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So for Family Book Club we read and just finished discussing Cory Doctorow's Walkaway.
I have many thoughts, let me tell you them.
I loved the idea of walkaways, of simply stepping out of the existing social structure and living communally on abandoned land with scrounged materials. I loved Limpopo, who described it so well for everyone who came through the B&B and actually convinced an entire community to abandon/walkaway from an existing utopia and build a new one. I loved the decision making process that allowed for a randomized anonymous polling so no one had to step up to lead a rebellion and no one had to support them, you could reveal the idea when you had a quorum.
I loved that zeppelins became a thing
I loved the MOOP - Material Out Of Place
I liked a society based on bug tracking,
I get really uncomfortable thinking about "downloading" or recording individuals and storing them in a computer, and we talked for a long time around how death is one thing for each individual (I will stop, and nothing happens after that) and something really really different for the people who are left behind, who MISS them. So having a copy of the person is nice for the community but more or less meaningless to the individual. the new individual is a new entity, running on a different substrate. We agreed the problem was somewhere between a teleporter problem and Theseus' ship problem. The problematic teleporter creates a new body at the destination and ports the intellect into it and then kills off the old body. Is that murder? yep. Would you teleport yourself? maaaybe... Theseus's ship is how much has to be replaced (presumably because of breakage from use) before it isn't Theseus' ship any more? The USS Constitution has maybe 10% original planking and parts - is it the same ship? J settled that question by saying "Hey Theseus - is that your ship?" Which meant we settled on bodies being a social construct.
I guess at a fundamental level I can't see that happening - there is enough of the human psyche that is entailed in our being embodied, including the emotions we get from our gut bacteria, that it seems unlikely that a brain scan will replicate an individual.
Anyhow.
I have many thoughts, let me tell you them.
I loved the idea of walkaways, of simply stepping out of the existing social structure and living communally on abandoned land with scrounged materials. I loved Limpopo, who described it so well for everyone who came through the B&B and actually convinced an entire community to abandon/walkaway from an existing utopia and build a new one. I loved the decision making process that allowed for a randomized anonymous polling so no one had to step up to lead a rebellion and no one had to support them, you could reveal the idea when you had a quorum.
I loved that zeppelins became a thing
I loved the MOOP - Material Out Of Place
I liked a society based on bug tracking,
I get really uncomfortable thinking about "downloading" or recording individuals and storing them in a computer, and we talked for a long time around how death is one thing for each individual (I will stop, and nothing happens after that) and something really really different for the people who are left behind, who MISS them. So having a copy of the person is nice for the community but more or less meaningless to the individual. the new individual is a new entity, running on a different substrate. We agreed the problem was somewhere between a teleporter problem and Theseus' ship problem. The problematic teleporter creates a new body at the destination and ports the intellect into it and then kills off the old body. Is that murder? yep. Would you teleport yourself? maaaybe... Theseus's ship is how much has to be replaced (presumably because of breakage from use) before it isn't Theseus' ship any more? The USS Constitution has maybe 10% original planking and parts - is it the same ship? J settled that question by saying "Hey Theseus - is that your ship?" Which meant we settled on bodies being a social construct.
I guess at a fundamental level I can't see that happening - there is enough of the human psyche that is entailed in our being embodied, including the emotions we get from our gut bacteria, that it seems unlikely that a brain scan will replicate an individual.
Anyhow.