Around 1710, George Berkeley propounded an idealist notion of reality, in which matter did not exist, stressing his views were commonsense. We experience a bundling of sensations which are the "things" of our world. God's creation, the laws of nature, is what makes those bundles come to us in regular and predictable ways. Today, Berkeley can be understood via the emerging field of virtual reality, a similar bundling of ideas without any matter behind it. The computer programmer is the "God", and his program is the laws of nature. The Matrix movie was the first sci-fi movie to treat the concept of a vast virtual reality, with billions of humans unaware they are in a virtual reality game which has displaced their "real" lives. I will discuss issues surrounding such worlds (including some other sci-fi films such as Thirteenth Floor and Avatar) and the nature of AI. All views welcomed.
Dates: 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month. Nights. 18:15 for a 18:30 Start. Finish 21:30 (Feel free to come and go at any point during the night.) The Members Bar, Floor 1 (Keep winding up to the top of the stairs.) The Gaelic Club 64 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills Sydney, Australia (100 metres from a Central railway station exit.) Cost: $3 donation. (This goes entirely to the venue). www.philorum.org View a google map at http://www.philorum.org/centralNextMeeting.html _______________________________________________ SydPhil mailing list: http://bit.ly/sydphil New archive: http://bit.ly/SydPhilArchive To UNSUBSCRIBE, change your MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS, find ANSWERS TO COMMON PROBLEMS, or visit our ONLINE ARCHIVES, please go to the LIST INFORMATION PAGE: http://bit.ly/sydphil ... and if you can't get to that page, try the EMERGENCY PAGE: http://bit.ly/SydPhilEmergency
