I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but isn't the Sims game pretty similar to the Matrix?

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would you care to elaborate a bit further? facts/details?

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interesting idea

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I once read a sci fi book called 'soul of a robot'. This book posed an ancient question:

If a man can neither see, hear, smell, touch, taste or think... can he do something else?

When i first read this, I thought, yeah, he can do 2 things, one begins with F and the other begins with A!


But then i under stood the question. It was asking: can he simply be conscious???


It is said that consciousness is just an illusion created by the various senses, but maybe this is not the case.

Any way, my point is that surely we have no way of telling, at which point (if ever) a computer generated charachter may become self aware!

Perhaps, right now, some charachters in The Sims are having this discussion!


Of course then, they would start trying to take over the world and it all gets very messy etc etc ;)


Seriously, trinidad, id be interested to hear your thoughts on this or anyone elses.

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Ok, so I have not played Sims, so I may have some of the details wrong- but from what I know of the game, you create your own little people, and have them go about their daily life interacting with other people- co-workers, family members, etc.
You control what you do in the game, and you assign personality traits to other people (i.e. co-worker Joe is annoying, tardy, and eager), but you do not actually control what they are going to do- which is where it becomes 'fun'- you can have reality based interactions with people very similar to those that are in your life, or that you want in your life- but it is not reality.
Now, since they have launched the Sims game online, there are more and more virtual relationships>> which have led to some real life relationships, and shows signs of leading to even more.

People have gotten addicted to playing the game- I recently read an article about a woman who lost her husband in real life, so she 'programmed' his personality traits onto one of the Sims characters, so she could play and still feel like she was interacting with him- and this consumed tremendous amounts of her time.

If people can enjoy a game like Sims, and get lost in it, spending hours in this virtual world-- is it really that hard to imagine people (humans) accepting a Matrix?

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Yes, Ive often thought this about the holosuite in star treck!!!


I for one have to admit that i could easily become a holo-junkie!




What your saying reminds me of when i was, a kid and I used to play dungeons and dragons all the time! Strange as it sounds... after a while, when i would think back to an adventure i'd just played, i would find myself remembering it asthough it was real!!!


I wouldnt remember rolling dice and scribbling on bits of paper... i would remember running around in a dungeon chasing goblins etc.

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I've never played sims or any role-playing games, but I easily get absorbed into books. This can create a problem, when a book sucks me in and one of the characters gets hurt, or when someone tries to talk to me and I don't try to listen... I think it would be VERY easy to get absorbed into a real matrix. Maybe we're in one now.

The sims is soooooo addictive. I lent a copy of my cousin, and the next thing i knew i had all of the expansion packs. Books are the same, i start a book and the next thing i know it's 2 hours later and i've either finished it, nearly finished it, or really tired!
It's really easy to see that people could get absorbed into a matrix, real or game, scarily easy...kinda like the internet...(addictive, not scary)

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man i love the sims, and i guess it is possible that it is "reality", but you have to wonder then, just what is reality? If reality is the surroundings we have that we can understand, then i guess the sims isnt reality, but I can never say that sims don't understand their environment. The only hitch is do they exist if the computer is off. If they don't, than they cant be real.

Just a few ideas

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How do you know that the 'Plannet Earth' game isnt being switched on and off? How could we ever tell, if everytime our lives were saved out, they were re-booted the next day at the exact same moment.

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the sims ?

addictive ?

omfg, it's the most lame game ever (my opion, u don't have to share it)

...

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