Killing Dream People

Recently I had a dream, in that dream was a girl, she had a incurable sickness, she used the german word "verzehren" which means sth. like "consumption" and in this dream I just knew that this meant she would soon die a horrible agonizing death, it was a very vivid dream, but i woke up soon after. I wonder If waking up, was an act of mercy to her, so that she never had to experience the end of that dream. Who am I to say that the dreamers life is worth more than that of the dreamee, the people in the dreams. What do lain anons think? Should people, respect the morsl rights of dream people more?

>>1188 If you are talking about people you see only in dreams, it doesn't matter much. their lifespan is only until you wake up. but if they're with you when you're awake, you can take their claims seriously.

>>1189 Why does the length of a life matter, if one should treat them like a person? Imagine a baby is born with an incurable disease so that it will die a few weeks later, wouldn't you still treat the baby as a person?

>>1190 what I was trying to draw your attention to was not the lifes length, but whether you see them in real or not. so if you only see them in your dreams, why should you feel responsible for them?

>>1191 Why would I not? Just because someone lives at a different place I still value them and they should still be treated as a person. For example I do not think we should kill people that live in africa, Just because I live not in africa. Or we should not kill people on the ISS just because they are in space and we are not. If we shouldn't kill people who live in different places, why should I be able to harm the dream person just because they live in dreams and I do not.

Dream person is a facet of you. Killing her only really possible with killing yourself. Dont do it lain.

If the dreamer's body were to succumb the brain would stop running also, killing all the dream people. The dreamer's life is the priority.

>>1194 Yeah sure, I value my own life more than yours too, never said anything different. The question is, if we shouldn't do things like killing or torturing dream people?

>>1195 Ive killed so many dream people and they come back. Its not really possible. You can peel their faces off and they're unfazed, you can chop off their heads and glance back and realize they're whole again, if not someone else alltogether. The whole question of killing a dream person is absurd. Only way to kill the dream person is to kill the dreamer.

>>1197 Is the question really absurd? People, thought women's rights were absurd not too long ago (see "A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes"). There have been so many liberation movements, e.g. blacks, gays, through time. Why not liberation movements for dream people? Imagine how beautiful society would be: dream people and real people hand in hand together with the same rights. All I ask is to apply the principle of equality consistently, be it real people or dream people.

>>1198 >all I ask is apply the principle of equality consistently One may apply it equally in one of two ways; either by saying that rabbits and turds are equal to Alexander, who is himself equal to the lowest bum and also the most beautifully painted butterfly. That or you can just say equality as a principle is a hobgoblin, the bane and refuge of the non committal, and the idiotic, and should be generally dispensed with altogether. Your position is of course the logical liberal one.

>>1199 I don't know what you understand under the "principle of equality", but what I mean with it, is that if there is no relevant moral differentiation between two things, they ought to be treated the same. E.g. it would be weird to say blue cars are for driving, but green cars are not, color is not a relevant factor. E.g. it would be weird to say killing people named Alexander is morally okay, but killing people named Peter is not morally okay, again name is not a relevant factor. I reject the comparison of Alexander with a turd, because there is an important moral differentiation Alexander is conscious and the turd and butterfly are not.

>>1200 >important moral differentiation between things So what you're saying is that the principal of equality is merely the tautology that things which are equal are equal (and things which are not are not). In this case we're back to square one. Why are dream people supposed to be equal to real live human beings ? They seem substantially different, perhaps as different as Alexander vs the turd. >butterfly is unconscious prove it >Alexander is conscious hes dead. But anyway, prove it.

>>1201 > Merely a tautology You can put it like this, I wasn't trying to inovocate anything controversial. > Why are dream people supposed to be equal to rela live people? The points I was trying to make in prior posts, that all factors (besides one) are not morally relevant e.g. that they have a shorter "lifespan", that they do not have a own body, that they life in another "dimension". The only relevant moral factor is if they are conscious or not, there are two reasons for this (1) in all other factors one can easily find counter examples (2) this is analogous to what we value as humans, "something is someone (and with that deserving of moral consideration) if and only if it has the capacity to deploy consciousness". > Prove it This goes straight to my central thesis, "we can't prove that something is conscious". All we can do is look at outward signs for consciousness e.g. seeing if something recognizes itself in a mirror. How do I know you are conscious? I can't know it, all I can do is say you have the outwards signs of having consciousness, hence I act like you are conscious. The only alternative would be to walk around, in epistemological nihilism. And since consciousnes is what we value as humans, this would be an untenable position to have. Going back to dreams people, all I can say is that they act like they have consciousness ( I can talk to them, I hurt them in a dream they scream in pain, ...), thus I should treat them such.

>>1188 y'know, consumption is actually the old name for tuberculosis. it's not related to the topic at all, but I just thought it was interesting

>>1188 >What do lain anons think? Should people, respect the morsl rights of dream people more? No need to care about dream people because they're just figments of your imagination and aren't actually sentient.

dream person here. I demand government payouts please

>>1188 only half related, but ill share anyways for the longest time, i had dreams in which i tried to express violence towards others, but failed (note this was always in a defensive context, e.g: bad person trying to kill me so i fight back) like, i would punch someone, but nothing would happen, try to shoot someone, but nothing happens, etc. after killing my first deer, gutting it, etc., my dreams changed now i can successfully express violence in dreams to defend myself ( at least, most of the time, like 80% instead of 0%) i'm not sure what it means, but it's something...

>>1188 weird question, but here we go in my knowledge, dreams are just scenarios that your brain create to do some "brain stuff" (I don't know, maybe keep you alert with nightmares or calm you down with cute dreams), so the people you met in your dreams (and yourself in the drams) has no life at all, they're just reflections of your personality/personalities you brain build to put you in those scenarios like the people already said, the only way to "kill" the dram people is to kill the dreamer but, in fact, I think what you do the dream people when you dream (lucid or not) tells more about you than about them > What do lain anons think? Should people, respect the morsl rights of dream people more? short answer: no

>>1208 Please, do not kill dream people!

>>1210 > dreams are just scenarios that your brain creates to do some "brain stuff" I agree with that > So that the people you meet in your dreams has no life I mean it depends on how you define "life", but I agree they are not a biological organism and do not life in that way. > Short answer: no If I understand correctly you think it depends on if something "lifes" in the biological sense, if that thing deserves moral rights or not. What if we ever create artificial intelligence which becomes conscious? It doesn't have a biological life, does this mean it doesn't deserve moral rights? What about if far in the future we can simulate human consciousness on a computer? Thats also not biological life. Do you think it would be okay to do whatever you want with them?

>>1206 Prove it. How do I know that you are just not masquerading as a dream person to get that sweet government money? >>1203 Yeah, I do think that is the inspiration from where the sickness comes from, I did read something about Edgar poes wife. >>1205 There are two claims here > Don't care about them because they are figment of imagination I don't think this is a relevant moral factor. Some people(e.g. Hindus) believe we people are a figment of imagination of a god, but even than they don't go around killing people. What does it change if we are dreamt up by some greater being? Nothing, we exist now regardless if our world is a dream or not, we don't go around murdering people. > Don't care about them because they are not sentient I think this is the Crux of the Issue, if they are really not sentient I would agree with you. But how do you know they are not sentient? In my dream, they certainly act like they are: they scream in pain when hurt, I can converse with them, ect. You might wonder why nature would allow sentience to develop in dream people? But this has a simple explanation, one function of dreams is to help us to better handle social situations, or in other words: better predict how another person might react to an action. What better way to predict this, then to simulate consciousness in dream person?

>>1217 >hindus hindus are a figment of my imagination. Sorry I didn't really think through the logic on them yet. I planned to >sentience sentience is a spook. Dogs are sentient. Cows are sentient. Lettuce and apple trees are sentient. If you can't cause pain to sentience then your best option is nitrogen suicide yesterday.

>>1188 How do lucid dreams fit into this? My natural inclimation when I realize I'm dreaming is to find the nearest person, turn them into a hot chick and feel up her boobs. It doesn't feel real so I don't feel bad about it. Sometimes I can spawn people in and remove them from my dream on whims. As long as I'm not under the impression that it's real I don't feel any obligation to the people in dreams, but of course by default I do feel like it's real if I haven't realized I'm dreaming.

>>1198 Ghosts, demons, gods, etc don't exist. They're all in your mind. Read up about Carl Jung's Archetypes. Archetypes are "patterns of behaviour, feelings and thought". Notice that they are all correlated. Psychology knows by now that logic is controllable by emotion, i.e. logic is used by emotion to rationalize its desires and beliefs. This is how you can have completely different opinions and conclusions depending on your emotional state. The archetypes all have correct places and times, as well as wrong places and times. They can be good or bad, depending on the context. They all carry conflicting goals and worldviews. If you combine the concept of the archetype with the concept of projection, you get gods. Gods are projections of your own archetypes. I am sure that if we suddenly removed religion from everybody, it would reemerge through dream figures, disembodied voices, visions etc. which carry meaning for person they appear in. But because of the universatlity of archetypes, multiple people can recognize the same "pattern" of "dream figure", i.e. gods. I'm not deep into this, so I don't which archetype people project onto Lain. It may vary from person to person. Some critics say archetypes are pseudoscience because they can't be scientifically verified. That is true. But when you apply this concept to your own mental states, it becomes obvious how good of a conceptualisation this is. Consider empathy. You cannot "feel" another person, but you can imagine what that person feels. The thing about empathy is, it's You feeling what You think the other person feels, through voice changes, facial expressions, body patterns, pheromone cues, etc. The depths of information are so great and complex that we cannot grasp everything at once in our conscious mind, so most of it is processed unconsciously. Here, our gut feeling also comes from. But to know what another person actually feels is impossible - your nerves are only linked to yourself. Any claims about non-material transmission is unverifiable and unscientific. TL;DR: You are the demons

>>1226 if they don't exist, but I am them....then do I not exist?!????

>>1227 Nah man. You exist. Thats really the only thing you can ever know