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Author Topic: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?  (Read 37842 times)

Rhedyn
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #180 on: April 28, 2021, 11:28:56 PM »
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.

Yeah, the whole "Back yourself up and live forever!" horseshit that transhumanists get into doesn't take in to account your gestalt.  Look, if I make a backup of you, and you're both standing there, and I kill you, the you that's reading this right now?  YOU are dead.  It's over.  Now, if you're a spiritual person, and you believe you go to an afterlife, rock on.  But YOU YOU is dead.  Your experience of the now, reality, is switched off.  It doesn't jump over into the other person.  From my perspective, that other you, that backup, is for my convenience.  The only way around that is to transfer that gestalt from YOU to HIM.  Not ctrl-c, ctrl-v, but ctrl-x, ctrl-v.  And if the latter is done, and the copy you got ctrl-x/ctrl-v'ed into dies?  You're still dead.  Sure, if you face no hazards beyond aging, it is a way to live forever, but the minute someone kills whatever your consciousness - I mean YOUR consciousness, not a copy! - is in, then that's it.  Game over. 

Some people will bring up the whole "Aha, but when you go to sleep you effectively aren't the same person...!"  Yes, you are.  The gestalt continues, albeit through the surreal mindscape of unconscious dream, but the thread is unbroken.  It's not like when I go to sleep tonight, I die, and a new Bill Silvey awakens tomorrow and keeps on chugging.  That's not how it works.  And if it is, at what point does the copy kick in?  The minute I drift off to sleep?  During deep REM?  shallow sleep prior to awakening?  And if you interrupt any of that, am I now both me and this hypothetical copy?  No: sleep is a continuation of gestalt, not a termination of it, and a new gestalt begins at awakening.

"Upload my consciousness" bitch please.  If putting yourself on a floppy disk or atari cartridge is just as valid a "you" as the you that is your gestalt, then typing out your life's history onto paper is a copy of your consciousness!

(And it ain't)
Suppose there is an all-powerful God.

Suppose said God constructs this concept called a Soul that is truly you and is what remains of you when your time on this mortal coil is over.

This God then has the final say in what goes into this Soul, what it is morally responsible for and all definitions of YOU.

If God puts all the back-ups, forks, merges etc into this Soul, and once you are completely erased or existence ends, then that one being continues on, then by Divine Command theory YOU were backed up and continued as one entity in the material plane because God said so and decided that is how it would work.

Would God do this? There are arguments to be made for and against, but that is not the point of this hypothetical. If God did, then certain things are objectively true by definition of one who can truly define things however they wish.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #181 on: April 28, 2021, 11:33:24 PM »
If God puts all the back-ups, forks, merges etc into this Soul, and once you are completely erased or existence ends, then that one being continues on, then by Divine Command theory YOU were backed up and continued as one entity in the material plane because God said so and decided that is how it would work.

I'm confused as to how this relates to transhumanist theory.

thedungeondelver

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #182 on: April 28, 2021, 11:48:19 PM »
If God puts all the back-ups, forks, merges etc into this Soul, and once you are completely erased or existence ends, then that one being continues on, then by Divine Command theory YOU were backed up and continued as one entity in the material plane because God said so and decided that is how it would work.

I'm confused as to how this relates to transhumanist theory.

Yeah, I am too.

Transhumanism is hooha of the hooest of ha's. 
THE DELVERS DUNGEON


Mcbobbo sums it up nicely.

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Astrophysicists are reassessing Einsteinian relativity because the 28 billion l

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #183 on: April 28, 2021, 11:55:01 PM »
The case is so much of what makes us human is tied to our bodies. It's possible it's not going to actually be possible to digitize because its complexity is tied to molecular processes that are tied entirely to our biological processes. Simulating that (even in short hand) will require so much energy I'm not sure how viable that will really be.

People go nuts from even minor adjustments to their body or mismatches from the brain to the body. I'm sceptical of the idea of a brain detached from any real stimulus wouldn't go nuts immediately. People get bodily dysphoria from minor chemical imbalances, and then get severe depression just from that alone.

The kind of brain that wouldn't, would be as alien to a human as a jellyfish.

Rhedyn
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #184 on: April 29, 2021, 12:00:36 AM »
If God puts all the back-ups, forks, merges etc into this Soul, and once you are completely erased or existence ends, then that one being continues on, then by Divine Command theory YOU were backed up and continued as one entity in the material plane because God said so and decided that is how it would work.

I'm confused as to how this relates to transhumanist theory.
In Nova Praxis, the transhumist sides of religions subscribe to this kind spiritual perspective that they are the same person when backed up and not multiple people since there would be one soul.

The spiritual belief then can translate to a purely philosophical one. Why would "being" and "identity" intrinsically hinge on continuous experience? If you get black-out drunk, you still did all those things even if you don't remember them. That time period still is part of what defines you. Forgotten memories are still part of your life. What some people get hung up on is the meat sack being the same, but even that is not the one you started with. Nearly every molecule is different from when you were born.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #185 on: April 29, 2021, 12:07:35 AM »
In Nova Praxis, the transhumist sides of religions subscribe to this kind spiritual perspective that they are the same person when backed up and not multiple people since there would be one soul.

That's interesting. Solving a practical sci-fi matter with a philosophical/ religious answer. It does make sense that some level of theology would be required to make a society like that function. That's sort of an expanded version of our current societies.

So do people in Nova Praxis have children? A society where children don't exist is one that sounds pretty dystopian to me.

Why would "being" and "identity" intrinsically hinge on continuous experience?

That sort of logic can be expanded to treating every person as just an extension of 'you'. Once you do that, your back to 0 where even if everybody is an extension of you, your current consciousness is exclusive to you.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2021, 12:13:32 AM by Shrieking Banshee »

Pat
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #186 on: April 29, 2021, 12:28:08 AM »
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.

Yeah, the whole "Back yourself up and live forever!" horseshit that transhumanists get into doesn't take in to account your gestalt.  Look, if I make a backup of you, and you're both standing there, and I kill you, the you that's reading this right now?  YOU are dead.  It's over.  Now, if you're a spiritual person, and you believe you go to an afterlife, rock on.  But YOU YOU is dead.  Your experience of the now, reality, is switched off.  It doesn't jump over into the other person.  From my perspective, that other you, that backup, is for my convenience.  The only way around that is to transfer that gestalt from YOU to HIM.  Not ctrl-c, ctrl-v, but ctrl-x, ctrl-v.  And if the latter is done, and the copy you got ctrl-x/ctrl-v'ed into dies?  You're still dead.  Sure, if you face no hazards beyond aging, it is a way to live forever, but the minute someone kills whatever your consciousness - I mean YOUR consciousness, not a copy! - is in, then that's it.  Game over. 

Some people will bring up the whole "Aha, but when you go to sleep you effectively aren't the same person...!"  Yes, you are.  The gestalt continues, albeit through the surreal mindscape of unconscious dream, but the thread is unbroken.  It's not like when I go to sleep tonight, I die, and a new Bill Silvey awakens tomorrow and keeps on chugging.  That's not how it works.  And if it is, at what point does the copy kick in?  The minute I drift off to sleep?  During deep REM?  shallow sleep prior to awakening?  And if you interrupt any of that, am I now both me and this hypothetical copy?  No: sleep is a continuation of gestalt, not a termination of it, and a new gestalt begins at awakening.
Continuity of consciousness is a real philosophical question, and it's got nothing to do with sleep. The you of this second isn't the you of the last second. Quantum physics makes that even funkier, because we're not even made up of continuous matter. At the most basic level, we're just waveforms, distributions of probability. But the people who obsessed about the ultimate nature of reality are missing the point, because consciousness, and our perception of identity moving forward in time, is an illusion at any scale. And it's that illusion that matters, not the underlying physical reality. Cogito ergo sum; we experience consciousness and continuity, and that's what matters.

So the question them becomes what do all the copies experience? If you die, and wake up with all your memories in a digital form, then you have continuity. You've changed, yes, and may become someone very different from who you used to be, but you'd still be the same person, because you remember being that person. It's true the flesh is dead, and that may have been a real death for you when you were flesh, but you're now (digitally) alive, and you're still that dead person, as well. This isn't a conflict and shouldn't be, because the only continuity that still exists is the digital one.

Of course, if you didn't die and you're a copy of a living person, you still have that continuity, but now there are two of you. You've forked. There's another person, who isn't you, who shares the same continuity with you, up to a point. You could play games about who is real or who is original, but really you're both real and you both have the same trunk. You're just different branches.

And what if there's a way to merge those two branches? If the digital you could be updated with the flesh you's latest memories, or two digital copies that went their own ways and then came back together could be joined? This is the first time where the fork is internal to you. You'd have the trunk memories, shared by both, but then a branch, and two separate lines of continuity that you can remember and which are both you, before they merged back together. That would probably raise some psychological challenges, because humans are used to the illusion of linear, continuous time.

And if you wanted to get even more complicated, you could do a whole git-flow.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2021, 12:46:21 AM by Pat »

matt swain
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #187 on: April 29, 2021, 12:37:34 AM »
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 in to.

Oh, you're back. This is my total lack of surprise.

Got any proof for your story about that right wing media star who is going to help you storm the castle of RPGNet? Inquiring minds want to know.




   
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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.)

Yeah, you're inexperienced.

Thankfully i'm experienced in putting shitfucking cumsuckers like you on my ignore list now.

RPG.net is a cancer on the left and a disgrace to reasonable progressives that should be denounced and shunned by anyone considering themselves a progressive.

matt swain
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #188 on: April 29, 2021, 12:52:48 AM »
Wow, bringing religion into it. Fair enough. 8)

I don't know for sure, but i'm pretty certain something like a 'soul' exists. I do not believe in any mainstream religion as i see all as humanocentric constructs meant to create and justify a power structure and maintain social order. But i have reasons for believing something that is analogous to the concept of the soul exists.

As to how a soul would work in Ep, not gonna touch that one.  :P All i can say is "quantum entanglement". ::)

I think religion in EP is realistic, as i believe a lot of people would need the comforts it provides. I don't think any religion in ep is necessary the real one.

As to a person's body being essential to them being human, hmmmm. Fair issue.

There was a movie called 'creation of the humanoids' that was ghawdawfully cheap and mostly terribly acted made back in the 60's but it was ahead of its time in a lot of it's concepts. One issue was the nature of humanity. A scientist asks a character "If a man loses a leg, is his soul diminished by even one iota?"

The guy says "No."

The scientists asks if losing your legs and arms would reduce your soul. The man replies "You can't compound a negative!"

So the scientist tells him "Well, you're a man who's  lost his whole body, but your still the same man you were before."

The man then asks the scientist if he still has a soul. The scientist thinks for a moment  and replies "Hmmm, no, I don't think so. But you remember having a soul, that...seems to be enough."

So maybe a mind emulation could still be the person it was take from for all practical intents. Also, if you think a mind can't be human without a body, what about a quadrapalegic? Like poor Christopher reeve was? His last few years he couldn't move or feel like 98% odf his body, yet he was still human. Maybe an emulation in a ultra high end processor could retain essential humanity with no sense of a body.

Fascinating ideas here.

RPG.net is a cancer on the left and a disgrace to reasonable progressives that should be denounced and shunned by anyone considering themselves a progressive.

Mishihari

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #189 on: April 29, 2021, 02:10:21 AM »
The case is so much of what makes us human is tied to our bodies. It's possible it's not going to actually be possible to digitize because its complexity is tied to molecular processes that are tied entirely to our biological processes. Simulating that (even in short hand) will require so much energy I'm not sure how viable that will really be.

People go nuts from even minor adjustments to their body or mismatches from the brain to the body. I'm sceptical of the idea of a brain detached from any real stimulus wouldn't go nuts immediately. People get bodily dysphoria from minor chemical imbalances, and then get severe depression just from that alone.

That would probably be true of machine intelligences as well, assuming that such a thing is even possible.  There was an effort not long ago to develop decision-making neural network AI (not SF AI, the real world version, which is not at all the same) "organically" (meaning by experience and positive or negative feedback) and then make copies to mass produce the neural network.  It didn't work.  It turns out that the processing is very precise and delicate, to the point where the manufacturing differences in otherwise identical chips were critical to the process.  If the chips weren't identical to a greater extent than what we can produce reliably, then algorithms would not be made to work identically on the chips.  Since I expect that the delicacy in a real machine intelligence (again making the large assumption that such a thing is possible) would be even greater, it would make it even less possible to move programs between hardware.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2021, 02:44:31 AM by Mishihari »

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #190 on: April 29, 2021, 06:37:01 PM »
It’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.

Okay, maybe I get my wires crossed every so often.

I wasn’t trying to diss you or anything. Antagonist hive minds that try to make everybody join by force because they see anything else as morally negligent is classic. Such as the borg.
I don’t think you were dissing me.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #191 on: April 29, 2021, 06:38:38 PM »
The case is so much of what makes us human is tied to our bodies. It's possible it's not going to actually be possible to digitize because its complexity is tied to molecular processes that are tied entirely to our biological processes. Simulating that (even in short hand) will require so much energy I'm not sure how viable that will really be.

People go nuts from even minor adjustments to their body or mismatches from the brain to the body. I'm sceptical of the idea of a brain detached from any real stimulus wouldn't go nuts immediately. People get bodily dysphoria from minor chemical imbalances, and then get severe depression just from that alone.

That would probably be true of machine intelligences as well, assuming that such a thing is even possible.  There was an effort not long ago to develop decision-making neural network AI (not SF AI, the real world version, which is not at all the same) "organically" (meaning by experience and positive or negative feedback) and then make copies to mass produce the neural network.  It didn't work.  It turns out that the processing is very precise and delicate, to the point where the manufacturing differences in otherwise identical chips were critical to the process.  If the chips weren't identical to a greater extent than what we can produce reliably, then algorithms would not be made to work identically on the chips.  Since I expect that the delicacy in a real machine intelligence (again making the large assumption that such a thing is possible) would be even greater, it would make it even less possible to move programs between hardware.
That’s the most fascinating thing I’ve heard in months. Source?

Mishihari

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #192 on: April 29, 2021, 08:38:35 PM »
The case is so much of what makes us human is tied to our bodies. It's possible it's not going to actually be possible to digitize because its complexity is tied to molecular processes that are tied entirely to our biological processes. Simulating that (even in short hand) will require so much energy I'm not sure how viable that will really be.

People go nuts from even minor adjustments to their body or mismatches from the brain to the body. I'm sceptical of the idea of a brain detached from any real stimulus wouldn't go nuts immediately. People get bodily dysphoria from minor chemical imbalances, and then get severe depression just from that alone.

That would probably be true of machine intelligences as well, assuming that such a thing is even possible.  There was an effort not long ago to develop decision-making neural network AI (not SF AI, the real world version, which is not at all the same) "organically" (meaning by experience and positive or negative feedback) and then make copies to mass produce the neural network.  It didn't work.  It turns out that the processing is very precise and delicate, to the point where the manufacturing differences in otherwise identical chips were critical to the process.  If the chips weren't identical to a greater extent than what we can produce reliably, then algorithms would not be made to work identically on the chips.  Since I expect that the delicacy in a real machine intelligence (again making the large assumption that such a thing is possible) would be even greater, it would make it even less possible to move programs between hardware.
That’s the most fascinating thing I’ve heard in months. Source?

A friends who's a computer engineer mentioned it to me a while back because I've done professional work in AI.  I'll see if he remembers what the article was.

Valatar

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #193 on: April 30, 2021, 11:04:07 AM »
It's true that a lot of what we consider to be 'me' are a bunch of squishy fluids running around in our brains, human emotion and stability hinge on the various glands squirting their gland juice into the equation.  Any attempt to virtualize a human would necessitate emulating the presence of those systems as well, or you'd wind up with something weird and probably crazy.  Lots of people consider our brains to be a discrete item, just a big jello CPU, but it's actually much more distributed than that.  Like, consider your heart.  That's got nothing to do with anything with your mind, right?  Except there's a real problem with artificial hearts that messes with people who've had them implanted, because they can't feel the heartbeat anymore, there's no sensation of their heart racing when they're excited or upset, etc.  We take a lot of the sensation of living for granted because we've experienced it our entire lives, but if any of those things suddenly vanished it would cause significant problems.

People might like to think that they can exist as a disembodied intellect of pure reason or whatever, but the fact is that we're animals, and we aren't so easily divorced from our meat.

HappyDaze

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #194 on: April 30, 2021, 11:54:02 AM »
It's true that a lot of what we consider to be 'me' are a bunch of squishy fluids running around in our brains, human emotion and stability hinge on the various glands squirting their gland juice into the equation.  Any attempt to virtualize a human would necessitate emulating the presence of those systems as well, or you'd wind up with something weird and probably crazy.  Lots of people consider our brains to be a discrete item, just a big jello CPU, but it's actually much more distributed than that.  Like, consider your heart.  That's got nothing to do with anything with your mind, right?  Except there's a real problem with artificial hearts that messes with people who've had them implanted, because they can't feel the heartbeat anymore, there's no sensation of their heart racing when they're excited or upset, etc.  We take a lot of the sensation of living for granted because we've experienced it our entire lives, but if any of those things suddenly vanished it would cause significant problems.

People might like to think that they can exist as a disembodied intellect of pure reason or whatever, but the fact is that we're animals, and we aren't so easily divorced from our meat.
EP is built with the premise that the technology is flawless at copying/storing/emulating life. It's a fantastical assumption, but it's no worse than accepting time travel in Dr. Who or Star Trek.