Random Stuff

[newnumber6]

Just noticed that LJ gave us free users an extra 3 userpics (apparently since I had 7 from when I was a paid account holder, I wasn't able to use them until I deleted one, so I didn't notice until now even though they gave them a few days ago). Yay LJ anyway.

So the other day I was hanging out on a dead MU* (one I still
frequent to chat with someone). Another person who I occasionally
see online there (presumably for the same reason) but have never
really talked to paged me out of the blue, apparently bored. We
talked briefly but I was just heading to bed, so that was that.
Then, a couple days later, they paged me again and it was all
pouncy and nuzzling and I'm a little WTF? I don't mean to be
rude but we've said like less than 20 words to each other and
suddenly you're nuzzling me? I have trouble knowing how to react to online 'nuzzles' and such even from good friends, much less from someone who's all but a stranger.

XET looks like it's temporarily down again.

Book Foo: Recently finished: Brothers-In-Arms and Mirror Dance, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Started: The Einstein Intersection, by Samuel Delany
Minor spoilers beyond the cut.
I wasn't sold on it initially, but with these books I've decided that I rather like that universe Bujold sets up for her Vorkosigan books. The cultures are interesting and she manages to make both the regular Miles and his clone distinctive characters, similar but different. Before I only planned on reading a few of the books because they'd won Hugo or Nebula awards, but they interest me enough that I'll pick up all of them, eventually. They're rather fun.

TEI is sort of about humans living after some kind of nuclear holocaust, where being born normal is a mark of distinction when many people are born so mutated they're not even functional, and the main character is functional but 'different' like a number of people. Except it's not quite about that at all, there's other stuff going on that I won't spoil in case you're interested in reading it. The main character goes on a quest to among other things bring back his dead love. It's okay, but it's really not for me. Just reading it because it won a Nebula, so after I'm done I'll have read every novel winning a Nebula in the 60s... and have already read every Hugo in the 60s, 70s, and 90s, and a good proportion of the rest)


Am I the only one that thinks 'trust us, we're the government' is better as a punchline to a joke rather than official government policy?

Philosophical Question of the Moment: You've just died, but just before that happened, the entire contents of your brain were downloaded into a new supercomputer. The computer has all the memories you did, and behaves in a way consistent with your personality. Is the computer 'you'? Or is it a copy/imitation?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

XET is down! Who will I complain to about my illness and my reading and stuff?! :(

Answer: It is both you and a copy/imitation of you. You split yourself, made a clone so to speak, so while one part of you dies, the other lives on. Although, the paths do go different ways after that. Once you realize that you don't live in the same physical body you used to be in, you stop being "you" - you become something else entirely, that is a lot like you but not really. You just Frankenstiened yourself. I think William Gibson wrote about this but I can't remember in which book.

[bareedy.livejournal.com]

That was me by the way - the real me, not the downloaded me. I think the downloaded me is off cavorting in some hentai website or something, I'd rather not know.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

My answer is similar, except to me, the AI-you is you, and the dying-post-AI-brainsuck version is you, but AI-you is not post-brainsuck-you. It's like this:
/----AI-You
You pre AI stuff -----------<
\----Post-Brainsuck-body-you (soon dead)

They both have the same past being but they are not the same being as each other.

Although IMHO, neither one is 'preferential'. Even if Post-Brainsuck body still had all his memories and got a cure and had a long and healthy life, he's not _more_ me than AI-me, he's just a different.

The 'you cease being you but instead become something else' to me isn't any different than what happens on a day to day basis as people slowly reinvent themselves. I feel I'd be just as justified to say that I'm not the same me as I was at, say, age 15, I'm something else entirely, as I would in saying that I'm not the same me post-AI as I am pre-AI. In some ways both are true, and yet if I point to a picture of myself at 16 and say 'That's me', I'm still right. It all depends on what your definition of 'is' is. ;)

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Woops, that attempt to draw really didn't work out too well. Oh well. It was a branching, that was my point.

[foxfyre.livejournal.com]

I had a horrible, evil urge to start off my comment with *nuzzles*.

But I wouldn't do that to you, because I understand how rare and special online pseudo-affection is from you. I cherish my one and only *hug*. ;)

Seriously though, that sort of situation is completely freaky and non-fun. People really need to learn that despite the online medium, there are still appropriate and inappropriate levels of intimacy. ;p

As for the philosophical question, the AI would be not-me, because I would cease. It would be a new almost-me building up from the basis of what I was. A lot of what makes me "me" is wrapped up in my body as much as my mind, and without that--even with all the memories and the right thought patterns--the AI would diverge from the original personality.

I think.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Heh... well, at least with someone I know fairly well, I don't _mind_ the affectionate gestures, I just am not properly equipped to respond. You might get a ':is benuzzled'. But when it's someone who's more or less a stranger, I don't even want to do that and am just sort of left staring at the screen shaking my head. ;)