Anachronist wrote:

First things first. EP rocks! I mean it rocks like it rocks in Fear Factory. Incredibly dense, atmospheric and powerful. Thanks for making it a free download, I bought it anyway. If for nothing else than to support the future of the game. I'm sure you guys hear and read a lot why your game is awesome and all. I won't repeat it although I support the notion. I thank for some tips in the book as well like humanityplus.org or geomatic. Good stuff that is. Though there is one thing that bugs me a little bit. And I would like to discuss one pretty central aspect of the game and of the transhuman thought altogether. Unfortunately I am not a native english speaker, so there might be some irritating phrases or words I use the wrong way. I apologize for that in advance. It's just that I find the idea of braintaping, infomorphing and resleeving extremely unrealistic. The idea to scan a brain for the explicit knowledge it contains, that is the stored raw facts might work somehow. But the idea to read out personality and behavior of a sentient beeing from the braincells alone is rather stupid, I'd say (sorry). There are just to many body functions (or malfunctions) that have a direct impact on the behavior, the psychic development and the mood and affect of a human. The ability to shrug of physical diseases and mental disorders, the resilience, is formed from a conglomerate of several psychological and physical factors we don't know all. Because they are individually different and rather chaotic. One could say, that science in EP has lifted the veil and transhumanity has the ability to know every single factor for every single person, but that stretches the science thing way to far. doesn't it? And even then there would be the decision to erase all the possible negative aspects, the vulnerabilities from the infomorph or to keep them. But there is the problem that a vulnerability can be a quite protective. Fear and aggression have good and bad sides. So one could say OK, we read out the entire body for the infomorph. We decide the tech is there to find every physiological and psychological factor of a human. And it will all be contained in the datafile. We know the genetics so we know how they will influence the behavior (emotional, cognitive and action) in the future and we will simulate those factors as part of the infomorph. That would leave us with the problem of the developmental stage the person is in. Every human reacts on the exterior influences according to his perception (what have I noticed?) his knowledge about the influence (have I understood, what happened?), the knowledge or rather believe about himself (am I able to cope the situation?). Every single step is different in the different stages of psychic development. But you can't simulate that because it is a matter of maturing. Maturing is a mixed emotional, rational and phsyical process, which is heavily influenced by the outside world and our ability to shrug negative influences of and integrate positive ones. You can simulate maturing but it would be complete guesswork, as you don't know which influences have which impact and when (the can be very delayed). An infomorph that was made under those conditions can not be the real thing. It is just to far from the human. I'd say it wouldn't feel like the person it simulates to friends and relatives rather quick. Unconscious behavior that derives from minimal bodiliy malfunctions might be never actively noticed by anyone, but once it is gone it might be missed. A person that always fixes his glasses on the nose, might get a new body with no need for the glasses. If the computer, that translates the person into data, reads the behavioral scheme of setting the glasses in the right place, might keep the scheme, but build the infomorph in a way that the movement of the hand will only be used, when the glasses are in the wrong place. Thus erasing it once the person stops using glasses. A natural person would probably do the handmovement for the years to come, even when the eyes are fixed. Friends an relatives would be alienated from such a "streamlined" person. So this my concern with the infomorph thing and I think it rather unfortunate that so much of the game is so heavily influenced by it. In the campaign I'm going to run I plan to fix it somehow, though I'm not very sure, how! Anyways cheers and thanks for ther great game!!! So in the en

The uploading and downloading process is more a process of making a sort of virtual machine for a brain to work on more-or-less unmoddified than understanding 100% of how the brain works. That said, great strides have been made in understanding brain function (resulting in AGIs, uplifts and psychosurgery). As for difficulties in maturing minds, it is generally thought that sleeving children, especially young children, in synths or infomorphs can have negative effects, therefore it is discouraged. A transhuman brain is apparently somewhat flexible and can compensate to a certain extent (especially with some help from specialized VR simulspaces and even XPs) and even then you have to worry about integration and alienation during resleeving (so... how does this walking thing work again?) In real life, we can't be certain as to the limits of the brain's flexibility, because we are kinda stuck with one body. In the end, it is, after all, a science FICTION game. It is a harder sci-fi because it strives not to put in human technology that isn't proven impossible by the laws of physics as we know them, but there are a few stretches. All-in-all, I'd say its pretty well thought out and realistic compared to other sci-fi settings.

Anachronist wrote:

It's just that I find the idea of braintaping, infomorphing and resleeving extremely unrealistic. The idea to scan a brain for the explicit knowledge it contains, that is the stored raw facts might work somehow. But the idea to read out personality and behavior of a sentient beeing from the braincells alone is rather stupid, I'd say (sorry). There are just to many body functions (or malfunctions) that have a direct impact on the behavior, the psychic development and the mood and affect of a human. The ability to shrug of physical diseases and mental disorders, the resilience, is formed from a conglomerate of several psychological and physical factors we don't know all. Because they are individually different and rather chaotic. One could say, that science in EP has lifted the veil and transhumanity has the ability to know every single factor for every single person, but that stretches the science thing way to far. doesn't it? And even then there would be the decision to erase all the possible negative aspects, the vulnerabilities from the infomorph or to keep them. But there is the problem that a vulnerability can be a quite protective. Fear and aggression have good and bad sides. So one could say OK, we read out the entire body for the infomorph. We decide the tech is there to find every physiological and psychological factor of a human. And it will all be contained in the datafile. We know the genetics so we know how they will influence the behavior (emotional, cognitive and action) in the future and we will simulate those factors as part of the infomorph. That would leave us with the problem of the developmental stage the person is in. Every human reacts on the exterior influences according to his perception (what have I noticed?) his knowledge about the influence (have I understood, what happened?), the knowledge or rather believe about himself (am I able to cope the situation?). Every single step is different in the different stages of psychic development. But you can't simulate that because it is a matter of maturing.

There is likely no need for simulating the entire body of a human being in order to make an effective brain simulation in the form of an infomorph. As important as all of our body is in keeping our brain alive, it is not necessarily essential to make up who we are. So far as I can tell, I did not become a different person when I lost my teeth or cut my hair. My friend did not become a different person when he had his appendix removed. An amputee does not cease to be the person they are. Essentially that's what it comes down to. Brain simulation is all about narrowing down the necessary bodily functions that make you "you", and extracting them for use in a computer, or to be placed within another body.

Anachronist wrote:

Maturing is a mixed emotional, rational and phsyical process, which is heavily influenced by the outside world and our ability to shrug negative influences of and integrate positive ones. You can simulate maturing but it would be complete guesswork, as you don't know which influences have which impact and when (the can be very delayed).

But how do we define maturing? Is it the biological process by which the organism that is us develops over time (such as puberty), or is it the experiences we have through life that culminates in the person we are now. If it is the former, then brain simulation would need to adjust the simulation accordingly, further simulation the organic change and adjustment that the brain naturally makes. Assuming of course that the person within the simulation does not intend to keep their mind exactly as it is, for whatever reasons (such as maintaining their youthful wit and learning capacity). If we are talking about the latter, however, that's a different story. The experiences that make us will continue to occur whether we are in flesh or machine. We will still experience the world, just through a different shell. Will it make you a different person than you might have been in a different body? Sure. That doesn't make you any less of a person. We are just as much defined by our choices as we are our experiences.

Anachronist wrote:

An infomorph that was made under those conditions can not be the real thing. It is just to far from the human. I'd say it wouldn't feel like the person it simulates to friends and relatives rather quick. Unconscious behavior that derives from minimal bodiliy malfunctions might be never actively noticed by anyone, but once it is gone it might be missed. A person that always fixes his glasses on the nose, might get a new body with no need for the glasses. If the computer, that translates the person into data, reads the behavioral scheme of setting the glasses in the right place, might keep the scheme, but build the infomorph in a way that the movement of the hand will only be used, when the glasses are in the wrong place. Thus erasing it once the person stops using glasses. A natural person would probably do the handmovement for the years to come, even when the eyes are fixed. Friends an relatives would be alienated from such a "streamlined" person.

Does a man that gets corrective eye surgery stop being the man he was? Certainly he would no longer keep fixing the glasses on his nose, since he no longer wears them. Does a person who loses their hands stop being the person they were if they were known for having a signature hand gesture? If you lost your arm tomorrow, would you stop being you? Are we the mind or the body? The lightning or the meat?

Arenamontanus wrote:

Of course, even as a brain emulation proponent I think the model for uploading/resleeving used in EP is likely very unrealistic. But that is a minor matter: it is a fictional setting, and going for what I consider to be realism would not have added much to the game.

Continuity and the alienation effect have been my big gripes since the beginning. What's yours?

Yerameyahu wrote:

"The idea to scan a brain for the explicit knowledge it contains, that is the stored raw facts might work somehow. But the idea to read out personality and behavior of a sentient beeing from the braincells alone is rather stupid, I'd say (sorry). " If anything, surely copying out the personality is *more* realistic than directly reading out the raw facts? It's not like they're stored in specific places, AFAIK.

Latest i have read on the subject gives the impression that when we try to remember something, we recreate the neuron trigger pattern as best we can. This also makes it damned easy to create false memories, and makes eye witness accounts some of the most scientifically unreliable sources.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Yup. Biological memory has awesome associative abilities and can recreate believable memories, but it is not very reliable. Mnemonic augmentation, accept no substitute!

This could easily tie into some systems of law, where a witness with Mnemonic augs is held as more believable than one without. Now, imagine guys with Mnemonic augs making things up...

GreyBrother wrote:

Arenamontanus wrote:

Yup. Biological memory has awesome associative abilities and can recreate believable memories, but it is not very reliable. Mnemonic augmentation, accept no substitute!

This could easily tie into some systems of law, where a witness with Mnemonic augs is held as more believable than one without. Now, imagine guys with Mnemonic augs making things up...

Or one rework the legal system into something that worries more about repeatability and threat to the public than guilt.

Smokeskin wrote:

750 wrote:

Or one rework the legal system into something that worries more about repeatability and threat to the public than guilt.

You absolutely have to add deterrence to that. I don't think such a rationally based judicial system would maximize happiness in society though. Humans have a strong desire for reciprocity, and are willing to make sacrifies to punish unfair behavior. This is evident not just from public reactions to court cases, but also from all sorts of psychological experiments where people play games over a few dollars. I think people would be miserable living in a society they felt were unjust because it didn't punish cheating, stealing and violence in all cases.

The computer is your friend, citizen. And remember, not being happy is a capital offense!

Anachronist wrote:

Yeah, you're right, you might develop a program to emulate hormones and chemical balance, but who would choose to keep a disadvantagous one for his digital self? Wouldn't you rather choose to have an optimal balance? I think most people would. But that way everyone would be streamlined to the best and this would be at least partly a loss of individuality, right?

How so? Is there an optimal balance? Are there not periods of time that chemical balance needs to shift, pertaining to various tasks that you would need to do? Wouldn't the "optimal balance" be an adjustable one?

Anachronist wrote:

I think there is a huge difference between characteristic change by psychic and physiological development and change by erasing parts of the memory. And dying is an unappropriate term entirely. Of course noone dies when he changes his behavior. I'm not so stupid to believe that. And sorry, addiction is nothing you pick up or drop like a habit. It's a terrible chronic and often lethal disease that can sometimes be halted but never healed (or "dropped"). Let's not open that can of worms, please.

Actually, people can pick up and drop habits. Not easily, mind you... I never mentioned a degree of difficulty. But I specifically referenced addictions because an addiction is an extremely powerful thing. One that actually does change personalities and attitudes. One very well becomes a different person, in a sense, when they gain or lose an addiction... but they hardly die and are replaced by someone else.

Anachronist wrote:

I don't know what BCE knowledge is, so I might indeed lacking it, but I apologize for being so unprecise. With christian thought I did not mean a thought which is produced out of chrisitanity. I'm quite sure that the division between mind and body is as old as dreams are, so even older than all religions we know. With the christian thought I meant the dualistic approach on the world. And I know, dualism is not only found in christianity and the christian dualism is a a softened form too. But the dychotomy of light and dark, black and wight, good and evil, man and woman, us and them, material and immaterial permeates christianity entirely. Christian morals have few place for gray areas. The body is only a carrier for the soul. When you die, the physical form rots away, while your soul (which is you) goes to hell or heaven. In the middle ages this took the form of making the devil ruler of the physical world and thus making the pysical world evil. Even today physical urges of sexuality and food are restrained. Of course we find that in other religions too.

"Before Common Era knowledge", as in faiths that existed prior to Christianity. Philosophical dualism is is an explicitly Christian thing, but the concept of intimately tied oppositive concepts dates back to the philosophy of Yin and Yang. It isn't actually the same as Christian dualism, because dualism is based on the concept of conflict. Yin and Yang, on the other hand, are based on the idea that opposites could be intimately tied and essentially create one another... there is no light without dark, man without woman, life without death. In the context of Eclipse Phase and transhumanism, the concept would be represented by "morph" and "ego". While the ego is separable from the body, it requires one to actually function or exist... even if that "body" is just a computer running a simulation. There is no such thing as a mind without a body, even in the setting. On the other hand, a body without a mind is nothing as well; An inert, non-functioning device made of metal or meat.

Anachronist wrote:

Again I say there is a huge difference between changing over time by going through physical and emotional processes (even short ones) and changing by erasing experiences and memories. By loosing your virginity you gained experience, knowledge, insight. Making a digital copy of your brain cuts of sensual input and maybe even the understanding of it. I think you really underestimate the extent of the influence of your body functions on your unconscious thoughts and the influence of your unconscious thoughts on your everyday behavior and by that on your personality.

I disagree. Changing bodies does not erase experience and memory, only changes the ones you will have. Should you become an amputee, it does not erase the memories you have of limbs, it only changes your life experiences from that point on to one of a life excluding limbs. Even if you change [i]your entire body[/i], you aren't "losing experiences". At the same time as you are losing the future experiences of having a human body, you are gaining the future experiences of having a digital existence.

Anarhista wrote:

Anywho, what I wanted to say was if you are not part of majority and doesn't follow casual indoctrination you may think different. I, for example, find my self judging many people, groups, ideas... without realizing what is it all about, so I understand why is hard to understand someone who is different. Fairness and punishing for the greater good may look entirely different if you look through other eyes...

Let me clarify my position. I generally believe in reciprocity, and that should be the basis for fairness and punishment. What this means that if you just someone to be wrong, disgusting, offensive, whatever - that's not a basis for punishment. After all, what damages did I suffer? Going to jail because someone thinks I'm offensive is out of proportion. Even if someone did suffer mental trauma from it, another problem with such subjective judgements is that it would not be a general response, and people shouldn't be liable because someone has extreme sensibilities. It must be harmful to a "typical" person, stripped of the sensibilities of individuals (even if they apply to the majority of a given population, like you might find in a very religious country). Most behavior that doesn't directly harm other people can't be punished for this reason. There are of course cases where even reasonable and tolerant persons could take harm (physical, emotional or financial), and that should be punished, for example if you faked to be a doctor and convinced someone they were terminally ill. I am very much NOT in favor of punishing minorities just because the majority thinks it should be so. In fact, I believe the unfairness, ignorance, gullibility and stupidity of the majority is a huge disadvantage of democracy (it is just majority tyranny really).

That depends on how you define you. I don't think anyone can answer that - it seens to require a solution to the hard problem of consciousness. A more relevant question to me is "what uploading procedures would not violate my instinct for self preservation?" A straight brainscan and resleeving wouldn't be acceptable to me - just because there's a copy of me, there's no way I'll accept suicide. Some of the gradual procedures that transfer to a different substrate could work, but anything that breaks continuitt is a nogo for me. Maybe some future research will change my mind on the subject so I'll accept suiciding, but I'm STRONGLY opposed to that atm.

Xagroth wrote:

Personally, I think the backup and resleeving process (similar to the one using the transporter from Star Trek...) has, technologically speaking, no options at all but to make a copy, leaving the original behind, instead of "moving" the consciousness from one body to another. That would explain part of the stress value suffered by a resleeved ego: he tries to cope with the feeling that he is not "he", but a copy.

How the copy feels about it is one thing - its another thing how the guy getting uploaded feels about it. If it feels like suicide, noboby would do it!

Xagroth wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

How the copy feels about it is one thing - its another thing how the guy getting uploaded feels about it. If it feels like suicide, noboby would do it!

It does not "feel". There are three reasons for a resleeve: death, travel, and "changing clothes". If you are dead, then there is no issue. If you are traveling or switching morphs for whatever reason, then here is the process: you are connected to the ego bridge, all your ego is copied, and then the brain is "cleaned" of all connexions (Alzheimer at its finest...) but I bet the first target of the nanobots essentially turns the body into a vegetable with memories (and of course, the body is inmovilized and anesthesized). So, the guy being uploaded does not feel a thing (also the backup is made before the erasing process begins).

Obviously the person getring uploaded is the one who has made the decision to upload (except for the death scenario of course). So how he feels about is of utmost importance. And most likely he will feel that it is suicide, and so he won't ever voluntarily resleeve. Social or scientific breakthroughs might change things, but currently very feel that they are the equivalence class of processes sufficiently like themselves, as Arenamontanus does (and I can't escape the nudging suspicion that even if he got proof of the existence of his exact carbon copy, actually committing suicide might still prove impossible).

There's a lot of things flying back and forth here. I can't hardly keep track of what may be said or unsaid yet, but I think I'll just add my two cents and someone else can tally how it adds or detracts to the consensus. John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" and "Ghost Brigade" and other books in that series has a lot of similar subject matter I've found in Eclipse Phase. It was how I got turned on to EP in the first place. It's my testimonial, I know. I say it often enough. Anyway, one part describes consciousness transfer from the view of a character undergoing the procedure. During the process he has a moment or two where he has a strange overlay of perspective simultaneous from both bodies. He actually looks at himself...looking at himself, from both bodies. The device they had was similar to an ego bridge, but I think the process in this book is faster than in EP. There is no cessation of awareness by the consciousness. No one really has to wonder what limbo it goes to and returns from. The problem for us here in the modern, "real" world is that we can't imagine how the "me" that sees through the peepholes of its human body moves to another body. One has to plumb the depths of the nature of existence to come up with a pat answer to that. Has there been any luck yet on that? No. Didn't think so. From what I know of EP's process is how it takes a "snapshot" of the brain currently being occupied by ego, then transferring that pattern upon the destination brain. Cortical stacks do this on a regular basis daily, quite frequently. Is our ego just a neural pattern that can be painted or erased from canvas to canvas? I don't know. Is our consciousness is "at home" under those conditions, like some sort of neural native habitat? I don't know. Does it go wherever it finds those conditions? Would forking merely be "smaller" environments where certain configurations of an ego can find expression? I doubt there can be certitude. I had stated in another thread that one has to decide on how they view consciousness itself. Is consciousness a flat quality, like some sort of cognitive dimensional trait, that is configured by the biology it is able to express itself? Does consciousness emerge within proper configurations of matter/biology? Is consciousness a product or side-effect of complex structures? There are two equal and opposite vectors of thought and opinion to this. One can look to be like the other from the outside. It really makes no difference to the external world. Internally, on any sort of personal experience level of this, we might be able to give definition and truth to the matter. More or less, I guess. They might know with greater certainty in the EP setting. And that's where suspension of disbelief is needed to play the game. We can't say no any more certainly than yes. I'm personally of the "consciousness is the self, the body is its suit" camp. Consciousness is consciousness, while difference can be found in where it chooses to live. My consciousness is much the same consciousness as yours. The differences we have are in biology, time, and space. If you had been born when I was, by whom I was (my parents), and lived my life, I think you'd be me. I am already me. But I would be you if I had been you. It's all pretty arbitrary in many ways. But I don't want to reach into metaphysics or religious blather here, so let's leave it at that. One thing to keep in mind is such phenomena as identical twins: very few physical differences, but certainly viable and individual consciousness within each. Many are said to share thoughts or instinct at certain levels. They are probably pretty good at reading one another's moods and thoughts without much visible evidence. It might not be mind reading, but if they live together, I would imagine they have a pretty strong authority as to what their counterpart's motivations are behind actions and such. We could step onward to true cloning and continue to imagine these similarities. Now, we can forget about body copying, and consider consciousness replication. We can imagine twins having similar minds but are separate individuals and even that clones could hold true to that in a similar way, so why not taking it from the other angle? If you spliced perfect genetic duplicates and also perfect mental duplicates, would one have the sole monopoly of consciousness to enjoy? I believe the first reaction to that question is "no." They would both be people in the same sense as us and each other. Did I just make everyone feel not so special? I personally think too much value and importance is placed upon these notions of individuality. Identity is a big issue. Me versus you. What's to lose? I've always found it a unifying factor in my mind, when I consider the depth of our similarities and the superficiality of our differences. Oh, and as an aside, the whole principle of quantum teleportation involves a similar principle as consciousness transfer, right? As you build the duplicate atomic structure at the destination, the original thing is broken down and dispersed. One would believe you'd have to kill a living organism from its original location in order to teleport it elsewhere. Would the creature at the other end turn out to be an empty husk, or will the consciousness follow? Consciousness would transcend space and time then, wouldn't it? Part of the charm of this setting is the pedestrian manner in which consciousness is treated and thought of. Our cell phones and the fact we can do so much that was impossible to imagine just decades ago are taken for granted nowadays, I think EP natives treat consciousness transfer in a similar way. The average person may not understand it, but they'll be damned if they don't get the best gadget that everyone's getting.