This Game Is Torture
- Thread starter Susan Arendt
- Start date
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There is one issue here that seems to be ignored time and time again, and it needs to be kept to the fore so that this entire argument can be kept in perspective.
WE KNOW IT ISN'T REAL.
There is no actual person being harmed here, no poor victim on the other side of the screen helpless to prevent your atrocities. It is nothing but a program. One tap of the "reset" button and all the damage is undone. Close the program and it is as if nothing had ever happened. Is this going to somehow bend someone's mind towards torturing real people? Only if that mind is already very much tilted towards it.
Now, if we were somehow given an interface that allowed us to anonymously harm a real-life human being somewhere far away, THAT would be a true atrocity.
WE KNOW IT ISN'T REAL.
There is no actual person being harmed here, no poor victim on the other side of the screen helpless to prevent your atrocities. It is nothing but a program. One tap of the "reset" button and all the damage is undone. Close the program and it is as if nothing had ever happened. Is this going to somehow bend someone's mind towards torturing real people? Only if that mind is already very much tilted towards it.
Now, if we were somehow given an interface that allowed us to anonymously harm a real-life human being somewhere far away, THAT would be a true atrocity.