How would humane treatment of virtual life forms be assured?
Only a few readers have addressed this important issue. When humans invent virtual life forms, humane treatment will be a major problem. Inhumane treatment could result in war between virtual and biological human life. Could this be how the microbots came to destroy their creators (Chapter 4)? The microbots of The Observers would control the treatment of virtual life forms in their natural history collection. Clearly, there are ethical issues here. For virtual humans that are core personae of microbots, there would also have to be ethical controls. Such controls may be the purpose of the clan system. The microbots identify closely with their core personae so humane treatment could be a matter of self-interest. In Chapter 19, Laura-bot says, “The idea of having a core persona is to make each microbot a stakeholder in some given place and time in the universe. A core persona should represent something special about a particular planet and civilization at a particular time.” What about th
