EVE Fiction

So I've read two of the books and a few of the chronicles and as far as I can tell, there seems to be some disagreement on the issue among the writers. I was hoping somebody here can elucidate the issue a bit for me.

When a capsuleer is killed, is there an actual transfer of consciousness? Is the new clone really inhabited by the actual person who just died or is it essentially just a perfect copy? If it's really just a copy it would seem to steal a great deal of the allure of the technology, at least to me.

"Transfer of consciousness" is more or less no different from saying "transfer of the soul". It's an equally simplistic explanation that doesn't actually consider the implications of what the mind actually is and how the process actually occurs.

When the capsule is breached, the burning scanner takes an immediate snapshot of the exact composition of the brain's neural map at that time. It then transmits that snapsot to the cloning facility. The brain is left in the body, badly damaged due to the rapidity of the scanning process, and is then euthanized by a chemical injection.

The new clone receives the data from the scanner, and then proceeds to mold and grow the previously blank brain-gel until it is a near-100% replica of the original's neural map.

It's a 'transfer of consciousness' in that it transfers a data copy of the consciousness. But is it the exact same consciousness that it transferred? No, because "consciousness" is not a physical entity that you can just pick up and send somewhere, short of transplanting the whole brain from one body to another. Like a soul, it is a simplistic method of referring to someone's persona. The clone shares the person's legacy, they share their memories and personality, but at the moment of death, one person dies and another is born.

"The moment the capsule sensors detect a breach in the capsule they activate the emergency uploading of the mind of the person in the capsule, as described above. The capsule makes an analog scan of the brain of the person. This extraordinary snapshot records the exact state of the mind, including every neuron connection between every brain cell. Because the scan must be instantaneous and efficient it brutalizes the brain in the process." -Cloning, EVElopedia

The only thing stopping there from being two of you at the same time when the burning scanner is used is the fact that A) you're probably about to die anyway if your pod is breached, and B ) the fact that the scanner's instantaneous speed destroys the brain. Theoretically, if in the future a scanner will be developed that is instantaneous without the destructive process, it really would result in two identical copies.


Now, you could make the argument that it is the same person because even in a single body cells are dying and being replaced all the time, to the point that the person you are today is comprised of a completely new set of cells compared to the person you were five years ago. So you can make the case that it is the same person in all form and function, even if the original cells are all dead and gone. But strictly speaking, the clone is a copy, a replica, and sources that go into the details of how it works directly state it to that effect.


As for the allure of the technology... I find that the allure is the fantasy of it. It is extremely easy and natural to buy into the whole 'immortality'/'transfer of consciousness' thing, because it's a lot simpler to understand and a lot more pleasing to hear than actually thinking about the scientific process behind it. Even those who do think about it logically and do fear it can't really change the fact that the moment it happens, the new clone will still in every possible way feel like they are the same person. Even though you may be able to acknowledge that, "the person before me is dead," it's much, much harder to actually acknowledge the fact that you are an entirely new person and that none of the memories you have are really yours.

It's kind of like thinking about the time before you were born. It's can be rather discomforting to think that billions and billions of years went by before you existed. But because all you've ever known is your state of existence, it's very hard to incorporate that discomfort into your daily life unless you're really thinking hard about it. It's rather easy to ignore it.

Essentially, the allure is that it actually takes effort to think on the realities of it. It's very hard to force yourself to ignore what you feel. It's natural to think it's immortality, because the person who died doesn't exist anymore and can't think anymore, and the person who was born is in every way a duplicate replica that remembers everything from "first hand experience" even though it wasn't first hand experience. The allure is that it's almost inconceivable to think that it isn't alluring.

Don't think of your bodies as people, learn to identify your conciseness with your data-set. You are an informorph, a being of pure data, liberated from your natural fleshy prison though the progress of technology. Your body an asset, its like a house or a ship, and place where you are housed, but it isn't YOU. When your pod is breached you are quickly extracted from your soon to be damaged beyond operation body and safely conveyed via quantum entanglement link to another body. You, the identity and conciseness are transferred, wholly and safely, leaving only the wreak of your body behind. The mechanisms might be a bit messy, and the first time you see your own dead body can be very disturbing, but on the whole its less scary once you do it a few times, and begin to really understand what it means to be an Infomorph.

The fact that the transfer is instantaneous is really the lynchpin that separates true survival of consciousness-upon-pod-breach from another copy of it. The instantaneous nature means that for this instant, your neurological system is doubled before the dead half is severed, thus it can be safe to say that it gets as close to "true-self" as possible, otherwise your "true-self" ended the instant after you were born/recognised yourself.