Sci-fi ethics question. (hollander ship)

[The Yosemite Bear]

as a variation on the STL colony ship. The colonists are all frozen, and safe from accelleration and other requirements. The crew on the otherhand exists as memory spread out through the ship. When the need arises, the chips can preform vital ship functions or be transfered to the ship's robot drones for tasks. When not actively doing something, the virtual people exist in a fantasy world for their down time. Just how bad is this situation?

[Junghalli]

As long as the crew willingly volunteered for this I don't see the problem.

[The Yosemite Bear]

you do understand the potential mental hell, and why the ship is called the hollander? right?

[Starglider]

you do understand the potential mental hell

No. If you can run all these uploaded minds you can almost certainly run a decently interesting simulated environment. I can't imagine why you'd bother though, why not just suspend the uploads (in a manner exactly analogous to 'sleep mode' on a contemporary PC) when they're not actually needed? Having a full-time VR environment only makes sense if the crew are in medical hibernation rather than cryogenic freeze, and even then only if the technology can't safely keep people in a coma-like state (which seems highly unlikely - hibernation pretty much necessitates minimal brain function).

[Uraniun235]

Presumably there would also be a test-run on Earth beforehand, so as to detect and correct problems in the system before sending them out to space.

[phred]

Would the virtual world need to run in real-time? Can't there be some way to make the trip seem like a couple days/weeks/months instead of the years that the trip would actually be taking? I figure that if your crew is doing it the way you described they had better have worked out all the kinks in the process before they sent it on it's way.

[The Yosemite Bear]

the idea is that the crew is essentially "ghosts in the machine" on board a sci fi flying dutchman, with down time in VR world.

[Starglider]

the idea is that the crew is essentially "ghosts in the machine" on board a sci fi flying dutchman, with down time in VR world.

That makes no sense as a deliberate design decision. It made only marginally more sense when Stargate Atlantis did it as a desperation tactic (S2E09 'Aurora'). If you did it anyway, it would be no big deal. You could deliberately put uploaded people in a horrible VR world to torture them, but if you're going to do that, why bother with the 'colony ship' bit?

[The Yosemite Bear]

sub light travel, you need to have someone capable of making descisions enroute, do repairs, and find a habitable planet.

[Lord of the Abyss]

sub light travel, you need to have someone capable of making descisions enroute, do repairs, and find a habitable planet.

But they can spend most of that time in "sleep" mode or operating in slow subjective time. Or just entertaining themselves in virtual Xanadu. If anything it's the frozen colonists who are worse off, who are still stuck with their frozen meat bodies and missing out on all the virtual fun.

[Junghalli]

you do understand the potential mental hell, and why the ship is called the hollander? right?

What Starglider said; if you can run human mind simulations on the ship's computer you should probably be able to give them a decently realistic and interesting simulated world to pass the time in, and your OP seemed to imply this was the case ("the virtual people exist in a fantasy world for their down time"). Even if that's infeasible then I don't see why you couldn't just freeze the brain simulations when they aren't needed for some task, with the effect that the uploads spend most of their time in an unconscious state. You should also probably be able to do things like keep them in sleep-simulation mode most of the time, or dial back their clock speed most of the time so they usually percieve, say, only a minute of subjective time passing every hour of real time, making the trip bearably short.

It's also worth pointing out that most of the uploads' time will probably be "down time". It's not like they'd probably have a whole lot to do while the ship just drifted through dead space for years or decades on end. Their only duties would be looking after the ship's most vital systems, watching out for space debris, and doing the occassional repair work or astronomical or ISM observations, and much of that could be mostly or entirely left to automated systems.

If for some reason we must assume a set-up where the uploads are conscious and forced to endure years or decades of grinding tedium then yes, it is ethically problematic.

[NecronLord]

That makes no sense as a deliberate design decision. It made only marginally more sense when Stargate Atlantis did it as a desperation tactic (S2E09 'Aurora').

In fairness to that, I always got the imperssion that the virtual environment that the Ancients were in was a system they'd not activated, and that the Wraith came along and turned it on. It certainly makes sense if it was a system already in the pods, for any reason you fancy (say, talking to people in medical stasis) that the Wraith came along and activated to get the information he wanted on intergalactic drives. Rather than that they'd been twiddling their thumbs in VR for ten thousand years.

[Zixinus]

To the OP: Pretty good actually. You have people that are living in a fantasy land until the need arises. The only danger is that the virtual crew might get too entangled with their fantasy lives. There is also a bit of danger of going mad.

But otherwise, they are clearly not suffering, but instead, enjoying the trip. The problem appears to be more of question of design than morals.

[frogcurry]

Do they have the ability to access external media in the form of continuous TV/ information/ science broadcasts from earth/ home? Even if not, then they have the ability to consume any media made up to the date of departure, and do any thing that they wish (white water rafting, mountain climbing and skydiving come to mind) without risk or problem. This is considerably better than real, physical life with its cost, time and geography limitations on such matters.

Assuming the simulation is of adequate resolution and sensation as to avoid awareness and discomfort with its virtual nature, I see no significant, unmanageable downsides to this scenario compared to reality. It'd certainly be better than being physically awake on an interstellar voyage in a metal room with whatever entertainments the builders saw fit to install in the rooms to entertain you, and would allow much better human-human interaction. I would not want to be a frozen popsicle-colonist on a ship run by a small crew of awake humans with nothing but sex and TV to keep them from going mad for X years.

It also has massive potential benefits as a training regime to allow the colonists to maximise/maintain their skill sets using simulated survival, farming and other scenarios. A requirement to do simulated "work" for say 8 hours a day, before you get to do whatever you want in Xanaduville would help to keep a grounding in reality and the need to leave the simulation at the end of the voyage, and build/ maintain skillsets as required.

[Junghalli]

Do they have the ability to access external media in the form of continuous TV/ information/ science broadcasts from earth/ home?

Receiving narrowband transmissions from Earth might be feasible. According to this they could be detected out to 1-100 light years with a 4 meter radio dish. A starship could easily carry such a dish. It should also be feasible to communicate with the starship optically (via comm laser) over even longer distances. Of course, due to the finite speed of light real-time communication would be impossible and all information would be increasingly out of date as the starship got further and further away from the transmitter.

At any rate, I suspect by the time we can seriously contemplate building c-fractional starships computers will have large enough memory that this won't be a serious issue (i.e. maintaining a large enough internal store of entertainment will be feasible).

It'd certainly be better than being physically awake on an interstellar voyage in a metal room with whatever entertainments the builders saw fit to install in the rooms to entertain you, and would allow much better human-human interaction. I would not want to be a frozen popsicle-colonist on a ship run by a small crew of awake humans with nothing but sex and TV to keep them from going mad for X years.

If you have this sort of technology you should probably be able to give living humans extremely realistic simulated environments too. The big advantage of uploading is going to be the reduction in required spacecraft mass.

It also has massive potential benefits as a training regime to allow the colonists to maximise/maintain their skill sets using simulated survival, farming and other scenarios. A requirement to do simulated "work" for say 8 hours a day, before you get to do whatever you want in Xanaduville would help to keep a grounding in reality and the need to leave the simulation at the end of the voyage, and build/ maintain skillsets as required.

Uploads shouldn't need to be trained in the conventional sense, you simply alter the brain simulation to put the knowledge in their minds, and making sure the skills are retained is a simple matter of programming the brain simulator to not permit them to be lost. A simulated work regimen might have some value in psychologically preparing people for certain experiences, but you could do that more quickly by simply putting in fake memories. It might be used as make-work to keep them from going insane with boredom, although personally I suspect I'd prefer the option of doing something more pleasurable with my time instead if I was in that position.

[Lord of the Abyss]

It also has massive potential benefits as a training regime to allow the colonists to maximise/maintain their skill sets using simulated survival, farming and other scenarios. A requirement to do simulated "work" for say 8 hours a day, before you get to do whatever you want in Xanaduville would help to keep a grounding in reality and the need to leave the simulation at the end of the voyage, and build/ maintain skillsets as required.

Uploads shouldn't need to be trained in the conventional sense, you simply alter the brain simulation to put the knowledge in their minds, and making sure the skills are retained is a simple matter of programming the brain simulator to not permit them to be lost.

Maybe; that depends on how well the mind is understood, and on how good automated mind editing software is. Uploading only requires that you know how to scan the brain with great detail, simulate it, and program input for the portions that are already evolved as sensory interfaces. Things like memory and knowledge could still be poorly understood; and even if they aren't your nonsentient programs may not be able to craft "knowledge programs" for something as individually variable and self built as a human style mind. For that matter; the minds in question may simply not allow that sort of thing to be done to them for fear of being edited in ways they wouldn't like.

On the other hand, if you DO have that level of detailed control over uploaded minds, you could probably eliminate the whole question of madness with an error correction program.