Addicted to thinking...is that healthy?

Like most everyone else in the class, I enjoyed hearing the varying ideas being presented in class on Tuesday. After thinking about A.I. and video games I came up with some theories on my own.

The first idea is how people become addicted to video games in the first place. Chris touched on this a little in class about how there is a vast amount of psychology that goes into the development of a video game. I feel that people become addicted to games because they become trapped into a new world that they feel that they can somewhat control. Games are created by humans and these humans have put some sort of limitations on the game. If someone plays the game enough they understand these limitations and become masters of the game. Some games reward these masters with material possessions such as new weapons or new powers and this helps bring players back for more every time. The games become addicting because people's minds have mastered this virtual world and this is invigorating because those same minds can't master their actual physical world. The actual world has limitations beyond the comprehension of the human mind because those limitations were not created by humans but something else, be it God, the Big Bang or whatever you believe. Life is hard becasue we don't understand it. Video games are fun and addicting because we do understand them. Our minds are able to comprehend what needs to be done in order to succeed. Kill the bad guy, collect the coins, stomp on the mushroom and you will eventually win. But how does one succeed in real life. Go to school, get a good job, make lots of money, find love, travel the world. There is no distinct answer and I think that frustrates some people. They can't ever really win at life, which is what I think makes life so fun and interesting, there is no right way. But sometimes people like to escape their real bodies and transport their mind into a character in which they can feel some sort of accomplishment.

Where then does one draw the line as to what is real life and what is artificial. Morgan brought this idea up as well. What is perception and what is reality. Lets take a hypothetical situation. What if when you were born you were hooked up to a machine that distorted your five senses and replaced them with artificial ones and turned your world into a virtual reality. You were never able to see the real world but instead say you had say go collecting gold and wood and construct and trade things in a world that was indeed a computer simulation. What if all you ever knew was that you were an orc in a vast forest. Would that baby ever realize that it was indeed a human and not an orc. This I do not know but it is interesting to think about.

I feel that it can be compared to J.C.R Licklider and his symbiotic relationships with computers. He described some ways for us to become dependent on computers yet we have vastly exceed those predictions in the 47 years since his article was written. He talked about how storing memory will require vast amounts of hardware. We now can store an entire library on a drive the size of our hand. But are we now symbiotic?

I do not feel though we are symbiotic quite yet only becasue computers do not depend on us. Or do they? This ties back to the idea of life and death and how human intelligence understands that it must survive while A.I. does not. I believe that humans depend heavily on computers in our day and age but we have a ways before we are truly symbiotic.

All right no more thinking, my head hurts now.