On Friday 26 September 2008 02:25:32 pm Kerim Aydin wrote: > I utterly reject that notion. > > There's nothing tortuous about it. No matter how you slice it, > there's a set of conscious, thinking, Turing-test-passing entities > that have fundamental controls that are behind every shell we've > allowed to register, that are "final" causal agents, in that things > are sent because "they" want them to be sent.
The problem is: treating persons and identities platonically like this creates huge snarls if we ever mistake (or are misled regarding) a person's identity or existence. For the sake of pragmatism, for ratification, for the long-term sanity of the game state, it is (if not currently the case) a *good idea* to treat players as legal fictions, as avatars and shells. There may be abuses in the short run, but it's better than another Annabel Crisis.
