> there's little reason other than exceedingly unfounded hope to think it's what will happen.
And this is the point where I think we have to agree to disagree. In both the present real-world case and the theoretical simulated-experience case, we both agree that there are extraordinary power differentials which _could_ allow privileged people to abuse unprivileged people in horrifying and consequence-free ways - and yet, in the real world, we observe that _some_ (certainly not all!) of those abuses are curtailed - whether by political action, or concerted activism, or the economic impacts of customers disliking negative press, or what have you.
I certainly agree with you that the _extent_ of abuses that are possible on a simulated being are orders-of-magnitude higher than those that a billionaire could visit on the average human today. But I don't agree that it's "_exceedingly_ unfounded" to believe that society would develop in such a way as to protect the interests of simulated-beings against abuse in the same way that it (incompletely, but not irrelevantly) protects the interests of the less-privileged today.
(Don't get me wrong - I think the balance of probability and risk is such that I'd be _extremely_ wary of such a situation, it's putting a lot of faith in society to keep protecting "me". I am just disagreeing with your evaluation of the likelihood - I think it's _probably_ true that, say, an effective "Simulated Beings' Rights" Movement would arise, whereas you seem to believe that that's nigh-impossible)
How's the Human Rights movement doing? I'm underwhelmed personally.
It is virtually inconceivable that the Simulated Beings Right's Movement would be universal in both space... and time. Don't forget about that one. Or that the nominal claims would be universally actually performed. See those Human Rights again; nominally I've got all sorts of rights, in reality, I find the claims are quite grandiose compared to the reality.
Right, yes - I think we are "agreeing past each other". You are rightly pointing out in this comment that your lifestyle and personal freedoms are unjustly curtailed by powerful people and organizations, who themselves are partly (but inadequately) kept in check by social, legal, and political pressure that is mostly outside of your direct personal control. My original point was that the vulnerability that a simulated being would suffer is not a wholly new type of experience, but merely an extension in scale of potential-abuse.
If you trust society to protect simulated-you (and I am _absolutely_ not saying that you _should_ - merely that present-day society indicates that it's not _entirely_ unreasonable to expect that it might at least _try_ to), simulation is not _guaranteed_ to be horrific.
And this is the point where I think we have to agree to disagree. In both the present real-world case and the theoretical simulated-experience case, we both agree that there are extraordinary power differentials which _could_ allow privileged people to abuse unprivileged people in horrifying and consequence-free ways - and yet, in the real world, we observe that _some_ (certainly not all!) of those abuses are curtailed - whether by political action, or concerted activism, or the economic impacts of customers disliking negative press, or what have you.
I certainly agree with you that the _extent_ of abuses that are possible on a simulated being are orders-of-magnitude higher than those that a billionaire could visit on the average human today. But I don't agree that it's "_exceedingly_ unfounded" to believe that society would develop in such a way as to protect the interests of simulated-beings against abuse in the same way that it (incompletely, but not irrelevantly) protects the interests of the less-privileged today.
(Don't get me wrong - I think the balance of probability and risk is such that I'd be _extremely_ wary of such a situation, it's putting a lot of faith in society to keep protecting "me". I am just disagreeing with your evaluation of the likelihood - I think it's _probably_ true that, say, an effective "Simulated Beings' Rights" Movement would arise, whereas you seem to believe that that's nigh-impossible)