As an alternative to having the personalities of dangerous people such as serial killers be changed for everybody else’s safety, what if they could live in a simulation where they can do what they want? My reasoning for this is that everybody is their own person with their own distinct hopes and goals, and that there aren’t really any people who do something without reason in real life as villains like there are in fiction.
On the subject of implants, a problem often brought up by outsiders of transhumanism I try to discuss the topic with is that they could be easily hacked. My solution to this is having self-programming software that can analyse itself for these implants that acts as an antivirus, as it could become highly adaptable to attacks and operate independently of its creators.
Would those simulations contain other sentient beings? Would those be free to leave the simulation at will? Who would pay for the cost of running the simulation?
Sure, determinism implies that everything happens for a reason, and that we are determined by our internal properties that were shaped by the environment. Therefore, dangerous criminal actions are an indicator that something is wrong with the environment.
And when it comes to punishments, I’d argue that even criminals have human rights and their autonomy should be respected as much as possible. They should be given a range of punishments (seen as roughly equivalent from the point of view of the public), and the criminal would have to choose one among those. Getting banished to a virtual world would be one possibility. Getting his mind altered would be another one. I’ve actually written a short fictional piece that contains that theme:
Yes, that would be a very serious problem, especially as implants get more powerful and essential.
Sounds like a “cyber-guardian AI” that should protect your implant security. I guess once we get useful AI assistants, this kind of technology won’t be far off. Another possible way to maintain implant security would be formally correct code aimed at making implants virtually hacker-proof, see:
There’d probably be a mix of sentient and non-sentient beings, sentient beings can visit and leave as they so please. Maybe the prisoner could be taught empathy if that’s what they lack. Data or energy that individuals can store/own in their own accounts could probably be a currency in which the prison gets paid extra to use along with the amount needed to run the simulation.
Prisoners could still have limited contact with the physical world if they wanted to during their sentence.
I think you might find this study very interesting. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/154002NCJRS.pdf
The having your mind altered option might not be something that even needs to be forced on people or even require any new tech… although, I suspect AI technology will be very useful in getting this widely available.