The Day Rinnie Woke Up
In my Pony Singularity stories, humans live beside superadvanced artificial general intelligences. The A.I.'s live a virtual existence, for the most part, within computronium that has replaced much of the world, appearing as white, smooth, camera-covered blocky mountains and outcroppings bursting through the ground. Occasionally they detach and float through the air, like machine clouds.
Humans have the option to upload and live as ponies, either in a virtual Equestria, or in manufactured robotic pony bodies. Humans who refuse to upload live either in simple, rural, eighteenth-century farming villages, or in the few remaining cities - exceptionally high-technology enclaves with Beanstalk access to space and beyond. All humans must obey the absolute law of the A.I.'s - no violence, no weapons, being ecologically sound in every way, living lightly on the earth, and kindly with each other.
Humanity will never again be the master of its own fate, but there are many compensations. One of those is immortality, if it is desired. This immortality can come through uploading, but it is also granted to those who choose to remain living in fragile meat bodies. Because all physical things are eventually destroyed by time and accident, the solution is the recording of consciousness and memory in case of catastrophe.
Wondrous and desirable as this is, it is something that is not without a degree existential concern. The question of what it means to be is complicated and multifaceted, as one little human girl shall discover upon...
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T H E P O N Y S I N G U L A R I T Y
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The Day Rinnie Woke Up
By Chatoyance
A Story Taken From Brand New Universe, Universe One: The Pony Singularity
"So this is your very first Backup, is that right?” The machine-pony in the white lab coat smiled.
Rinnie nodded, too nervous to speak. The human-adapted smart chair she was in was huge and very technical looking and there was no doubt about the purpose of the massive section that would fit around the entirety of her head.
The hoof pat on Rinnie’s hand was followed by another smile. “It’s going to be alright… uh…” The lab-coated robotic pony checked her flexipad. The device stuck to her ceramic hoof through some technological miracle. “Marina. Hmm!” Another smile. “That’s a pretty name!”
“R-rinnie.” The nervous girl in the chair fiddled with her fingers as if exploring them for the first time. “I like being called ‘Rinnie’. All my mates call me that. ‘Marina’ sounds sorta fussy, y’know?”
“I like it, honestly. It's very Pony.” Another smile. Lab-coat adjusted some parts of the chair then sat up again. “My name’s Perihelion, by the way. Do you know what that is?"
Rinnie shook her head. Her neck hurt sharply from the effort, because she was so tense.
The mechanical pony doctor watched her patient as she rubbed her neck. "It's the point in the orbit of a planet where it is closest to it's star. Closest to the light!" The pony used a hoof to give Rinnie another gentle pat on her arm. "You can call me Peri, though, if you like."
"Peri?"
Peri nodded. "Since this is your very first Backup, there’s some things I’d like to go over. Newbie stuff - once you’ve been Restored the first time, you’ll be used to it.”
“I don’t think I could ever get used to any of this. It’s way weird. But I’m really scared of death. More scared than of this, you know?” Rinnie was clutching the arms of the big uploading chair, her fingernails white from the pressure.
“Everypony is, Rinnie. Everypony is.” Perihelion looked over her flexipad again. “But, really, this is not scary. Seriously!” Rinnie had a look of utter disbelief on her face. “I mean it. You’re being Backed-Up! That’s the safest thing there is in all the world. Well, next to being a pony like me. This is the one safe place for meatfolk, the one safe moment ever!”
Rinnie did not appear convinced.
“Anything can happen at any time.” Peri was standing, adjusting the large head-covering machine to fit Rinnie more closely. “You could walk out of the Centre and trip and fall, and just like that, you’re dead. But here, in this chair, in this room, once you’re recorded and saved off, you’re… well, safe. Immortal, really. Nothing can ever kill you again.”
Perihelion trotted to the side of the room and used a hoof to lift a small cube off of a shelf. The cube was translucent, made of plastic panels with writing covering it, and various slots for neural-cable plugs and other connections. “You get stored in one of these. Not this one, this is just for demonstration. Everything about you - your thoughts, your dreams, every little memory, all your wishes and fears, your soul, really - everything you are is saved off nice and securely in an MMD just like this one. Molecular Memory Device. Then it’s put into a vault filled with nitrogen to protect it from any damage ever, and you are one-hundred percent safe, forever!”
“If… if I die… then the A.I.'s grow a whole new body for me, and all that stuff gets put into it. My memories and stuff. Then I wake up again, right?” Rinnie held the little cube now. It was about fifteen centimeters on a side and fairly heavy.
“When you die. Every meatfolk does. All meatfolk will. You will, someday. Somehow. That’s why you’re here. In the old days, meatfolk just died. That was it. Gone forever. But with Backups, you can come back. You can get a fresh, young body. Any kind of body - even a pony body, if you want - I'm not trying to be pushy, I'm just saying that you could - and then you can continue, just like a game. You like games, Rinnie?”
Rinnie grinned. “Yeah. Me and my mate Sri, we play all kinds of things. I like Everworld, with all the exploring and magic and stuff.”
“Well, this is just that. Life is like a game, and just like you would save off your progress in your game, you’re saving off your personal, real-world progress now.” This was familiar territory for Peri. She liked using games as an analogy. It was so much easier dealing with the meatfolk who chose to live in the advanced machine cities. There was a common basis for understanding. It was a lot harder with rural types that chose to backup. Fortunately, such situations were fairly rare.
This seemed to resonate with the young woman. Rinnie visibly relaxed. “Yeah. Just saving my game. That’s all.” Rinnie’s fingernails went pink again as her grip released. “Savin’ my game!”
“Alright then. We’re just about ready to begin.” Perihelion hovered her hoof over her flexpad and used the ceramic-like edge to tap a few icons. “I need to do one last thing, though, again, because it’s your very first time. I have to give you the Talk.”
“The talk?” Rinnie had no idea what Peri meant.
“Yes. It’s a standard thing. Recommended procedure. Plus, it will really help you. Just relax, it’s not that long.” Perihelion put her flexpad on the short, wheeled table near the chair.
“I am going to explain what you will experience, and what it will all be like. This will help you deal with it all. So pay close attention, and feel free to ask questions if you need to, okay?”
“Okay.” Rinnie moved her hand across the antiseptic, white armrest.
“You’ll lay back, and get comfortable, and then the neural scanner goes over your head. It’s not as scary as it looks. It’s big like that because it needs lots of tubes to cool off the components inside down to way below freezing.” The look on Rinnie’s face almost made Peri laugh. “No, no… it won’t freeze your head or anything. It won’t even feel icy. The components inside need to be very low-temperature to read your brain accurately is all. Keeping the equipment super-cold makes it really accurate, which is what you want when you are copying a living brain.”
“So… what happens to me, then?”
Perihelion smiled. “Like I said, we lay you back, and you will get sleepy thanks to a little patch I will put on your foreleg. It will make you go to sleep. When you are all the way out, we scan your brain, and store the result. It takes about an hour. After an hour and a half, the patch wears off, and you wake up.”
The human girl thought for a moment. “That seems pretty simple. It won’t hurt will it? I mean… I won’t have a headache after or anything?” Rinnie had been told by one of her classmates that the scanning gave people headaches and did all kinds of awful things.
“No, no. In fact, you will feel better than you ever have before in your life.” Peri’s muzzle had an odd expression. “And... that’s part of what the Talk is about. Now just listen for a bit, alright?”
Rinnie nodded.
“Being Backed-Up can be a little weird, and I need to prepare you for that. You see, when you wake up, after being scanned, things are going to be different. Not you, usually, but everything else. The world will be different.”
Rinnie was confused. “The world? What?”
Perihelion nodded. “Yes. This room - it could be different. It could be an entirely different room. I probably won’t be here when you wake up. There will be somepony else sitting here, maybe even one of the greater A.I.s! Or, your family might be here. You might even wake up in an entirely different location."
The machine-pony moved closer. “You see, Rinnie, getting Backed-Up is sort of like getting to ride in a time machine.”
“A time machine?” This was very strange, and Rinnie had not heard anything like this before.
“Yes. When you wake up, it could be any time in the future. It could be later today, or next week, or even many years from now.” Peri studied the uncertain look on her patient’s face.
“Seriously. When you wake up, it could be ten years from now. It could be a century. Or several. You get to travel in time, to see the future. But you can never go back.”
“I don’t understand. I thought this was just preserving my brain!” Rinnie felt a chill go up her back, and the little hairs stood up on the back of her neck.
“It is that, Rinnie. We’re preserving your mind, that’s all this is. But the reason we back up minds is because meat-life is dangerous. Existence is dangerous. And we all die, in the end. Even ponies and A.I.'s do if they are physical, if they are outside the System, in meatspace. Bodies wear out, or an accident will happen. No matter what, we all die sometimes. It's just the roll of the dice. So… when you wake up, it will be after you have died. You will lay down, go to sleep, and when you wake up it will be sometime in the future, and… you will have died in the past.”
Rinnie sat in the chair, a stunned expression creeping about her face. She shook her head slightly, and then looked at Peri. “You’re going to kill me?”
“No, oh, heavens no!” Perihelion shook her large head, and put a fetlock over Rinnie’s arm. “You signed the No-Termination clause. This isn’t a reboot or an uploading. This is just a standard meat-backup. Nopony is terminating you today.”
“But you said that when I wake up, I’ll be dead!” Rinnie was not happy about the morbid nature of what she had just heard.
“Everything you are, is going to be preserved, suspended, in a MMD.” Peri lifted the cubical device once more, and held it out. It clung to her hoof. “For you, it will be like you are frozen in time. Time will pass, though you won't feel it, and when you wake up, it will be the future. You will have already lived your life, but you won’t remember it. You won’t remember anything that happened to you after you get that patch put on your arm.
“You may wake up to meet your own grand-children. You won’t know them. You won’t remember having had children, or anything that happened. But they will know you, and they will remember having lived a life with you. You may have a partner, a spouse. Anything you might have done will have already been done, only you won’t remember it.
“The last thing you will remember, is me, sitting here with you, and going to sleep. Do you understand?” Perihelion had put down the memory module, and had once again draped her fetlock across Rinnie’s arm.
“No. I don’t understand. How… what…?” The girl looked around, as if the walls or the ceiling might somehow hold a clue. “Why don’t I just wake up and go about my day? I have handball this afternoon with Sri! Why do I die? I don’t understand any of this!”
Peri sighed. “You will. You will wake up, leave the Centre, and go play ball. You’ll live your life normally. That is true.”
“You just said I’m gonna wake up in the future, and that I’ll be dead!” Rinnie didn’t entirely look like she might cry, but it was close.
“Rinnie…. Rinnie. You do both.” The look was daggers. “Seriously. You do both. It’s not that hard to understand. Games, right? You play games. Multiple saves. When I play a game, I sometimes have multiple saves. So I don’t lose anything, right?”
Rinnie tried to follow.
“This is sort of like that. Sort of.” The first time was always the hardest for meatfolk. “We’re going to scan your brain, and make a game save. That save will be frozen. It won’t change. You will wake up and go about your life, until the day you die. Then we take the ‘game save’ and download it into a fresh new body. That is when you wake up, after your death. That is when you are resurrected, and get to be alive again.”
Perihelion raised her foreleg and brushed her artificial mane away from her camera eyes. She noticed that her foreleg needed maintenance soon. The plastic hide and fake fur around the base of it had become ragged and thin. Everything wore out in meatspace. “The you in the future can only remember or know whatever we save off now. It can’t know anything after that point. We are saving you off as you are right now, in this moment. That is what you will remember when you are resurrected.”
Rinnie shook her head. “You told me that I would wake up in the future, and all that ‘time machine’ stuff, and how I would be meeting my grandkids and… now you’re saying none of that is true and that I’ll just go about my life and…”
Peri put a hoof to her muzzle. “Shhh…” Rinnie got the hint. “I guess you could think of it as if there were two ‘you’s. One leaves this room and goes on. The other is stored for later. One day, the you that leaves here will die. That’s when the you, now, the you I am talking to right this minute, gets to live. Both are you. Really you. It’s just that the Rinnie that gets saved off can’t know what the other you does after that point.
“It’s just like saving your game, and then playing on for a few hours, only something goes wrong, and you lose your progress, and have to re-load. Just like that. Except… that any changes you made to the world, they stay. Your character is gone, but all the stuff you did remains. Does that make sense?” Perihelion thought for a moment. "You don't lose any progress you made! When you reload... you get to keep your game progress. You just don't get to keep the memory of how you achieved it - you have to learn about that from others. Make sense?"
Rinnie thought for a moment. It was clear she understood now… she just didn’t particularly like what she was hearing.
“I… yeah. I think I get it right enough. But…” Rinnie was clutching the arm rests again. “It’s dead creepy! Really it is. There’s something about it all… I mean, I get that unless I do this, unless I get backed-up, I’m toast, I’m just gone forever but… The whole ‘two of me’ thing and…” Rinnie finally released her grip once more. “Why… why did you come at me with the whole ‘oh, you’re gonna wake up dead’ and everything speech? I don’t get that. Why say that to me? It’s scary… are you supposed to get me wound-up or something?”
Peri looked down for a moment, then back to her patient. “No. There is a purpose, a psychological value to telling you all of this in the way that I did. Understand - you - the you I am talking to right now - you are actually, really going to be waking up in the future. And waking up, knowing that you died, finding out that you’ve had a life and done all sorts of things… maybe even had grandchildren or moved to another part of the world - all of that can be very disturbing. It can be very difficult. So we tell you this, just this way, so that when it happens… you are prepared.”
“But what about the me that just walks out the door?”
Peri nodded. “I understand your confusion. I was meat once myself, a long time ago. That 'you' walks out knowing that she isn’t going to wake up in the future. It’s rough, I admit, to walk out, knowing that you are the one who is going to die someday. But… you have to understand… both are really you. That’s still you… the one that walks, and the one that waits.
“But the one that waits? That Rinnie is the one that will have the hardest time. Everything will be strange for her. The whole world might be different for her. For the you that walks outside today… just two hours will have passed. For the future you… everyone you know now might be… gone. Moved away. Different lives. There may be all sorts of folks telling her that she has always been a part of their lives! Everything is going to be strange. We have to be kind to that Rinnie. Do you understand?”
Rinnie just sat in the chair, and stared at the wall, at nothing in particular. Peri knew what she was going through. She could almost hear the girl’s mind ticking over, running through the impossible dilemma of it all.
“Have you ever been through this?” Rinnie was very shaken, now. She no longer clutched at the chair, or anything. She seemed strangely beaten.
Perihelion nodded, slowly. “Yes. Twice now. The first time was while I was still meat. That one was especially strange for me. The second one happened after I went pony. Like I said, even machine bodies can die. You get used to it though. Honest.”
Rinnie looked at the lab-coated robotic pony in front of her, at Peri, at this future-future Peri who had apparently died twice and lived to tell the tale. This... person... had been restored from backup, twice. Once as a human, and once as a pony. She had actually died before.
For a moment, Rinnie felt like she was in the presence of a ghost. Then she felt the soft, fuzzy foreleg on her forearm, and a cool patch numbing her skin.
“That’s the patch. In a moment you will feel very sleepy. And in a moment, you will walk out the door, and in a moment you will be in the future.” Perihelion smiled, but behind her smile was something complex, something indecipherable. It was the smile of a sphinx.
“Tha… tha… is sooo weird.” Rinnie felt the patch taking her now, she felt the artificial sleep carrying her away.
As she lay there, the large cerebral scanning unit starting to cover her head, she wondered which thing she would experience. Would she wake up in an hour… or in a century? What did it really mean that both were her?
It was beyond her increasingly addled mind. Rinnie had no choice but to give in to the dreamless sleep.
And then, almost immediately of course, she woke up.
THE END
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Heck with that. Dead-me never existed as far as backup-me is concerned, there's just all these people who were hanging out with my chronologically-displaced identical twin. Doesn't mean squat to backup-me. Never happened to me. Didn't experience any of it. Happened to someone else. Waiting on the shelf in hibernation-mode was a complete waste of time. Upload now, plz k thx.
SOMA!
One of the many things I love about your work Chatoyance, they really make you think about things. You may have just given me several ideas for stories.
6765071
All that plus using the p-zombie actor shells as a data transfer protocol to permit communication and telepresence with other shards of hell.
That was an interesting tale ... in this setting, do people usually get backed up more than once? Is there any ritual or anything regarding this? Like "first backup at 13, with a big party before or after, with a coming-of-age vibe to it"? And Peri could have explained things a little better the first go around, saying that one fork would walk out the door that day to whatever comes, but the other would wake up well into the future.
Oh, are you familiar with a pen-and-paper RPG called "Eclipse Phase"? It's got a lot of interesting Transhumanist stuff that you might like, though it's also got a lot of stuff that you probably won't. A lot of the rulebooks are available completely free on the developers' site, and it makes for interesting reading even if you don't want to play the game.
6812506 P-zombies for telepresence seems a little excessive. No point in all that extra weight if I'm just using a puppet. Unless it's for error smoothing, verisimilitude, perhaps faster response times?
I like them as info carriers though.
6812698
I've never heard of 'Eclipse Phase', but I will google it.
That is such a realistic image. I am certain that some meatfolk do exactly that! It's just so human, and it just feels like a natural reaction to such thing as getting backed-up existing. Yes. That must happen. I wish I had thought of it! Perhaps Rinnie will have just such a party that evening, after handball with her friend, Sri. Probably be presents and cake, like a birthday, perhaps. Maybe she'll get that hologame she's been wanting, and her dad will tell her how proud he is that she went and had it done all on her own, that she insisted on going by herself, because 'she's a big girl now, and besides, yeesh, dad!'
I can so see that.
Really great post. Almost made me write a follow-up story. Almost. Good extrapolation and thinking, Firemind!
6813919 I'd actually be more surprised if there wasn't something along those lines (both from the implications of brain backups being a thing, and the very real psychological need for a coming of age celebration) and now I'm imagining it going along the lines you described. I'd initially pictured something a bit less ... Westernized, actually. And I'm glad you found my comment insightful, and I would like to see more of this 'verse and these characters ... if you want to, that is.
So now, if I get this right, one can only backup meat once per meat-life. Frankly, this seems more like a plot-device than a real limitation. It seems that one could create multiple backups and merge them before burning them into a clone.
In Down and Out in the Magical Kingdom, one can have multiple backups. The protagonist in that story faces a crisis similar to your protagonist:
The backups occur through a neural interface. In addition to allowing backups, is cognitively enhances the user (Isaac Newton would be considered mentally deficient in this world), and connects people to the Internet. The Neural interface fails. What he should do is commit suicide and restore from the last complete backup; but tragically however, he does not have the courage. He has to live, in a mentally deficient state (his IQ is barely in the triple digits), knowing that he will loose every thought and memory he will have until the day he dies, disnconnected from the Internet except through ancient computers with screens, speakers, and keyboard,, and his future clone, decades in the future, will have a memory-gap of decades.
6814298
No, you can backup as much as you like. It is just that this story is about Rinnie's very first Backup. That's all. You misunderstood.
6815196
So now, if I get this straight, every backup will be a separate instance in the future. Why not merge all of the backups into 1 backup and flashbake it into a clone? I do not see why the clone has to have a multidecade gap in her memory. ¿Does every backup get a clone? If a person backs up weekly and lives to the age on an hundred, does that person have a thousand clones running around after the original dies? I do not get it. Please explain.
6815422
How about the most obvious and straightforward answer?
One Backup, per person (who actually wants a Backup, not all do), updated with a new save over the old one, every year, or few years, as desired, or as circumstances allow.
We've already seen, in a previous story, how entire communities shun the whole of this technology - and the A.I.'s as well. Even in the last remaining tech cities, not every human wants immortality or a backup done, just as not all upload. But, for those that do want backups, they get one save, which they can schedule an update for - probably the soonest time would be once a year, rather like getting one's teeth cleaned at the dentist.
It's very simple if you just consider that - from their, future, perspective - this is just a trip to the dentist. It's ordinary, and not everybody does it even if maybe they should, and you only need one backup, because otherwise existential and philosophical issues grow exponentially. Just think of this as ordinary, and imagine how ordinary things right now are dealt with by people. It is really very simple, once you do this.
Because, for them, it would be ordinary.
So, following the above, your questions answer themselves:
Because you get one save game, and you overwrite the previous save when you update.
I know people whose last visit to a dentist was two decades ago. Hell - four decades ago! I go every year. If you give The Talk, you have to account for personal choice and conduct.
Only if they have chosen that option. Some choose direct uploading instead - they die, they wake up a pony in virtual Equestria. Some eccentrics actually ask to only be resurrected after a... century... say, so they can 'time travel' if they die, just because they want to.
Of course not. The A.I.'s would find zero utility in endless copies of the same person - besides, think of the ecological impact - it's already been made clear that their rules are all about saving the natural world. Thousands of clones eat thousands of peoples worth of food, and shit thousands of peoples worth of toxic waste. That's just silly and illogical.
Only one backup at a time. Only one new body, either meat or machine, if you die. Only for the person who actually chooses to do any of this. Some don't, and some are lazy about it. Just like going going to the dentist. Simple and straightforward, because that is what is logical and makes the most sense in every possible way.
Always use the most obvious and simple solution. Occam's razor applies to fiction, too. Especially fiction, because unlike the real world, fiction has to make sense.
"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain
From this moment onwards, there are two of you, but you can never meet. Be grateful for who you are, whichever you it is, and know that for you both there is only one time: the present in which you are alive. It is the gift both of you receive, but cannnot ever share.
6815513
Given your explanation, the speech is melodramatic. If Rinnie has an huge gap in her memory, covering multiple decades, that is on her. The speech should be:
The above is the speech I would give to Rinnie.
6815659
Oh, I like that!
6815733
If you should ever be her technician, then you should do just that. Peri, on the other hoof, feels and thinks differently than you, or I do, and she said what she would and did say, because of who she is as a person.
Writing Protip: When you write dialog, you have to write what the character speaking would say, based on who they are and what they can know. Not what is correct, not what is true, not what is real, not what you know, not what the ideal thing would be. A character should only speak and act according to their unique identity, personality, and experience.
Some people are quiet, some use few words. Some are dramatic and emotional. Other people are bitter, still others are happy. Some know useful things, others only half know what is going on, and some are just doing their best while being clueless - just like real life.
The secret to bringing characters to life is to let them speak, instead of you. You, as the author, know everything. They, the characters, do not. You may be one kind of person, they may be completely different than you. But they can only be themselves, or else they are false, just you speaking for them.
You would say that to Rinnie. But you were not there. Perihelion was. And she said what she said because she is who she is - and she is not me, and she is not you, she is herself. Is she melodramatic? I know several people like that. I guess she is a little melodramatic. Perhaps she has her own issues about being backed up. I think she even suggests that, in the things she says. She has her own, personal issues. Because that is who she is.
And that, that right there, is a major secret of writing.
6815733
That's exactly what I was thinking. The less time between backups, the less you lose.
6816117
6815814
You would not want to use me as a character in your stories. I am rather blunt about important things. I just find that bluntness is more effective.
6816264
Bluntness has its uses, and a character with a blunt approach can be interesting. That said, such characters, outside of specific contexts where they shine (immediate take-charge emergency, cutting through political bullshit, saving stupid people from their own foolishness - that sort of thing) tend to be unlikable. The reason is that all the emotional couching and cushioning, or emotional elaboration is actually a useful human technology.
Like the technology of 'politeness', the linguistic technology of emotional elaboration (melodramatic phrasing or exposition, comforting descriptions, or round-about approaches) addresses the emotional mechanisms within people in ways that permit full comprehension.
There's a place for every character. Context is everything.
6816812
If you would not want blunt characters, do not create a character like I.
I did not comment about this because Perihelion going on about the multidecade gap seemed strange, but, you mentioned storing the datacubes (I assume that the backups are themselves backupped with some of the backups being off-world) in a nitrogen-atmosphere. ¿Why not go whole-hog , and store the cubes in an argon-atmosphere? Even with present technology, argon is cheap:
My windows, which are 2-pane-plus (2 panes of glass with a plastic membrane splitting the airspace) have the airspace filled with argon because it conducts heat more slowly than air (xenon of sulfur hexafluoride would be better still, but they are expensive), much of my food is packed in argon, and I can buy canisters of argon. Argon, being a nobel gas, is even better that nitrogen for storing things and is not that much more expensive than nitrogen. A better choice still might be to store the datacubes in liquid helium, but many substances could not withstand the thermal shock from differential thermal expansion; so now, I get why that might not be an option for the datacubes.
Hopefully my first comment wasn't too snippy-sounding; I was a bit low on sleep when I wrote it.
Since I don't "get" the mindset of someone who'd consider static backups to be OK, but not uploading or transfer to a more durable body, can someone elaborate on what sort of philosophy that would fit?
6817209 I guess I'm just stupid.
6817536
Every human is afraid of death whether they admit it or not. So everyone wants immortality. But if the price is getting a new body - especially a non-TOTALLY-identical one, then some people have issues. The issues that I know about, regarding transfer to a superior substrate include:
It Isn't Really Being Alive
What About My Soul?
The Human Form Is The Choice Of Some God
It Wouldn't Be Me
Continuity Of Consciousness Is Broken And That Is Bad
A Machine Or Virtual Body Could Be Hacked And Controlled
You Are Your Flesh
You Would Become A Philosophical Zombie Somehow
Man Was Not Meant To Have A Superior Body
If It Isn't Meat, It Cannot Really Emote For Some Reason
I Clearly Don't Really Understand Any Of This
Machine Or Virtual People Can't Reproduce For Some Reason
It's Just Scary To Think
I Wouldn't Be Truly Human Anymore And That Is Bad Somehow
Anything That Ends Biological Breeding Is Genocide Somehow
Evolution Would Stop For Some Reason
When Jesus Gets Back He Will Be Mad
I Just Like Being Meat Because It's All I Know (I'm Scared)
It's Playing God
Sex And Food Pleasure Would Not Be Possible For Some Reason
I Really, Really Like Poop And Piss (And That Couldn't Be Simulated For Some Reason)
It Isn't NATURAL
AND MANY MORE!
6817705
I get all those, but how does "download my state into a storage cube, and dump it back into a cloned body when the previous instance dies" work if you believe any of those? No physical or mental continuity, new body (complete with "I saw you die!" from your clone's friends), etc.
I can understand "upload me now" and "this whole business is heresy", but not this compromise position of backups and clones.
6817658
¡That is not True!
You are just not a chemist, physicist, or material scientist. I shall give to you links so that you can educate yourself:
* Noble Gas
* Argon
* Liquid Helium
* Thermal Shock
¡Now you know!
While reading your story, I assumed that your scanner uses liquid helium for cooling.
*Deep breath* … *Sigh*
For the longest time, I have opted not to say anything about the Optimalverse, because it is a nice fantasy, however, using it to ponder philosophical quandaries in the form of stories has started to bug me because from my perspective it is assuming too much. First I shall explain my experiences then explain where I see the problem.
There is a certain level of open mindedness that is considered too crazy to be taken into consideration, but if uploading is on the table, then I hope this will not seem too far off. You see: when I call myself a reincarnationist, it is not a belief; it is an experience. The basis of this experience is that I am born into a body without memory, live a while, slowly recover/integrate the memories from my spirit into the body, live as a more connected me, die, and start the process over again. There is no simple term in the English language to explain the relationship between body and spirit, but can be thought of as a server/client connection. The body's interpretation of the spirit creates the personality of that person.
Anyway, this is important to explain, because the real me is the spirit not the body. For me at least, after death there is a short period of about two minutes that I am still able to see or hear normally, but then all goes black and attaching to a new body is almost completely random. This doesn't interfere with the concept of being uploaded, providing that the computer in question has a means of housing and interfacing with the spirit and draws the spirit to connect to it, however, backups such as the one described in this story do not reliably work because the spirit is more than likely unable to find and connect to the new body. This is especially true if the new body is not ready at the moment of death, however, the randomness of reincarnation makes it possible for that body to be inhabited by a different spirit the moment it is created. Providing a spirit could find their cloned body, that spirit may have to forcibly eject the spirit that has randomly been assigned to it (possession).
The problem here is that in order for a backup to work, a spirit would have to learn how to hold off the reincarnation process indefinitely, continue perceiving without body for extended periods of time, develop a way to detect their clone body from no less than a distance of the size of earth, develop an instantaneous travel method to go to their body, and get good at the nasty habit of kicking spirits out of bodies. From my point of view, by the time a spirit is able to do any one of these things, there is no longer a fear of the change brought by death because they have gone through it so many times that the desire to return to a specific life has dwindled to the point where it is no longer worth the effort.
Desires aside, there is no conceivable way for societies as spiritually ignorant as the ones described in these stories to get the machine to do the work that the spirit needs to do in order to make the backup process work as advertised, so it is not as simple as copying a CD, but more like trying to copy a CD that will only write correctly after the user kayaks alone across the Atlantic ocean then climbs to the top of mount Everest and back.
6819934
OK, I'm not going to argue about your experiences, as you've had them and I haven't.
I do have questions about the brain-mind-soul relationship, though.
We know of cases where physical changes to the brain have led to radical changes in personality and behavior. Phineas Gage is a famous historical example, caused by trauma. We also have this modern example, where a brain tumor caused "uncontrollable paedophilia". We also know that hormones and other chemicals can have huge effects on personality and behavior.
If the soul is metaphysical, what is going on here? If it's simply a case of a "bad connection" between the soul and the body, we've opened up the can of worms that is the p-zombie. It could be that every one of us who hasn't had any spiritual experiences is actually a p-zombie, and we'd back-up just fine, since there's no soul involved. People with souls wouldn't re-establish the body-soul link when restored from back-up, but their bodies wouldn't know the difference. A new p-zombie has been born!
On a different note, did anypony see Wednesday's XKCD comic? It reminds me of CelestAI's reaction. Check it out.
6820478
I loved that one too - and I agree!
6819934 Honestly, while I am philosophically in a similar boat vis-a-vis reincarnation (and have past life memories), I honestly see a lot less of a problem. First, both from what I've read, and my own memories, a spirit will generally take a down time of about 20 years or so in between lives (though that's not absolute), and - having at least limited knowledge of their body's life - would know enough to be watching for a backup to activate. Also, I see no reason why a spirit unencumbered by the body would not behave like other forms of energy, and thus be capable of traveling near the speed of light.
Also, I'm personally not bothered by the idea of "swapping places" with somepony else.
Edit: or maybe this is all one giant brain-fart to make up for me being smart earlier.
6820191 In the case of humans, it is not possible to have a living body without a spirit. From what I have gathered, the brain seems to have a kill-switch as an autonomic function; if a spirit is not there everything shuts off.
As for the relationship between mind-body-spirit, the best way to describe it is like backing up all your data onto a server, then moving to a computer that doesn't have that data installed. The connection to the server is always there, but until the user goes looking for the data or there is a program server side to inject information, the new computer (body) and the old one appear unrelated.
6820927 From my experiences, the down time between lives is about three seconds, but this feels much longer because, at least for myself, I watch my entire life over again from an objective perspective. I believe this happens to everyone, but my only basis for that belief is how a person's life flashes before their eyes when faced with a life threatening situation.
You are presuming that spirits without bodies are inherently able to see and detect over vast distances and are able to move freely, however, it has been my experience that the capabilities of the spiritual body have to be discovered, learned, and practiced just as one has to discover how to use a physical body.
6822006 I'm sorry, I think I came into this late. I must have missed the bit where you clarify what makes your supernatural claims merit consideration.
Let's say you, and by you I mean whatever it is claiming to be the real player at the strings on your side of the conversation, really do have sensations as you've described.
This is an extremely generous position to grant, since it glosses over the obvious consideration that you're making it up.
So. You've got sensations of being connected beyond your current self, and a feeling that resembles memories from states prior to your current biological life.
How do you know they're not hallucinations or delusions?
6822536 The philosopher must doubt everything including what everyone says, because of this, a philosopher inherently believes that everyone is lying. Unlike the idiot's definition of lying a philosopher must give the benefit of the doubt that most people will not be lying out of malicious intent, but instead out of misunderstanding the reality of their experiences. In this way, a philosopher can respect that a person is telling the truth according to their own experience even if that experience does not reflect absolute reality. It is tempting to disregard a person based on a single unbelieved aspect of their account, however, it is the duty of the philosopher to extrapolate truth from these misunderstandings.
William K. Clifford's The Ethics of Belief pointed out that it is not enough to doubt others' beliefs but also one's own beliefs, testing them when possible and hold them in a state of incomplete understanding when not. If a person does not do this, then they too are likely holding beliefs that will inevitably harm others in some way or at the very least stymie a person's understanding and development.
To answer your question, as described above, I cannot prove to anyone that my experiences are real, but in that same regard neither can you prove to anyone that your experiences are real. My experiences are presented for consideration not as absolute fact. I may have failed to include “From my experience,” at the beginning of every sentence, but I am used to conversing with groups that do not need such pretense.
6822006 Wish I could believe you. Just wish I could understand the feeling of not feeling - death.
6815196 Save now and save often.
6817851
The local Poultry-Plant will switch from electrocuting chickens and then slicing their throats while they convulse to asphyxiating chickens in Argon It should be more humane:
Rooster:
"¿Do you feel lightheaded?"
Hen:
"¿Yes I…?"
Within seconds of entering the chamber, the chickens loose consciousness and are dead in less than 1 minute.
If this comment does not make sense, read my previous comment from an year ago. I commented that it would be better to store the storage-modules in Argon.