[quote="Dianne":295fx8le]I am not sure if I agree with this. We are in fact [i:295fx8le]simulated[/i:295fx8le] characters in a simulated environment, not just real people walking around in a simulated environment. Some of us are not even human. I met an alt of one of our citizens the other day that was an old television set!
We are as Gwyn points out legal entities or pseudonymous extensions of RL people, but those entities are not the same as the real people. In fact, it is the differences between "real" people and avatars that are the real interesting bit, and those same differences that cause all the problems and make the project challenging to me. The very fact that we can also be multiple (have alts), throws a big monkey wrench into what would normally be easily simulated situations for example.[/quote:295fx8le]
An avatar is not a substitute [i:295fx8le]person[/i:295fx8le]: it is merely a substitute [i:295fx8le]body[/i:295fx8le]. The [i:295fx8le]mind[/i:295fx8le] is not virtual: it is real. The bodily aspects are virtualised, but the mental aspects are not. It is the mental aspects that are the important ones, and that are the relevant ones as far as law and justice are concerned. We are all human, even if we choose to be represented in a virtual world by a household appliance avatar: an avatar, after all, is a representation of a real person, not a whole person unto itself.
[quote:295fx8le]I wasn't aware that you were okay with non RL professionals serving in roles, but it hardly seems to matter in regards the plans you have set up. You say yourself above that it would "start with RL professionals," so for me, that is sort of the end of it as well. I am unclear how if a legal system started that way it would ever devolve into having non-RL professionals in it.[/quote:295fx8le]
By training - there was to be established a programme of legal education. People would have been able to obtain in-world legal qualifications. And why ought those who have specialist knowledge and skill in the first life be excluded from bringing the benefits of that knowledge and skill to SecondLife in establishing a legal system?
[quote:295fx8le]My point here was that it is "fair" and "just" to the people in those cultures at that time. [/quote:295fx8le]
There is a crucial logical flaw there: a person or set of people believing something to be just is not the same as something actually being just. A person or set of people can be wrong about whether something is just or not. Whether something is just cannot depend merely on whether people think that it is just, or else one descends into incoherent circularity: what are people thinking that it means for something to be just? If they are merely thinking that other people are thinking that something is just, then those other people would have to be thinking that being just meant that other people were thinking it was just, and so on ad infinitum. If other people thinking are something just in a way other than the the mere fact of believing that others so think, then it is possible that the person might be either right or wrong in thinking that the thing that he or she thinks has that property which he or she calls justice.
[quote:295fx8le]If I was a member of a tribal group that had this tradition I would probably think this was the most sensible way to decide who was guilty. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that the culture and the people in question set up an unjust, foolish system on purpose. [/quote:295fx8le]
That is not the point: the point is that they genuinely, albeit mistakenly, believe it to be just. In fact, it is unjust. It is always better to have a system that is genuinely just. Having a system that one falsely believes is just, whereas in fact it is unjust, is no better than having a system that people know is unjust (and potentially worse, since the defect is less likely to be cured).