What I don't get is how putting someone "on ice" is much of a punishment.
It's like sentencing someone to 50 years in prison, but they only experience it as an afternoon nap. What is even the point?
The show makes it kind of plain the only real interest here is gaining people's sleeves and the justice system helps supply that market, punishment and justice doesn't really come into it.
Well being skipped forward 50 years would pretty effectively destroy your social, family and business ties as well as making your bank account worth a hell of a lot less due to inflation and sticking you in a piece of crap sleeve. So it's not exactly fun.
Mind you it also basically means you'd have very little reason not to reoffend. So yeah It's to make the problem go away and get a supply of sleeves.
Anyway I've finally gotten around to watching and am currently half way through. I think it's a bit of a niche product but personally I really like it. I hope it continues (but preferably in a different direction to the books because 2 and 3 were... Eh.)
Are they not active in VR serving out their sentence?
Sounds expensive compared to just downloading them to spare stacks and keeping 2000 prisoners in a box under your desk.
Yeah, VR for a stack clearly has a non-negligible cost associated with it.
In a system built around getting sleeves to sell to people, there would be no incentive for the prison system to spend money on VR for rehabilitation, since they can shuffle those people off to freebie sleeves nobody wants and then get further sleeves when those folks go back to crime.
0
Options
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
I quite enjoyed this show, and it catered to a particular craving I've had since watching the new Blade Runner.
Blade Runner was a magnificent film, absolutely gorgeous, but I found it to be very lacking in that cramped, tightly packed grunginess that I'm fond of in my cyberpunk dystopias. Everything was slightly too clean, too open, even when it wasn't: the junkyard and apartments and stuff were supposed to look packed, I think, but the sweeping shots to give a sense of scale actually flattened them for me.
This show captured that crowded, lived-in feeling much better. Alleys felt jam-packed with vendors, people's homes had stuff in them, and I'm drawing blanks on more examples but it felt like you'd be able to smell the layers and layers of rain, grime, litter, etc.
What gets me about this sort of technology is that nobody seems to grasp the obvious implication that it's not immortality. What's in the stack isn't you, it's a digital copy of your memories and personality. The mere fact that double sleeving is possible proves that this isn't a transfer of consciousness, it's just copy&paste. It might walk, talk and act like you but you're dead and this clone that thinks it's you picks up your life where you left off. Normal personality drift means we can be dramatically different people from even one decade to the next, a copy of a copy of a copy a century down the line is simply not going to be the person they started out as, they might not even be anything like what that person would have been had they naturally managed to love 400 years!
Personally that's not appealing to me? If I was terminally ill and someone told me after I die they can make an exact duplicate that will carry on with my life my reaction would be "well great but it doesn't do a lot for me, does it?". It's a philosophical avenue the show doesn't go down at all, you have the religious people who this it's an affront to god (which again if they thought about it, it's not since this is not real immortality), you have the envoys who correctly surmised that stacks+capitalism will produce a two tier society of rich people and everyone else. No one is looking at the angle of "holy shit our society is being filled out with copies rather than real people".
Even when I read the book some 15 years ago I was wondering what the stack actually meant for the brain. Is the brain just a useless lump of blubber and the actual mind is in the stack? Is there still a mind in the brain and what's in the stack gets to override everything for some really messed up version of lock-in syndrome?
There was some quick comment about "wiping" in the show somewhere.
0
Options
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
I think you're meant to assume that consciousness is, like, a ~thing~ that can get moved around. It's not much different from Star Trek's transporters, it's just that your consciousness goes into a stack (and then presumably back up into the brain) rather than a copy of your body.
Backups throw a bit more of a wrench into this theory than double sleeving (which would just be creating a new person) but *waves hands*
What gets me about this sort of technology is that nobody seems to grasp the obvious implication that it's not immortality. What's in the stack isn't you, it's a digital copy of your memories and personality. The mere fact that double sleeving is possible proves that this isn't a transfer of consciousness, it's just copy&paste. It might walk, talk and act like you but you're dead and this clone that thinks it's you picks up your life where you left off. Normal personality drift means we can be dramatically different people from even one decade to the next, a copy of a copy of a copy a century down the line is simply not going to be the person they started out as, they might not even be anything like what that person would have been had they naturally managed to love 400 years!
Personally that's not appealing to me? If I was terminally ill and someone told me after I die they can make an exact duplicate that will carry on with my life my reaction would be "well great but it doesn't do a lot for me, does it?". It's a philosophical avenue the show doesn't go down at all, you have the religious people who this it's an affront to god (which again if they thought about it, it's not since this is not real immortality), you have the envoys who correctly surmised that stacks+capitalism will produce a two tier society of rich people and everyone else. No one is looking at the angle of "holy shit our society is being filled out with copies rather than real people".
From the show at least,
it seems like the technology is much more than a simple recorder-I've understood it as your self basically being inside the stack, and the brain and body being just the "hardware" running the you "software"
I think you're meant to assume that consciousness is, like, a ~thing~ that can get moved around. It's not much different from Star Trek's transporters, it's just that your consciousness goes into a stack (and then presumably back up into the brain) rather than a copy of your body.
Backups throw a bit more of a wrench into this theory than double sleeving (which would just be creating a new person) but *waves hands*
Yeah star trek teleporters are also a bugbear of mine, I would not get in one because again, the way it's been described as working, teleporters sound like a scanner, a disintegration ray and 3D printer.
What gets me about this sort of technology is that nobody seems to grasp the obvious implication that it's not immortality. What's in the stack isn't you, it's a digital copy of your memories and personality. The mere fact that double sleeving is possible proves that this isn't a transfer of consciousness, it's just copy&paste. It might walk, talk and act like you but you're dead and this clone that thinks it's you picks up your life where you left off. Normal personality drift means we can be dramatically different people from even one decade to the next, a copy of a copy of a copy a century down the line is simply not going to be the person they started out as, they might not even be anything like what that person would have been had they naturally managed to love 400 years!
Personally that's not appealing to me? If I was terminally ill and someone told me after I die they can make an exact duplicate that will carry on with my life my reaction would be "well great but it doesn't do a lot for me, does it?". It's a philosophical avenue the show doesn't go down at all, you have the religious people who this it's an affront to god (which again if they thought about it, it's not since this is not real immortality), you have the envoys who correctly surmised that stacks+capitalism will produce a two tier society of rich people and everyone else. No one is looking at the angle of "holy shit our society is being filled out with copies rather than real people".
From the show at least,
it seems like the technology is much more than a simple recorder-I've understood it as your self basically being inside the stack, and the brain and body being just the "hardware" running the you "software"
Me and the show will have to agree to disagree on the principle that a human consciousness copied into digital data is truly the actual consciousness and not a copy.
I think the difference is in how it's portrayed. If the old body was shown reaching out for its new body with it's last breath, that'd be the sucky version. In the show, the body literally stops as the consciousness goes, and other people flip back and forth between sleeves really easy without apparently leaving any trace in the old body. Whatever the technological requirements are, it seems to be a complete transfer from body to body. But as the mind is given a somewhat digital form, it's possible to back up and duplicate it. Even in a duplication case, each was aware acutely who was the original, probably be different if they were sleeved simultaneously though.
If I could transfer my mind near death or post-death in the way it's offered in the show, I'd happily do that.
I always liked the way that Eclipse Phase does it, where everyone believes that there is continuity and that you are the same person when you are downloaded as the person who was uploaded.
The operative word being believe, because most people do engage or have engaged in it before, and the idea that there isn't a continuity is philosophically and psychologically just completely unacceptable to most of society. We can't prove that it is the case, but it must be, because otherwise everyone would be ghosts of people who died during The Fall and in various situations and events afterwards, and that can't be true.
Solar on
+6
Options
MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
edited February 2018
It's mentioned a few times that stack tech is of non-human origin; something about the metal?
Wondering if there's any connection between those trees and stacks?
If you start to think about it you'll realize that it goes completely against our own understanding of how the brain works (where memories, personality etc are stored by braincells forming connections with each other).
Since Altered Carbon doesn't mention any brain-alteration it leaves us with a few (not so attractive) options:
a. Stack technology hijacks the body and your brain is in there screaming but unable to connect to the outside world.
b. Stack technology is super invasive and every time a stack is activated the brain is puddled and then reprogrammed from the data inside the stack. No wonder people go insane.
c. Wallbanger. Stack technology doesn't work. It's just not plausible. Though technically this is kind of OK for the type of socially oriented science fiction that Altered Carbon is. It's not about the technology itself, it's about the social impact of immortality and memory recording, the Author just isn't capable of writing up something that is actually plausible
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I think you're meant to assume that consciousness is, like, a ~thing~ that can get moved around. It's not much different from Star Trek's transporters, it's just that your consciousness goes into a stack (and then presumably back up into the brain) rather than a copy of your body.
Backups throw a bit more of a wrench into this theory than double sleeving (which would just be creating a new person) but *waves hands*
Yeah star trek teleporters are also a bugbear of mine, I would not get in one because again, the way it's been described as working, teleporters sound like a scanner, a disintegration ray and 3D printer.
I'll take the bus thanks!
I'd recommend you read The Punch Escrow. It basically plays around with this, and it's great.
I'm working my way through this and liking it. It has it's dumb moments of "we want to show some nudity and/or fighting now" that you just have to go with, but the world is cool. I like the Envoy flashbacks more than the actual story for the most part. I also wish it had less 'cop show' in it. Like, Ortega is ok but I don't need to know the name of every dude in the police station.
I've been seeing this woman for a couple of weeks and it's been going good, taking it slow, just three dates so far, no kind of sense of exclusivity (not even talked about it) but, you know
And I've been keeping an open but also relatively... realistic mind on it? Like we get on well but that's mostly because we both talk a lot, we don't actually have a lot in common with each other. And it is cool to hang out with her, but I just dunno how hugely compatible out interests, our friendship groups, and even our lifestyles are, like she works a lot of nights as a nurse, and I'm always on days etc. But I was thinking hey, you know, stick with it you know what you're like, keep on
Anyway this other woman messaged me online and she's really cool and interesting, lots of things in common, politically minded and active etc, seems funny... I dunno. I feel like kind of a jerk here for almost wanting to chat to her, maybe take her out for drinks if it goes well
If you two haven't agreed to be exclusive there is no reason to assume she may also be talking to other people. And talking to someone else when not exclusive shouldn't be a big deal!
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Prison being replaced by boxes full of stacks is 100% believable and gruesomely rational
Total prevention of recidivism, minimal cost (enormously reduced since you just have to pay for bureaucracy), etc.
Who cares about punishment, deterrence or rehabilitation? Criminals disappear without needing to kill them or feed them. It's the perfect, horrible solution. The unbelievable part is that they'd ever be resleeved.
(I agree that it's clearly not you when you're resleeved, just a copy, and it's not immortality as much as legacy. Still very appealing. It's arguable though, given that we can't convincingly argue that the same thing doesn't happen every time we sleep, or every few seconds.)
Prison being replaced by boxes full of stacks is 100% believable and gruesomely rational
Total prevention of recidivism, minimal cost (enormously reduced since you just have to pay for bureaucracy), etc.
Who cares about punishment, deterrence or rehabilitation? Criminals disappear without needing to kill them or feed them. It's the perfect, horrible solution. The unbelievable part is that they'd ever be resleeved.
Just to add to the brutality, atleast going by the book there isn't any exceptions for Catholics/Neo Cs so if they get thrown in for a week they're done.
I just wanted to add. Ortega's Grandma is the best.
They go more into the psychological trauma of the stack technology in the books.
I don't know if I like the change to the Envoy backstory yet. Only one episode in but we'll see. I definitely don't like him knowing Quellcrist Falconer due to later book storylines.
I don't buy that multisleeving would be just illegal (except for the wealthy that get away with anything). I feel like society would identify their best workers, soldiers, researchers and leaders and just start spinning up hundreds of them and fuck anybody who didn't make the cut. I'm sure you could handle it with world building though, like 'oh it was legal and then we had to keep fighting civil wars against massive collectives with identical minds' or something.
Multi sleeving would have it own issues, which sadly the show doesn't explore.
They just act like puppets for the originals, which in a realistic situation I don't buy. They may be a clone of the original's imprint, but they aren't slaved in digitally - they can do whatever they want and want their own lives.
But that'd make the story line to confusing and rather than cut the idea completely just hand wave the implications.
The only one I did buy it was with Takeshi's.
Harry Dresden on
0
Options
NogsCrap, crap, mega crap.Crap, crap, mega crap.Registered Userregular
loved the show but
Rei figured out Kovacs double sleeved pretty early on in the last episode. Why the hell didn't she just kill him immediately, knowing that he is actually totally safe out there somewhere, and she can get him whenever she wants.
I always liked the way that Eclipse Phase does it, where everyone believes that there is continuity and that you are the same person when are are downloaded as the person who was uploaded.
The operative word being believe, because most people do engage or have engaged in it before, and the idea that there isn't a continuity is philosophically and psychologically just completely unacceptable to most of society. We can't prove that it is the case, but it must be, because otherwise everyone would be ghosts of people who died during The Fall and in various situations and events afterwards, and that can't be true.
Yeah I think what matters in this show is not whether or not the "soul" truly lives in the stack - either way, society has reached a consensus by this point that yes it does. Everything they do is built on that founding assumption. As a viewer you can deny that if you want but I don't think it accomplishes anything from a story perspective. That philosophical debate is fairly played out now and this story just isn't interested in exploring it.
+8
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
At the end of the day, I think it's just that this author really didn't think the stack tech through as more than a one-off story device, so the handling of it is inconsistent by origin rather than design. The story wasn't about the ethics or ramifications of stacks, it was about some guy who shoots a lot of people to solve some rich dude's murder. Even if the author did spend time thinking about those ramifications or details, he didn't see them as important to the story and left them out.
For a setting like Ghost in the Shell, things like ghosts and cyberbrains have a fair bit of thought put into them, but that's because the setting actually focuses on the questions such things raise rather than just using them to beef up a pretty standard detective story. But that series delves heavily into ideas of self, sentience, and altered versus real perceptions in how people act and think of themselves.
In comparison, Kovacs is mostly just trying to stay sleeved, and pretty much all the delving he does is into the female characters.
+7
Options
HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I don't know how scientists believe brains work, but if consciousness are brain per brain specific cells and different connections between them then it's still something that should be able to be represented in a very big and very advanced matrix.
Given infinite time and perfect ability to read this info from a brain you should be able to draw it on a super large volume of paper.
I just assume stacks are some magic tech to do that. Unless you get into spiritual aspects, consciousness is necessarily something physical and then it follows I think that it can be represented in some way on another medium.
At the end of the day, I think it's just that this author really didn't think the stack tech through as more than a one-off story device, so the handling of it is inconsistent by origin rather than design. The story wasn't about the ethics or ramifications of stacks, it was about some guy who shoots a lot of people to solve some rich dude's murder. Even if the author did spend time thinking about those ramifications or details, he didn't see them as important to the story and left them out.
For a setting like Ghost in the Shell, things like ghosts and cyberbrains have a fair bit of thought put into them, but that's because the setting actually focuses on the questions such things raise rather than just using them to beef up a pretty standard detective story. But that series delves heavily into ideas of self, sentience, and altered versus real perceptions in how people act and think of themselves.
In comparison, Kovacs is mostly just trying to stay sleeved, and pretty much all the delving he does is into the female characters.
Not to get into the same discussion that was had during the GitS movie thread: This is entirely dependent on which medium you're talking about. The source material (the original comic) very much is just a police procedural with a lot of the technology just thrown on top. The ending with the puppet master and Kusanagi merging is only a few pages of dense text that happen very abruptly.
The 95 movie is the first time that the philosophical aspects of the setting became the core of the story.
I enjoyed the show overall and would watch a second season. My main gripes are that I didn't like a lot of the acting (Joel Kinnerman) and I didn't feel vested in the main story line towards the end. On the plus side were a lot of things already mentioned: The multicultural feel, how crowded everything was, and a few of the characters, like the Ortega family. Really, I'm just a fan of the cyberpunk genre and I hope more things get made like this.
One thing I will say about Joel Kinnerman, is that at the beginning they say that his sleeve has Neurachem and military grade muscular implants, and he definitely looks the part
Like if you said to me, this guy has been modified to be a grade-A 100% shitkicker then I absolutely would believe that by sight alone
I liked it quite a bit. No attachment to the original books. It wasn't the strongest plot, but it was substantially above average TV, and it was cyberpunk noir.
Also, I loved the Gibson reference with the bridge.
Posts
Well being skipped forward 50 years would pretty effectively destroy your social, family and business ties as well as making your bank account worth a hell of a lot less due to inflation and sticking you in a piece of crap sleeve. So it's not exactly fun.
Mind you it also basically means you'd have very little reason not to reoffend. So yeah It's to make the problem go away and get a supply of sleeves.
Anyway I've finally gotten around to watching and am currently half way through. I think it's a bit of a niche product but personally I really like it. I hope it continues (but preferably in a different direction to the books because 2 and 3 were... Eh.)
Sounds expensive compared to just downloading them to spare stacks and keeping 2000 prisoners in a box under your desk.
Yeah, VR for a stack clearly has a non-negligible cost associated with it.
In a system built around getting sleeves to sell to people, there would be no incentive for the prison system to spend money on VR for rehabilitation, since they can shuffle those people off to freebie sleeves nobody wants and then get further sleeves when those folks go back to crime.
Blade Runner was a magnificent film, absolutely gorgeous, but I found it to be very lacking in that cramped, tightly packed grunginess that I'm fond of in my cyberpunk dystopias. Everything was slightly too clean, too open, even when it wasn't: the junkyard and apartments and stuff were supposed to look packed, I think, but the sweeping shots to give a sense of scale actually flattened them for me.
This show captured that crowded, lived-in feeling much better. Alleys felt jam-packed with vendors, people's homes had stuff in them, and I'm drawing blanks on more examples but it felt like you'd be able to smell the layers and layers of rain, grime, litter, etc.
Also Poe is the best.
Personally that's not appealing to me? If I was terminally ill and someone told me after I die they can make an exact duplicate that will carry on with my life my reaction would be "well great but it doesn't do a lot for me, does it?". It's a philosophical avenue the show doesn't go down at all, you have the religious people who this it's an affront to god (which again if they thought about it, it's not since this is not real immortality), you have the envoys who correctly surmised that stacks+capitalism will produce a two tier society of rich people and everyone else. No one is looking at the angle of "holy shit our society is being filled out with copies rather than real people".
There was some quick comment about "wiping" in the show somewhere.
Backups throw a bit more of a wrench into this theory than double sleeving (which would just be creating a new person) but *waves hands*
From the show at least,
Yeah star trek teleporters are also a bugbear of mine, I would not get in one because again, the way it's been described as working, teleporters sound like a scanner, a disintegration ray and 3D printer.
I'll take the bus thanks!
Me and the show will have to agree to disagree on the principle that a human consciousness copied into digital data is truly the actual consciousness and not a copy.
If I could transfer my mind near death or post-death in the way it's offered in the show, I'd happily do that.
The operative word being believe, because most people do engage or have engaged in it before, and the idea that there isn't a continuity is philosophically and psychologically just completely unacceptable to most of society. We can't prove that it is the case, but it must be, because otherwise everyone would be ghosts of people who died during The Fall and in various situations and events afterwards, and that can't be true.
Wondering if there's any connection between those trees and stacks?
Since Altered Carbon doesn't mention any brain-alteration it leaves us with a few (not so attractive) options:
a. Stack technology hijacks the body and your brain is in there screaming but unable to connect to the outside world.
b. Stack technology is super invasive and every time a stack is activated the brain is puddled and then reprogrammed from the data inside the stack. No wonder people go insane.
c. Wallbanger. Stack technology doesn't work. It's just not plausible. Though technically this is kind of OK for the type of socially oriented science fiction that Altered Carbon is. It's not about the technology itself, it's about the social impact of immortality and memory recording, the Author just isn't capable of writing up something that is actually plausible
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I'd recommend you read The Punch Escrow. It basically plays around with this, and it's great.
If you two haven't agreed to be exclusive there is no reason to assume she may also be talking to other people. And talking to someone else when not exclusive shouldn't be a big deal!
Come Overwatch with meeeee
@RedTide thanks for the advice though mate, much appreciated
Total prevention of recidivism, minimal cost (enormously reduced since you just have to pay for bureaucracy), etc.
Who cares about punishment, deterrence or rehabilitation? Criminals disappear without needing to kill them or feed them. It's the perfect, horrible solution. The unbelievable part is that they'd ever be resleeved.
(I agree that it's clearly not you when you're resleeved, just a copy, and it's not immortality as much as legacy. Still very appealing. It's arguable though, given that we can't convincingly argue that the same thing doesn't happen every time we sleep, or every few seconds.)
So there'd probably be some sort of physical re-wiring of the brain that goes on shortly after a new stack is installed.
I guess if the stack is a flash-drive, then a sleeve's brain is the RAM.
Just to add to the brutality, atleast going by the book there isn't any exceptions for Catholics/Neo Cs so if they get thrown in for a week they're done.
I just wanted to add. Ortega's Grandma is the best.
I don't know if I like the change to the Envoy backstory yet. Only one episode in but we'll see. I definitely don't like him knowing Quellcrist Falconer due to later book storylines.
The hotel is pretty great though.
PARKER, YOU'RE FIRED! <-- My comic book podcast! Satan look here!
Yeah I think what matters in this show is not whether or not the "soul" truly lives in the stack - either way, society has reached a consensus by this point that yes it does. Everything they do is built on that founding assumption. As a viewer you can deny that if you want but I don't think it accomplishes anything from a story perspective. That philosophical debate is fairly played out now and this story just isn't interested in exploring it.
For a setting like Ghost in the Shell, things like ghosts and cyberbrains have a fair bit of thought put into them, but that's because the setting actually focuses on the questions such things raise rather than just using them to beef up a pretty standard detective story. But that series delves heavily into ideas of self, sentience, and altered versus real perceptions in how people act and think of themselves.
In comparison, Kovacs is mostly just trying to stay sleeved, and pretty much all the delving he does is into the female characters.
Given infinite time and perfect ability to read this info from a brain you should be able to draw it on a super large volume of paper.
I just assume stacks are some magic tech to do that. Unless you get into spiritual aspects, consciousness is necessarily something physical and then it follows I think that it can be represented in some way on another medium.
Not to get into the same discussion that was had during the GitS movie thread: This is entirely dependent on which medium you're talking about. The source material (the original comic) very much is just a police procedural with a lot of the technology just thrown on top. The ending with the puppet master and Kusanagi merging is only a few pages of dense text that happen very abruptly.
The 95 movie is the first time that the philosophical aspects of the setting became the core of the story.
Like if you said to me, this guy has been modified to be a grade-A 100% shitkicker then I absolutely would believe that by sight alone
Also, I loved the Gibson reference with the bridge.