There’s also the fact that if we had the technology to make a person’s consciousness perceive 1000 years in a mere 8 hours in the real world, then everyone would always be using that technology for everything. The only way sentences would go quicker than free life would be if, for some reason, society decided that prisoners deserved the expenditure of extra resources for overclocking. But everyone would want overclocking, which would make prison a reward, rather than a punishment. Far more likely that prisoners would be condemned to underclocking, to spare resources for free people.
Agreed, there are a ton of sci-fi stories that explore these sorts of options as ways to examine our assumptions about what we want the roles of prisons to be.
Years ago, I watched Demolition Man, and said to myself that this makes limited sense - you’ve taken your offenders, and imprisoned them in a way that utterly separates them from anything that could stabilize them, increasing their disconnect from the society, but have in no other way either punished them or reduced their ability to commit new crimes (although I find the instilling useful skills for a new life while in cryo to be a fun twist).
After this musing, I had what I felt was an ‘improved’ version (still damn dystopian) that may well show up in other works. My plan is that you give criminals the option of a normal sentence, or a 2/3 sentence in a medically induced coma. From one POV, hey, you do your time in a heartbeat, so super easy, especially since it’s shorter anyway. From the POV of a profit / loss, it’s probably easier (if you have the tech) to have a few hundred quasi-corpses being watched by a rental cop without worrying about break outs, visiting, meals, etc.
And they’re still removed from being any threat to society while serving their time, and they aren’t ‘keeping’ that time the way the cryo option would have.
But it is, like the OPs option, or the cryo option, unlikely in the extreme to give the felons any reason to try to re-integrate into a society that is now alien to them after a period of time separated, and leaving the only people who understand what they’ve been through their own fellow felons. If anything, that separation feels like it would increase the chances of new criminal acts for anything but the shortest (say sub 1 year) of sentences in the cryo/coma options.
This would only really be feasible for skills that don’t have a physical component like poetry or architecture. Sure, you would have the sight reading skills and muscle memory to be a concert pianist, but you would not have had the physical practice to have the real dexterity. The same as if you were a virtual top ranked virtual Krav Maga fighter getting your teeth kicked in by a second rank with real life training. Or being a bass guitar player with no calluses built up with years of experience.
The saddest thing about this entire story is the profound lack of imagination that can only ever envision a technology such as this used as a torture instrument. Like, why if we had a technology like this, could we not use it so that mathematicians could retreat deeply inwards and spend 1000 hours proving some important theory overnight, or for investigative journalists to dive into a tranche of newly leaked financial documents and report the next day on financial malfeasance performed by the rich and powerful?
Instead, nope, the vision of the future in this authors mind is that such technology would be best suited towards torturing prisoners.
If I spent a thousand years practicing kung fu in a virtual environment, my doughy body wouldn’t be able to utilize the skills I learned. But imagine a real-world master who sustains a grievous injury and spends several years in recovery. When they go back to training, they’re going to bounce back pretty quickly, and much more quickly than a total novice.
Why does this magic technology specifically take 8 hours?
I think the hypothetical is that a judge issues the sentence today, and you have finished it by the next morning.
This is actually an interesting idea that might merit a separate thread, or a SF story. You could use such technology to do say a week of boring work in the virtual environment (scanning documents, programming) in 1 hour real time, and have the rest of the week off as leisure time. Effectively having much more leisure while still being productive. But I guess the potential use as a torture instrument makes such technology rather undesirable.
No one wants to pay overtime.
And why not spend your leisure time in the virtual environment, too?
Not 8, 8.5. You obviously couldn’t do it in 8.
Sounds like the plot to Harry Harrison’s The Technicolor Time Machine.
At least they didn’t suggest 1000 years of daily virtual executions. Not Orson Scott Card fans I guess.
A 1000 year sentence is purely punitive. If you can stick someone in an accelerated virtual reality (AVR) why not just give them a normal length sentence and use the AVR for cheaper and more intensive rehabilitation work?
As well as the authorities IIRC, except in those, you were just unconscious and basically woke up to an entirely different future. Kovacs himself had been sentenced to several of those sentences- his objective age was 41, but the actual time since he was born was upwards of 100 years.
IIRC the Gateway series had something similar in the later novels- people were sentenced as virtual beings; the upshot being that even if your physical body died, they’d just upload you and you’d continue your sentence.
I would think that sentencing would have to be reasonable; a 1000 year sentence would be absurd for nearly anything. And I’d think at least in the US, a cruel and unusual punishment debate would ensue- especially around incorrigibles and extreme offenders like mass-murderers and child molesters, etc… Is it more cruel or unusual to let them serve out a huge sentence virtually and turn them loose, or just execute them? What is the length of sentence that’s cruel and/or unusual? And so on.
Beyond that, it seems to be so… disproportionate. I mean, other than to be cruel, what’s the difference and point between virtually incarcerating someone for 100 years vs.1000? Everyone anyone knows is likely to be dead after 100 years (maybe someone’s newborn is a centenarian when you get out), so that aspect of life is going to be the same. Culture shock will be even worse the longer you’re out.
I think that would still be a significant headstart though. Dexterity seems like it would not be so hard to hone if you already have the other parts in place, as it would be if you have to develop them all together. I don’t think there’s any reason to imagine that a holistic approach is necessarily better - why would it be?
Dexterity might be one of the easier to develop physical skills. But agility, strength, endurance, and the ability to take a punch do take years. Been there, done that.
You would also have to deal with the mental dissonance of having a black-belt mind in a Pillsbury Dough Boy body.
I mean, that’s me every day, except not black belt
I’d go for virtual leisure time interspersed with seemingly infrequent weeks of boring “real work” to do in order to earn your 6 months of virtual vacation to a tropical wonderland.