SCI199Y: Computational Reality, Illusion and Deception

Assignment 3

Due: 11:59pm, Monday 6 December 2010

I'm not crazy about reality but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.
-- Groucho Marx.

It is the year 2510 and through the miracle of early 21st Century discoveries in genomics, prosthetics and various other -ics, you have lived more than 500 years. You're more than a bit bored. Due to overpopulation and overconsumption, all the food you eat looks and tastes much like reconstituted carbo-protein goo. But what if the experience of that so-called food could be altered? You happen by a funky store called "URXperisensed". The sales-bot there has already data-mined your question from your FaceMedia activity, and gives you an imitation-paper brochure claiming that they have digitally represented "Xperisenses" that can be reconstructed so you can experience your favourite food from the past exactly as if it were the real thing now. You enjoy how exactly strobes and spins and lifts off the page. The bot goes on to say that they have a huge catalogue of other experiences that can be reconstructed and channeled into you through your zero-footprint hydrogen-cell powered iPaid implant. You are attracted by the idea of replicated experiences.

All this gets you thinking about "truth in advertising" in this brochure, and about a wacky class you took 500 years earlier that talked about reality and computers. You begin reflecting on what it would mean to represent an experience exactly.

To cast things in terms of visual representations, watch the following video on Milo from "Project Natal" (which has now recently released as Microsoft Kinect). Now, whatever you may think of this particular demonstration (post your thoughts to the discussion board), let your imagination run ahead several hundred years and think of a game developer advertising a game in which synthetic characters behave "exactly" like real people.

If the words we use are any indication, we appear to think we can do this. We say things like "Do exactly as I say," or "This is exactly as I remember it." What do we mean by "exactly" in this context? Does something have to be "exact" to substitute for something "real"? What do these questions say about the plausibility of the above scenarios? Can experiences be exactly simulated? What requirements must be met for a representation to be "exact"? In the case of a Milo in a far-off future, what kind of tests or experiments would you devise to determine exactness according to your definition of "exact"?

To answer this question thoroughly, you should first explore your intuitions about the scenarios I proposed. First give a plausible definition of "exact" as motivated above and give a philosophical argument regarding the definition and plausibility of "exact" replicas. Then reinforce the argument by appealing to our discussion regarding realism, science and uncertainty. Along the way, you should attend to the various issues motivated by the overlapping questions I asked in the previous paragraph. You are encouraged to consult other references, but ensure you cite them (movies, books, articles, etc. are all fair game).

As always, there is no correct answer, but I think you will find that you will need to consider things from several vantage points to make sense of this assignment. For example, if all this seems like a restatement of the "uncanny valley" assignment, then you probably aren't thinking broadly enough.