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I can imagine how to some people it is important that the world has one of "them" around, even if that one is not actually them. Like they are God's gift to the universe. I wonder what fragile copy it would be without our physical reality. Living with pain affects my personality. As does pleasure.

😂😂😂😂

in Soviet Russia, you transport transporters

Conditions in the planet's atmosphere made the copy, the transporter alone did not do it.

heisenberg compensators overcompensated, now riker is in two places

two containment beams simultaneously to break through an interference field, but the first beam was able to complete transport.

It always felt like it would have been so easy to fudge this too imo, like ‘The transporter opens a tiny wormhole directly on your exact location with the exit inside the transporter bay, moves it down your body and then closes it once you’ve gone fully through.’ But they insist on The Disintegrator

But then you have Thomas Riker who seems to disprove that the original “soul” is magically transferred into the new copy via quantum magic.

Ah, tbh I’m a very inconsistent ST viewer, there’s a lot of handwavium I’m not up on. That sounds like hardcore cope from the writers though so they wouldn’t have to deal with all the ramifications of transporter technology that TOS didn’t think through very well

Simon at least has the excuse of being literally brain damaged and unable to learn new information fully.

I happen to think the nature of consiouness is probably some form of quantum entanglement. what we've described as the soul could be whatever the other end of that particle pair is harmony and stability in the link between the two, and likewise with disharmony might explain how one has an inner self

They absolutely feel the passage of time.

David Brin was rude to Kevin Mitnick thirty years ago and I'm still mad at him. I know it's petty but that's just who I am

Bold of you to presume reality has competent project management

since it's all imaginary they don't have to do that. It's like Star Trek sidestepping the whole problem by having transporters turn you in to a conscious and aware energy being instead of breaking you down and rebuilding you. If the immortality ray uses destrctive scanning and fails to maintain

Yeah, this is where I'm at, too. I'd take the deal, too, my meat body continues to betray me.

Also it it did work that way, you wouldn't want it to qntm.org/mmacevedo

The key is kinda in the word "copy"

oh my god. "no you dont get it, that's a new guy now. that's guy 2"

Hell yeah, i haven't gotten to talk to anyone who's done it but my therapist is v familiar with it and I've done a lot of legwork on cannabis psychadelics already so I'm really hopeful? I want my art back if nothing else.

Yup I'm pretty great like that.

There's a good Outer Limits episode about it too: theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/Think_L...

in your defense, there are so many games

Preach

i don't mind that i don't get to be the copy as long as it inherits my credit card debt

it’s not a new problem too! there’s a handful of sci fi from the early 2000s where it’s clear they read the same essay about replacing neurons one by one to ensure continuity; but that’s too difficult on its face and it makes me thing these people are just philosophical zombies, so maybe it can work

Yeah. As an anterograde amnesiac, I have experienced the lack of self-continuity but it was still me, having all the experiences I don't remember experiencing. I don't understand why this is hard? If a digital copy of me is "tortured" or "pleasured" in the future, that's none of my business.

My favourite one of these is Kurzweil saying he can resurrect his dad one day because he has copies of the man's diary, writings, electricity bills,

You get the same shit from techbros but they're idiots so they don't count.

Reminds me of the bit in Borderlands where Handsome Jack describes the approach as "the diet soda of immortality" borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Handsom...

Soma gave me existential anxiety for like six months.

It touches on real fears for people like me: People only have so much patience for those of us with cognitive problems. Many players "gave up" on Simon out of frustration, like the lady in the game. But for me, I'm like Simon. How long until my one companion gives up on me, too?

Pantheon is a documentary

But its better than being mapped out or your brain being sliced piece by piece like in pantheon 😬

It's why brain-in-a-jar is the way to go

You can just have them watch Arnold Schwarzenegger's underrated 2000 sci-fi action film, The Sixth Day

OMG OK I want to subscribe to this conversation so how does this person think the upload will work?

This is why I don't want a copy, I want the full cut and paste. Put me in the cloud baby, the meat body is obsolete.

this one was even dumber because this person was envisioning a tech where it really is just like a xerox of your brain and not any kind of consciousness transfer

they missed a trick by not having someone get scanned twice tbh

I used to think people were more likely to be like, solipsistic? I guess this is better? Like, I GUESS?

There will 100% be a consciousness-uploading startup that raises billions from Thiel types (no relation!) and it will be called Theseus. I've never been more confident of anything in my life.

How do people not understand "continuity" it's like...Seems simple to me lol.

It's okay. I will live forever by making some black goo shit that will make me immortal. This won't drive me totally insane. I'm just built different.

This hits so hard, I freaking love SOMA

...seems like dating is a exhausting exercise.

this match has a distinct lack of gravitas

That bugged me so much about Altered Carbon. No, you're not immortal...you're a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. The original person that was "you" died years ago.

i think it was during one of the barclay eps of TNG that made me realise that if teleporters every became real i would never use one for similar reasons

Literally fried her own processors rather than spend another second in the depths of the ocean with that whiny idiot. (I still feel for Simon, but come on, man. You ran a comic book shop, you should KNOW THESE TROPES.)

I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about that. SOMEONE is going to space, sure!

Yeah, your mind, the thing that you experience as you is still in your head. The thing in the computer is something else, possibly having an experience similar to the one you're having, but probably not

Maybe if reincarnation is a thing the Crazy Taxi guy goes 'Hey hey, who's ready to experience some crazy existential dread' right before starting again

Valuable Humans in Transit by @qntm.org thoroughly and viscerally stripped me off ever wanting to be an uploaded brain

"Internalize" is a thing human minds do, which is notably not the thing you're playing in soma. the hands are the first and most blatant example of this but

Eternal Guyhood of the Uploaded mind

it's not really "bonus" time, it's just some goop that happens to mostly remember someone else first.

I always try to keep in mind that Simon had literal terminal brain damage at the time of his scan. He's relatively lucid at that point, but he's not "firing on all cylinders" so to speak. Certain concepts he struggles to process, especially with the way the digital mind tries to protect itself.

Folks, this is the sort of content you only get when Rowan is 80 percent asleep from the covid vaccine hangover

It's ok, I know Mr Beast is a clone

'it's a fifty fifty shot' my man...no...

I've also only had one actual relationship in the last 5 years, so also maybe don't take my advice lol

I figured this shit out in elementary school

The Bobiverse would disagree

Halfway through your post I was going to”just get them to play SOMA” but you beat me to it lol

Too much effort for a dating app. I'd just unmatch.

Next step - Star Trek Teleportation Death

Okay but what if I put my brain in the CD tray and push it in? Loopholes, bay-BEE!

that is wrong though

and this is the kind of existential question that comes with not being human in a *biological* sense any more, since how our "minds" work or "thinking" works carries an infinite bucket of assumptions and unspoken (unspeakable? unnoticable?) prerequisites that just aren't there

ok but did you know that the human body consists of up to 75 trillion individual cells? They typically don't stay with us 'til we die, some live a few days, while others live a few years. I don't think anyone would argue that we ever lose our persona due to this process, yet we are clearly in a cons

Like I will grant that a version of me might persist in digital form, and knowing myself that version is likely to appreciate it, but I'm not going to be the beneficiary of that. Unless we have to invoke the quantum "No Clone" theorem in which case I died in the process.

Silverhand Lives!

Ok i cackled

You live twice as wide.

Well, (spoilers) ~ ~ ~ ~ that's the same arc, of course