SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

A discussion elsewhere of Andrew Kaplan's plans for a certain kind of immortality prompted an interesting discussion.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/techno...

Does it count as immortality?
And what books/ short stories/ movies have explored the idea?

Mentioned so far are:

Bradbury's "The Electric Grandmother" which can be read in I Sing the Body Electric! and viewed here: https://archive.org/details/The_Elect....

Some episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that feature the holodeck.

The Collapsing Empire

It’s been done to... undeath? Digital immortality, mind uploading, the Singularity, etc., it’s a staple of SF of at least the past 25 years, with various versions appearing earlier, such as in the works of Arthur C. Clarke, John Varley, Jack L. Chalker and Stephen King.

Altered Carbon
Accelerando
The Android's Dream
Permutation City
The Terminal Experiment
Eater
Vast
Heads
Eternity
Software
Ghost in the Shell
We Are Legion
Destination Void
2001: A Space Odyssey ~ 3001: The Final Odyssey
The Fifth Head of Cerberus
Feersum Endjinn
Mind Transfer
Machine Man

It's weird because the idea creeps me out. I vaguely remember one episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which Harry Kim fell in love with a hologram. What if that hologram was based on a real persons input from when they were alive?

Yet... My partner is chronically ill. And my first thought was: "He should start today with those recordings." Not my parents because for some reason I accept their death like something natural. So yes even if I want to hear them, I got years of memories with them. But when it comes to my partner I feel different.

And that creeps me out even more.

Because if I could have an image of him that I could interact with, would I ever grieve him properly? To remind him with a smile? To feel that ache but no longer the pain? To feel like I could fall in love with another without feeling like I would betray him?

Maybe you could be immortal but could your loved ones handle that?

Ada wrote: "It's weird because the idea creeps me out. I vaguely remember one episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which Harry Kim fell in love with a hologram. What if that hologram was based on a real persons in..."

There was a short story I read back in the early 90s that was about nanotechnology and the singularity, where the main character was a woman dating a scientist who was working on this. She doesn’t understand it at all, and when he receives a terminal diagnosis he bitterly complains that she will live long enough to reap the benefits and become immortal while he will be forgotten.

In her old age she does have her mind uploaded, and with the increased processing power it boosts her intelligence. After some time (years? decades? more?) she reconstructs his personality from his recordings, notes and her memories of him. So he eventually does become immortal, but not really. It always disturbed me because it seems to end on a happy note, but he remains a simulacrum rather than a continuation of the person.

I, too, have multiple chronic ailments and I would jump at the chance to upload my mind into an android body without pain. I’ll even take a virtual world, like the one shown in the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero.”

Trike wrote: "Ada wrote: "It's weird because the idea creeps me out. I vaguely remember one episode of Star Trek: Voyager in which Harry Kim fell in love with a hologram. What if that hologram was based on a rea..."
I just asked my partner what he would do and although he would want his consciousness uploaded a la Altered Carbon, he wouldn't want to be "just a living memory".

And I think I would cry bitter tears over the ending of that short story. Is can see why it would disturb you.

I was trying to reconstruct how far back I'd been seeing stories like this when I read the earlier thread and ran across this rather extensive history of fictional "mind uploading:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_up...

One of my favorites, at least back when I read it very, very long time ago, was Arthur C. Clarke's 1956 novel The City and the Stars.

The electric grandparent discussion kind of creeps me out because one of the most important parts of becoming an adult is, in my mind, learning to make your own way and forming your own ideas about what that means. I'd be concerned that this could interfere with that for some people. I see variants on that problem now and maybe that's why I'm such a curmudgeon about it. To be fair the article does mention this issue in passing.

There are a couple of examples of the use of this technology as an internal advisor in this year's group reads (A Memory Called Empire) and buddy reads (Aliette de Bodard). That seems particularly problematic to me. It could be great in the right hands/minds, but...

I don't think Andrew Kaplan's bot sounds like immortality; more like an echo. His son is in his thirties and he wants to leave something to his grandchildren. This is understandable, but when his grandson is in his thirties is he going to want to consult hundred-year-old grandpa bot? And if not, will the grandson feel like he is somehow letting down his dad or grandpa bot? You know, what is the limitation? Invite a holograph to a wedding? Siri reminding you to somehow visit and not forget about the bot. This is the benign version.

Can you imagine the Oval Office buffoon as quasi-immortal--millions consulting him? That would be awful. This is the more dangerous outcome.

I think our technology would be better-focused to cure what we have and it could be done.

Many would want to put the bot technology to good use, but the more aggressive would take the same technology and turn it to something bad.

But there's a very big difference between putting all your memories and advice into a program/hologram/android, and putting your *ongoing* consciousness into one. That is, what Trike said: " simulacrum rather than a continuation of the person."

Blurbs for stories and novels don't always clarify which kind is being explored. And the irl Andy-bot is being hyped as if it's the latter, when it's clearly the former.

The former doesn't bother me at all. I'm very lucky that I'm not in a situation like yours, Ada, and so I don't really know for sure how I'd feel... but I do think I'd grieve and recover much as I would otherwise. Meanwhile anyway I am sending warmest wishes to you both.

Where would this consciousness be housed? Up in the cloud with 50M other consciousnesses? What happens when the cloud migrates to something bigger and better? Or who maintains the droid? Where will it, not live, but stay? I hope techno experts focus on keeping the planet livable, curing the so far incurable. But, it won't stop with the Andy bot, that's for sure. Sounds like the Mirror of Erised.

M.L. wrote: "Can you imagine the Oval Office buffoon as quasi-immortal--millions consulting him?"



Try it yourself at
https://time.com/3966291/donald-trump...

Hahaha!

I like your term "echo" for the simulacrum. Catchy.
M.L., your obections & the way you present them are getting through to me and I'm beginning to see how this could be a more powerful, more easily abused form of memoirs.

Well, I've not read that, but my opinion is, if the mind can not only remember the previous existence but also come up with new ideas and incorporate new experiences, it's closer to alive than dead.

That's why this is such a neat idea for SF authors to explore. What if the memories are gone, and the body is something entirely different, but the mind is based on a particular human? Because if not based on human, it's AI, right, and that's a different set of explorations.

Or is it all that different? What's the difference between The Ship Who Sang and Lovey in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet?

Cheryl wrote: "Well, I've not read that, but my opinion is, if the mind can not only remember the previous existence but also come up with new ideas and incorporate new experiences, it's closer to alive than dead..."

I have relatives who have Alzheimer’s, and we treat them as if they are still the same person when they clearly aren’t. Although the question there is one of destruction versus dysfunction. If we could restore their brains to their proper operation, would their memories be restored? Or are those memories gone? Until we can reverse the disease, there’s no way to tell.

It becomes a case of the Ship of Theseus, really. That’s where we confront Theseus’ Paradox that questions identity: his ship is more than 300 years old, but gradually over time every plank and component has been replaced. Is it still the same object if none of the original parts are there?

Yup, lots of interesting things to think and read about.

Re' senility, Alzheimer's, etc. (view spoiler)[I fully expect to be treated completely differently if/when I develop Alzheimer's. I have no doubt that I, personally, would find it frustrating as hell to have expectations put on me to act as if I were still fully functional... and I'd hope that my family and caregivers would interact with me as the person I am atm, not as the person they wish that I still was. I know my husband's Nana was happiest when we reached her in her own space. (hide spoiler)]

Interesting bit of coincidence today:

Just after I posted the above I was reading Way Station (1963) by Clifford D. Simak, which is about an immortal human who has been placed in charge of an alien transfer station on Earth. The teleportation method is destructive/reconstructive, which hits exactly on this topic:

Moments ago the creature in the tank had rested in another tank in another station and the materializer had built up a pattern of it — not only of its body, but of its very vital force, the thing that gave it life. Then the impulse pattern had moved across the gulfs of space almost instantaneously to the receiver of this station, where the pattern had been used to duplicate the body and the mind and the memory and the life of the creature now lying dead many lightyears distant. And in the tank the new body and the new mind and memory and life had taken form almost instantly — an entirely new being, but exactly like the old one, so that the identity continued and the consciousness (the very thought no more than momentarily interrupted) so that to all intent and purpose the being was the same.

He hasn’t gone into the ramifications of this yet, but I have seen this theme (and tech) in other SF works.

John, that's true... but in a way it supports my point: (view spoiler)[if a person is driven to act 'out of character' is s/he to be interacted with and treated as if s/he is the same person that s/he was? I'd argue 'not necessarily.' (hide spoiler)]

Trike, indeed. Good book, one of my favorite authors. I should read it again.