Posthuman Blues

Deadly plague hits Warcraft world

In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a "corrupted blood" infection that can instantly kill weaker characters.

The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar's corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.

This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.

(Via Betterhumans.)

A compelling metaphor. If we're inhabiting a simulation, could degenerative diseases be the equivalent to corrupt code or even "bit rot"?

Perhaps when scientists search for the cure for illnesses like cancer and AIDS they're in truth groping for a software patch. Our computational substrate may be diseased or senile, and using our world as a sort of virtual Petri dish in an effort to combat "architect level" decay. Buddhism holds that "life is suffering." If so, maybe the fruits of our suffering are harvested for the greater good of whatever created us; meanwhile, we're lulled into complacency like so many lab rats awaiting the next round of experimental injections.





There's a vein a Judeo-Christian metalogic in this scenario, as it implies that the entity or entities in the "real" universe have a legitimate reason to care about our plight, much like the deities of Western mythology. (Now that I think of it, this strikes me as a plot for some never-written Philip K. Dick novel.)

Personally, I'm not sure I like the idea of existing solely to spawn code for some unseen hierarchical intelligence. I'd like to think we could ultimately transcend to the next level, regardless if it represents "true" reality. (As philosopher Nick Bostrom has noted, we could inhabit a simulation within a simulation -- the total number of spurious realities dependent on the computational might of original reality, assuming such exists.)