Are True Slaves and those subject to Sansha Implantation forever lost?

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
42

I recognize that the most promise comes from the correct balance of curiosity and risk. Judging that correctly can be tricky but if the problem eats you while you’re studying it that’s maybe an indication that you judged wrongly.

The world is complex; our models of it, less so. It takes a lot of kinds of people to make a world, and nobody’s going to be right every time. So it is not necessary, or probably even useful, for our paths to be the same.

It does seem to be a truth of this world, though, that hearts are dreadful liars.

43

Pain, sustained over time, without release, most definitely is suffering. And it does not require reason. Or would you argue that someone’s pet cat, being consumed from within by cancer, cannot be suffering?

Lovely attempt to take things out of context, but you’ll notice that the theoretical application there doesn’t fix the damaged individual… it replaces them, and doesn’t require the original to be present at all.

Are they suffering? Are they a threat to others? (and, again, take note that the brain scan option does not revert the damaged psyche, it replaces it, just like when a capsuleer dies, we’re replaced by a copy).

And there’s the admission-without-realization. You want to be in the ‘enviable’ position. You want to feel good about yourself and have others approve of you.

It’s not about what’s best for the victims at all… it’s about what makes you feel good.

45

At this point, I feel it might be useful to bring up the fact that… ugh, damnit, I forgot who it was… was it CONCORD ? the SOCT ? One of those two, anyway, the usual suspects when it comes to doing Funny Stuff. Anyway one of them did a thing a number of years back, with the… Echelon corvette, a specialised electronics reconnaissance ship, that had a sophisticated codebreaker dingus as part of its equipment. Handed those ships out to every active capsuleer like they were going out of fashion. Anyway, the point I was going to make, was that someone, CONCORD or the SOCT, was in the possession of a large number of True Slave prisoners-of-war. And those PoWs were used to create the Echelon’s specialised codebreaker thingie.
As fates worse than death go, being imprisoned in a jar inside a electronic dingus that a capsuleer has left in a hangar to gather dust for years, that has to be up there.

46

Incorrect, pain over any amount of time can lead to suffering. Just as poverty, or deprivation could. Pain is not Suffering, it can cause it however.

This feels like a rather absurd reduction coming from someone who is replaced on a weekly if not daily basis. Another deflection at best.

When I see statements like this, I suspect that the discussion has now shifted from something in-good-faith to a more of a face-saving argument. Of course I do not wish to be wrong, I recognize the risk it poses.

Ah, so loquaciousness it is then?

But I think its best to leave things here. I do not suspect there is any room to budge for you, and we are likely just wasting each others time.

-K

47

The current average lifespan for an Arrendis Culome is approximately 38d, 16h, 53m, 47s. (I have a spreadsheet. There have been 133 of us.) Capsuleers are not immortal. We are disposable, tissue-paper people who die and are replaced, with no-one mourning our loss, or even (usually) even aware of the substitution. Feel free to look over my posting history in this regard, I’m entirely consistent in this viewpoint. We are replaced, and the replacement is not the same person… it’s merely a copy that nobody can tell is just a copy. If anything, avoiding that conclusion in favor of the ‘a totally different person with a copy of my brain state is still me!’ nonsense that produces the ‘immortal capsuleer’ trope is the deflection.

It’s not. I have no need to save face, as you’ve refuted nothing, but offered only nonsense and insistence, implying (since to refuse to actually say it) that animals without the capacity for reason are also incapable of suffering. You’ve also offered only high-handed attempts at gotcha questions, and when the answers don’t let you snap shut the jaws of your ineffectual rhetorical traps, have not even so much as acknowledged the answers you’ve gotten, in favor of attempting another form of the same loaded question.

So no, there’s no face-saving going on on my end.

48

Hi. It’s me. Don’t expect me to post often. It’s good to see some of you.

I think the topic here has lacked a defining factor to use as a proper fulcrum. Or, rather, that differing fulcrums are being utilized to different effects. Let me elaborate in the sense that the leading unstated thing here is value. “What do people value,” they ask, “in the living?” The answer to the Nation question adjusts depending on what the answer to the Value Question is.

The main Value I see being argued in this thread is the Value of Human Consciousness. This one is a more nuanced definition of human life to most people, I would say: that all of what a person is is stored in the vaguely approachable theme of ‘consciousness’. A large portion of modern philosophers and amateur philosophers (IGS posters) balance their entire debates on this concept. If someone is missing their consciousness, then are they ‘them’? And if that consciousness of their own is gone, then, presumably, there is no more value, and that their body – a shell to house a consciousness – then can be recycled into compost, or perhaps ash.

(There are more Values. If I wanted to speak on them, it would end up a huge pile of text with no real direction or focus.)

True Slaves are robbed of their original consciousness. It is stolen from them, manipulated, and then destroyed with such severity that recovery attempts for Nation victims very rarely succeeds. With the original consciousness (and some would argue that that makes the original person) shredded, there is no Original Person left. At this point, many would say that since the Original Person is Super Dead, that the Replacement Person who’s living in their meatsuit should also be Super Dead. I think that’s a bit silly. I do live in the metaphorical clouds, however.

Trawling the Federation, I’ve seen a few cultures that feel that a soul (generally seen as a 1:1 to describe consciousness) is formed in a child weeks or months after that child is born. That is, the brain provides the framework for a consciousness to form. Many have no objections to aborting a pregnancy, but draw the line at mulching an infant child. Stay with me. We’re almost at my actual discussion point.

People keep referring to the process for changing Nation victims to be “recovering”, or “restoring”. Why? Consciousness is valued so incredibly highly. If someone’s mind is destroyed, is that not just an opportunity to create a new one? I don’t mean recover, or restore, but why not wipe it, refresh it, abuse TCMCs and fake memories all until something new – someone new – is made?

(Edited for minor grammatic issues and readability)

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49

Sir, I will have you know I was paid quite well to weigh philosophical and ethical concerns for many years, as part of the GSF Directorate. I am a professional philosopher and bloviator, thank you. :stuck_out_tongue:

What’s there isn’t capable of those functions, because of the way the meat’s been re-wired to be dependent on the implants. And any question of ‘well, can’t we re-rewrite it?’ puts you squarely into the ‘cheaper, faster, and easier to flash-grow a clone with an artificially constructed infomorph’ territory, since that’s what you’re trying to do without regrowing the body.

And, in both cases, pretty sure attempting it gets CONCORD to drop dreads on your facility and blow you up, then arrest you, then fine you, unless you’re some kind of maniac blooder weirdo doing it all in a wormhole to avoid prosecution…

50

One of the other values I was going to talk about but deleted because it made my post too long was many peoples’ value for human life (specifically, pre-existing human life). Paired with the value for consciousness, the act of repurposing an existing human life with a new consciousness then becomes more desirable to destroying the human life (and the absent consciousness).

As for making a shitload of artificial infomorphs (or AI for short; what could go wrong?) is generally seen as poor taste if you’re not also utilizing infrastructure to support them and their developments.

For the record, I was a tube child with an artificially constructed infomorph. It’s the question of genuine vs synthetic diamonds: they’re both diamonds, so who cares?

51

Are we labeling such an existence ‘human’ now? Is humanity not intrinsically tied to the human experience?

Because if empty-headed bodies are truly ‘human’ than facility owners who cancel jump clone contracts face hundreds of thousands of murder charges.

52

Hi, Charles!

So I think a lot of the reason people get a little-- well, “stuck” makes it sound unreasonable, but I think it’s not.

It’s a matter of restitution, sort of. Many or most of those people were taken unwillingly-- stolen from their lives and families. Those families will want their loved ones back. “We’re sorry; we can’t give you back your loved one. But we can give you someone else who looks like her!” is apt to be pretty cold comfort.

Similarly, those who were taken and their minds butchered should likewise be able to get their lives back, if it’s possible for that to happen. Maybe some wouldn’t want them back (I would not become my predecessor again, given the chance) but that should maybe be their choice to make.

If, through great effort and expense, we are able to make severed individuals viable to any degree … well, maybe that’s mercy of a kind.

Only, I feel like you could probably do a lot for, like, an omega city with that kind of money though, and is there really anybody you’re helping with such extreme measures before you help them? It’s not like the world’s short on suffering without directly creating (or I guess “making functional from a ruined state”) yet more also-suffering people.

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53

Merely jumping in here to say that Arrendis has the right of it. I agree with 99% of her stated points.

54

There is a generally well adhered to maxim in the Federation at least; “The creator owns and controls.” Blue Print Originals are a good example of this principle in action.
A synthetic item is manufactured and thus under the control of the manufacturer in the way a naturally occurring - some would say God given - artefact however abundant it is not.
Nation technology is owned and controlled by Nation. Its application upon individuals allows Nation to claim both practical and technical control.
That Nation trespasses natural law by usurping individual will without consent is just one of the reasons why our Order can not abide.
So no, a naturally occurring lump of pressurised carbon is not the same as an artificially produced matrix of pressurised carbon engineered by design.

55

We who sail through the stars on wings of plasma have no place to even consider Natural Law.

Natural law is death by curable disease. Natural law is being doomed by genetic happenstance. Natural law is the reason given why the primative suffers and dies, while we who are above Natural law stride across solar winds.

Invoke Natural law, while your brain is hardwired in to a starship? Madness.

56

“Natural law” isn’t that stuff, Evi. It’s more like the stuff Gallente usually go on about-- rights and such that people are supposedly born with regardless of nation, etc. (This is somehow supposed to be obvious even though nature itself tends to violate those rights across a range of species with gusto.)

Anyway, her problem’s not with the cybernetics; it’s with the kidnapping and forced conversion.

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57

Like some minds may reject Nation without proper preparation, so too do some bodies reject cybernetic implants without proper preparation. I won’t claim the process is flawless, but I still do see both as necessary for humanity in the long run.

58

I … guess you could read “guarantees hostility from every corner of civilized space and guarded reactions even from others” as a flaw, sure.

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59

Everyone’s in favour of installing cybernetic coprocessors to speed their thinking, and tactical analysis chips, and memory augs out the wazoo, but as soon as the chips start giving commands rather than suggestions then oooooooooh you’ve gone too far.

60

Exactly.

61

Nothing that results from that process qualifies as ‘humanity’.

62

There is no escaping the true death. We may claim to be immortal but we will all succumb to it one day. The further we attempt to stave off the inevitable with augmentations, then the less human we become.

The true slaves are already dead.

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