There was an episode of ST:TNG where a sentient Holodek character was created by accident. Elementary, Dear Data I think. The Moriarty character was accidentally endowed with true sentience.
Talk about a victimless crime…
It’s victimless until the psychosis kicks in. If your instinct is to kill and maim perfect holo-simulations in real-time, with total realism, how long until you lose the ability to hold back from committing ultraviolence while in the real world?
It’s what happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall.
Yes. See posts #26, 31, 37 and 41.
If your instinct is to kill and maim, wouldn’t it be better to act those fantasies out against holograms than real people?
Nice cite, btw. 
The point of my post was that it would be too much of a mind-screw to frequently partake in ultraviolence on the Holodeck, if the violence was totally realistic. At what point do the fantasies became as real to you as the real world outside the Holodeck?
Sorta like the current crop of WoW afficianados who live online, exist in their Mom’s basement, and emerge only occasionally to eat or crap?
I can’t argue with this; you’re very likely right.
I certainly have no use for the notion that people, by becoming accustomed to horror, and thus numbed by it, would be more likely to participate in it. I don’t think that violent games make people violent.
I worry that people, by becoming accustomed to horror, would be less energetic in responding to it. A kind of “Kitty Genovese” effect; not that they go out and commit murder and rape, but that they turn a blind eye to it. Or even become despairing, feeling unable to help.
(A lot of people have that reaction to the world’s mass famines, or tribal genocides. I know people who stop donating to charities when things get overwhelmingly rotten, on the reasoning that their tiny contributions are too small to be helpful. Why pour one’s cup of water on a raging wildfire?)
But worrying about a thesis is a long, long stretch short of demonstrating it!
Can you cite that exposure to fantasy ultraviolence increases the tendency to participate in such behavior? There’s plenty of twisted fantasy shit out there, but despite how many Quentin Tarrantino movies come out, nobody has demonstrated a link between them and real-life behavior mimicking his movies. Why should the holodeck be any different?
Compare the ultraviolence in our entertainment media with the ultraviolence in our culture. One feeds the other.
Do you have a vested interest in defending Quentin Tarantino movies? The SAW series? The Human Centipede? They are all sociological red flags! Not causes per se, but symptoms of the disease!
The Holodeck is not just a movie or a video game. It’s a totally immersive artificial reality. Video game designers are moving towards virtual reality and will achieve it sooner or later.
When/if star trek style holosuites become reality alot of things become possible that will not just indulge our wildest fantasies, but will also save lives in droves.
Teaching folks to drive/operate heavy machinery/fly.
Skydiving, rock climbing, bungee jumping, name your extreme sport, all becomes totally safe.
Soldiers can be trained in full virtual reality combat envirnments against smart opponents, with minimal chance for injury.
We can do things with Opal that would normally get us killed 
We can go to school, including full lab work all from our home. (Computer, Load Chem 1A)
Learn musical instruments, solo at the Met, join the violin section of the orchestra of your choice.
Martial arts training, physical fitness, tired of running your block, how about a run down the great wall of China.
But we all know Porn is gonna be first.
I guess another fun morality question would be, would you want your S/O to be regularly banging a HoloHo[sup]TM[/sup]
Is it even possible to convert energy to matter and back to energy again?
To create matter and then annihilate it utterly seems godlike.
We’ve already discussed Voyager’s EMH. I believe he was even legally declared to be a sentient, self determining entity on Voyager’s return. And there was concern expressed over the rights of the other Mark-I EMHs that were converted into miners.
Also, Vic Fontaine, the lounge singer in the Vegas holosuite sim on DS9 was self-aware. He knew that he was a hologram, that his environment was a simulation, and his customers were inhabitants of a space station. I believe that he even requested that the simulation be left running 26 hours a day (the station was on Bajoran time) because he remained aware while the program was shut off and he felt mentally isolated.
So would any intentional action taken to permanently erase these holograms’ programs from the matrix (to use Star Trek technobabble) be regarded as murder?
Here is the real question – Can thoughts without deeds be immoral? We all have had, I suspect, very realistic dreams that we thought (for a brief time) was reality – can we dream immorally?
If you can say yes to either of these, your answer to the holodeck question should be the same.
Personally, while I think the objective answer is ‘no’, my own upbringing makes me think my subjective answer is ‘yes’.
Another couple of questions
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Suppose you are somehow brought into a holodeck but are unaware of it. You actually believe you are experiencing reality, and you do something you think at the time is immoral. Later, you find out it was the holodeck. Have you still acted immorally?
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Suppose the opposite – you unknowingly exit the holodeck and act out a rape fantasy on someone who you eventually find out was real, but you thought at the time was a simulation. Has your moral position changed?
In our legal and moral universe, intent plays a big role. If you hurt someone by genuine accident, you generally won’t bear much guilt. But if you attempt to cause harm, you can get in trouble even if the harm doesn’t actually come to pass. If you scare grandpa and he has a heart attack at a surprise party, it’s not a problem. But if that happens during a robbery, you’ll be in big trouble even if you didn’t set out to kill him.
I think in the first case you’d get “conspiracy to commit X” or “attempted X,” and generally carry that level of immorality. You won’t get a full prison sentence, but you will have to serve some time and people will probably be a bit careful around you.
In situation 2, you’d get something like manslaughter, or for rape, one of the lesser degrees of sexual assault. A lot would depend on how realistically you could have foreseen the possibility of the holodeck spitting you out into the real world. If it’s a freak once in a lifetime accident, I doubt you’d carry much culpability. But if unknowingly exiting the holodeck was a known hazard, you might find yourself in pretty deep trouble. We generally consider people to be pretty much fully responsible for making sure their partner is of age and fully consenting, even in situations like an underage partner showing you a fake ID. I could see, for example, placing the burden on users to use the “quick, re-confirm that I’m actually in the holodeck” button before committing acts that would be illegal in real life.
I understand intent is big element of a legal question, but the OP isn’t about legality, but morality.
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Your own wording holds the answer to scenario 1. In the case of this problem, yes, you have acted immorally, because, as set up by your scenario, by your own volition you did something that you yourself thought was immoral. (If you had worded that problem differently, there might be a different answer).
Changed from what? You have presented a second, different, scenario, so my opinion might change according to the scenario, it doesn’t mean you’ve altered my ultimate philosophy. In this second scenario, as you have stated it, there would be very little moral culpability on your part because you never believed you were hurting anyone.
The mental state of someone acting out rape fantasies is altogether another question best left for another forum.
This goes back to my post before the questions I posed – immoral thoughts without accompanying deeds. You might have thought you performed immoral acts, but you didn’t. Can you dream immorally?
Oh, and another question about the nature of the holodeck. I can conceive of two basic types. One is a large space you wander in, and a synthetic reality is somehow projected around you. The other is some kind of booth or tank – no real physical space is needed because the synthetic reality is transmitted directly into your brain.
I pose this question because of the comments about about “sentient” computers, and whether it may be immoral to cause them damage or pain. For those of you concerned about this, would the latter “booth” type address your issues?