EVE General Discussion

was -this- what you were thinking of?


Im afraid I cannot claim to have read everything in this thread, though I did try. It kept getting away from me. Essentially what has been discussed so far though reads to me as a discussion of theseus' paradox; the question of whether something that has had all its component parts replaced remains fundamentally the same.
To put it another way, suppose we have 2 cars, both off the same assembly line, one after the other, each car is exactly the same, right down to everything but the paint job. Your car is red, mine is blue. Suppose now we hire a pair of mechanics. These mechanics begin trading parts from each car to the other until your car is blue, and mine is red. Have we traded cars? if so, at what point did we trade?


On another note I believe this 'infomorph clone' thing used to support eve's death and resurrection mechanics was quite intentional on CCP's part. It serves to help reinforce the black and grey mortality of the setting. Indeed the game makes no secret of this, from your first few tutorial's you are informed that your previous "body" was successfully "euthanasied" and welcomes you to the "immortal" life of the capsuler demi-gods. There is no solid answer to the questions being raised here and the answer you come to will depend largely on your own world view.
However if I might make one point; to the outside observer what is the difference? If they both talk the same, act the same, think the same then how does it make any difference to me that "you" died in a firey ball of pod-goo and that this person before me is "not-you"?

The latter, though this doesn't mean they aren't me.

Actually it is the issue, because if anyone can know it is the same you, it is you, since you are the only person that can verify an authentic experience of you; assuming you could every truly experience you. Everyone else only experiences their perceptions of you, not actually you.

i don't see what's grimdark about it. it's pretty utopian, if you ask me. death's been done away with. can't get less grimdark than that.

Now the real thing is if the clone acts exactly like, reacts to stimuli in exactly the same fashion to you, it is you and actually the whole eve cloning immortality is not actually too bad of an idea, the brain is a series of bridges between neurons, with the same bridges, its the same mind.

So if you were to "write" the bridges onto a fresh mind, you would be exactly the same down to the last tiny thought process, put you through the same scenario twice without remembering it, one before, one after, you will do the exact same thing down to the last off topic thought.

At least, in theory, havent tried it yet obviously XD

(Wow, Eternum Praetorian, your first post was the thickest stream of BS I've read in recent history. You'd have a good calling in politics.)

The prevailing problem everyone (except Vyl Vit) seems to be having with this subject is based on the assumption that the conciousness is inextricably tied to the physical being. (This is in no small part due to Physics' inability to conclude there is no matter, only vibration. I doubt they'll get there.) All the analogies, examples and "experimental thinking" is bound to the anthropomorphic conceptualization of the "self" being somehow of the nature of physical reality.

Where Vyl gets it right is conceptualizing the body as merely a vessel, and the conscious self as independent of that body existing within another time/space frame. It's the duality of existing in two dimensions of reality at the same time. Ones perceptions are overrun by the five senses and the material plane. One has but fleeting glimpses or notions as to the exact nature, and location of consciousness itself.

The concept of cloning an individual and winding up with a copy of that individual is as preposterous as the concept of being able to "warp" a spaceship with a person in it. It's great fodder for the movies, but it's as impossible as time travel. The more detailed and technical intellectual wizards become in trying to describe the impossible as real, the more is revealed the ignorance prevailing on this subject of the "self" and "consciousness."

This thread couldn't make a good read because all but the "I don't get it" commenters have no clue what they're talking about.

This always bothered me about Star Trek....they were killing themselves every time they stepped on a transporter platform. Oh sure the guy arriving on the other end is an exact molecular copy of the guy who beamed down/up, but it's NOT the original. Same thing applies to EvE clones.

Ok first of all our consciousness is a product of the electro-chemical reactions in our brains. They are result not of the chemicals but how those chemicals interact in the physical structure of the brain.

What the part of the pod that copies your consciousness does is that it takes what is essentially a super high res cat scan of your brain where it documents it's exact structure and beams that "picture" to the cloning facility. The scan is ultimately destructive in that it utterly and completely destroys the source brain while in the act of making a copy. This is why the technology was deemed impractical for civilian use because of the intrinsic difficulty in determining when the time has come to terminate the old brain and make the copy.

Under that lore there is no case where you will have to two copies of the consciousness occupying different bodies.

Jump clones of course complicate that matter but I suppose the RP justification would be that since an instant copy isn't required the process doesn't have to be as destructive as the one used in the pod.

Regardless I think of it more as being a case of the "imprint" of the brain scan being "drawn" on the target brain via Nano assemblers to ensure an exact duplication of the original brain structure.

Cloning also seems kind of a misnomer to me. Since technically a clone would need to be grown from a fetus which seems impractical for the purposes that are used here. Then you run into the issues of atrophy and other problems that would likely derive from an accelerated cloning process and well I think it's far more likely that your "clone" is actually assembled fully grown from a base blueprint then when it's activated the image of the pod pilots brain is imprinted on the base brain and the "clone' activated.

I suggest ya'll check out some of Peter F Hamilton's works he delves extensively i this subject. Particularly check out Fallen Dragon and the conversation with the brain that was prepping it's new body.

i love people like you, rarely does this topic come up in my field though most share your view. Read Nietzsche's death of god (the hole thing) or book up and read the history of existential philosophy (not existentialism, i am referring to the study of existence).

And because you probably won't, TL;DR: The idea that the self can be explained by physical science requires a leap of faith exactly the same as religious beliefs, albeit at a much more sophisticated level.


Edit, oh man i am happy i found this thread, packed to the brim with ignorance, should make for a fun evening while gatecamping xD

Some people did not read their lore.

Pod are equipped with neural scanner that activate ONLY at the moment the pod detect a breach in the hull. At that same moment, powerful neurotoxin are injected in the brain. Instant scan maybe but it also makes you a vegetable, that's the why of the neurotoxin. Back to station with you!