In the way back, Steve Jackson Games had a game called Car Wars.
In that game they had a mini-rpg where your "character" could die and be brought back to life via a custom grown clone body and a read of your mind into the clone body.
It was called Gold Cross. It was expensive, but worth it.
I introduced it into my Traveller campaign.
Anagathics were a staple of LBB Traveller, but if you could be resurrected, why fight getting old?
In Car Wars it was a simple matter to will your goods to your clone because you were legally the same person.
Because there's nobility in Traveller, I decided that your clone was not legally the same person, but that you could will your entire estate to your clone. No problem for most players.
One huge legal exception. Titles of nobility didn't transfer. If you were Baron of something, and you Gold-Crossed back to life, you weren't a baron anymore.
This kept the anagathics and let there be Gold Cross.
Neuyou (new you) was a competitor to Gold Cross, much cheaper.
I had an ad campaign for Gold Cross mentioning that their more costly procedure was more reliable than the "budget" option; "You'll never know what you're missing!" implying that memories could be entirely gone.
I never did confirm or deny if Newyou was an inferior service.
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Here's a problem that I've never seen brought up, either here or in fiction (such as Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) where this kind of thing happens:
ReplyDeleteWith anagathics, you stay alive. You keep being you.
With cloning and memory transplants, you die and someone else goes on being you. Sure, that person thinks they're you and acts like you and has all your memories, but they aren't you because you're lying dead in the ground.
From a mechanical RPG aspect, this isn't a problem. From a "real life" perspective, this is a massive drawback.
My path through the legal niceties of resurrection cloning actually started with the disintegrator-replicator model for the Star Trek transporters.
DeleteLegally still you and actually still you is a pickle. From your perspective, you're still you. A lot of this has to do with the how people who've received Gold Cross are thought of socially. It could be thought of as a complicated surgical procedure, a body transplant in effect. If there's no stigma attached to it, then you're you and treated as such.
What I am going on about above is the Imperium decided that immortal nobles was not in keeping with what they wanted the nobility to be, so a title couldn't cross the line; making resurrection clones almost the same person. With the line drawn at almost, then your clone becomes legally an heir and is treated as a separate person in the eyes of the law. Your wife is a widow and such. Socially how it's handled is the wedding contracts agree to recognize the inheriting clones as the person who was and they remarry.
In Car Wars, there's no legal difference between the deceased and his clone. You're still you and everyone agrees; except for philosophers and a couple of religions.
In one iteration of Traveller the players stumbled across a plot where a noble was decanting his clones as infants and raising them as his own children with the intent of overwritting their memories with his own when he died. It never got to fruition and they never discovered that it wouldn't have worked as you needed a "blank" clone to read into or the write goes horribly wrong.
"From your perspective, you're still you" only holds true if the you we're talking about is the one that's alive. I'm not even talking about souls and such; I'm talking about the notion that the "I" which inhabits this body is wholly a a separate creature from the "I" which inhabits a clone and shares my memories. If I die, "I" live on, but the I who is me stays dead.
DeleteThe point I'm trying to make with this is that while I see how it's useful within a game, I see the drawbacks as being too severe for real life, and therefore when I put myself into the perspective of average inhabitants of the game world I can't see much incentive to use it.
As I say, it's a philosophical question whether you remain you after your memories are transplanted into a new body after death.
DeleteIf the tech becomes real then it's a question that will need an answer. I know that if I were on my death-bed and fell unconscious then woke up in a completely healthy, young body I'd never doubt that I was still me. My sense of self is not tied to the particular shell. This really only becomes a severe issue if someone takes a braintape of me and loads it into a clone of me that's the same age and mileage. We're both going to think we're me! Since fingerprints are random, the one with "my" fingerprints is still "me"; but "he" might not believe it. In a post mortem case, laws will have to be written to register the new prints with the old identity.
There will, of course, be people who will not feel that they are still themselves post-resurrection. It's a matter of self awareness and perspective. How you see yourself will come drastically into play with this as a real technology. I suspect, that given the chance to be young again, people will get past the "I'm dead over there while I look at me from here." pretty fast. I know I'd chuck this crippled body in a heart-beat.
The Prestige plays with this idea a bit.
In Car Wars it's illegal to read a brain or brain-tape into the prepared clone if the memory donor is still alive to side step such things.
The philosophy and morality of this kind of tech has appeared in several debates in the Ghost in the Shell manga. Like if you upload yourself to the net, who is you? The upload, or the one that remained behind? How does one identify the original person where brain augmentation cyberware is so commonplace that it's not even considered to be an actual mofidication?
It's like the transporter question. Step on the pad, scanned, disintegrated, replicator fires at the destination and builds a new Kirk. Did he just die there? All he knows is he stepped on the pad and felt the "transporter" sensation and is now on the target.
"The Prestige plays with this idea a bit."
DeleteI heart that movie so much.
They are ALL your hat!
DeleteI fear I am not explaining myself properly. Let me try it once more, and if this doesn't work I'm admitting defeat.
ReplyDeleteBasically, unless you believe in some concept analogous to the soul, and believe that it transfers along with memories, then the "you" that is reading this email right now would not continue to live on despite being copied into a cloned body. Sure, the person who wakes up would have your memories, and would certainly think and act like you, but that isn't you in that whole "I am thinking and feeling and existing right now" sense. That you would not wake up in a new body; that you would die and stay dead.
Grr, I'm still not explaining this properly, am I? This is middle school all over again, and I'm trying to explain to my class after we just read "A Sound of Thunder" that no, just because they have a time machine doesn't mean they can go back and stop the man from stepping on a butterfly, and failing because I didn't have the vocabulary for such things as "paradox" and "observer effect" so I'm reduced to saying "But it can't happen because they didn't see themselves stopping themselves."
Ultimately, the best I can do is this: I wouldn't buy this product, because for reasons I cannot explain but viscerally know to be true, the me that is actually me would not rise from that table. I don't see how I could be convinced that a simple memory recording could transfer my own consciousness to it, and ultimately I would still be dead. I believe that many folks would feel the same, although I don't know what percentage that would be.
I get what you're saying. I got it the first time, actually.
ReplyDeleteClone is a different person, no doubt about it. The matter of the difference mattering is a philosophical question.
Mr Clonethag will think he's me and carry on as if he was; unless I have a strong feeling that I couldn't ever be successfully moved over to that clone. Then I'd feel... odd? I'd certainly be carrying a piece of OG Thag wherever I went even if I am not he. A related question is: "am I vain enough to seek such immortality?"
Ah, okay. That's not how I took your "it's a philosophical question whether you remain you after your memories are transplanted" statement. I thought you were arguing that it was the same person.
ReplyDeleteCarry on, then.
"Continuity of memory is an illusion." Don't tunnel down that rabbit hole unless you really, really want to. ;)
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I want to, or really really want to; but I find that I cannot look away... I also cannot resist the bottle labeled "DRINK ME".
Delete