In a holodeck, or any other VR setup that is indistinguishable from reality, are heinous crimes like murder, rape, et al immoral? If you’re the only real person in the room, no one is hurt, but would these debauched acts so impact your psyche that morality comes into play?
Personally I believe that such things are highly immoral. I’d speculate that most people around here would not agree. Most people in my generation seem to think that any type of pornography is okay, even if it involves rape and murder, so bringing the same types of pornography into virtual reality would necessarily be okay in that thinking as well.
I think it would largely depend on how the situation is set up.
A scenario involving stalking and then raping and killing a girl? Bad, and probably prohibited.
A scenario involving fighting in a war, or being a “hero” and rescuing (for example) the presidents daughter? Probably ok.
At least, that’s how I hope it would be.
It is no more immoral than any work of fiction.
Yeah the ole rape and murder porn lobby is huge. :dubious: Seriously though, what are you on about?
As regards the OP, I think a bigger issue would be using someone’s likeness, although I suppose in such a scenario there would be people willing to licence their likeness for such things.
I don’t know, it’s a bit different than anything we have now. The holodeck as portrayed in Star Trek: The Next Generation is so realistic that people can be fooled into thinking it’s real. Someone who set up a rape simulator in a holodeck is going to have all the real sensation of raping someone. How it feels, sounds and even how it smells are going to be indistinguishable from the real thing save for the knowledge that it isn’t real. At the end of the day I guess we’re just talking about a computer simulation and some random photons and <technobabble here>, but I gotta wonder what this kind of thing would do to the pyche of those who engage in this kind of behavior.
This isn’t all that different from the debate over violent video games, is it?
There was another thread on this topic some time ago…maybe a couple of years. Think it was in IMHO, but I’m not sure.
My position is that no, such things are not immoral. There are no victims, the comparison to video games is spot on…a holodeck is just the ultimate video game.
The facts about the pornography industry are not secret.
What “facts”? That Lizzie Borden and Rob Black, after failing as wrestling promoters, turned to extreme porn? That their stuff is so far out of the mainstream as to provide no worthwhile support for whatever argument you were attempting to make?
I agree- there are no victims, so it is not immoral.
There is still a fundamental difference between a simulated action and a real one. It really does change the game when you know something is not real. For example, a bloodthirsty serial killer is probably not going to be entertained by a holodeck, because what they get off on is having that godlike control over an autonomous human being. An electronic construct with no hopes, dreams, fears, family, or love isn’t comparable.
It comes down to why they are committing the crime against a hologram - for the “victim’s” sake, or theirs.
If they want to “murder” someone without hurting anybody, there’s nothing to worry about. If they want to “murder” someone without being arrested, they’re dangerous.
If we’re talking about the star trek holodeck, it’s not really clear whether the holograms/computer are sentient or not…
But sure, if we’re saying we know the holodeck characters are not conscious, then I think it should be fine to do whatever there. In fact I think it will quickly be seen as a healthy outlet for certain urges.
If there’s a danger, it is that over time the distinction between reality and holodeck will quickly become blurred.
But this is a danger anyway, whether or not you allow people to act out dodgy fantasies e.g. you might get car accidents where someone forgot that they were in the real world, and did something careless.
So it’s something any holodeck-capable society would have to address somehow.
I don’t think anything that could be done on a holodeck could be considered immoral because it doesn’t hurt anyone.
However, I also think that it would be a huge red flag against the actual morality and/or mental stability of anyone who was using a holodeck to play out rape, torture or killing of innocents. That is to say that people using a holodeck to play out those scenarios would probably not be a very pleasant person to hang around with, and I would report their activity to the Captain (that’s me) for further observation by counselor Troi.
…You’ve never watched “Descent”, have you?
No, what’s that?
Clearly you never played Grand Theft Auto.
A TNG episode where Troi talks Data into using the holodeck to try to recreate his emotions of anger and pleasure at killing a Borg.
Rape involves “consent”, which virtual computer generated entities can’t give because they aren’t real.
So in other words, it is not more “rape” than two consentual couples acting out some sort of rape fantasy.
Just because I bring a flamethrower to the stripclub in GTA4 doesn’t mean I’d bring one to Scores IRL.
I do recall one episode where Troi said it was a little weird that one of the characters used the likenesses of actual people in his simulations. But I would think that would be expected. ie “Computer…activate program ‘Threesome Diana Troi and Hot Chick From Astrophysics’” or “Computer…begin program ‘Fuck You Riker Douche-ass’”…
I ordered my Holodeck[sup]TM[/sup] without Smell-O-Vision[sup]TM[/sup] FYI.