Capsuleer Infomorph Mishaps - Transhumanist Problems

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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As a fellow Transhumanist, I don’t find that my Transhumanism lends a bleak outlook on life. In fact, I find that my Transhumanist worldview is a positive one and I only wish more people had access to the enabling technology to benefit from it. It’s that so many people are denied the technology that darkens my worldview, even though I realize that there are limiting factors in the technology itself that don’t make such a widespread use currently viable.

Perhaps we’re applying informorph technology incorrectly to achieve maximum benefit for the most people? Thoughts?

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I sometimes wonder why we’re so obsessed with having clones to revive in. Why don’t we just occupy android bodies? I think Mr Tash-Murkon answered that in part as duplicating the human brain in hardware and software is very difficult. As long as we have biomass to use maybe it’s just easier to use clones. If difficulty and cost weren’t issues, and you maintained your autonomy, would having your memories uploaded into an android body present a moral or personal problems for anybody, or does it have to be “flesh and blood?”

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Thank you Ms Jenneth and Mr Quelza for that exchange. Perhaps your conversation has answered a few misgivings other people on the forums may have had.

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This is what my predecessor thought of herself as (among other metaphors from folklore). Being such a thing-- a vengeful spirit-- was her excuse for murdering Grandfather.

I don’t think we’re dead, at all, though, or anything that ought to be treated as “other than human.”

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Infantry soldiers had 60% of their brain mass replaced by the equivalent of reversed engineered Sleeper implants that are pretty much the pocket-sized equivalent of our capsules. And even then, they couldn’t fit the entire thing on our skulls and had to install them on our helmets too.

Once we get over the snags like the visual cortex and spacial recognition down I’m pretty sure brains will be a thing of past.

I mean, they already are! Half of the capsuleer population don’t use them for anything other than cram ship skills or implants!

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The pod is a separate thing from our burn scanners and cloning, you know. That’s just a little add-on activated when the egg cracks.

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You have met other capsuleers…?
I’ll be honest I replace as many personnel with drones as I can and try to avoid combat situations…but then the thing i like to do isn’t fighting, no?

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I have. And the ones that I work with range from monsters I don’t associate with outside of ‘have to deal with this person to do my job’ to decent human beings who really do try to minimize the loss of human life… that I don’t associate with outside of what I need to, to do my job. We can be professionals and still acknowledge the mounting cost of what we do, without dehumanizing our crews.

Getting completely disassociated carries its own dangers. It’s a route I almost went down myself earlier this year, but for a disgusted tongue-lashing delivered by a distant kinswoman.

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Ms Arrendis and Ms Ember, thank you for setting an example of how to keep disagreements civil while still expressing your views.

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Thank you for sharing, Ms Jenneth. I’ve been giving some thought to this question since you mentioned it last. Wondering if maybe the problem isn’t that some people wander outside the definition of human, but if our definition of human might be too narrow? Might this sidestep or avoid this problem? Thoughts?

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So, what are your thoughts on being installed into an android body instead of a clone, Ms Ruil? Or would you prefer a flesh and blood body with an electronic brain?

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Whom are you directing this to, Ms Del’thul? I’m feeling a bit lost here. Please help me out. Thank you.

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The post directly above mine, speaking of how the gropo grunts had ‘the pocket sized equivalent of our capsules’. Which, as they should know, is nowhere near reality. They had a different type of scanner is all.

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Who’s to say my body isn’t already retrofitted with cybernetics that all but cross of what is legal in civilized space? I mean… My arms are gone. So are my legs. My spine is titanium and my skull is plated. My left eye is an implant. My heart is an eight chamber pump and my blood stream is so crammed with the necessary nanites to keep this body going that it turned to a pinkish silver.

And I know what I said Miss Del’thul, and I meant it. A dropsuit helmet is quite literally a capsule for your skull. And just as safeguarded as the real thing. Even a shrapnel is enough to terminate the clone if it just as much scrapes the armor plating. And they sure as heck didn’t extend that curtsy to the rest of the body, as I bled to death more than I’m proud to admit on the battlefield.

Nova Knife stab wounds hurt like heck too!

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I see, Ms Del’thul.

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Do you find that your attitude towards both non capsuleers and capsuleers is affected by your extensive use of cybernetics, Ms Ruil?

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Well … one of the problems of this issue is that the definition of “human” depends a lot on whose dictionary you use.

Letting people define us out is dangerous to us, because people tend to be more willing to harm or kill things they don’t see as human beings. Overdefining runs the maybe more distant and hypothetical risk of adding something genuinely monstrous to our list of things we talk about as human beings, that might trick us into thinking it follows our rules about things like not making a habit of sucking the marrow out of babies’ bones while they sleep.

“Naturally born, unmodified baseline humans” - probably way too narrow; hems out tube children, cybered individuals, capsuleers, etc.

“Any and all sapient beings” - probably too broad; includes, probably, rogue drones and illegal AI generally, Sansha’s Nation (if not individual True Slaves), and, if they turned out to exist, kumiho and bhaalgorns.

Basic rule: try not to let people define you out of the circle, and definitely don’t do it to yourself if you want to be seen as someone it’s not okay to murder.

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I agree Ms Jenneth. That is pretty important.

Overdefining runs the maybe more distant and hypothetical risk of adding something genuinely monstrous to our list of things we talk about as human beings

Possibly, but I think I might rather run the risk of adding a monster to the definition than excluding those who rightfully should be considered humans. In the sentence just prior you stated how seeing other creatures as non-human, possibly subhuman, as giving us licence to abuse them. It might be far more egregious to omit others from being human than accidentally define something as human that is actually a monster.

that might trick us into thinking it follows our rules about things like not making a habit of sucking the marrow out of babies’ bones while they sleep.

Or murder Minmater in mass to appease some supposed deity? Such a person is considered a genuine monster, yet they are still human are they not? It is possible to be such a monster and still be human and who can say that there aren’t humans in the cluster that do think it’s okay to suck marrow from the bones of babies. Humans like that are broken, maladjusted and humanity would probably be better off getting rid of such individuals, but there is no denying their humanity either.

“Any and all sapient beings” - probably too broad

Why? Our ability to think is something that we use to define ourselves as human, isn’t it? This is an important criteria, though clearly not conclusive, to defining a human. So how much sapience is enough to qualify as human and how much is too little? Conversely, how much is too much?

includes, probably, rogue drones and illegal AI generally

Maybe some of them should be defined as human. Perhaps we’re missing out on the richness they’d add to humanity by excluding their voices. What are your thoughts on that?

Sansha’s Nation (if not individual True Slaves)

We don’t consider them human? I can see claiming that they’ve had some of their individuality robbed from them in a lot of cases. When does one stop becoming human? Is individuality a criteria we look for, how much and how does one measure it?

if they turned out to exist, kumiho and bhaalgorns

I’m not sure what those are, mythical beings perhaps? So at some point there are sapients that are human, and those that aren’t. So any sapience that arises from human genes, or is the product of human creativity, might have a claim to being human in my opinion.

Sapient life that arises from other biology, even alien biology, could possibly be equivalent too but not human.

Basic rule: try not to let people define you out of the circle, and definitely don’t do it to yourself if you want to be seen as someone it’s not okay to murder.

Corallary: try to include as many people and entities as possible in your circle of what defines human, including yourself.

Thoughts?

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How about: ‘Are you genetically homo sapiens?’

Really. It’s not exactly difficult.

And yes, that means Sansha are human. They’re victims. How is this a difficult concept?

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So-- here’s sort of my version of the catch to the greatly-extended version, Ms. Ambrye, and this is going to end up being a little, uh, subjective.

Or esoteric. Or something. Anyway, grounded a bit in beliefs about what morality is and where it comes from.

Achur morality, generally, is contextual. You expect a baker to try to be a good baker; a farmer, a good farmer; a soldier a good soldier. Also, a human to be a good human.

Being a human comes with certain duties: humility; moderation; curiosity; compassion. I’ve talked about this a little elsewhere, but, basically, these are concepts that derive from the state of being alive, and a human being. It’s stuff we owe to ourselves, and each other. When we fail in these, we can expect consequences to flow from that failure.

Now-- do you expect compassion from a good slaver hound? Generally, no. Unless it’s been trained and conditioned otherwise, you should expect it to treat dropping on you out of a tree and biting your face off just because you’re you, and tasty, as the proper slaver houndly thing to do. In a human, that would be a callous, extreme, and probably arrogant act, likely bringing a storm of negative consequence. In a slaver hound, it’s just acting properly according to what it is.

My predecessor felt that as capsuleers, we’re not human beings anymore. That would free us of the duties that come with being human-- we no longer have to be careful of human lives, for one thing. Our duties shift. That was kind of the point of the “Children of Naught” writings-- trying to sketch out a new Path … a way to live, only, unlike most stuff like that, it wasn’t about sketching out what you expect from a career, but from a different state of being.

The danger-- and it’s largely a hypothetical danger-- of overextending the definition of what it is to be human is that you start applying it to things that do not and will not comply with human duties-- things as different from a human being’s position in this world as a slaver hound is. Maybe more so. A bhaalgorn-- a demon-- will have its own rules to live by. A kumiho, a shapechanging monster, lives by eating human organs and uses trickery to get them.

These are mythic beings, but Sansha’s Nation is, unfortunately, verifiably real-- a hive mind of probably-irreversibly cybernetically-enslaved humans, itself the product of a terrifying act of hubris, that has an enthusiasm for eating everybody it hasn’t eaten yet.

Then you have the rogue drones. Rogue AI. They talk. Sort of? … it’s a little ambiguous. But they eat and reproduce into human ships, with the humans still on board. Maybe they could be brought to act as we might expect humans to act, but, it’s pretty likely not.

… then you have the Drifters, which are maybe the most obvious problem with Arrendis’s solution: their biological components are built using human (Jove) DNA. But we don’t even know if there’s a consciousness we’d recognize as such behind their eyes. Are they sapient, thinking beings or machine-puppets? If they’re machine-puppets, are there sapient beings behind them? … It’s hard to tell.

If we were to encounter an alien species of which the same basic duties in this world could be expected as come with being human, I think maybe there’d be no problem with counting them that way. That would be a very lucky, also a beautiful, thing.

But if we encounter something that follows different basic rules for its behavior in this world … maybe we’d be fools to think of it as similar to us in spirit.

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