It seems like a staple in the gaming industry and even in some series like Battlestar, but the idea of death in these places is a bit of an inconvenience at best. Which, of course, got me thinking a bit; why not us too?! With that bit of bad grammar and a little imagination, I can foresee the concept of death becoming very belittled in the far and distant future. We all want to live longer, sure, but that’s just not as fun as getting a redo button or having a save point. Just imagine if you could have do overs with any aspect of your life. Maybe not temporally like figuring out what to say to that hot girl at the bar, but with stuff like which wire to cut and getting a second chance if you chose anything but blue. It may seem like pure fantasy, but I don’t think of it as being so insane…
So let me kinda mull over with you some of the highlights of sci-fi mulligans. First up, we got Battlestar Galactica (the remake, not that one from the 20s or whatever); see, they got it right. They have a space ship with some blank copies of all their friends so if you happen to get blown up or tossed out of an airlock, you just get uploaded to the ship and downloaded back into a new body! Easy peasy! Actually, Stargate did this as well with the Asgard, but for some reason making copies of their bodies was having a bit of an issue. Probably of all the methods, this might be one of the most straight forward and doable for us within a reasonable timeframe. As computers get closer to mimicking the functionality of our human brains, the idea of pulling out a copy of, well, us, isn’t such a crazy thing to imagine. It’s just data and neural pathways and once we get a handle on how the circuitry works, just plug in a usb thumbdrive and you’ve got a backup! Of course, that’s a LOT of data and we’ll need many many centuries of pure biological, psychological, and technological advances before it’s ready to hit the market.
Another one is present in my favorite and your’s, Star Wars! Send in the clones my friends! In the whole clone wars thing, they just kept hitting the copy button with a certain first class mandalorian to make an entire army. I guess this also assumes the presence of data imprinting onto the brains since a clone wouldn’t have the accumulated knowledge just from the DNA. But, ya know, having a few spare bodies isn’t such a bad thing! Keep em on ice and if you go MIA, then pop one out into a microwave… shake n bake and you’re good to go again! Though I’m not sure why Vader never did that… Seems like quite a bit of oversight not to have a few backups on hand…
Then we have stuff like Stargate and Star Trek… While not overly used, they both have technology with the capabilities of total body backup and replication. More so than the previously mentioned actually. Whenever you beam up or jump through a gate, your body gets ripped apart and the data is stored, transmitted, and used to rebuild you on the other side. Not so different than scanning a document, faxing it, and it coming out on some other desk. Similarly, the technology for these two shows works the same; granted, on a much larger scale. But with a document, it can also be duplicated or stored… See where I’m going? Why not just store the data and make a copy whenever you need it? It’s like a save state, locked in at the time of scan, and every copy made since would be exactly the same!
Personally, I think the concept is sound, whether or not we have the technology yet to do so. It seems amazingly simple enough to pull off. In fact, you’d only need 2 components (both of which may exist postmortem); DNA and a brain scan that can duplicate the data exactly. With DNA, you can easily build a replacement blank and assuming you can somehow flash the memories into the brain or manipulate the network structure during replication, you’d just wake up good as new! A more complex way would be a save state like in Star Trek, a full molecular download… unless it can be compressed in some way that’s reasonable and assembled fast enough (don’t want to be missing my upper torso while the mac color wheel thingy spins for a decade), the atomic replication might be more problematic. Still, if that technology was available, it would be the superior version as long as you go in for regular backups, since it would be an atom by atom replacement.
Anyways… I’ll let you guys know when I have a prototype up and running… XD
eve online nuff said
ha! indeed! thems had some of the toughest death penalties I’ve seen next to real life! even some Perfect World “insert game title here… they’re all the same really” games were pretty stiff, like I think one of em had it so if you died, there was a small chance you’d lose an item, which is worse if it was high end… of course, you could buy stuff to prevent that…
Well there are definate benafits!!!…… I can see this being abused or WORSE used as some sort of weapon!
weapon?! naaaaaw… I promise the army of Shawns won’t go taking over planets…
well, maybe just one or two planets…
I think something like this is a bad idea, as it is the population is already growing very quickly and every generation is living a little longer and all that life uses up the resources of the world.
It doesn’t help that the majority of people are pretty wasteful and refuse to do things to elongate the life of the planet such as reducing and clearing pollution.
Creating more people in this fashion would exacerbate the issue.
Who says everyone gets a new body right off the bat? Futurama’s heads in a box [taken from a scifi series of short stories] is one possibility, or GITS’s idea of an solid state counterpart that could be either put on hold or installed in something a little less resource intensive.
If you go 100% inorganic then nothing is preventing setting up residence in less hospitable environments including interstellar space.
Mind you people who exist for the sake of existing won’t last too long thus leaving the long haul for those who actually like to do things. Think of the possibilities and ramifications on that - interstellar travel is viable since you don’t have a time constraint any more.
don’t worry Niv, that’s what soylent cookies are for…
that, and probably the only people with access to such a device would be the very very wealthy… you know, those people you want to live forever?
HAHAHA! actually, scratch that backup body! I want head in a box technology now!! sigh, but does that mean Nixon really can have another term? cause you know, no “body” can serve more terms, but having a new robot body resets the counter! XD
Loved that episode.
AFAIK quantum physics forbids coping quantum state without destroying it. And without it you probably cant copy human brain (as long Sir Roger Penrose is right abut that brain work because of quantum mechanic).
ah yes, that’s the problem with doing an atomic copy of the brain, especially with the whole quantum bits thrown in… but you know, if they were capable of scanning and downloading a digital copy of the brain, they might be able to make an “emulated” consciousness. might not be your wholegrain organic version, but hell, it tastes the same either way. well, in theory anyways…
either way, a LOT more research is needed before we can even come close to conclusive speculation, though my gut just tells me it’s going to be possible at some point… in some form even with limited functionality.
From physival point of wiev… d nothing really interestig happens on quantum level in the brain… those are fairly macroscopic objects… and all that happens are a lot of electrochemic gradients… doesn´t really matter if you distrupt spins, and negligably change momentum…
A number of well know sci-fi writers covered this ages ago and there have been a number of b-grade movies based on the various methods.
I personally liked the one where the data is transmitted, the original is left where it is, and a copy is assembled at the destination. True interstellar travel but without the need for ships except to carry the receivers and transmitters if you want to send stuff home.
you tryin to say Multiplicity was a b movie? XD
sigh, I still want those startrek replicator things… $10 or credits or whatever it’s called in the future, says the first thing to ever be replicated is a cup of warm earl grey tea!
A intresting problem is that the copy will not be you. Not as in ethical or soul stuff (i’m an athiest) but as in it will simply be your memories, behaviors and other traits copied onto another thing. You will be dead, but another just like you will live on. Sorta depressing when you think about it.
I should have read your post before making mine. :/
does make you wonder though… I mean, I know I’m me and all… I can think in my head and have self awareness… but, if there was a copy, would it have the same self awareness? like you said, technically when you expire, so does your consciousness, regardless of copy… hmm, or does it? idk really… gonna have to ponder this one!
oh, but I want to be resurrected, not copied.
If I die I dont want a clone taking over after my demise, and then another, nd another, and another.
I always imagined the bad guys from the 6th day mvie meeting up with their clones in hell at the end.
sheesh, fine! I’ll get working on my zombification serum! gosh!
Stargate… Asgard in Ida galaxy had one problem- their cloning program lasted for several dozen millenia. Hell they even had first hand made records of Ancients living in milky way which was several millions years into the past.
It was not issue for Asgard to keep their organs from failing… but during hundreths of millenia of memory transfers they have hit a roadblock- they could no longer engenier a brain capable of maintaining their “soul” in full… they would have to sarcrfifice memories, in essence they would seize to be who they are. (plus the last attempt around it kind of messed up rest of their bodies… but they simply gave up choosing to die as they were)
Asgard in Pegasus have solved this, possibly delaying it for few other millenia. (Kind of liked those guys… blowing up all gates in Pegasus was really state of art maneuver… then they could easily settle planet with neutronium deposits and rebuild their intergalactic fleet… not only be stuck with those transport ships (they know how to build tech but planet they chose lacks resources and they did not want to be caught by wraith)
And well Asgard tech somehow allowed mind to really transfer… body was simply blank if technique was utilized properly… mind remained in ships computer or new body… perhaps it was some sort of beaming, Thor´s mind survived beeing compresed to few crystals in Goauld datastorage…
That said… it allowed to do only a copy… young O´Neill Loki created f.e.
ah, good SG lore writeup! yeah, I forget what the circumstances were, but I remember Thor complaining about his body and getting copied and whatnot… dunno why it would be a one way thing though, if you’ve got it on file, why not just make 2 or more? more thor to adore!
Ok so OFF topic but
I just got pokemon platinum (my forst pokemon game) did’t like it……
Should i try a diffrent pokemon game or is pokemon just not my cup of tea?
ya know, never played platinum so I can’t speak for it, but I’ve never been able to get into the newer games. personally, I LOVED the oldschool yellow (or red/blue if you hate having a buddy follow you around)! anyways, if you’ve got any kind gba or equiv, try out the older ones. I think you’d like em.