Quote from: Mishihari on April 28, 2021, 03:01:57 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 27, 2021, 09:22:13 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 27, 2021, 08:54:05 PM
I gotta say the world of EP sounds like a hellscape. Where every aspect of your identity, memory, body are up for change.

That sounds like a world where you have dysphoria about everything.

And that's assuming that uploading a copy of your meat-brain's memories and thought patterns means that copy is actually YOU, as opposed to just...a copy. Of bits and fragments of your mind...at the time you were scanned or whatever. And this is just an AI going off out of whatever bits of data they gathered from you.

But that's the part I never bought into about this part of the transhumanist genre. I get genetic engineering and cyber-implants, but uploading your actual "YOU" consciousness into a computer is never going to happen. All you'll get is an AI copy trapped in a meaningless existence, echoing fragments of a once living organism's mind. And all of those fragments can be stripped away through updates and editing.

This sound like the arguments about the Star Trek transporter.  If you use it, do you move, or are you dead and that's a new copy of you over there.  I believe that canonically McCoy always believed that latter but did it anyway for some reason.  I'm inclined to to that point of view as well unless you could prove that the soul moves to the new location.  I believe that the soul, not the brain, is the seat of consciousness, so that would be the important part.

With Star Trek at least I found it easier to suspend my disbelieve because "teleportation". I just figured they just transported your molecules and restructured them somewhere else. Though, it does get tricky and hand-wavy once you start to consider how tha hell does this transporter thing disassembles you and reassembles you correctly without recreating a mindless husk at the other end.

The idea of uploading someone's brain into a computer seems less credible to me because that's just code in a hard drive somewhere. And I'm not even sure how they can scan something as ephemeral as thoughts or even memories to begin with. Even if they could, how much of it could they read?

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 28, 2021, 09:30:39 AM
With Star Trek at least I found it easier to suspend my disbelieve because "teleportation". I just figured they just transported your molecules and restructured them somewhere else. Though, it does get tricky and hand-wavy once you start to consider how tha hell does this transporter thing disassembles you and reassembles you correctly without recreating a mindless husk at the other end.

The idea of uploading someone's brain into a computer seems less credible to me because that's just code in a hard drive somewhere. And I'm not even sure how they can scan something as ephemeral as thoughts or even memories to begin with. Even if they could, how much of it could they read?

It seemed clear that they wanted continuity of experience and identity with the transporter, but we also had, e.g., transporter accidents that gave you multiples of a person.  And the general concept that you can store people and things in the transporter buffer, and recreate it later.

Data is not precious.  Data is not numinous.  Data can be copied, deleted, restored from backup, and edited, endlessly.  To make a reductive claim in your universe that people can be reduced to data and so manipulated is both to make a fundamentally anti-humanist statement, and to open worlds of tactics which, if not carefully ignored by all present, will rapidly take over your setting.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 28, 2021, 07:18:11 AMDo you mean all religions or just Christianity/Islam?

True, not all religeons. But the list above does also include judiasm.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 28, 2021, 10:01:23 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 28, 2021, 07:18:11 AMDo you mean all religions or just Christianity/Islam?

True, not all religeons. But the list above does also include judiasm.

In any case, my scifi would include syncretic future religions because I loved that about Dune. Apparently, in the next 20,000 years there will be two additional Muhammeds.

...just two?

Wow.

I left here in disgust but decided to see what happened to my thread a couple days later. I was amazed to see a real discussion growing out of the shitstorm some assholes here turned it into.

Someone said the the EP world sounded like a hellscape and others said it was.

Yes, that's part of the EP setting, the idea that we live in a world of technological giants and moral midgets. The tech could make things better for all, but people use it in terrible ways. That's true. Just like today's world where we could feed everyone but don't,  We could give everyone medical care but don't, we could stop destroying the environment but don't, etc. Those real world metaphors look bad because our real world is pretty bad.

Capitalism gets dinged in EP. Yep, it does. just look at what capitalism has done to the American middle class in the last 40 years, or just since 2008.  Yeah, i live in america and i'm longing for some of that horrible european socialism we keep hearing about. And yes, the social pendulum is swinging towards what the right calls socialism. When younger americans hear socialism they don't think red banners and marching armies of conquest, they think medical coverage for all, living wages, etc, because that;'s what the right in america calls socialism. The writers of EP are tuned into this unlike a lot of people here.

I don't agree with bill maher on everything but i agree with him on this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohRiNE8GcHU

So yes EP does have a +socialism -capitalism vibe, yes it's intentional. No i have no problem with that. Look at how many eps of the second Dr. Who series made capitalism out to be the bad guy.

Now some people claim that the hypercorps use basically slave labor because they fear using full AGI after the titans wiped out 95% of transhumanity. Ok, that might explain why "indentured infogees" are used and abused as slave labor, but it does not explain why they are treated so horribly.

Someone here attacked Ep for unrealistic tech like mind recording and emulation. Golly goshkins, a RPG set a few hundred years from now with technology we can't do today? Whooda thunk it? Have a look at what you're reading this post on, einstein. How long ago would it have been impossible? 100 years ago we  barely had tube radios and two piece phones requiring human operators and switchboards to work.

maybe you prefer traveller with it's computers that couldn't run Doom, let alone crysis? (I like traveller BTW, but it's tech is pretty  limited.)

As to people forking themselves to create duplicates to serve them, yep, that happens a lot in EP, there are cases where one person has several dozen edited low level forks (copies of his mind) as part of his fanfic series as crew on his ship. A character may routinely use an alpha fork of himself for brief times to cover for him at work while he does his firewall duty. the reintegrate the fork into himself. That's normal in ep.

I'm glad to see a decent discussion started here after a couple days and may drop in to see if any useful things come up. The sad thing is EP would be such a great game to discuss at the site of total evil, but it's such a shit hole of what i have to call the fascist left that i just can't stand to go there anymore. Plus i'm kinda hoping something happens to it soon.

This place is frankly a right wing shithole but at least some posters here are  worth reading and you can post dissent without being banhammered 5 minutes later.

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 04:39:44 PM
Wow.

I left here in disgust but decided to see what happened to my thread a couple days later. I was amazed to see a real discussion growing out of the shitstorm some assholes here turned it into.

In true drama queen fashion, you flounce out like a little bitch, and then come back because you didn't really want to leave, you just wanted attention.

QuoteI'm glad to see a decent discussion started here after a couple days and may drop in to see if any useful things come up. The sad thing is EP would be such a great game to discuss at the site of total evil, but it's such a shit hole of what i have to call the fascist left that i just can't stand to go there anymore. Plus i'm kinda hoping something happens to it soon.

This place is frankly a right wing shithole but at least some posters here are  worth reading and you can post dissent without being banhammered 5 minutes later.

You just have to act like an adult and not come in swinging and then complain when people punch back. If you're up for a suggestion, how about trying leaving the politics out altogether. You started that crap, and then participated in the replies.

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 04:39:44 PMYes, that's part of the EP setting, the idea that we live in a world of technological giants and moral midgets.

I didn't even mean it that way. I meant the baseline idea is a hellish one. You can't really be 'unethical' to people if people are just expendable commodities. And not even in the 'clone slave' sort of deal. In the sense that if everything is infinitely and perfectly replicable then nothing has any real value. This includes people on a biological level and even an intellectual level.
So much of who anybody is is defined by their limitations. In a world without limitations, it's a world where nobody means anything. Its a world where psychotic bug people would not just survive, but thrive moreso than anybody else. Having any morals would truly only be a hinderance.
In the baseline state of that world, I would honestly argue that it would be more merciful if the AI came back and murdered everybody.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 28, 2021, 04:45:33 PM

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 04:39:44 PM
Wow.

I left here in disgust but decided to see what happened to my thread a couple days later. I was amazed to see a real discussion growing out of the shitstorm some assholes here turned it into.

In true drama queen fashion, you flounce out like a little bitch, and then come back because you didn't really want to leave, you just wanted attention.

QuoteI'm glad to see a decent discussion started here after a couple days and may drop in to see if any useful things come up. The sad thing is EP would be such a great game to discuss at the site of total evil, but it's such a shit hole of what i have to call the fascist left that i just can't stand to go there anymore. Plus i'm kinda hoping something happens to it soon.

This place is frankly a right wing shithole but at least some posters here are  worth reading and you can post dissent without being banhammered 5 minutes later.

You just have to act like an adult and not come in swinging and then complain when people punch back. If you're up for a suggestion, how about trying leaving the politics out altogether. You started that crap, and then participated in the replies.

Ok, time to start blocking trolls so i'm not bothered by their shitlording.

FUCK! This board doesn't have a block function?!

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 04:39:44 PM
I left here in disgust but decided to see what happened to my thread a couple days later. I was amazed to see a real discussion growing out of the shitstorm some assholes here turned it into.

You incorrectly pluralized asshole. There was only one asshole.

Notice how real discussion only happened when the person stinking up the thread left.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 28, 2021, 04:52:15 PM

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 04:39:44 PMYes, that's part of the EP setting, the idea that we live in a world of technological giants and moral midgets.

I didn't even mean it that way. I meant the baseline idea is a hellish one. You can't really be 'unethical' to people if people are just expendable commodities. And not even in the 'clone slave' sort of deal. In the sense that if everything is infinitely and perfectly replicable then nothing has any real value. This includes people on a biological level and even an intellectual level.
So much of who anybody is is defined by their limitations. In a world without limitations, it's a world where nobody means anything. Its a world where psychotic bug people would not just survive, but thrive moreso than anybody else. Having any morals would truly only be a hinderance.
In the baseline state of that world, I would honestly argue that it would be more merciful if the AI came back and murdered everybody.

It's an awesome villain ideology, right? I use a variation of this for the hivemind aliens in my original scifi setting.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 28, 2021, 04:52:15 PM

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 04:39:44 PMYes, that's part of the EP setting, the idea that we live in a world of technological giants and moral midgets.

I didn't even mean it that way. I meant the baseline idea is a hellish one. You can't really be 'unethical' to people if people are just expendable commodities. And not even in the 'clone slave' sort of deal. In the sense that if everything is infinitely and perfectly replicable then nothing has any real value. This includes people on a biological level and even an intellectual level.
So much of who anybody is is defined by their limitations. In a world without limitations, it's a world where nobody means anything. Its a world where psychotic bug people would not just survive, but thrive moreso than anybody else. Having any morals would truly only be a hinderance.
In the baseline state of that world, I would honestly argue that it would be more merciful if the AI came back and murdered everybody.

Ok, that's a philosophical debate issue here. I mean what you said has validity and in a good point, but for millennia people have not been duplicatable and still treated horribly, enslaved, worked to beat, subject to genocide, etc even in a world where the can't be reloaded, copies, etc. So thinking the SP  EP would will be worse than what we have nos because people can be duplicated and reloaded might have  validity, i admit, but i don't think it will make the world worse.

Likewise the fact that people can be copied and reloaded doesn't make some factions treat them badly, the scum, the argonauts, etc giver people rights and have laws to protect them even if they can be rebooted after bring murdered.

Now the exhumans have a habit ot murdering and rebooting people over and over again for torture's sake, you have a point with them, but in general i don't think the fact that people  can be copies, reloaded, etc will make everyone treat them worse than they do now. People and ideologies that treat people bad now will still treat them bad, those with different views likely won't treat people worse.

Quote from: Pat on April 28, 2021, 05:18:10 PM

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 04:39:44 PM
I left here in disgust but decided to see what happened to my thread a couple days later. I was amazed to see a real discussion growing out of the shitstorm some assholes here turned it into.

You incorrectly pluralized asshole. There was only one asshole.

Notice how real discussion only happened when the person stinking up the thread left.

oh fuck you your goatcocksucking shitstain. Tired of the ASSHOLES here and not bothering to waste much time on them. You are an argument for mandatory sterilization and retroactive abortion, please do the world a service and step in front of a bus, this board and the world will be better off without you.

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 05:26:10 PM

Quote from: Pat on April 28, 2021, 05:18:10 PM

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 04:39:44 PM
I left here in disgust but decided to see what happened to my thread a couple days later. I was amazed to see a real discussion growing out of the shitstorm some assholes here turned it into.

You incorrectly pluralized asshole. There was only one asshole.

Notice how real discussion only happened when the person stinking up the thread left.

oh fuck you your goatcocksucking shitstain. Tired of the ASSHOLES here and not bothering to waste much time on them. You are an argument for mandatory sterilization and retroactive abortion, please do the world a service and step in front of a bus, this board and the world will be better off without you.

You're a miserable human being, and you did you damnedest to make the thread as shitty as possible.

Nice series of death threats, BTW. That's completely sane and rational.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 28, 2021, 05:18:29 PMIt's an awesome villain ideology, right? I use a variation of this for the hivemind aliens in my original scifi setting.

Even being a hivemind would be more socially cohesive then Eclipse Phase, because at least a hivemind is designed from top down specifically with some things as expendable and others as not. A drone wouldn't torture another drone (unless needed by the hive) because it's bred and created to provide a strictly utilitarian function.

Quote from: matt swain on April 28, 2021, 05:23:34 PM
Ok, that's a philosophical debate issue here. I mean what you said has validity and in a good point, but for millennia people have not been duplicatable and still treated horribly, enslaved, worked to beat, subject to genocide, etc even in a world where the can't be reloaded, copies, etc. So thinking the SP  EP would will be worse than what we have nos because people can be duplicated and reloaded might have  validity, i admit, but i don't think it will make the world worse.

It most certainly would. In such a world, enslavement wouldn't be punished by whip or chain, but just mentally adjusting you until your subservient to your captor. In such a world there can be no genuine emotion because emotions are things you have complete control over. Sadness or happiness are just switches you can flick on. For yourselves or others. There would be no reason to live in any sort of self-restraint because you could just flip a switch and feel ultimate pleasure forever.

And that's not assuming they don't just delete all of you with an army of duplicate drones.
It's already an issue true that less ethical can get power in our world. But in the EP world, the less ethical would get ABSOLUTE power. It just sounds like the writers didn't think through the utterly horrific consequences of their world.

I've gleaned from this thread that someone has uploaded their consciousness to RPG.net and it morphed into a self-loathing sociopath that started a thread on this site in an attempt to do some low effort trolling. Eclipse Phase in full effect.