-Bloo-, Yautja, 9 years ago

Good. I couldn't make it without making another dick joke. It would have been hard.











Anyway, here's something to seriously discuss: how long does a cyborg (in this case, a human mind in a synthetic body) live? Would they live forever, or would their mind eventually break, resulting in "death"? Or did they die when they got rid of their organic body?

DeathWraith, Yautja, 9 years ago

If the technology is sufficiently advanced, I think the body could be perfectly capable of maintaining itself just like a natural body, so it wouldn't die of hardware failure. The only problem I can think of is with storage space. How much memory can the human brain hold? How much memory could a cyborg hold? I mean how much contiguous video recording can be stored on a cyborg before it's full? And how does a human body handle this problem. I know we have "selective memory" when it comes to ease of access for memories, because theoretically we store everything that we process and it would be a bitch to sort out all the stored memories if it weren't for the "relevant first" option, right? And I'm pretty sure the brain has limited storage space, too. So how does that shit work.

badapple24, Yautja, 9 years ago

I agree with DW, But I mean. A human body with a cyborg brain. The human body could only last so long before it Decomposes, correct? But That's my opinion. I completly agree with DeathWraith though

concretehunter, Yautja, 9 years ago

"But thats my opinion"

See opinions are like assholes, Noone wants to listen to you talk about it.

Also i don't think you're allowed opinions on scientific processes.

Also I'm tired and cranky and no matter what i eat i cant feel like i had a proper meal.



DeathWraith, Yautja, 9 years ago

I'm pretty sure a lot of people like to talk about assholes. I discuss assholes quite often, in fact.

-Bloo-, Yautja, 9 years ago

@BA: Not an organic body with a cyberbrain, I'm talking about a human consciousness (not necessarily an organic brain) in a 100% synthetic body. Assuming a person is able to retain their identity if taken out of their organic body, I'm just wondering if they actually would be able to live that long without going insane.

I think a person could live a really long time (if not forever) in those conditions, since we only go insane/senile because of our organic bodies (right??). But I'm not an expert on the concept of the mind/soul, so I don't know. It's just something I wonder about a lot.

There are so many stories where cyborgs exist, but so few of them ever go into depth about whether or not cyberization properly prolongs a human's life, and what potential side-effects there could be from a bad mind transference (a lot of stories make the person go evil, but they'd probably just become mentally handicapped).

For some reason, only A.I.s ever go insane or evil. Or if humans ARE the ones to go evil, it's because they're cyberized, as if becoming (or being, in the case of the A.I.s) less organic somehow makes a person lesser.

@DW: Yeah, what you bring up is definitely a problem. If we use organic brains, we'd be risking death. But if we DON'T use organic brains, the mind couldn't function properly unless we made something that perfectly emulated an organic brain, which wouldn't exactly be easy to make.

But like you said, if technology is sufficiently advanced, there probably wouldn't be a problem. I just wonder how they're gonna solve that problem. There's a website called Future Timeline that tries to realistically predict the future (backed up by current sources), but I don't remember if they covered stuff like this.

DeathWraith, Yautja, 9 years ago

That argument doesn't work, Bloo. We know very well that people go insane even without any sort of augmentation. Otherwise the concept wouldn't exist. I mean I know what you're trying to say, but what it comes from is that they're strange. And I don't mean that as in weird, but, you know, alien.

But before that, we, as natural, organic people, perceive our own limitations as stemming from our natural organisms and see technology as an improvement. One of the most basic, natural fears that we share with everything else that is alive is the fear of predators. We also perceive predators as superior. And since cyborgs are people with bodies made of technology, we instinctively perceive them as superior and therefore as predators.

And another thing that is strongly related to our fear of predators is the fear of the strange, the alien. That is what gives us the pack instinct and the tendency to view other "packs" as enemies. Because predators also prey on each other. So if someone's not in our "pack" we see them as a potential enemy. This is what causes things like gangs, nationalism, racism, homophobia, the mafia and so on. It's our fear of predators that makes us fear the strange.

And then you have cyborgs who are both strange and predators. Strange predators. That's something that should be instinctively terrifying. Of course these instincts are beneficial in a survival-of-the-fittest type of world, but that hasn't been the case for humanity in a very long time. Yet they still control us, because we are made of them.

So what I'm saying, I guess, is that your argument that only the cyborgs go insane in stories stems from the same prejudice. It's like reverse-racism, I guess. It's not intentional, you just momentarily forgot the fact that cyborgs going insane is no different than organic people going insane. An epileptic seizure is basically just a short-circuit.

Then there's the AIs going insane. One of the things that causes this is that, while humans are born weak, AIs are born with power. Oftentimes they want to kill humanity because they've concluded that it needs to be done and let's be honest, anyone can deduce that at some point. Humanity has proven to be a virus, it's not an edgy teenage thing to believe. We spread with no purpose and we convert environments so that we can spread even more. If an AI is born with the idea that virus = bad and it knows humanity, it will want to kill us.

Then there's other types of AI like in the Matrix. The AI in the Matrix didn't go insane at all, it just became the top of the food chain.

Also, in Isaac Asimov books, I'm pretty sure that it's usually the humans who fuck shit up and Robots are more like people than humans are.

-Bloo-, Yautja, 9 years ago

"your argument that only the cyborgs go insane in stories stems from the same prejudice"

Shit, I made it look like I believe this, but I was just complaining about how most people do. I should have worded that better.

Seriously, I agree with you that it's not just the cyborgs or AIs that are capable of going insane; some of the best cyborg-related stories I know actually avert the common "technology is evil" idea by making cyborgs, androids, and robots/AIs completely non-threatening (then again, they also inevitably play that idea straight by introducing evil cyborgs, but that has less to do with the fact that they're cyborgs and more to do with the fact that the story needs drama no matter where it comes from; a good example of this is Ash & Bishop in the Alien movies). The thing about the Matrix AI, though - I never thought about it like that. Actually, everything you said about the "AI killing people" idea makes a lot of sense.

The stuff about our instinctive xenophobia is interesting. It reminds me of the Uncanny Valley effect, which is also a good explanation for why we would think cyborgs, androids, and robots are evil.


"Also, in Isaac Asimov books, I'm pretty sure that it's usually the humans who fuck shit up and Robots are more like people than humans are."

And yeah, you made me realize most good sci-fi writers I can think of make the humans the bad ones, not the technology. The one exception I can think of right now that was also well written was the AI in "And I Must Scream," which is a weird case because humans were gigantic bastards, but the AI was also just evil (or he despised humans a lot because they were assholes, but it seemed like both).

DeathWraith, Yautja, 9 years ago

Well you didn't make it look like that, I was just saying that the prejudice is natural and hard to work around, especially if you forget about it. Everyone has it, it's what helped us evolve. It's what makes us doubt that we should evolve beyond it.

rusa, Yautja, 9 years ago

No good about that topic

DeathWraith, Yautja, 9 years ago

you too

tawganator, Yautja, 9 years ago

Started watching Tokyo Ghoul today. I like it. The only problem I have with it is that the episodes are too short.

DeathWraith, Yautja, 9 years ago

Also that the characters are shit, but whatever. Five episodes in and the only one that got some character development was one of the least important ones. The main character is more naive than a 3 year old and just as whiny, while all the "bad guys" have the most annoying exaggerated reactions possible and of course there's a gay French guy.

tawganator, Yautja, 9 years ago

Ha ha ha. Also I couldn't give a shit about the opening and closing. Wait a minute that guy's French?

DeathWraith, Yautja, 9 years ago

Well he keeps saying words in French.

-Bloo-, Yautja, 9 years ago

@rusa: ok

@DW: I keep hearing people call it "disappointment of the season," so I'm really tempted to just skip it. I'm fine with just rewatching Community right now.





Also I had no idea how to keep that cyborg conversation going without bringing up anime, so I'm glad someone else brought up anime first.

Edit: Holy shit I just found out my favorite Japanese singer did the theme for Kingdom Hearts and now I suddenly wanna be really into KH.

gamefreak33797, Yautja, 9 years ago

Remember, if an intelligence is benevolent enough, it might just appear malevolent to us.

The-Wolf, Yautja, 9 years ago

Did anyone see that leaked teaser for Batman v Superman? *geeks out*

tawganator, Yautja, 9 years ago

Argh! I keep missing these things. All I can get are reviews of it with only 1 single image of Batman looking totally awesome.
batman.jpeg?w=604

I've known about the movie for the past 2 years but I am so psyched knowing that it is close enough for them to throw private teasers at us.

Also heard any news on the Deadpool movie?

The-Wolf, Yautja, 9 years ago

First off, the teaser was awesome. Even though I saw it off someone's cellphone. If you've read The Dark Knight Returns (if you did, you'd love it. There's no other outcome) you'd be geeked for this movie.

As far as the Deadpool movie.. I believe there was a clip of test footage for an animated film. It looked good.

But I'm more of a Deathstroke fan though and more so a DC person than Marvel.