kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Or worse evil body snatcher clone empire.
You leave your home planet, come back two years later, and find all your family and friends have become ardent supporters of the regime.
And your turn to be.... reimaged..... is coming....
OTU Only: Whither Death?
- Thread starter LeperColony
- Start date
Or worse evil body snatcher clone empire.
You leave your home planet, come back two years later, and find all your family and friends have become ardent supporters of the regime.
And your turn to be.... reimaged..... is coming....
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
If the clones are grown in tubes and then stored awaiting use, how is any muscle mass going to develop or bone density going to be achieved? For that matter, will the brain develop normally with no activity?
Have you ever seen a basically flat EEG? I have.
I think you have a failure to suspend disbelief. The rules/book say what they say. Such problems as you raise are solved somehow. Don't know how; it's the future.
A deep problem that remains with all this is the philosophical/metaphysical one. A clone of you is not You. If you download your personality to a wafer and upload it to a clone, or computer, or whatever, it doesn't matter: it is not You, it is just a copy (at best).
So going back to the OP:
Because most well-adjusted people understand that none of this actually changes anything for You; You are still dead, there is just a different body running around that thinks it lived your life but it didn't. Once it learns the truth, there might be a bit of an existential crisis...
Only if it worked, and it doesn't.
A simple thought experiment: most of us are afraid of pain. Imagine you are about to be subjected to horrible torture for the rest of your existence. Someone offers to make a copy of your mind and implanting it in another body. Does that in any way make you feel better about what you are going to experience? Did you somehow avoid the pain because there is a clone running around that thinks it is you that doesn't experience the pain? Of course not.
Now that is not to say certain highly egotistical individuals or those with a neurotic fear of death might do it anyway in a self-delusional hope of cheating death. And I liked Mike's idea that maybe that is what Strephon was doing and that is the real reason he was assassinated...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Muscle and bone growth in a force grown clone - chemical and electrical stimulation.
The copy that thinks its you but isn't you. When the clone wakes it has 'your' body, your personality and your memories. You would have as hard a time convincing it it is not the prime as trying to convince the prime it is a clone.
Is the clone really you? No, Do you continue your existence, no.
Does something that thinks it is continuing its existence rather than being a few hours old (since memory and personality download) continue its existence yes.
The rich realise this, they would rather go for life extension and brain transplants...
The copy that thinks its you but isn't you. When the clone wakes it has 'your' body, your personality and your memories. You would have as hard a time convincing it it is not the prime as trying to convince the prime it is a clone.
Is the clone really you? No, Do you continue your existence, no.
Does something that thinks it is continuing its existence rather than being a few hours old (since memory and personality download) continue its existence yes.
The rich realise this, they would rather go for life extension and brain transplants...
LeperColony
Traveller Card Game Dev Team
Leaving aside your definition of well-adjusted, whether it is accurate or whether it would apply to a society thousands of years removed from us, I'd point out that enough people in the OTU reject your premise for "death insurance" to be a thing.
So whether or not you personally believe wafers and cloning offer immortality (and whether they actually do, or if they just "copy" you), there's canonical evidence that at least some people in Traveller do.
Again, except we know enough people disagree with your premise for death insurance to exist.
Also, we can Ship of Theseus this till the cows come home, but since consciousness transfer exists, swapping out the meat part of an aging brain may be good enough.
Biological immortality, even by the rather narrow assertions you're making would seem to be possible. Though, unlike relying on cloning or wafers, there's nothing you could do in the event of sudden trauma.
Another thought.
Pseudoreality communication - you know the one where a computer emulates a person so well you may as well be talking to the real person.
You are.
Pseaudoreality communication involves a computer generated holographic avatar that is running the personality/memory that at TLs below 15 meant wafers and wafer jacks.
Duke Norris has his personality and memory copied just after the FFW concludes, he sends this 'wafer' via courier to the Imperial Palace. Computers run the personality as a hologram, but the hologram 'is' Norris.
After the audience the wafer is couriered back to Norris, who has it implanted into his own memories via personality transfer machine - because they are 'his' memories there is no rejection issue (or risk of insanity, or possession by Trojan memories etc... or is there)
He remembers the audience with Strephon as if it were yesterday...
I think you'd need to take into account personality editing when thinking about pseudo-reality communication.
If I were a Duke sending a copy of "me" to be interviewed by the Emperor I'd edit out all the memories and physiological ticks that might give away any of my secrets.
Consider what happens if you deliver "yourself" to the boss on a chip and after you finish your interview on the subject you were required to report on he starts asking about why your sectors tax take is down, or where those political dissidents disappeared to....
If "you" try to lie, the boss just hands over your wafer to the psychologist/hackers and digital torturers who run your personnality in a closed loop hell on a computer till "you" fess up.
Then the ship arrives from Capital to collect the "original" you that has already been tried and sentenced.
Better to send a copy with no knowledge of these matters. It seems entirely possible to do this with personality editing.
An edited personality however is not the same as "you".
This would also explain why the material on pseudo-reality communications say they can converse on a subject widely but will find it difficult to speculate on other matters. A true copy would be able to do this, an edited copy explains the limited ability.
LeperColony
Traveller Card Game Dev Team
There's probably a black market in illegally copied personality wafers too. Want to know industrial secrets? Passwords? Need Emperor Strephon to put in an appearance at your party...
And of course, a lot of those "copies" would actually just be fakes.
Then imagine what Virus must have done to wafers!
The reason for having clones and other artificials, and the uses to which they can be/are put, in any sf setting, is precisely to elicit the sort of response you are having, and explore it.
Data in Trek was introduced so they could explore what it means to be human, for example.
Good point. There must be a new element in security and close protection of VIPs which covers preventing them getting personnality scanned.
There's a whole range of Total Recall and Ghost in The Shell scenarios you could run if you want to run a more cyberpunk/transhumanist Traveller Universe.
The one that creeps me out a bit is the Entertainment Wafer from p.526 BBB a deeply immersive technology that lets you experience someone else's memories and experience. Like Star Trek's holodeck or other genres "sensies" it can be multi-user.
It opens up some very weird possibilities.
A scenario idea that jumps to mind, inspired by Taken: One of the PCs is kidnapped, however the twist is the party recover the PC relatively quickly, obviously drugged but otherwise unharmed. Investigation reveals that the kidnappers were "Sensation Rippers" who scanned intimate memories and experiences from the PC. I'd love to lay this in front of some players and see if they'd care enough about having memories copied and traded to go after the Rippers with their special sets of skills. Maybe to make it work they'd need to have a comprehension of how much an invasion that would be... needs work
For years I could sum up my scifi campaigns as explorations of the question "What does it mean to be human" in the same way that my fantasy campaigns were variations of "what is the nature of evil".
It's not that I intend for my games to be modern recreations of medieval passion plays, but perhaps due to the nature of me and at least some of my players that is how they regularly turned out.
Heck, Altered Carbon coming on SciFi is almost certainly going to be exploring some of these issues by all accounts - and certainly would be if it is going to be following the books at all...
D.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
There is a limit to my ability to suspend disbelief, or utilize handwavium to avoid problems. Im My Traveller Universe, there are no personal energy weapons, as I have this problem with how much radiation a personal plasma or fusion gun puts out. I calculate that it would be more than enough to fry the shooter and the immediate surrounding area. I am not a fan of tiny fusion power plants for a lot of reasons, so they are not present either.
As for the rules saying that they are, I go with Gary Gygax's view that rules in roleplaying are guidelines only. Not cast in stone or written on tablets of stone. I understand that makes me a bit of a heretic. but as my signature says, I march to my own set of bagpipes.
LeperColony
Traveller Card Game Dev Team
Nobody is saying you can't define the bounds of YTU. But I intentionally set the tag of the thread as OTU because I was specifically interested in the impact of wafers and cloning on the original setting.
"None of this exists IMTU" is unarguably valid. But it's also not really the point.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Ship of Theseus issue:
a soldier on a TL14 battlefield has half their brain destroyed, but advanced medical science stabilizes them and them the half a brain is regrown.
Are you still the same soldier, although lacking personality traits and memories?
Say a wafer back up was taken before the conflict and you can be resored to that point - are you still you?
Another battle, this time the original half of the brain is destroyed. You get your brain regrown again - you now have no original brain (by the way - did you know you don't have the brain tissue you were born with?) and yet full memories and personality are restored.
Are you still you?
How about the entire brain is destroyed but the rest of the body survives - the brain is regrown and again a backup implanted. Is it still you.
a soldier on a TL14 battlefield has half their brain destroyed, but advanced medical science stabilizes them and them the half a brain is regrown.
Are you still the same soldier, although lacking personality traits and memories?
Say a wafer back up was taken before the conflict and you can be resored to that point - are you still you?
Another battle, this time the original half of the brain is destroyed. You get your brain regrown again - you now have no original brain (by the way - did you know you don't have the brain tissue you were born with?) and yet full memories and personality are restored.
Are you still you?
How about the entire brain is destroyed but the rest of the body survives - the brain is regrown and again a backup implanted. Is it still you.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Kidnap megacorp exec - copy memories and personality and then arrange for them to 'escape'...
run the copy in VR and extract information...
At lower TLs you would have to destructively upload the personality and memories, but what's one more megacorp leech in the grand scheme of things...
Marc has definitely made the OTU a much more interesting place.
run the copy in VR and extract information...
At lower TLs you would have to destructively upload the personality and memories, but what's one more megacorp leech in the grand scheme of things...
Marc has definitely made the OTU a much more interesting place.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Simply put, it is things like this that are driving me further and further away from the OTU, especially when the OTU changes with every new release from Marc. There is no longer a stable OTU.
How can you operate in an OTU when this wafer technology and cloning have supposedly been around for a few centuries with nothing in any prior rule set having them, and then having to re-verse engineer all of this into the OTU? If Wafer technology has been around for 500 years before 1100 Imperial dating, why has not it totally changed the entire Imperium and how it operates? Why are not all of your major nobles and business leaders immortal by now? The Technology has been there for 500 YEARS. How the Imperium should look with this should be totally different from any prior version of the OTU.
As I see it, Marc basically blew up the OTU with his novel, without considering any of the possible consequences of all what he tossed in. Whoever was Emperor when the action in the novel was supposed to take place should still be Emperor.
You now have two OTU. One is the one developed since 1977 in all of the various rule editions and added material. The other is the one based on Agent of the Imperium. Those are the choices.
The game Eclipse Phase deals with the ramifications of this technology in depth.
The writers have also made high quality pdfs free to download under the Creative Commons license. The hardcover books are also very high quality, too.
https://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
There never has been a stable OTU.
Ever.
The OTU of the early CT days is very different from the OTU of the post High Guard revision. The OTU of MT is very different from the OTU of TNE etc etc etc.
Every set of rules has changed the OTU - superficial similarities remain constant but the details are very different.
The 'OTU' of MgT has lots of stuff which is setting changing once you explore the implications.
How do massive battlefleets of 500,000t warships suddenly appear when the top of the line ship used to be 1200 tons?
Why do ships suddenly only require a fraction of the jump fuel they used to? Why do ships suddelny have HEPlaR drives?
The OTU has been blown up many times:
post HG big ships
MT Rebellion
TNE
There are a lot more than two...
LBB1-3 77 OTU
HG1/HG2 OTU
LBB1-3 81 OTU
MT OTU
TNE OTU
T4 OTU
T5/AotI OTU; they are all different in ways that do actually make a difference.
Then there is the GT ATU and the MgT ATU
Accept the OTU is an elephant and only eat the parts you want...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Traveller has always been a toolbox for running sci-fi adventure, the original intent was for any sci-fi adventure gleaned from fiction could be adapted to a Traveller scenario.
Over the past four decades sci-fi has moved on and it is a good thing that Traveller has too.
The OTU has always reflected the current edition of the rules, as the rules change the setting changes. The OTU is only there to show you what can be done, what you actually do with Traveller and/or the OTU is referee dependent.
Grown men and women have been driven to spending hours/days/years/decades of their lives discussing trivial issues and arguing for a specific interpretation of the OTU - sad thing is there is not and never has been and probably never will be a definitive 'this is how it is and how it has been all along' without a complete setting re-boot.
Over the past four decades sci-fi has moved on and it is a good thing that Traveller has too.
The OTU has always reflected the current edition of the rules, as the rules change the setting changes. The OTU is only there to show you what can be done, what you actually do with Traveller and/or the OTU is referee dependent.
Grown men and women have been driven to spending hours/days/years/decades of their lives discussing trivial issues and arguing for a specific interpretation of the OTU - sad thing is there is not and never has been and probably never will be a definitive 'this is how it is and how it has been all along' without a complete setting re-boot.
You should watch the Micheal Bay movie "The Island" with Ewan McGregor (in contrast to the movie "The Island" from the 80's). It deals a bit with this topic and is a pretty good movie, even if it's a Micheal Bay movie.
Don't want to delve too deeply, less you know the better.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
If your brains regenerates completely every centiry, and your body does as well granting practical immortality, would you still be you?
As regards to the brain, if you run it in RAID 5, slowly restoring segments as they commit seppuku, probably.
As regards to the brain, if you run it in RAID 5, slowly restoring segments as they commit seppuku, probably.