If they weren't useful they would either vanish or fall to a low lever of occurance. They have done neither, apparently.

People of both sexes and orientations routinely engage in sex with children, for example. The same can be said for murder (as opposed to self-defense or deadly force enforcing the law, or such), even though in most societies and for recorded time in them murderers were killed.

If, as seems likely, there's a genetic component to homosexuality it follows that pattern. It has often resulted in the practitioner being killed; that has probably been common. In some way a crucial element in that orientation may have a vital part to play. I don't know what it would be, but it would override the detrimental effect of getting people killed or castrated or their not having much interest in the opposite sex.

There's no moral force in evolution involved here: if those behaviors came to produce the negative effects solely they would eventually be weeded out to the extent they have a genetic basis or cease to be practiced to the extent they are choices.

Of course they may well be vanishing but so slowly we can't tell since useable records (statistics and factor studies) are only a hundred or so years old.

I'm leery of just up and deleting behaviors we may not fully understand.

 

Okay, so rape then. It is evolutionarily successful because it allows someone to force their offspring onto unwilling recipients. Hmm yes I can see why we should keep the behaviour around [/sarcasm]

Our culture and consciousness has developed far faster than evolution can keep up with. Evolution is antiquated.

1. if we had matrix-level vertual reality that every agent could costomize into their own heaven, no one would ever want to leave it. 2. i can not think of a single good reason why we should put any restrictions on people in there virtual paradise. 3. therefore people who live in their virtual paradise can rape their own children and then blow their brains out if they want. if you disagree, please make your argument clear.

qewl writes, "...but I am not so sure about the morality of memory editing. I'd be fearful of my freedom. I guess it's okay as long as in appropriate circumstances- the cured offender would choose to be edited and since he is no longer a threat, and the victim + family would be edited to not harm him. But not have the memory erased."

Well, yes, I should have clarified: There is no need to change the memories of the victims or relations to the victims.

I was only thinking of the criminals. If they commit extremely serious and violent crimes, the penality they'll have to pay is to have their memories extensively edited, in addition to removal of addictions or other forms of organically caused mental illness. They would be forced to assume totally new identities, including altering of all biometrics. Lesser crimes wouldn't rate this obviously.

There'd be little risk of revenge because, even if the victim's retain all their memories, these would be useless in identifying the former criminal, who is now for all practical purposes an entirely new person.

This may be what capital punishment evolves into one day.

qewl writes, "But all this memory editing stuff is unrealistic...."

Advanced nanotechnology makes it realistic. Cell repair machines could be adapted to rewrite a person's brain and body molecule by molecule. At point editing memories and personalities is easy.

CP writes, "I'm leery of just up and deleting behaviors we may not fully understand."

So?  We'll just keep records of the causes of various forms of organic mental illnesses on file and whenever we find some use for them, building an army of conquest for example, we can build a few megalomanics, sociopaths and sadists as needed.  I read a science fiction, Niven I think, story where they did just this.

Not that I'd want to be part of such a society!

Mostly though, I think the social pressure will be to cure all forms of organically caused mental illness. I certainly not a psychiatrist but I wonder how much of a pedophile's illness is caused organically. From what I've heard it seems like it's mostly biological. Pedophiles claim that they can't change themselves.

We may well keep files of various "mental illnesses," which will ultimately include mere differences from the approved standard, but I'm not sure we'll know what they're good for. Perhaps animal experiments 500 years afterward when something new is needed will show.

In effect, everything should have a biological basis including learned behavior. It's integrated into and recorded in the brain through organic processes.

Pedophilia may well have a biological basis. I recall reading someone's speculation that a surge of sexual interest kids have around age 5 is the remnant of an earlier stage in which human ancestors reached sexual maturity around age 5 and old age in the teens. Must've been a long lasting stage to leave such a trace, but the point is that this could somehow underlie pedophilia in its most persistent forms. A sort of imprinting that for some reason happens in some individuals.

A criminal's memories may be erased, effectively making her a different person but the pain and such will remain in the victims if they aren't assured the criminal is punished. It's a natural thing. Like today's leftist laws that apply to ordinary people but not the elite, this won't resolve the damage crime creates -- perhaps unlike today's laws it won't specifically be intended to impress ordinary people with their social inferiority and maintain social strife, however.

 

Prove that a perfectly simulated agent is not conscious in its own right.

Or even a really really good simulation of a conscious-being might be sufficient to be conscious in itself. Are the only "people" with rights the ones that have existed in a squishy meat body?

"I was only thinking of the criminals. If they commit extremely serious and violent crimes, the penality they'll have to pay is to have their memories extensively edited, in addition to removal of addictions or other forms of organically caused mental illness. They would be forced to assume totally new identities, including altering of all biometrics. Lesser crimes wouldn't rate this obviously."
~ Mr. Farlops

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear... Yes, clearly deviants are easily recognised and their behaviour is the result of a simple defect. They are the ones wearing the black hats who don't behave as i do. [/class="also sarcasm;"]

I'm guessing you've never been in a situation where a serious breach of the law seemed like the lesser of the evils available as options?

Now before anybody wades in, i'm not for one moment attempting to justify murder/rape/child molestation, because clearly these are all heinous acts which we would all be the better for seeing the less of. However, nothing to do with human behaviour is ever simple. Nobody wakes up one morning, having been a perfectly well adjusted person the day before, and thinks, "Today, for no reason, i'll become a murderer/rapist/child molester. That sounds like a laugh!" There may well be a genetic predisposition to these behaviours, however, by and large, terrible behaviours spring out of terrible environments.

The reason for this is simple: empathy. If our environment is safe, we engage with its other inhabitants emotionally and whilst occaisional destructive thoughts/feelings may enter our heads (and who doesn't get frustrated to the point of fantasy violence occaisionally), the reason we don't act on them is not because it's against the law (otherwise murder would be as common as illegal drug taking), but rather because we have some intimation of how terrible it would feel for the victim/s or surviving loved ones.

If our environment is unsafe, the opposite is true: we do not empathise with anyone, we become all about self, therefore the same level of inhibition is not present. This is surely part of our survival instinct. The answer is not to attempt to stigmatise 'deviants' and change them, but rather change the environment. After all, as CP rightly points out, who knows when these traits might be very necessary. The planet has undergone radical change before and, no doubt, will again. This is quite apart from any hostile environments we may end up colonising off Earth.

This is without considering the fallability of criminal justice systems, malicious prosecution for personal gain or simple governmental oppression.

"I believe that two versions of these programs should be available to the public. One version should be available to the general population and the other to prisoners."
~ FISH OUT OF WATER

Personally, i'm hoping we'll have come up with something better than prisons. I don't know what, because i certainly wouldn't advocate any kind of memory edit, but some kind of supervised re-integration with society, maybe. Possibly even with temporary restrictions on access to some parts of society. After all, rights are a privilege with which come responsibilities. I see nothing wrong with their temporary suspension, until such times as a person has been taught the ability to respond to their environment, rather than react to their feelings about it.

The trouble with prison is that it does not do this, but rather abrogates rights almost totally, which actually further increases a convict's alienation from society, thus making it that much less likely that they will ever be integrated.

"the pain and such will remain in the victims if they aren't assured the criminal is punished. It's a natural thing." ~ CP

It may well be natural to seek revenge however, i'd suggest that it is equally as dysfunctional as committing crime. It is a pandering to a feeling of outrage. In a Judeo-Christian moral framework, we may well identify with that feeling more readily than we do with the feelings that led upto a crime, however this does not change the fact that it is simply a feeling, the strength of which may have outlived its original purpose, which was surely also survival related.

The victims of this unhelpfull feeling could also be helped to re-integrate, without the necessity of a further moral outrage being perpetrated (in the mistaken belief that this would somehow assuage it). That seems to be one of the functions of law, to temper outrage, because if people were to go around seeking revenge biblical stylee, it'd be an eye for an eye until we were all blind.

"Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there."
~ Oscar Wilde
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

So does anyone know why, when i try to edit my previous post, the edit window opens, the original text flashes into view, then disappears? Mac OS 10.2.8 Mozilla 7.1.12

Anyway, i just wanted to add a PS:

I started playing Halo not long ago and was shocked into temporary confusion by my emotional reaction. I'd just shot 1 of the small aliens that run around mainly as cannon fodder (for those that don't know the game: they die easily and unless you let lots of them get near enough to shoot you or caught in a crossfire, not hard to deal with) it didn't die after 1 shot, which is not uncommon, but what threw me was it saying, "Oh no..." in a tortured, pleading kind of way as i pumped more cyber-lead into it. Honestly, i felt guilty and i couldn't shake the feeling for days.

Now, obviously, it is a programmed response that crops up now and again so i've heard it since. It still gets me a bit, but less so as time goes on.

Now, i have to confess that i've not been what you might call an upstanding citizen all my life, but i have put my past behind me. Slowly but surely though, i am becoming re-inured to the prospect of violence.

edjog writes, "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear... Yes, clearly deviants are easily recognised and their behaviour is the result of a simple defect. They are the ones wearing the black hats who don't behave as i do."

Actually I never meant to imply it was a simple as all that. The causes of crime, violent or not, are very, very complicated, psychologically, economically, socially and so on. I also agree that crime is not merely biology or mental illness. A person's upbringing and environment plays a central role. Some sociopaths, because of happy circumstances, never turn to fraud or other crimes. Mentally healthy people turn to crime, even violent crime, when their straits are so desparate they have nothing to lose.

I never wanted to give the impression that crime and justice was anything simple. Such complex problems can't merely be solved with a wave of the nanotech wand.

I was merely stating a possibility for future punishment of certain kinds of crime--complete personality and body alteration. Functionally this is the same thing as capital punishment; the old person is killed.

And yes, I am fully aware of the possibility for abuse of this potential.

Obviously governments can use these technologies, as they emerge, to silence dissidents, political prisoners, revolutionaries and so on. The situation could rapidly degenerate to a point were we have the perfect police state where people's brains have been rendered physically incapable of thinking subversive thoughts.

I assure you I'd hate to see such a society come into being. I quite agree there are unjust laws and unjust societies and we should all work to change them.

edjog writes, "After all, as CP rightly points out, who knows when these traits might be very necessary."

Hence my citation of that Larry Niven short story. After centuries of near perfect psychotherapy, most biologically caused mental illnesses have been purged out of humanity. Society has become idyllic and rather passive.

Then hostile aliens threaten to invade and occupy Earth.

Faced with this threat, all the psychiatrists start issuing drugs that induce meglomania, sociopathy, pathological visciousness, delusions of grandeur, manic depression, creativity linked with suicidal depression, foolhardiness and related mental traits needed for a long, bloodthirsty war for survival.

I don't know if such a highly contrived situation would ever come to pass but, if there is ever a need to revive these traits, I think it should be easy to do so. If we learn how to cure these illnesses, we'll learn a lot about how to recreate them. I'm not really worried about loss of brain diversity.

Edjog, I agree with everything that you said about memory editing, prisons, and unsafe environments causing some of its inhabitants to commit violent acts. I don’t think we will see any changes in the penal systems around the world in the near future, unless someone like you or me has the power to change it. I believe that prison should be about 25% punishment and 75% rehabilitation. At the moment most prisons are about 95% punishment and 5% rehabilitation. It should be almost impossible for a person to be raped in prison. Prisons should have more security cameras than casinos. This would make it impossible for an inmate to commit a violent act without being punished for it. Prison overcrowding is another big problem. (Especially in the U.S.A) Stuffing three of four grown men into a small cell where they have to share a toilet is a recipe for disaster.

Well-behaved inmates should have some of the same privileges that they had before they were incarcerated. These privileges can include good food, satellite or cable television, internet access, their own living space with a comfortable bed, and conjugal visits with a spouse, girl friend, boy friend, or prostitute. (If they were not convicted for raping someone) Prisons should be designed in a way where an inmate would have to start at the bottom and work their way up. The bottom could be solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day, and the top could be all of the privileges that I mentioned above. The inmates can earn these privileges by following all of the prison rules and working in various areas of the prison.

There are some prisons that give well-behaved inmates some of the privileges that I mentioned, but most inmates around the world are treated like animals. Inmates that have life sentences are not given a reason to act like civilized human beings. Inmates that were convicted for non-violent crimes (drug possession) are forced to live with violent savages that have nothing to lose because they are going to be spending the rest of their lives behind bars.

I have a question for all of you. What is your definition of a pedophile? Some countries like the United States Of America have something that I call cultural pedophilia. I am talking about a situation where an 18 year old person is arrested because they had sex with someone that is 15 years old in a state where the legal age of consent is 16.

I am going to write a scenario that happens on a regular basis in America. A man walks into a bar or a club. He sees a beautiful woman. They start talking. They leave the establishment to go to his place to have sex. Unfortunately he doesn’t know that the beautiful woman that he is having sex with is only 15 years old. Due to an unfortunate series of events the girl’s parents learn that their sweet innocent daughter has been violated by a monster. One week later the man hears his door bell ringing. He opens the door to be greated by police officers. “ Sir we are arresting you for the rape of that beautiful innocent girl that you violated two weeks ago.” The man is convicted of statutory rape and he is sentenced to 10 years in prison. The man is beaten and gang raped while he is in prison. What is the moral of the story? One night stands can be very dangerous.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I would do if I had the power to write the laws that people were forced to live by. What you see below are some of the laws that I would make regarding sexuality.

A person can engage in consensual sexual activity with someone under the age of 12 if their age is within 2 years of the individual.

A person can engage in consensual sexual activity with someone between the ages of 12 and 16 if their age is within 5 years of the individual.

The legal age of consent is 16

If someone engages in consensual illegal sexual activity with an individual over the age of 12 it is a misdemeanor offense.

Incest is legal if the consensual sex is with individuals that are 18 years or older.

It is a felony offense for a parent or guardian to engage in consensual sexual activity with their children if they are under the age of 18

It is a misdemeanor offense for siblings to engage in consensual sexual activity if both individuals are not over the age 18

People can possess child pornography, but it is a felony offense to produce it and to sell it.

 

 

 

 

Mr. Farlops, i'm very glad to read that. Looking back at what i wrote, i apologise for the sarcasm: it's just that this is a subject upon which i have considerable personal experience, so i get oversensitive.

The Larry Niven scenario though: wouldn't it be better to just leave the people, and their potential diversity, alone? If we agree that radically improving our environment would reduce criminality massively, then the only persons who would likely commit crime would be those who were born with a severe pathology which precluded successfull integration. These problems would be manifest in childhood, well before they could become a danger to others. Perhaps supervising these unfortunates, in society not behind bars, would be what social work would evolve into, given that the problems caused by poverty and poor education would no longer be a social worker's stock in trade.

I wasn't planning on revealing details about my criminal past, but this seems like an appropriate time to do so, as without the details, the conclusions lack substance and would likely be dismissed by the far righteous as 'liberal [insert insalubrious epithet of choice]'.

"The bottom could be solitary confinement for twenty-three hours a day"
~ FISH OUT OF WATER

I'd guess you've never been locked in solitary confinement for 23 hours/day? Well i have and the result was that i cannot remember how many times i attempted suicide. Thankfully, my 15 year addiction had given me the constitution to withstand my attempts at overdose and then i was transferred into a psychiatric/hospital wing because of the severe nature of my withdrawal symptoms (where suicide watch was standard policy and the smuggling of drugs, impossible).

I wasn't there because i was a particular badass, i never murdered, raped or molested children, it's just that the security regime made no differentiation between badasses and extreme escape risks. As it happened, because of some very bad events which exacerbated my offences, i was released from prison with probation and conditions of residential therapy for my addiction when my case came to court. This short time in jail however made me worse, i did not give up drugs, but merely complied with treatment until such time as i was free to take up drug dealing and crime again.

It made me very hard faced. In fairness, the criminal circles i'd previously moved in had made me far more morally degenerate than i could possibly have imagined i could become, before it all began, but jail made me worse. I would have murdered rather than risk going back, without any shadow of a doubt. It didn't come to that, fortunately (although i didn't see it that way at the time) the police came for me mob handed whilst i was unconscious, so a fight would have been pointless and the illegal weapons with which i tended to surround myself were not present anyway. I was busted for a relatively small amount of drugs, although knowing damn well what i was about, the police charged me with supplying anyway. Again, i was fortunate because the severity of my addiction was a matter of record and so i successfully pleaded that it was for my own use and got another probation with treatment order.

Now, at this time, my life was almost over anyway. Combined circumstances and the fear of going back inside (although only a remote possibility) had me stressed-out to the point that my daily drug use could have reasonably been expected to kill any 15 healthy adults stone dead. I did not believe there was any hope for me, but it was clear i would die soon. This was the attitude that got me to a well run treatment facility: if i was going to do it, i may as well do it properly. After all, what was there to lose?

Things worked out well. Since then i've become a gifted sound engineer, worked in music and theatre, made a few short films and am now writing a novel. I am such a different person to who i was that some of my memories are utterly incomprehensible to me. I have deliberately harmed another exactly twice in the 8 years since (and i mean in any way whatsoever). My environment has changed totally, so have i.

About 6 months after i hit the streets again, i was living in a house where the landlady occupied the ground floor. I was startled from the bath by a commotion and screaming from below. I ran down, trying to cover my nads with a towel, to find the landlady being assaulted by a guy who was clearly deranged. He was trying to bite her face and her attempts to push him away were getting weaker.

Because of my past, it was not difficult for me to intervene. Even when he struggled powerfully and would not listen to my attempts to warn him that, though i didn't want to hurt him, i would if he carried on. Perhaps understandably, the landlady shreiked, "Hurt him! Hurt him!" I kept a cool head and merely butted him once, sufficient to drop him, and loomed over him to prevent any attempts to start it off again, until the police arrived.

My point here is that, if my personality had been edited in some way, if i had dithered over what to do or waited for the law, the landlady would have no doubt suffered horrendous facial injury.

A couple of years later, i felt it necessary to intervene in a domestic dispute because of the bloodcurdling screaching coming from within the flat below my then girlfriend's. I was polite, the guy attacked me. It was a minor scuffle, though he attempted to stab me, grazing my ribs. My first thought was to go and get a weapon and do him properly. I didn't. My purpose had been acheived, he was no longer attacking the woman and their child was safe. Let the police handle the rest, i thought.

My point here is that only 3 years prior, i wouldn't have cared. Even if i had been persuaded by another to intervene, i would have gone to the door weapon in hand and layed the guy out before he had chance to realise what was happening, let alone attack me.

I have changed, but my character traits, once so destructive have been turned to the good. Despite what i have done in the past, the depravity to which i have sunk, the shame i feel at some of my actions, i wouldn't change a moment of it. It's who i am. If i couldn't remember my crimes, i'd have no opportunity to make amends, whether directly or to society in kind.

"People can possess child pornography, but it is a felony offense to produce it and to sell it." ~ FISH OUT OF WATER

That makes no sense. How can we say that it's ok to have something, but an offence to produce it? The demand encourages the supply. Like with drugs though, prohibition may not be the answer, because just because something is illegal doesn't stop people supplying it. In fact it may actually encourage its supply because of the money to be made out of contraband. I don't know what the answer is, but i'd be very wary of anything that could be misused to abrogate freedom.

Actually, another PS:

"It should be almost impossible for a person to be raped in prison." ~ FISH OUT OF WATER

I can't speak for the US, but in the UK prison rape is actually a very rare occurance. That's not to say that it doesn't happen, and once is too often, just that it's not like the media/popular ideas would have you believe.

I suspect this is probably down to the ease with which an inmate can severely mutilate another in an eyeblink, as well as the fact that rape is a crime of hate, not a need for sex. In jail, cons hate screws far more than each other.

Amongst the prefered British methods are:

Smashing the head of a disposable plastic razor to release its blade. Heating this with a lighter and welding it to the handle of a toothbrush. This produces an inch long blade which can cut somebody's throat and probably, somebody's genitals off (although this last, i've not seen).

Placing several large batteries into a sock and whacking somebody repeatedly over the head with it. They're going down after the first hit, the rest is for added injury.

Dissolving as much sugar as will go into a pint sized cup of boiling water from the geyser which is provided on the wing for cups of tea/coffee. This is then thrown into the face. It is impossible to get the scalding syrup off fast enough to avoid severe burns and can blind. This would probably also work with genetalia (again, i've not actually seen this though).

Slamming a heavy steel cell door onto the limbs of another as they come through it. This can result in amputation.

Like i say, if you're not a badass when you go inside, you are by the time you get out.

PPS:

"their sweat innocent daughter"
~ FISH OUT OF WATER

Mate, i appologise in advance for this, but your misspelling of 'sweet' as "sweat" had me in stitches. Some very inappropriate imagery flashed through my mind! (perhaps i am a perverted monster after all?)

Quote> I'd guess you've never been locked in solitary confinement for 23 hours/day? Well i have and the result was that i cannot remember how many times i attempted suicide.

No, I never experienced what it is like to be locked in a cell for 23 hours a day, but I do believe that some people deserve it. I can only imagine the pain that you must have felt when you were in prison. I hate the fact that thousand or perhaps millions of people around the world are imprisoned for drug possession. I know someone that killed himself after he was raped in prison. He was arrested for cocaine possession.

Quote> That makes no sense. How can we say that it's ok to have something, but an offence to produce it?

I do not believe that any government should have the right to tell people what they can and can’t look at. When I wrote the word production I was thinking about the people that are filming and raping the children. I was not thinking about the people that are putting files onto multiple DVD’s. I do not think that it should be a crime to possess it, but I do think that it should be a crime if the police can prove that you purchased it or sold it for a profit. There are similar drug laws in the U.S.A. It is legal to possess so-called medical marijuana in California, but it is illegal to purchase it or sell it. I would not have a problem with peoples names being put into some kind of potential pedophile database if the police found child pornography on someone’s computer. People would be able to use this database to prevent these people from working with children. (Teachers, pediatricians, ect.)