody >sets one of these up in a closed virtual environment in which it will >be tortured to death in the slowest and most horrific manner >imaginable. I think we'd all agree that running that program is morally >wrong because it would inflict suffering on a sentient being.
I find the topic quite interesting, but I will need more time to think about this. Nevertheless, I am stuck with one question. A sentient computer program is not a physical entity; it can only "live" as a number of ones and zeroes inside a computer's memory banks. How could one torture such a non-physical entity? Jeroen _________________________________________________________________________ Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com Tom's Photo Gallery: http://tom.vanbaardwijk.com
