Order of Kilopi
In the Farthest Star/Wall Around A Star books, there is a teleporter that makes copies and leaves the original intact. Human convicts are "rented out" as slaves to aliens while still serving their sentences on Earth. The copies can even be modified for specific environments or types of labor.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Not to mention the other episodes where the transporter malfunctioned and created weird copies of one person.Originally Posted by Noclevername
Order of Kilopi
Or alter someone's age, or get their minds and bodies spearated, or get them stuck on the holodeck...
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Established Member
I think what's more likely to happen in the short term is that someone is going to develop artificial implants of some type to augment brain function. For example, there may be a chip designed to enhance memory. I think that as that technology improves, we will be allow ourselves to be implanted with increasing numbers of artificial devices just so we can remain competitive with the world. I think that once we reach a certain threshold of artificiality it will be difficult to define where the human ends and the machine begins. If we do ever reach that point, I think it will be possible to move whatever it is that makes humans 'human' into another vessel. But it would mean gradually and slowly transferring our mental functions from biological to artificial. Our brains would have to 'learn' to use its artificial components.
If you read people like Ray Kurzweil, he thinks this will begin to happen in the next fifty years or so. I think that is way too optomistic. If I were to guess, I would say that the first people who will take advantage of this have yet to even be born.
But I think we have good reason to develop this technology, because it has the potential to correct so many mental handicaps. So, I think it will start out with the people who need it, and then like everything else it will become available to those who want it. Eventually, the people who refuse this technology will be obsolete. It's exciting and bleak at the same time.
Last edited by primummobile; 2012-Jul-30 at 09:26 PM. Reason: redundant
Order of Kilopi
Oh, and in Schlock Mercenary the race that controls the teleporters keep all the originals for systematic torture for everything they know before being killed so that race has complete knowledge of everything important every other species in the galaxy knows. At least until it's discovered.
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
Order of Kilopi
I seem to remember that one. Once the gate-clones were free, they were legally regarded as the same person as their originals, so the same bounty could be collected on two criminals.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Actually, that brings up another important ethical question. Could the copies be held responsible for the crimes of the original? And people think the ethics of cloning are complicated!
Order of Kilopi
I would think yes, otherwise you'd have criminals copying themselves to get out of paying for their crimes. "It wasn't me, it was version 1.0!"
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Established Member
Even if the original survives along with the copy?
Order of Kilopi
If that's the case, it would depend on whether the crime was committed before the copying process. If it was after, definitely not. If it was before, if the copy has the same personalty as the original, they should be punished for crimes committed before the split. After all, they were the same person when the crime occurred.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
Consciousness of you will carry on, but only in the minds of people (or other animals) who have known you or been influenced by you or something you did.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Order of Kilopi
At the risk of a derail, I have to say that I don't think the basic model human will become obsolete for a long, long time. There will be quite a few who reject self-alteration, on religious or other grounds.
As for when it will happen, there are already some implanted devices connected to the central nervous system to help with certain cerebral or sensory problems.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
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Thanks all
That's about it, I guess.
Tis a shame; I wanted to see what was gonna happen a thousand years from now.
Order of Kilopi
Order of Kilopi
Sorry we couldn't offer you anything more.That's about it, I guess.
Tis a shame; I wanted to see what was gonna happen a thousand years from now.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Established Member
IIRC, Harry Houdini and his wife had arrangements by which they would try to signal to a surviving spouse. After Harry died there was . . . nothing. (See the Wiki article.)
Sigh.
I'm not a hardnosed mainstreamer; I just like the observations, theories, predictions, and results to match.
"Mainstream isn’t a faith system. It is a verified body of work that must be taken into account if you wish to add to that body of work, or if you want to change the conclusions of that body of work." - korjik
Order of Kilopi
Don't we all. Yep, tis a shame, but that certainly appears to be how life is. A thought that warrants but a single acknowledgement, then back to living.That's about it, I guess.
Tis a shame; I wanted to see what was gonna happen a thousand years from now.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Order of Kilopi
If I could afford it, I'd have myself cryo'd, at least then there'd be a nonzero chance that some part of me might be revived. Sadly, it doesn't look like something I'll be able to do.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Established Member
To quote the old joke as best I can remember...
Q. Is there life after death?
A. Watch what happens in this office after 5:00...
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Are cryogenic temperatures strictly necessary? Scientific specimens hold up quite well for centuries in just ethanol and water.
The cellular machinery is going to be shot whether you're frozen or pickled, right? If they can't fix that, then you're not coming back in your original body.
It seems like the best you can do is preserve your gross tissue structure, DNA, and the dendritic structure in your brain, which ethanol pickling does, so far as I know.
Order of Kilopi
It depends on the method they use. They're making improvements in neuronal-level preservation now, by the time I die it might have improved further. As for my original body, they can have it.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Established Member
Wow. I just looked up the prices. 80K for a frozen brain? That's nuts.
Not even if I had the money.
Order of Kilopi
I think you can get a life insurance policy to cover the cost of cryonic suspension.
Order of Kilopi
Remember, that's not just to freeze the brain, but to ensure that it stays intact for the next 100 years or however long it takes.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
Since adapted synapse response is part of learning, once you get the cellular machinery shot it's game over, all information stored that way is gone. Having the hardware won't help you get back from death if you can't save the running software and as that is in volatile memory, to use a mangled analogy to computers, if you lose power it's gone.
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
Established Member
How do you know the "software" is stored biochemically? Maybe it's structural.
Order of Kilopi
As the universe nears Tipler's Omega Point, enough computing power will become available simulate every human mind that ever could have existed. That would include all of our minds, so we'll all be back. In theory.
Order of Kilopi
It's both.
There's definitely a strong biochemical part in that synapses adapt their response over time in response to frequency of triggering, which is one of the mechanisms by which neural networks learn.
Pruning of connections to define structure is another and there's naturally discussion about which mechanism's most important, but it's fairly clear that they are both involved with how the brain changes over time.
__________________________________________________
Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
Order of Kilopi
Except that's pretty much already been debunked-- for one thing it depends on a "big crunch" that current observation says will never happen.
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Order of Kilopi
Except it requires that all the information in all our brains is still around then, which I frankly consider absurd.
Having enough storage to remember every book ever written doesn't mean that every book ever written will be stored there. Some books are lost, and having the room to store them won't magically bring them back.
Not even if you did have access to an L-Space certified orangutan.
__________________________________________________
Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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