Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme

[Radar]

And whether that is important or not is the very conceptual point being explored. If I and my simulacrum both remember being the person I was an instant ago, is the fact that one of us actually (historically) was that person (as in had most of the same atoms) meaningful?

Considering consciousness (so the I that thinks and observes the world through the body) the answer will always be yes, the distinction is meaningful. The problem is, we have no idea what the consciousness is on a scientific level since the neural activity itself does not need any true consciousness to give the same external reactions, so there is no concievable way to distinguish between a conscious person and a philosophical zombie. Without that there is no way of making a definite judgment, yet everyone is fully aware of their own internal experience.

In the context of Schlock Mercenary, it seems that scientists there did find the conscious mind and can distinguish between uploading memories and uploading the conscious mind itself.

edit: I ate a few necessary words, so I needed to put them in.

[Willie the Duck]

Considering consciousness (so the I that thinks and observes the world through the body) the answer will always be yes, the distinction is meaningful.

Unless I am misreading what you are saying, that is a position, not an inarguable truth. Why does 'considering consciousness' suggest that the distinction clearly is meaningful? I think that's certainly the kind of question Taylor is wanting to explore.

The problem is, we have no idea what the consciousness is on a scientific level since the neural activity itself does not need any true consciousness to give the same external reactions, so there is no concievable way to distinguish between a conscious person and a philosophical zombie. Without that there is no way of making a definite judgment, yet everyone is fully aware of their own internal experience.

I know that I am real, and I really think. I only know that I feel like I am the same person as the person that I was some time ago. I can't prove that, if a process occurred and there were suddenly two of me (one made of the original atoms, but both with the same memories), that one of them would be more 'functionally me.'

In the context of Schlock Mercenary, it seems that scientists there did find the conscious mind and can distinguish between uploading memories and uploading the conscious mind itself.

In-comic, they certainly think they have, what with the 'teraport the soul' discussion. They certainly seem to go back and forth on the topic and whether it matters. Tagon muses about the previous Tagon, who sacrificed himself. OTOH, back when and Kevyn and Gav were captive of the UNS (right around when Gav got massively multiple), Kevyn set up the situation where he sent a copy of himself somewhere, then gravied his own position. Something makes me thing Taylor's thought process on the subject is in mid-evolution.

Whether being a copy is the deciding factor is a matter of opinion.

You are correct. Sorry if I implied I get to decide what the comic 'is about.'

[Ibrinar]

You are correct. Sorry if I implied I get to decide what the comic 'is about.'

Nah that was in reply to HandofShadows, I started an answer did something else for so long that you had already answered but I didn't bother to adjust my post.

[Radar]

Unless I am misreading what you are saying, that is a position, not an inarguable truth. Why does 'considering consciousness' suggest that the distinction clearly is meaningful? I think that's certainly the kind of question Taylor is wanting to explore.

I know that I am real, and I really think. I only know that I feel like I am the same person as the person that I was some time ago. I can't prove that, if a process occurred and there were suddenly two of me (one made of the original atoms, but both with the same memories), that one of them would be more 'functionally me.'

Let me rephrase that: I postulate that there is a fine distinction between "functionally me" and "me" because of the internal perspective. With this copying process (or even some symmetric splicing, so there is no way to call one original and the other a copy) both would be functionally the same person as before, yet there are now two distinct people standing there with a separate perspective on themselves.

While we cannot prove that we are the same people as in our memories (just as we cannot prove that our sense connect us to some objective reality), we always assume it to be true since any other stance would not be practical on a daily basis. Moreover, we have an even stronger assumption that we will persist in the future: we plan for stuff we will do later, we fear upcoming situations etc.

This means that at the very least the internal perspective and its continuity matters to us. Consider this: you can travel somewhere by regular means or you can choose to create an ideal copy of yourself at the destination and then destroy the original. Which will you choose?

[HouseRules]

Are you your body, or are you the sum of your thoughts and experiences and memories? Or both?

Worse than that is that consciousness is not continuous because people have to sleep and dream.
Dreams are mostly separate for most people, and totally illogical.
Many people do not remember their dreams when they wake up, only the emotion from the dreams.

[Radar]

Worse than that is that consciousness is not continuous because people have to sleep and dream.
Dreams are mostly separate for most people, and totally illogical.
Many people do not remember their dreams when they wake up, only the emotion from the dreams.

There is indeed a question about the role of sleep in the whole thing and not an easy one. There is a nice comics about a specific stance on the problem. Not remembering something is not enough to declare discontinuity and so is lack of logic - after a single drunken party does not usually kill you. Still, for this we can only rely on neurology and relating brain activity with the sense of self is a bit tricky to say the least.

[HouseRules]

There is indeed a question about the role of sleep in the whole thing and not an easy one. There is a nice comics about a specific stance on the problem. Not remembering something is not enough to declare discontinuity and so is lack of logic - after a single drunken party does not usually kill you. Still, for this we can only rely on neurology and relating brain activity with the sense of self is a bit tricky to say the least.

More Philosophical Discussion:

Since Red Blood Cells Live 10 hours, would you say that they die? Yes.
If each life has a soul, then does the over 10 Trillion Cells that make up the human body each have a Soul? Yes.

Thus, an individual is not an individual, but a collection of over 10 Trillion Souls.

[Radar]

More Philosophical Discussion:

Since Red Blood Cells Live 10 hours, would you say that they die? Yes.
If each life has a soul, then does the over 10 Trillion Cells that make up the human body each have a Soul? Yes.

Thus, an individual is not an individual, but a collection of over 10 Trillion Souls.

There is also a significant problem of what is alive and what is not - for the microorganisms the the distinction is pretty fuzzy. The red blood cells themselves are devoid of many organelles crucial for sustained existence as well as the genetic material, so they cannot reproduce. If we consider them alive, would platelets count as well? If we consider them as just some biomachines, where do we draw the line of life?

[factotum]

You know, I didn't notice Kevyn's clone here coming up with a better plan than Petey did for saving those people, so maybe he should cut the bear some slack until his actions are proven bad?

[Gez]

You know, I didn't notice Kevyn's clone here coming up with a better plan than Petey did for saving those people, so maybe he should cut the bear some slack until his actions are proven bad?

Focus on shielding the planet, only soulgig individuals who are at risk of death due to panic (e.g. getting trampled by a crowd), and if the attempt to shield the planet doesn't look like it's going to work, then mass-soulgig everyone just a couple of seconds before the radiation front arrives.

By acting like he did, he gives people time to focus on how he instantly ended the biological life of everyone at once on a planet.

[factotum]

By acting like he did, he gives people time to focus on how he instantly ended the biological life of everyone at once on a planet.

But that still doesn't make what he did intrinsically bad, and Kevyn seems to be approaching it as if it is.

[NEO|Phyte]

Meat people tend to ascribe significance to their meat. Even knowing that the soulgig preserves continuity of consciousness and thus the generally meaningful definition of life, watching an entire planet of meatpeople physically expire is gonna leave you with the not happy feels.

[Radar]

Meat people tend to ascribe significance to their meat. Even knowing that the soulgig preserves continuity of consciousness and thus the generally meaningful definition of life, watching an entire planet of meatpeople physically expire is gonna leave you with the not happy feels.

Additionally, they ease with which it is done might be even more terrifying. Also there is this thought that bringing everyone back to their own bodies is optional with this device. Petey would not perform a genocide, but the possibility is there.

[Marcelinari]

Hmm. What, precisely, did Petey teraport from these Uniocs that made them die? ‘Soul’ is not a meaningful physical characteristic of a sophont, but the description that Kevin gave of the teraport target - as an aggregate wave-form which may be expressed in any medium capable of analogous wave-propagation - doesn’t sound like a physical target either. Then again, teraportation works by shoving a person’s atoms through teeny-tiny wormholes and reassembling them on the other side, so it must be physical on some level?

If it is physical, however, how is it possible to teraport a person’s ‘soul’ directly into Eina-Afa’s data banks? Surely there must be an intermediary state, where everyone’s souls - and whatever physical mater was removed from these Uniocs simultaneously that made them die - are floating in real-space somewhere, before being uploaded to Eina-Afa?

This is all very confusing. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the metaphysics of the Schlockiverse.

[HandofShadows]

Petey teraported out there conciseness, the mind of these people. So with that gone the body dies.

[Gnoman]

Or, in other words, the soul (or something that you can meaningfully call a soul, at least) unequivocally does exist in the SM universe (just as it does in Star Trek, the other famous "Transporter Paradox" universe), and Petey has discovered a way to interact with it directly.

[Ibrinar]

Yeah that is my interpretation too. But if that is correct that leads to some weird questions too, putting souls in a setting where you can copy people and you won't notice it in any way but where I assume the soul doesn't get copied, leads to the question: what does it even do if nobody notices the difference if you just copy the brain contents? (Though yeah teraport copies matter so that doesn't really answer how it copies that and how it is then transferred to the mindframe.)

[Marcelinari]

Petey teraported out there conciseness, the mind of these people. So with that gone the body dies.

The mind is an emergent property of the brain. There is no organ in the human body where you can point and say ‘look, there’s the mind’. The mind only exists as the result of the brain’s functions and connections. That’s why I’m not too torn up about Kevin describing the ‘soul’ as an aggregate wave-form. In a wave-pool, the wave only exists as the result of the motions and disturbances of the water. It’s pretty distinct, and if you give the wave more space to propagate (by say, opening the gates to another pool and the water and the new fluid merging), it will continue through that new medium.

But have you ever tried to scoop a wave out of a pool? You can’t do it - the only thing you get is water. Even if you manage to extract all of the water that the wave is propagating through at that time, and place it seamlessly into another fluid, you’ve still added a bunch of water to that other fluid. Plus, unless your removal of that water was so disruptive that it completely destroyed the wave generator, then the waves will continue to appear in the original pool.

In case my metaphor was unclear, in this case the ‘Wave’ is the sophont soul/consciousness, the water is the sophont brain, and the ‘other fluid’ is Eina-Afa’s databanks. The wave generator is the sophont’s brain activity.

So Petey didn’t just steal all those people’s consciousnesses and lives, he also specifically stole their brains (or important chunks of them). Or, possibly, I’m still wrong, and I’m also wildly misunderstanding the descriptions in the comic.

[NEO|Phyte]

Hmm, putting some thought into it, I'm pretty sure that what the soulgig is doing is simply cutting the middleman out of the existing nanotech mind backup stuff. We might not be able to point at a specific thing and go "this is the mind", but they've got that figured out in Schlockverse. Which fits with what Kevyn was talking about with teaching the teraport how to grab a mind. The technical details of if it needs to scoop out any physical matter in the process are unclear, but it's not like they can't just regrow those bits if/when they get to go back to meatbodies.

[halfeye]

The mind is an emergent property of the brain. There is no organ in the human body where you can point and say ‘look, there’s the mind’. The mind only exists as the result of the brain’s functions and connections. That’s why I’m not too torn up about Kevin describing the ‘soul’ as an aggregate wave-form. In a wave-pool, the wave only exists as the result of the motions and disturbances of the water. It’s pretty distinct, and if you give the wave more space to propagate (by say, opening the gates to another pool and the water and the new fluid merging), it will continue through that new medium.

But have you ever tried to scoop a wave out of a pool? You can’t do it - the only thing you get is water. Even if you manage to extract all of the water that the wave is propagating through at that time, and place it seamlessly into another fluid, you’ve still added a bunch of water to that other fluid. Plus, unless your removal of that water was so disruptive that it completely destroyed the wave generator, then the waves will continue to appear in the original pool.

In case my metaphor was unclear, in this case the ‘Wave’ is the sophont soul/consciousness, the water is the sophont brain, and the ‘other fluid’ is Eina-Afa’s databanks. The wave generator is the sophont’s brain activity.

So Petey didn’t just steal all those people’s consciousnesses and lives, he also specifically stole their brains (or important chunks of them). Or, possibly, I’m still wrong, and I’m also wildly misunderstanding the descriptions in the comic.

I suspect you are mistaken. I see the mind as software, that can run on any sufficiently capable hardware. So I don't think taking the brains will have been necessary. We'll know before too long what the in comic solution is.

[NEO|Phyte]

Hmm, further thinking on things and a quick stroll through the archives, I am updating my opinion to be that the Soulgig is a remotely-applied this.

[HandofShadows]

Hmm, further thinking on things and a quick stroll through the archives, I am updating my opinion to be that the Soulgig is a remotely-applied this.

That is a very good find and I think very relevant to the current conversation.

[Radar]

One thing I only just noticed from today's page: it turns out Archie knew exactly what kind of technology leads to oblivion, which means the F'sherl-Ganni also had this technology. Interesting that they did not try to use it. They might be one of the only old galactic civilizations, which did not choose oblivion even when they had the opportunity.

[Kornaki]

One thing I only just noticed from today's page: it turns out Archie knew exactly what kind of technology leads to oblivion, which means the F'sherl-Ganni also had this technology. Interesting that they did not try to use it. They might be one of the only old galactic civilizations, which did not choose oblivion even when they had the opportunity.

We know the all star is familiar with the f'sherl-ganni, that knowledge might go both ways. They might have just seen the oafans and the all Star go down this path and decided they wanted to try something different (which would be yet another reason to suppress the teraport)

[Willie the Duck]

You know, I didn't notice Kevyn's clone here coming up with a better plan than Petey did for saving those people, so maybe he should cut the bear some slack until his actions are proven bad?

But that still doesn't make what he did intrinsically bad, and Kevyn seems to be approaching it as if it is.

His response to a solar system's worth of people being in slow (but, admittedly, likely-to-cause-panic) danger was the near-instantly neutralize all their defenses, kidnap them in a manner which could also be used to kill people (which is effectively what would happen, if he chose not to maintain the storage of their minds/souls/whatevers), and in a manner that looks like killing people. You are right, it is not inherently wrong, but it is an inherently frightening power that he has (that others are apparently supposed to trust he will use responsibly). And the fact that the instant he had the capability, it became his go-to action to save people is disturbing in a 'the author wants us to treat this as a big deal' kind or way.

Hmm. What, precisely, did Petey teraport from these Uniocs that made them die? ‘Soul’ is not a meaningful physical characteristic of a sophont, but the description that Kevin gave of the teraport target - as an aggregate wave-form which may be expressed in any medium capable of analogous wave-propagation - doesn’t sound like a physical target either. Then again, teraportation works by shoving a person’s atoms through teeny-tiny wormholes and reassembling them on the other side, so it must be physical on some level?

If it is physical, however, how is it possible to teraport a person’s ‘soul’ directly into Eina-Afa’s data banks? Surely there must be an intermediary state, where everyone’s souls - and whatever physical mater was removed from these Uniocs simultaneously that made them die - are floating in real-space somewhere, before being uploaded to Eina-Afa?

This is all very confusing. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the metaphysics of the Schlockiverse.

I don't think you are misunderstanding anything. It's just that 'souls' are apparently a thing in the Schlockverse, but we just found that out (previously it seemed a very 'we're all just biological computers that can be modelled perfectly' universe with no souls), and it was introduced by fiat in a very 'now you are supposed to take this seriously' way.

[Radar]

I don't think you are misunderstanding anything. It's just that 'souls' are apparently a thing in the Schlockverse, but we just found that out (previously it seemed a very 'we're all just biological computers that can be modelled perfectly' universe with no souls), and it was introduced by fiat in a very 'now you are supposed to take this seriously' way.

This is not true. Those notions were discussed previously in Schlock Mercenary and the distinction between the memory gestalt and a selfstream (a term used in-universe) was established pretty clear by Kowalski, Karl Tagon (after captain Tagon blew himself up), Elf (to a degree; not sure if it fits the list, but this might) and most importantly Schlock himself.

I am sure there are more instances of this discussion around.

[halfeye]

This is not true. Those notions were discussed previously in Schlock Mercenary and the distinction between the memory gestalt and a selfstream (a term used in-universe) was established pretty clear by Kowalski, Karl Tagon (after captain Tagon blew himself up), Elf (to a degree; not sure if it fits the list, but this might) and most importantly Schlock himself.

I am sure there are more instances of this discussion around.

I do like the subtleties around self-streams, gestalts and souls in Schlock Mercenary, I'm not sure I agree with the author, but the subtlety is of itself good.

[Willie the Duck]

This is not true. Those notions were discussed previously in Schlock Mercenary and the distinction between the memory gestalt and a selfstream (a term used in-universe) was established pretty clear by Kowalski, Karl Tagon (after captain Tagon blew himself up), Elf (to a degree; not sure if it fits the list, but this might) and most importantly Schlock himself.

I am sure there are more instances of this discussion around.

I literally have no idea why you think this is contradictory, because it pretty much was my entire point. Previously, including all those post you included, as well as Murtaugh, Kevyn, and Gav/the Gavs, we've seen characters in-universe were having these big existential crises (or not, depending on their personality) over the various forms of person duplication and immortality, specifically because of the question of whether or not the new and old individual was the same person, an to what level. Now, as of this comic, we the audience are told that this universe suddenly (presumably retroactively, and presuming alt-Kevyn and Petey are correct) has something called a soul and all these character's introspective gnashing of teeths and the like have definitive answers, suddenly changing seriously important metaphysical aspects of the strip.

I do like the subtleties around self-streams, gestalts and souls in Schlock Mercenary, I'm not sure I agree with the author, but the subtlety is of itself good.

Agreed. It is an interesting thought space. One rarely covered in sci fi (despite, IFAIC, that's some of the most interesting things that it can do). Altered Carbon also has been plumbing this well. Frankly, I'd rather disagree with an author than have my own preferences reinforced. See how someone else might think of things, and explore the logical consequences thereof.

[HandofShadows]

Now, as of this comic, we the audience are told that this universe suddenly (presumably retroactively, and presuming alt-Kevyn and Petey are correct) has something called a soul and all these character's introspective gnashing of teeths and the like have definitive answers, suddenly changing seriously important metaphysical aspects of the strip.

You missed the link that NEO|Phyte posted to This Strip above. The selfstream has been a concept for a long time. And as shown here removing a selfstream causes immediate and irreversible brain death.

[Radar]

You missed the link that NEO|Phyte posted to This Strip above. The selfstream has been a concept for a long time. And as shown here removing a selfstream causes immediate and irreversible brain death.

That was the point I tried to make: there was no new concept introduced recently - what Kevyn was studying and Petey teraporting was the selfstream. The previous technology to do that (used by Emm and Kowalski) was simply more clunky and could not be used remotely. Whether there is some immortal soul or not is not really a part of the current happenings. Even the fact that a selfstream of an organic being can be ported to a computer was also well established (Thurl and all the other people brought back from Laz-5 dead, Oafans, Allstar inhabitants).