Considering that human neural architecture is bilateral supporting quad limb use, would sleeving into exotic morphs like swarmaroids, novacrabs and octomorphs require significant editing or modification of neural architectural and thus push the user of such a morph closer to a posthuman state?
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Fluff question about sleeving into exotic morphs
Thu, 2015-01-29 23:57
#1
Count_Zero
Fluff question about sleeving into exotic morphs
Fri, 2015-01-30 00:50
#2
ShadowDragon8685
I suppose that depends on
I suppose that depends on your definition of "posthuman." I imagine it would definitely expand the horizons of the person who sleeves that morph.
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Fri, 2015-01-30 09:22
#3
ThatWhichNeverWas
"My new morph has 6 fingers. What Have I Become!?"
I'd say no.
One the one hand, sleeving into a morph with N limbs is theoretically no different than getting N-2 cyberlimbs, or more importantly no more different than losing limbs. A slight change of worldview is inevitable, but not one significant enough to be meaningful.
On the other, whilst psychological alterations ("Patches") are required to enable the use of non-human physiology, they will be replaced when the ego resleeves, making any changes to the mind-state merely temporary.
Put it together, and any progression towards a post-human mindset will be through the evolution of the subject's sense of self, rather than through the resleeving process.
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In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few.
But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?
Fri, 2015-01-30 13:12
#4
Urthdigger
I think what would push them
I think what would push them towards posthuman is not the editing to allow the use of new limbs, but more how they feel about it. Someone who sleeves into a swarmanoid for pragmatic purposes and feels it's uncomfortable would stay more human. Then you have folks like my main Rocky, who is so into his scurrier morph that he detests being in a human morph for any extended period of time. I would put him as posthuman.
Fri, 2015-01-30 17:33
#5
MAD Crab
Urthdigger wrote: I would put
I don't see it, at least not based on 'I identify with only this body' terms. His thinking is still basically human. Posthuman isn't a mindset, it's a mind -change.-
Have you ever patched software? Then patched the patched software? Then patched the patched...
Speaking as somebody who likes game mods, I can tell you that multiple patches are tricky things, and unpatching is a nightmare of 'what came first? Why is this different?' Even something as conceptually simple as a different number of limbs has got to be a massive change in how your brain works.
Even granting that brains are plastic things and can self-heal bad patches to some extent, I think the original question is an excellent one. Does baseline normal start to drift after many patches?
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Sat, 2015-01-31 00:07
#6
Bursting Eagern...
MAD Crab wrote:
Presumably, the psychosurgeon would have a backup and a record to work with.
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Sat, 2015-01-31 03:54
#7
Chrontius
I posit that while it wouldn
I posit that while it wouldn't force you closer to a posthuman state, it might offer insights, ways of thinking, or other experiences that one could embrace that make you different, and if one decided to embrace the right kind of difference to the point where sleeving a splicer or communicating with baseline humanity is difficult at best, one could be described as posthuman (or, perhaps, parahuman).
Posthuman implies something like a clear-cut follow-on to humanity that doesn't overlap with baseline humanity. The closest you can get to this while sleeving a five-fingered biped is a remade and heavy psychosurgery giving you aspects of a seed AI, but someone changed like that's still recognizable as human. So, keep going in that direction for a couple more decades and you might get something that people would tend to call "posthuman" more often than not.
Sat, 2015-01-31 10:38
#8
MAD Crab
Again, why is everybody
Again, why is everybody focusing on the experiences? Sure, new experiences can expand your horizons. But the question was specifically about the fact that you have to modify big chunks of your brain to make exotic morphs work. Why wouldn't that have a major effect on you? Small amounts of brain damage can cause personality change, and I'd bet that adding grey matter would do much the same.
The best reason I can give for 'no, you stay more or less normal' is that psychosurgeons chop out any reactions that deviate too far. Which is a little bit of existential horror right there, when you think about it.
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Mon, 2015-02-02 01:31
#9
Chrontius
It's not the reactions that a
It's not the reactions that a competent psychosurgeon should be removing, but side-effects of splicing in a cubic centimeter of squid brain to handle a Reaper's six instrumented tentacles.
The experiences of walking on four limbs where either everything or nothing is a joint, and knowing not only hypothetically that you could kill everything on the hab, but the most efficient way to do so at any given moment? That's the sort of memory you ask the psychosurgeon to blunt.
Mon, 2015-02-02 06:27
#10
Lorsa
I've always thought posthuman
I've always thought posthuman had more to do with emotions and thought processes, and less to do with what morph you are in.
Yes, being in an exotic morph WILL change the way you view both yourself and the world. That's the way to become a TRANShuman. In order to become a posthuman, you have to rid yourself of all the evolutionary legacy of a human brain pattern. Reprogram your emotional responses into something completely alien, alter your rational mind to be more, or less, logical.
Becoming posthuman is hard, and requires a dedicated effort on your part. And lots of psychosurgery. Merely sleeving into weird morphs will most likely just make you a very hardened, slightly weird, transhuman.
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Mon, 2015-02-02 06:45
#11
Count_Zero
If one takes the point of
If one takes the point of view that the brain is the mind and therefore modifying the neural architecture in order to operate an exotic morph, won't this have a significant effect on the user's cognition? I think that the brain is far too complex and interlinked to simply excise and modify motor functions without having some sort cascading effect, even with the technology available in Eclipse Phase.
Mon, 2015-02-02 11:33
#12
ThatWhichNeverWas
I summon the dark power of Multi-Quote!
No.
Specifically, because if this were true you wouldn't be able to resleeve at all.
If we accept the principles of uploading and resleeving as presented, then neural systems can be divided into three classes:
A) Systems which purely concern the Morph.
B) Systems which purely concern the Ego.
C) Systems which influence both morph and ego.
Type (A) systems are completely irrelevant for the integrity of the Ego: you can mess around with them however much you want without consequence, and so we can ignore them entirely.
In fact, these systems need not be uploaded at all – they can permanently remain in the morph.
Type (B) systems are absolutely vital. Any and all alterations to those systems will cause personality change, memory alteration and so on. However, there's no need to alter these systems.
As such, we only need to concern ourselves with type (C), and this is where patching will occur – The entirety of (C) will need to be replaced when you resleeve.
What needs to be noted as this point is that these categories do not change.
If the ability to co-ordinate your limbs is Type (A), then it has no influence on your ego. If it's type (B), then it won't be altered when you resleeve, and if it's type 3 then it will be replaced entirely every time you resleeve.
Now, which category each system falls under is an unknown, but the only one which is absolutely necessary is (B), as without it your ego would be rewritten with every resleeve – which means you didn't resleeve at all.
The only scenario where resleeving causes personality changes distinct from those acquired through experience is if something in a (B) system got patched, which is not supposed to happen.
Even then, the change wouldn't be towards being a Posthuman as much as towards body/species dysmorphia.
As an aside, I tend to agree with Lorsa's view on Posthumans – A posthuman is an entity which no longer possesses human (or transhuman) thought processes.
—
In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few.
But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?