All the Best Toys

[Ahriman238]

You hear all the time about how there are no new ideas, and so much of science fiction seems to validate the idea. People will still think and act largely the same, maybe guns will be a little more lethal, and there may be more living space thanks to space colonization, or more energy thanks to antimatter. But even technology, the shining hope of the future seems so often in fiction to consist only of refinements or improvements to existing technology, rather than something entirely new.

But there are exceptions, so here and now let us talk about the technologies that offer radical new capabilities, that bring up serious philosophical questions, that challenge our definitions of technology or humanity and their possible uses and abuses. And not just transhumanism, though that's a part of it.

How about that MRI bed in Avatar that lets a human mind control a lab-grown clone body of an entirely different species? Man, where are the Avatar-eagles? Pretty much the first thing I'd think to do with that tech is get myself some wings and fly. How about the military applications of being able to send in an ultimately disposable rabbit or capybara remotely piloted by an intel-gathering specialist? Or hell, the gorilla-Avatar wrestling circuit. How about disable people who can never leave a bed leading rich and fulfilling lives, while only unplugging to have basic needs dealt with?

What about the part of the Culture books wherein it is discussed how every civilization that lives long enough must eventually deal with the sure and certain knowledge that a mind can be saved, deleted, or copied & pasted into a fresh new body, and the religious and philosophical questions raised by this knowledge. It is implied that some civilizations are ultimately destroyed by this knowledge, but some, like the Chelgrians, come up with novel ideas on the concept, while the Culture just gives everyone the chance to live as long as they like via memory saves, or to live without a safety net. Mortality, the most basic and unalterable fact of our lives, is to them a lifestyle choice.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm. Another one- parallel universe travel. Technology for doing this has shown up in a lot of stories; the one I remember most vividly is Niven's All the Myriad Ways. It deals with an investigator looking into a surge of crimes. He realizes that parallel universe travel is changing people's perception on reality because it makes all possible outcomes of your decision real. That includes the ones where you spontaneously decide to make a fool of yourself in public, or rob a jewelry store, or blow out your brains... with the result that people feel less inhibition about doing these things, and the crime rate goes up.

What are the implications of knowing that all the infinite possibles, if-thens, and counterfactuals of your life are just as "real" as the ones you're experiencing right now?

[Gaidin]

What about the part of the Culture books wherein it is discussed how every civilization that lives long enough must eventually deal with the sure and certain knowledge that a mind can be saved, deleted, or copied & pasted into a fresh new body, and the religious and philosophical questions raised by this knowledge. It is implied that some civilizations are ultimately destroyed by this knowledge, but some, like the Chelgrians, come up with novel ideas on the concept, while the Culture just gives everyone the chance to live as long as they like via memory saves, or to live without a safety net. Mortality, the most basic and unalterable fact of our lives, is to them a lifestyle choice.

This one was handled in a very interesting way by Peter F. Hamilton in his Commonwealth Duology from a criminal law standpoint. I'm not sure what the status of the death penalty was before the technology came about, but it understandably disappeared, while at the same time punishments for various crimes increased or decreased as appropriate, sometimes hilariously so. There were punishments like the convicted would be stored and kept out of society for a few centuries. While 'prison terms' and their use increased to an extent, the cost of prison dropped. With the technological ability to 're-life' its people, the courts were no longer shy about handing out what might be considered an appropriate punishment.

[lordofchange13]

What about the part of the Culture books wherein it is discussed how every civilization that lives long enough must eventually deal with the sure and certain knowledge that a mind can be saved, deleted, or copied & pasted into a fresh new body, and the religious and philosophical questions raised by this knowledge. It is implied that some civilizations are ultimately destroyed by this knowledge, but some, like the Chelgrians, come up with novel ideas on the concept, while the Culture just gives everyone the chance to live as long as they like via memory saves, or to live without a safety net. Mortality, the most basic and unalterable fact of our lives, is to them a lifestyle choice.

This one was handled in a very interesting way by Peter F. Hamilton in his Commonwealth Duology from a criminal law standpoint. I'm not sure what the status of the death penalty was before the technology came about, but it understandably disappeared, while at the same time punishments for various crimes increased or decreased as appropriate, sometimes hilariously so. There were punishments like the convicted would be stored and kept out of society for a few centuries. While 'prison terms' and their use increased to an extent, the cost of prison dropped. With the technological ability to 're-life' its people, the courts were no longer shy about handing out what might be considered an appropriate punishment.

To expand on that: The ability to upload your mind into a computer were you gain super intelligence and get to use up your time playing around in VR.

[Rabid]

The complete redefinition of the notion of "self" as we expand the borders of our uploaded consciousness on the Global Network far beyond what we could imagine now, as a Gestalt form itself from the emergent merging of every uploaded human minds into one or several Meta-Entities.


I do not believe in the so-called "Technological Singularity", but I think it is a theme that could be interesting to explore.

[Ahriman238]

Hmm. Another one- parallel universe travel. Technology for doing this has shown up in a lot of stories; the one I remember most vividly is Niven's All the Myriad Ways. It deals with an investigator looking into a surge of crimes. He realizes that parallel universe travel is changing people's perception on reality because it makes all possible outcomes of your decision real. That includes the ones where you spontaneously decide to make a fool of yourself in public, or rob a jewelry store, or blow out your brains... with the result that people feel less inhibition about doing these things, and the crime rate goes up.

What are the implications of knowing that all the infinite possibles, if-thens, and counterfactuals of your life are just as "real" as the ones you're experiencing right now?

Or even think back to that bad movie, the One. What happens when the evil version of your from the Mirror Universe (or one of the many, many possible universes where you turn out to be a psychopath) migrates to our universe and commits many gruesome crimes, leaving you fingerprints and DNA all over everything?

[someone_else]

How about that MRI bed in Avatar that lets a human mind control a lab-grown clone body of an entirely different species? Man, where are the Avatar-eagles? Pretty much the first thing I'd think to do with that tech is get myself some wings and fly. How about the military applications of being able to send in an ultimately disposable rabbit or capybara remotely piloted by an intel-gathering specialist? Or hell, the gorilla-Avatar wrestling circuit. How about disable people who can never leave a bed leading rich and fulfilling lives, while only unplugging to have basic needs dealt with

I think it would end like Surrogates, with old fatasses sitting in their bedrooms having sex with their avatar-sexy-chick bodies with other avatar-ideal-men controlled by fatasses sitting in their bedrooms.

Casual sex without any consequence? You think anyone would pass up that?

For the general population at least. I'd be with you controlling animals and having fun.

Besides, the entire point of using Avatars in that movie is completely oblivious to me.
Other than the "an Avatar lets you have sex with blue chicks", that is.

What about the part of the Culture books wherein it is discussed how every civilization that lives long enough must eventually deal with the sure and certain knowledge that a mind can be saved, deleted, or copied & pasted into a fresh new body, and the religious and philosophical questions raised by this knowledge.

Rich people manage to do it by travelling to Switzerland or whatever is the place that offers such and fork a huge sum for it, poor keep dying like everyone else since in most countries there will be laws in place that prohibit because it is "unhethical" and their religion's leaders do not want it.

Awesome. Now rich people can accumulate centuries of experience, and start looking at other humans like shit like if they were fantasy Elfs.


The main point behind this is that unless your "technologies that offer radical new capabilities" alters somehow the human mind (for the better or for the worst), it will just become another tool to do the same old things:
-satisfy greed
-have sex
-dominate other men (with or without leather)

That's what the average human wants.

[Mayabird]

The complete redefinition of the notion of "self" as we expand the borders of our uploaded consciousness on the Global Network far beyond what we could imagine now, as a Gestalt form itself from the emergent merging of every uploaded human minds into one or several Meta-Entities.

Am I the only person who views this possibility and imagines the sheer unending horror of it all? Taking the minds of every venal, petty, stupid, self-absorbed little shithead on this planet and merging them together to create an overarching uber-shithead to overwhelm everything else?

I mean, such a Meta-Entity might be cool if it was made of cool people, but being trapped in an eternal mind-meld with the assholes from my hometown is in a deeper level of Hell than my normal images of Hell, which involves being trapped with them forever but without a mind-meld.

[Ford Prefect]

I can't exactly say this with any authority, but to be honest I doubt that amalgam of every human mind on earth will resemble the sum of its parts. It's just my gut feeling, but it seems more likely to me that the result would be something totally different that would have practically nothing in common with any of the individuals that came before.

[Rabid]

I don't think the resulting Meta-Entities could ever be conceptualized in any way close to what we conceive of today's individuals. I think It would likely "fracture" along the line of abstract concepts and basic emotions ; to use an analogy with existing fiction, a bit like how the Warp in 40K "soak up" the emotions of the living, which in turn create "demons" tuned to these emotions and fed by them.

I don't know. It's at the same time very metaphysical AND dependent on a lot of things we don't know yet about how the brain work and how an uploaded mind would function without a proper body. I've read articles implying that the structure of the mind is dependent on the structure of the body and the feedbacks it give, which is what inspired this idea : what if our "body" was the full extent of the Global Network, if it had a World Scale, and we shared it with millions, billions of other people ?

Of course, in such a scenario, it would be likely that there would be at the least crude anthropoid robots, which could be used as a form of tele-presence for the uploaded minds. This also would impact how the scenario play out.

[Zixinus]

Besides, the entire point of using Avatars in that movie is completely oblivious to me.

The point is to have a human that can explore and live in the jungle without relying on mechanical aid.
As well as interact with the native Na'vi. Which I am guessing is the entire POINT of the program.
Humans can't take the atmosphere, remember?

[Skgoa]

I don't think we would join into a true hive-mind, even if the Singularity happened. Humans like their individuality. It would be more like in The Matrix imho. That raises a further question, though: do we stop reproducing? Or are we going to turn ourselves into an unstopable flood of self-replicating nano-machines that turn all matter in the universe into more hardware for our consciousnesses to run on?

[Rabid]

There will always be basic humans, be it by their own choice or by their financial/physiological/whatever inability to upload their minds.

And I don't think you could call something like that a true Hive Mind. The merging wouldn't be a conscious choice, a conscious design choice. I think it would be an emergent phenomenon. More like some form of shared consciousness. You know, like, to make an IT analogy, how in a network, different machines can stock data on the same drive if it is shared, even if said drive is part of none of those machines. Some memories would likely "merge" between individuals. Maybe they could even "float" on the global network, without a proper owner, there for the taking. The "core consciousness", it is likely, would remain individual to some degree, but peripheral things like life experiences, memories, sensory inputs, would tend to become shared with other "core consciousnesses".
All in all, compared to what we experience today as individuals, to live such scenario would be a deeply alien experience to us. After all, what makes us who we are ? Once you stripe us from our flesh, what differentiate us from anyone else ? Is it our life experiences who makes us who we are ? But if we share these experiences ? If we delves into the experiences of others ?

[lordofchange13]

Why should we meld all our minds together? I get the idea,just not the necessity.

[Batman]

Reliably nonlethal stun guns. Suddenly, shooting first and apologizing later if it turns out you were in the wrong become a distinct possibility.

[Rabid]

Why should we meld all our minds together? I get the idea,just not the necessity.

The way I see it, it wouldn't be a necessity.

It could be an accident. An unforeseen consequence of the whole mind upload process.

Imagine millions, billions of people sharing the same body.
Now imagine this body is the Internet, and the people are uploaded minds.
What happen ?
That's the question.

The "mind meld" is but one of an incalculable number of possibilities. I chose this particular one it for its sheer alien-ness and the philosophical and ontological questions it ask us.

What makes us who we are ? How do we define an individual ? What IS individuality ?

[lordofchange13]

Why should we meld all our minds together? I get the idea,just not the necessity.

The way I see it, it wouldn't be a necessity.

It could be an accident. An unforeseen consequence of the whole mind upload process.

Imagine millions, billions of people sharing the same body.
Now imagine this body is the Internet, and the people are uploaded minds.
What happen ?
That's the question.

The "mind meld" is but one of an incalculable number of possibilities. I chose this particular one it for its sheer alien-ness and the philosophical and ontological questions it ask us.

What makes us who we are ? How do we define an individual ? What IS individuality ?

That would be interesting to see. though it's more destructive implications are a little scary.

[Rabid]

Destructive applications ?

[lordofchange13]

Destructive applications ?

No. If a Hive mind were to ever be formed and it, as you and others have posted, has a completely alien mind process. then their is a possibility that it could come at odds with the general human population as it's morality would have to be alien as well. This sort of thing was explored with GAIA creature from the Orion's-Arm world building program. with revolutionary advances like the Hive mind would constitute the status Que could not survive; which might take the form of physical and cyber violence or it might not.

[Rabid]

[ my mind derped and I read 'applications' instead of 'implications']


Yes, who say 'alien', 'unknown', by definition imply that you can't really predict how it will act, or even what will be its base motivations.

If you want to be really dramatic about it, I think it could be an interesting basis for some sort of Techno-Lovecraftian Horror Story.


"We thought that we could play God, that we could cheat Death ; see how it turned out. I have no individuality and I must scream."

[Batman]

Humans have a completely alien mind process to other humans half the time you know.

[Rabid]

Yet we still manage to have meaningful interactions. Because our basic nature is the same.
With something else of a radically new nature, something which reactions we couldn't really 'predict' for lack of a precedent, would we still be able to interact ?
For the unprepared mind it could turn into an unsettling experience.

[Ahriman238]

Reliably nonlethal stun guns. Suddenly, shooting first and apologizing later if it turns out you were in the wrong become a distinct possibility.

This is so. Funny how much the little things can effect the larger picture. But then, we wouldn't have had much of a space program without teflon and velcro. Sure, good stunguns let you be a lot more trigger happy, unless the people you're shooting at are hanging over a great fall or operating heavy machinery or something.

[Batman]

Define 'meaningful interactions' please. Because speaking for myself I have serious trouble understanding what goes on in the mind of a rapist, or a pedophile, or someone who tortures people for the fun of it, yet curiously enough, all of that have (depressingly frequently) been done by humans.

[lordofchange13]

Room-temperature superconductors would be the best toys in my opinion.