Altered Carbon

[DanB]

Sounds like a fun essay

[Snee]

Originally posted by brenda@9 August 2004 - 22:26
Yes I think you are right about the quality of sci-fi and the sub-categories, I think their most important role is to blend the relationship we have as humans with the technology that we can sometimes see as a threat, although I also feel that they expand the imagination and teach us to (or remind us how to) suspend our belief.

Science fiction, to me, has always been a medium of hope, in many cases it shows humanity to still exist long after we are gone.

And it frequently also offers the idea that there are ways to survive for us, that we may not be as finite as we think.

For me it has, I suppose, been a surrogate for religion, rather than the suspension of my beliefs.

Since I never had much fear of technology to begin with, I suppose my appreciation of science fiction, and science in general comes naturally.

I did quite a lot of research last year into sci-fi when writting a criticall assessment of Constance Penley's stsatement that "going into space - both the actuality of it and its science fiction realisation - has become the prime metaphor through which we try to make sense of the word of science and technology and imagine a place for ourselves within it."

Does it ring true to you then?

I wish I'd done something like that rather than digging down into the similarities of utopias, and then searching for similar traits in the dystopian plot.

Which isn't as fun as it may sound.

[brenda]

Originally posted by danb@9 August 2004 - 20:30
Sounds like a fun essay

It was farmore interesting to research than it is to read. I even ended up having my name put on a disc that is going into space on a NASA mission this year !!

[DanB]

Originally posted by brenda+9 August 2004 - 21:37--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (brenda @ 9 August 2004 - 21:37)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-danb@9 August 2004 - 20:30
Sounds like a fun essay

It was farmore interesting to research than it is to read. I even ended up having my name put on a disc that is going into space on a NASA mission this year &#33;&#33; [/b][/quote]

[Snee]

Originally posted by brenda+9 August 2004 - 22:37--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (brenda @ 9 August 2004 - 22:37)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-danb@9 August 2004 - 20:30
Sounds like a fun essay

It was farmore interesting to research than it is to read. I even ended up having my name put on a disc that is going into space on a NASA mission this year &#33;&#33; [/b][/quote]


*SnnY is very, very jealous*

[brenda]

Originally posted by danb+9 August 2004 - 20:38--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (danb @ 9 August 2004 - 20:38)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Originally posted by brenda@9 August 2004 - 21:37
<!--QuoteBegin-danb

@9 August 2004 - 20:30
Sounds like a fun essay

It was farmore interesting to research than it is to read. I even ended up having my name put on a disc that is going into space on a NASA mission this year &#33;&#33;

[/b][/quote]
does that make me a virtual astronaut?

[RGX]

I think it would be hard to tell even if someone tested it and told you. They may say they are in another persons body but are they truly the conciousness of the original person? Or just the data acting as a duplicate and therefore assuming it was the original person?

I hope i&#39;m making sense.

Either way, you would not be able to tell if the "new" body with the persons brain is concious, or if they lost their soul (assuming there was one) in the transfer.....we could end up with a load of copys walking round assuming they are the same as the original but with the originals conciouness destroyed. Whoever the person originally was may be dead...the only way to find out would be to try it, and risk never waking up again and having some glorified neural net walking round telling everyone he&#39;s you.

[Snee]

Originally posted by RGX@9 August 2004 - 22:41
I think it would be hard to tell even if someone tested it and told you. They may say they are in another persons body but are they truly the conciousness of the original person? Or just the data acting as a duplicate and therefore assuming it was the original person?

I hope i&#39;m making sense.

Either way, you would not be able to tell if the "new" body with the persons brain is concious, or if they lost their soul (assuming there was one) in the transfer.....we could end up with a load of copys walking round assuming they are the same as the original but with the originals conciouness destroyed. Whoever the person originally was may be dead...the only way to find out would be to try it, and risk never waking up again and having some glorified neural net walking round telling everyone he&#39;s you.

So your conclusion is that it is impossible to determine?

By introducing the soul you create a new mess.

There&#39;s this scientist, can&#39;t remember the name, who talks of quantuum tubules, and a connection between the conciousness and a higher level.

Whether the souls, or this connection would disappear...now we&#39;re into philosophy.



It is also a "is a perfect copy a person at all, or just a thing?" kind of thing.

In the event you had a harddrive inside you from the start, would you consider yourself to be two people?

As there&#39;s is both the you inside your brain, and the you that resides in the hard-drive.

[brenda]

Kinda going off-topic a bit here but how about comparing it to file-sharing?

Is a copied song any different from the original, indeed is there ever actually an original or just a simulacra?

Is the &#39;original&#39; the one available to buy, bceause as they are mass produced this kind of negates their originality.

Is the original the demo recording done at the studio - because this is made of of different peices of music put together through a machine i.e the drums are recorded first, then the baselin, etc......

Or is the original the song played all together from beginning to end - because any live performace is different from the studio version and also defferent from any other live performance.

I&#39;m beginning to convince myself that there is no &#39;orginal&#39; anything. I&#39;m not even sure that there is an original me

[RGX]

Untill we have a sure fire way of measuring conciousness or soul or whatever you want to call it, I dont think we can truly determine untill we try it ourselves.

I read a book over my holiday called Ilium. Its a sci fi novel with three intertwining stories, one of which involved a race who used teleportation or "fax portals" to travel from place to place. About halfway through the book they found out that "faxing" involved destroying the old human and creating a copy on the other side rather than teleportation. This obviously came as quite a shock to them and they stopped faxing immediatley. It also presents the moral dilemma of "im just a copy, the original me is gone, my memorys werent really experienced by this conciouness", which must be (excuse the pun) soul destroying.

This is much the same as the teleportation technology that exsists now to transport photons in experiments (as far as i know). It involves making exact copys of the original photon, then destroying it.

BTW Ilium is a great read for anyone wondering.