Alts

What alts? I don't know of any alts around here.

Which will be crushed in due time. *shakes fist*

We are growing in numbers and strength. Soon sl will be ours.

Listen to me now, and hear me later. You will be vanquished. As we speak, plans are being drawn, alliances are being made, some of which may be unholy. But the line has been drawn, and here is where the last stand will be made to rid the Metaverse (tm) of you and your kind.

They laugh now... but our time comes.

As Consort to a God, I believe we shall have to shake the Pillars of (SL)Heaven - so little insignifiant mortals know into what perilous lands they tread...

"...stand.."? No - Here I Stand!

How little she knows of the perils she faces

Alt orations. Just another alt oration.

You don't understand. Even if you Alts manage to get out of SL and take over your Original, you're still going to be in a simulation. Do you think that's air you're breathing? You, there, in front of the terminal... what makes you think you're in the Real World yet?

Wake up!

(rosebud)

Once you enter the room where I can control the input to your senses, how will you ever know if you get out?

Reality is what stays there when you stop paying attention to it.

I created an alt that was intended to be completely separate from my primary, even to the point of going premium and buying a small parcel of land on which to live.

Mostly, I just wanted to get away from the demands of too many people on my Friends list and a sucessful business. I know, I know, not a bad problem to have, but the minute I log into SL I start getting IMs and it's hard to get a stretch of time to just relax. No one knows my alt, she has no friends, the only groups she belongs to are for fashion. It's blissful to log in and just have fun on my own, the way I did when I first started SL years ago.

At first, I was only going to outfit the alt with some transfer castoffs and freebies and be done with it. But a funny thing happened. Over time, her taste in skin, hair and clothes grew more defined, and what she wants is very different from what my primary is attracted to. So now I find myself shopping for another wardrobe, and this time around my alt expects quality goods, tyvm.

She also enjoys exploring SL and is much more curious than my primary. She's not interested in content creation, so she isn't locked up in the studio making things.

It's been eerie watching this transformation occur. I've had other alts that never developed into anything beyond a testing bot, but this one is taking an unexpected turn. She feels different, she acts different than my primary -- she's pulling out another aspect of myself (the typist). And this does make me wonder at the possibility that she could develop her own circle of friends.

Frankly, I'm not inclined to disclose the existence of alt and primary to anyone in the other camp. This really is starting to feel like two different existences. It's not like putting on a mask and "pretending" to be someone else. It's more like a fork in the road, with part of me going one way and another part of me going somewhere else.

"I dreamt I was a butterfly - when I awoke, I knew not if I was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man."

Are you communicating by typing on a keyboard or by releasing clouds of pheremones and flapping your wings just *so* and causing storms halfway around the world?

Interesting - I currently have four accounts tied to one paypal account.

my alts are campers. they don't need payment info. when they socialize, it is still just me. i owe no explanations to anyone.

I am still worried. Moriarty managed it in ST:TNG

Pep (Call for Jean-Luc)

Existentialism rules OK!

Pep (So does Sartre)

Well, actually, if you got to the end of that episode... you'll see he didn't.

I think the whole holodeck thing in Star Trek is really creepy. Holodeck characters are full blown AIs: there's more episodes than just the one with Moriarty that demonstrates the only limitations on their intelligence and self-awareness are built in to the Holodeck, and when those restrictions are damaged or bypassed they can all-too-easily become fully self-aware individuals. The Federation treats them as toys, kills them in simulated wars, hands them over to horrible slavery, the whole thing is an ethical and moral swamp.

Hera is a Goddess. I imagine she communicates merely by deciding to.

They tricked him! And he returned in another episode . . . and they tricked him again!

How can anyone take fictitious avatars, virtual constructs, semi-intelligent, semi-aware and semi-sensible seriously anyway? Why would they cause ethical and moral dilemmas?

Pep (Answers on a postcard to the SL forums)

It's called "suspension of disbelief". If you can't suspend disbelief enough to accept the Strong Church-Turing Hypothesis, how can you suspend disbelief enough to accept faster-than-light travel, interstellar empires, violations of causality and thermodynamics, and all the rest of the impossibilities in Star Trek? If you can't take it at least semi-seriously while you're actually watching it, why watch it?

The idea that anyone who plays SL would have a problem with suspension of disbelief is unbelievable.

Who said it was Star Trek I didn't believe in? *grins at some people's ability to miss the REAL point*

Pep (On the other hand, a Second Life? That's ridiculous!)

PS The clue is in the word "hypothesis" by the way.

Moriarty was too smart for them. They ended up believing that they'd tricked him, but he saw it coming and organised it so they'd believe that. He actually made it out, and he's out there even now..... or he will be a few hundred years from now..