Topic: Ethical use of Holographic Environment Simulators

[Scottish Andy]

It occurred to me on remembering a line from Barbara Hambly's excellent TOS novel 'Crossroads' to wonder if there were, in fact, hardcoded system restrictions for the ethical use of holodecks/holosuites. This thread has spoilers for anyone who wants to read the book and for certain eps of the show in order to set the scene, so if you want to, stop reading here. Or, you know, if threads like these make your head explode, you can and should stop here too. 






The line from the novel has people who are used to holodeck technology warning each other that what they are seeing may be a holodeck trick to get them to spill information, and that holodeck simulations are so real that the people running them "could make you think you're having sex with a chained up fourteen year-old."

With this, along with a discussion on a Trek email group (or even on this forum, I cannot remember) about what holodecks would *really* be used for by *real* people instead of the shiny-happy TNG crew, made me wonder if holodeck use would be regulated to keep in line with Federation law. As in, would something illegal be allowed to be simulated? Or perhaps more precisely would something with malicious or evil intent be allowed to be simulated? Very hard to define expecially when you get right down into it, but as a broad example, let's say playing the shooter in a JFK assassination simulation to see if you can get away with it, or rack up a higher body count.

On wondering this, I then first remembered the Voyager episode 'Meld' (I think) where Tuvok mind-melds with psychotic murdering crewmember Souder in an attempt to settle him, but becomes unsettled himself. We see a scene where he ends up choking a very annoying Neelix to death in the mess hall, but it is right after revealed to be happening in Voyager's holodeck. I next remembered Picard's Dixon Hill eps, where 'people' are killed, though the live participants are not the killers -- which led me to the scene in First Contact where Picard kills the two Borg with a holo-character's Tommy gun after disengaging the safety protocols.
Previously, for Data's attempts with the Borg in 'TNG: Descent', two people had to authorise this. Perhaps Picard had a Captain's Override... but that's beside the point.
I then went back to Voyager, and remembered that their holodeck was a jury-rigged affair installed in a small cargo bay. It possibly would not have had such regulatory software installed with it.

This being the case, I think it safe to say there were then no such restrictions in place on Star Trek's holodecks/suites. I guess the question would then be:

Should there be such restrictions implemented?

If you can go into a holodeck and create a simulation of your life (home, workspace, car, favourite park, etc.) and then murder someone you know with your bare hands, or do any such thing as you see fit, how do you think that would affect you in the "real" worlds? If you can basically pretend to kill someone (or do something more satisfying/sadistic) for denying you a promotion at work, or stealing your boyfriend, or cutting you off in traffic, and you could do this any time you liked -- as in, not a one-time thing but a regular letting off of steam -- how do you think it would affect your mentality?

Would you become more serene and calm and happy, taking out all your base emotions on hyper-real simulations? Or would you start to see this as "normal", and one day forget to start up the holodeck before killing someone who pissed you off? Would it eventually blur the outlines of reality in your mind, like in that weird movie "American Psycho"? Would it stay fake and thus become unsatisfying, leading you to try it for real?

Thoughts, comments, suggestions are all welcome.

[Lieutenant_Q]

They dealt a little bit with this in TNG, Barclay would create a holographic environment that would mirror reality in all aspects except, that the characters all revered Barclay as an invaluable member of the crew, rather than the (at the time) ordinary engineering officer that he was.

I do see a lot of Ethical problems with the development of the Holodeck, but the Holosuites are the bigger issue.  The civilian version of the Holodecks.  There have been references throughout DS9 to shady programs like Vulcan Love Slave. (or was is Sex Slave?  I can't quite remember)  The questions become, and are mirrored a bit here in reality today, is the simulated experience of murder, sex, etc.  as bad as the real thing? Or does it become a sort of release valve, when used properly, resulting in a decline of the real thing.  I know personally when I've had a bad day, I find the use of simulated explosions in a first person shooter, or more usually an RTS to be a calming experience.  On Starships there's usually a prohibition on using members of the crew or even real people in general in a Holodeck program.  Remember Geordi creating the holographic version of Leah Brahms and Picard's reaction to it.

A lot of the ethical questions involved mirror the current trend of ethics with today's video games.  There will always be the side that sees it an immoral and reprehensible, and there will be a side that says, hey, anything goes.

[Captain Sharp]

Should a holodeck ever be invented, these same questions will be thrown in by everyone who wants to get in on the act. At first it might start out as unregulated, and then those in power would enforce their will on it. I can see, in the Trek instance of the problem, that each world might have its own laws and regulations on the tech and what it can portray.

Each question is a valid point, I'm afraid. I could see a person becoming adicted to killing and then seeking to do it for real when the holo-version proves unsatisfying. Though there is a difference in murdering someone with your bare hands and zapping badguys in a game/sim. Though, in the given realism that a holodeck is supposed to bring...perhaps that difference would be much less so. I've spoken with and read accounts of many soldiers who became quite fond of killing the badguy. Made a game of it. A holodeck might fuel this mentality.

Anyway, this is a tech that I believe, in some manner, will be availible within our lifetimes. Watered down, I'm sure, but we already live with a lot of stuff that at the beginning of my life, folk never thought they'd see.

I'm still waiting on my goddamn jetpack, though!

--Guv

[Commander La'ra]

First of all, while we're told and shown that the holodeck is a 'perfect version' of the things simulated within, I sort of doubt that it actually is.  For security reasons, I'm guessing that Starfleet officers are trained in ways to distinguish a holographic environment from a real one, probably as part of their anti-interrogation curriculum, and that the environment, while real enough to seem authentic if you want to let it be, is detectable in some fashion.

As far as what you'd be allowed to simulate...I think the biggest conflict you'd run into is attempting to regulate something that isn't actually happening, and in a free-speech society like the Federation, that's going to be hard for the powers-that-be to override.  You can't tell anyone what books they can read or what movies they can watch in free societies in real life, though you can encourage the producers of the material to not make things that step over a certain line, and a cultural environment that doesn't favor certain things will frown upon the general distribution of them (much like how there are few NC-17 movies made in the U.S., as they're seen as unmarketable).

The Holodeck circumvents that type of 'soft' restriction, though, as users can create their own programs, so you can't rely on that.  I don't see the Federation being able to get exhaustive civilian laws passed on what you can and can't do in a holodeck.  I can see Starfleet regulations forbidding certain things, or public-access holodecks not allowing certain things, but assuming private ownership is possible there's likely no way to realistically restrict their use.

On the other hand, we've seen that gunplay and other such is fine even for Starfleet officers, and I suspect that holodeck use is viewed largely as a game and not taken seriously.  Yeah, I could see it's level of reality causing certain problems...but people in the '50's might say the same thing about high-definition images that react to your control inputs or people from an earlier day wondering how these immoral 'books' were going to corrupt their youth.  So I think, to an extent, the holodeck would just become 'normal' after a decade or two of debate.

And, as the Guv said, there'll be changes from year to year about what use is 'acceptable'.  He said there's things we see now we'd never have imagined being seen on TV in the 80's...but on the other hand, we saw some stuff in movies in the 70's that now never seems to happen on screen  (female full frontal nudity seemed to reach it's heyday in the early 1980's, movie wise, for instance), so what you can get away with when people know you're doing it will likely vary based on when you do it.

[Captain Sharp]

Well, as far as Starfleet officers being trained to recognize a hologram, apparently those who have been in the series flunked those classes. Moriarty duped em easy enough in his episodes.

I'm not as giving as to what a 'free' society 'allows' its people. But I'm a born cinic. Plenty of laws get passed, and always will, that the Man has an aweful hard time enforcing. Not smoking dope. Not pirating movies. Not enjoying prostitutes. Etc. Holotech might wind up being another example.

I'm half tempted to do a sitcom series like a Trek version of Cheers, set in a place like Quarks. Might be fun.

--Guv again

[Commander La'ra]

Well, as far as Starfleet officers being trained to recognize a hologram, apparently those who have been in the series flunked those classes. Moriarty duped em easy enough in his episodes.

True.  Though Riker did eventually figure out that that one was a ploy in the episode with the alien kid.

I'm not as giving as to what a 'free' society 'allows' its people. But I'm a born cynic. Plenty of laws get passed, and always will, that the Man has an awful hard time enforcing. Not smoking dope. Not pirating movies. Not enjoying prostitutes. Etc. Holotech might wind up being another example.

If the public outcry is long enough or loud enough, though, it can change or prevent things.  Like Prohibition.  And those outcrys tend to be longer and louder when they affect things that people consider to be their basic rights.  Just look at the usual opposition to gun laws in our country...the folks being regulated can make it political suicide to support something that's unpopular enough. 

Curious idea, though...would holodecks put brothels out of business?  With the Feddies usual attitude they might view 'holographic' pursuits as a way to prevent behavior they find distasteful...

I'm half tempted to do a sitcom series like a Trek version of Cheers, set in a place like Quarks. Might be fun.

That's actually a damn good idea...

[Captain Sharp]

Some times you wanna go...where everybody knows your name...

--guv

[Scottish Andy]

Very good points all, especially well taken are Larry's.

I hadn't considered the "holodeck program as a fully immersive video game" where you can play 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 200', running around with a holographic phaser or even a personal electomagnetic rail/mass-driver gun shooting holographic Klingons and Romulans for fun. Increasing difficulty levels ranging from where you can be a couch potato and the bad guys will still miss you to having to be physically fit for all the diving and rolling around and the bad guys can still blast you if you're not quick enough.

With these being commercial aspects however, I'm not overly concerned with them. They are regulated now, and will be regulated then too.

What I was considering is this: you have your own personal holodeck (as do many others, like owning an XBox or Playstation). You can star in adventure or mystery programs converted from movies and novels (like Dixon Hill), you can star in games like Mass Effect, pilot your own starfighter or even starship on missions, and create your own missions. You can create new programs of your own. These new programs you create could be anything. You could plan out the remodelling of your house, visualise your daughter's wedding, etc.
You could also use it to create a crowded mall or sunny park, and go on a gun or sword rampage -- if there are no controls on it. I think the UFP, being a socialist nanny state, would have program safeguards to prevent this kind of scenario from being run, just as I think the replicators in everyone's home would be forbidden to be used to create explosives or weapons or viruses.

Now, people being people, they will try to get around said safeguards and use the tech for whatever they want to. But I believe those safeguards will be in place, and that they will be a matter of controversy just like free speech vs hate speech, video games vs acceptable violence, internet content vs "protection" for minors, and privacy vs national security is today. (Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither.    )

As for Larry's supposing if holosuites would replace brothels: do you really think that holotech is so advanced that you could actually have real-feeling sex with projected forcefields?    That said forcefields could be accurate and mobile enough for you to roll around with your holoslut and not have your bits sheared or broken off? 

That said, I re-read everyone's posts including my own. The line from 'Crossroads' is uttered by characters from the 25th Century who've come back through time to the 23rd, so perhaps by then yes, maybe you are right. However, I'd forgotten about those Vulcan Love Slave programs for Quark's holosuite, and I think I remember someone else getting a massage there. This kind of very fine control of holograms makes me wonder how all this intricate physical interaction can possibly be done (surely not from mere forcefields!), and how the computer can have such accurate personality files free to access to create real people as characters to the extent that their closest friends cannot tell they are holograms except for a left/right-handedness glitch.
As for Riker, he only really twigged the alien kid's program was an illusion when the computer used hologram Minuete as his real wife and mother of "their" son. It was not the quality of the hologram simulation. At least with Geordi's Leah Brahms infatuation, he brought up the issue of giving her hologram a personality based on what was known about her -- which turned out not to be hyperaccurate.   

But I'm getting off track; it has been demonstrated that holograms are that real and real people can be that accurately simulated, so... what can you do?    Even with that, though, some people still prefer real caviar to replicated caviar, so I am quite sure brothels will not go out of business because of holosuites. People will still want to feel the real thing, even if some of them cannot tell the difference. In fact, I think brothels will incorporate holosuites to cater to fantasies even more. Any planet, any costume, any setting, any scenario, real... participant. 

Back on track: with the holosuites being unrestricted, would this alter your mentality? I'd like to think that the vast majority of us would not even think to do this, but Humans are curious. We'd want to try it just to experience it, see what it felt like. Humans like doing things that are forbidden to them for whatever reason: legal, moral, responsiblity. Actors love playing the Bad Guys because they get to be bad. Enough people love playing those gangster games for the games to be successful (Max Payne, Grand Theft Auto, etc.), running around and causing havoc and shooting up the place and the people. So... it will happen. You'll want to live the thrill vicariously. And the more you do it, the more your mentality might slide over into seeing this as 'normal', which means 'bad' will slide further away.

Lol... this is why holosuites should not be invented until Earth is a paradise. Otherwise, everyone who is unhappy with their real life will permanently lose themselves in the fantasy worlds of their choice. Just like the Talosians.

[intermech]

Whether it is modded video games, questionable internet browsing, or holodeck simulations (or work-a-rounds), people will always search for ways to satisfy their debased human nature. No law, regulation, or programmed safeties will ever be sufficient to prevent these things, and as more and more restrictions are implemented, usefulness of these tools for legitimate purposes is mitigated. It is a heart issue.

Regulations should be focused on privacy; protecting people's data, images, body-forms, and mannerisms, preventing things like recording, motion capture, research on, or scanning of an individual without their permission. Instead of protecting against what might be done with the holodeck, empower people to protect their identifying features.

[Kreeargh]

It occurred to me on remembering a line from Barbara Hambly's excellent TOS novel 'Crossroads' to wonder if there were, in fact, hardcoded system restrictions for the ethical use of holodecks/holosuites. This thread has spoilers for anyone who wants to read the book and for certain eps of the show in order to set the scene, so if you want to, stop reading here. Or, you know, if threads like these make your head explode, you can and should stop here too. 




The line from the novel has people who are used to holodeck technology warning each other that what they are seeing may be a holodeck trick to get them to spill information, and that holodeck simulations are so real that the people running them "could make you think you're having sex with a chained up fourteen year-old."

With this, along with a discussion on a Trek email group (or even on this forum, I cannot remember) about what holodecks would *really* be used for by *real* people instead of the shiny-happy TNG crew, made me wonder if holodeck use would be regulated to keep in line with Federation law. As in, would something illegal be allowed to be simulated? Or perhaps more precisely would something with malicious or evil intent be allowed to be simulated? Very hard to define expecially when you get right down into it, but as a broad example, let's say playing the shooter in a JFK assassination simulation to see if you can get away with it, or rack up a higher body count.

On wondering this, I then first remembered the Voyager episode 'Meld' (I think) where Tuvok mind-melds with psychotic murdering crewmember Souder in an attempt to settle him, but becomes unsettled himself. We see a scene where he ends up choking a very annoying Neelix to death in the mess hall, but it is right after revealed to be happening in Voyager's holodeck. I next remembered Picard's Dixon Hill eps, where 'people' are killed, though the live participants are not the killers -- which led me to the scene in First Contact where Picard kills the two Borg with a holo-character's Tommy gun after disengaging the safety protocols.
Previously, for Data's attempts with the Borg in 'TNG: Descent', two people had to authorise this. Perhaps Picard had a Captain's Override... but that's beside the point.
I then went back to Voyager, and remembered that their holodeck was a jury-rigged affair installed in a small cargo bay. It possibly would not have had such regulatory software installed with it.

This being the case, I think it safe to say there were then no such restrictions in place on Star Trek's holodecks/suites. I guess the question would then be:

Should there be such restrictions implemented?

If you can go into a holodeck and create a simulation of your life (home, workspace, car, favourite park, etc.) and then murder someone you know with your bare hands, or do any such thing as you see fit, how do you think that would affect you in the "real" worlds? If you can basically pretend to kill someone (or do something more satisfying/sadistic) for denying you a promotion at work, or stealing your boyfriend, or cutting you off in traffic, and you could do this any time you liked -- as in, not a one-time thing but a regular letting off of steam -- how do you think it would affect your mentality?

Would you become more serene and calm and happy, taking out all your base emotions on hyper-real simulations? Or would you start to see this as "normal", and one day forget to start up the holodeck before killing someone who pissed you off? Would it eventually blur the outlines of reality in your mind, like in that weird movie "American Psycho"? Would it stay fake and thus become unsatisfying, leading you to try it for real?

Thoughts, comments, suggestions are all welcome.

The Use of possable HES tech. Military and safety learning full out use. General Public use restrict it.  Way to many nutts out there to use the tech to kill others for no reason at all.  That tech would be never be  released to the public on that base alone.   Then there is Greed and more issues a no win at all.
Not to say I dont want my holo deck but its not plauseble in the real world even if the tech was Now ready for use.   

[Scottish Andy]

No thoughts on what you think your own morality could turn to, given an unrestricted fantasy world to play in? Would you change as a person, come to see things as normal that you would not before? A real world example for me would be moving to the South. All thise guns everywhere. Would I come to see it as normal and okay, or would I stick to my metaphoricals and view them with distaste?

[Lono]

Ron Paul does not believe in the Govt. getting up in our personal holograms and telling us what we can or can't do in the privacy of our own holodeck session!

He has my vote!

[knightstorm]

Ron Paul does not believe in the Govt. getting up in our personal holograms and telling us what we can or can't do in the privacy of our own holodeck session!

He has my vote!

I think he'd object to a blonde haired "Austrian," schtuping him in a holosuite.

[Commander La'ra]

No thoughts on what you think your own morality could turn to, given an unrestricted fantasy world to play in? Would you change as a person, come to see things as normal that you would not before?

I don't see running down a crowded city street beating a guy with a shovel as 'normal' now, and I have escapist entertainment where I enthusiastically do so.  So no, I don't think you'd see much of this.

A real world example for me would be moving to the South. All thise guns everywhere. Would I come to see it as normal and okay, or would I stick to my metaphoricals and view them with distaste?

Could go either way, but that's a real situation, and one where people have as many rational reasons to possess firearms as you have rational reasons to distrust them.  A healthy human mind is capable of weighing such issues and adapting.  It's also capable of realizing that something that's 'okay' in certain surroundings (such as a fantasy 'play area') is not okay in others. 

[Captain Sharp]

A real world example for me would be moving to the South. All thise guns everywhere. Would I come to see it as normal and okay, or would I stick to my metaphoricals and view them with distaste?

Could go either way, but that's a real situation, and one where people have as many rational reasons to possess firearms as you have rational reasons to distrust them.  A healthy human mind is capable of weighing such issues and adapting.  It's also capable of realizing that something that's 'okay' in certain surroundings (such as a fantasy 'play area') is not okay in others.

LOL!

Just imagined Andy (should he ever move or visit here), having his first encounter with a possum houseguest. Said imagining ended with him chasing it down the road with a shovel for some reason...

We get some bossy possums down here.

--Guv

[Kreeargh]

No thoughts on what you think your own morality could turn to, given an unrestricted fantasy world to play in? Would you change as a person, come to see things as normal that you would not before? A real world example for me would be moving to the South. All thise guns everywhere. Would I come to see it as normal and okay, or would I stick to my metaphoricals and view them with distaste?

 Picard in first contact blowing away the borg with fear and evil hatered!