Philosophy Now Forum

Just want to share an idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlaM0_PcBK0

This video started to make me think about how it would be if human beings had populated a planet of initially practically entirely ignorant people, then filling it solely of nano-sized informatics that decided all of the environments of the planet at every behaviour, how much you could you completely and fully control the reality of a person without them ever knowing?

It would be entirely different than The Truman Show, different even than The Matrix, as there would be absolutely !no! visible clue as to why things behaved the way they did. Things happened on such a small scale that the given population could be kept in eternal ignorance! There would be nothing and nobody to blame if attempts at understand anything were disrupted.

Thoughts like this brings up old questions about whether or not we are not just marionettes of another civilization just around the corner or far far away. Crazy thought, but interesting nevertheless.

Mental Masturbation is fueled by imagination and the possibilities of imaginary lives of escapism from the reality we live in.

I don't see how it would be any different from Theism. If an intelligent race set of humans controlled the environment of an inferior 'somebody' they indeed would be akin to 'Gods' by the perspective of the manipulated. The manipulator of nano technology becomes God on a relative/subjective level.

Well the difference is that this is strictly scientifically theoretically possible, it's just that practically of course it's not likely to happen anytime soon to anybody. But if human beings were to reach a super-high state of technology (that is, in terms of productive capacity) at some point we might also discover perverse interests with our new-found technology that could turn into something similar of this. Indeed, I'd say it's bound to be cases of this sometime in the future if we consider humans to progress steadily without reaching any kind of absolute perfection. Right now it's just an entertaining thought.