The opposite of the death penalty.

[BroomJockey]

You know, we really need a new forum for theoretical arguments...

Okay, this time, I'm going the *opposite* direction of my "alternative death penalty." What if a mechanism was invented that could completely copy your mind. Every detail. And then when you died, you were copied to a new, healthy, middle-aged version of your body. Also pretend it's available to anyone who wants it. Would you do it? Why? Why not?

Let's play with the variables. You can move the age of the body you come back in. Anywhere from 18 to really really old. 18's the limit because of the process needed to create the duplicate body, they need to be reasonably sure it's finished growing. Would you still? Would you not?

Now you can change cosmetic physical characteristics. Hair colour, eye colour, skin tone, etc. Yes? No?

Now you can completely change anything and everything. You can design a body from the ground up. Yes, no?

What if there were only stock bodies available? Ones they could guarantee disease-free, and long-lived, etc. Yes, no?

If you did do this, would you change anything about how you live? What do you think some of the implications for the world would be? Overpopulation would be a greater concern, since few people would be dying any more. An interesting idea for the prison system would come up if it was possible to hold someone's consciousness before putting it in to a new body. Why bother with prisons if you can just throw their mind on a hard drive, keep that in storage for the length of their sentence, and then put them in a new body when it's time to release them. If you can hold the consciousness, could you put multiple copies out in to the world? Would it be right to have, say, 50 Einsteins running around? How about if we're short on people for a highly trained profession, like neurosurgeon. Copy the world's best a few times, keep them around until more people are trained, then ditch the copies. Or would we need to train more people at all? Why not just let the best guy handle it? What would it mean for murder? Would murder still be a crime? After all, you only killed a shell. The mind is still going over in a different body.

Okay, I think I've come up with enough that thread drift is inevitable . Feel free to discuss any and all points.

[violetyoshi]

Have you seen the film Dark City? It has a lot of the elements in it you've mentioned.

[BroomJockey]

Have you seen the film Dark City? It has a lot of the elements in it you've mentioned.

Actually, I picked up the idea by reading "Broken Angles," where everyone's fitted with a cortical stack that records your brain. I'll add Dark City to my list of films to see, though.

[Darrien]

Babylon 5 had an interesting choice of capital punishment. In the age of telepaths, a convicts mind was wiped and he was given a new memory and would serve the people he hurt.

[BroomJockey]

Babylon 5 had an interesting choice of capital punishment. In the age of telepaths, a convicts mind was wiped and he was given a new memory and would serve the people he hurt.

http://www.fratching.com/showthread.php?t=1279 Psst.

[Flyndaran]

So I'm dying and choose to have a copy made. Why would I care if there's some kind of mind clone out there, when I'm still dead?

[lovlybones]

the first thing I would ask is how much is this all gonna cost?...

If its pretty expensive i'd fix the over population problem right away, sad but true

[lovlybones]

p.s. BroomJockey I love your imagination, but I seem to recall seeing something like this in a preview at the movie theatre last week. staring bruce willis, and he sits in a pod while he uses his mind to control the robotperson of himself in the real world, that way no one really gets hurt when they leave their houses...blah blah, you know what i mean lol

[Kalli]

So I'm dying and choose to have a copy made. Why would I care if there's some kind of mind clone out there, when I'm still dead?

I agree with this. While it might just be that my mind is too stupid to contemplate consciousness transfer, I can't imagine you will actually live on; as far as I'm concerned, you'd still die and there would be a copy of you walking around, not you.

[Wingates_Hellsing]

It's obvious there would need to consciousness transfer. Maybe some sort of brain-to-brain hook-up during which the 'awake' mind can overtake the cloned one?

I dunno, but yeah. That's an important part.

[BroomJockey]

Why would I care if there's some kind of mind clone out there, when I'm still dead?

He looks exactly like you, he sounds exactly like you, he knows everything you know. What's the difference between him and you? The only point you might argue is the existence of a soul, but what's to say that if you died and your mind was copied over, that your soul wouldn't go too?

p.s. BroomJockey I love your imagination, but I seem to recall seeing something like this in a preview at the movie theatre last week.

It's actually an old sci-fi idea.

Addressing the cost issue: Imagine all the money that would be saved in other areas. Medical treatment would be reduced to things like colds and broken bones. Money saved in areas like that would help pay for it.

[Flyndaran]

He looks exactly like you, he sounds exactly like you, he knows everything you know. What's the difference between him and you? The only point you might argue is the existence of a soul, but what's to say that if you died and your mind was copied over, that your soul wouldn't go too?
....

I don't believe in souls. I only believe in sense of self through continuity of consciousness. Copying my brain is like cloning me. It would create two separate individuals not two of me.
Now copying one hemisphere of my brain while my metabolic processes were slowed to glacial crawl, hooking that section up to the remaining half, allowing my mind to integrate itself, then copying the remaining meat-half, and hooking it up to the first half, would create an electronic me. That would maintain C.O.C. and be fine with me.

[Slytovhand]

Getting back to BJ's actual query.. yes, I'd be totally there for it! I have a vivid imagination, I'd love to have the body to do those things with!

Couple of other scenarios for you though.... have the equipment attached to the brain while you skydive... without a parachute! If it's transmitting to a receiver and recording... hehehe.

If bodies are going to be designed and manipulated, then there's no reason they can't adjust the body so they could make them sterile, thus disposing of the over population problem... besides, once you've lived for a few hundred years, I'm willing to bet the desire/need to reproduce will drop down a fair bit.

Storing a criminal's mind in HDD until the term is spent.. no, I don't think so... not unless the criminal actually has some functioning mind, otherwise it's just a complete waste of time and resources. OTOH, it does mean you can keep the mind intact, and if it becomes determined that the person was innocent, then it makes things a bit better on the stuff up...


So.. how about swapping sexes!

[Flyndaran]

Getting back to BJ's actual query.. yes, I'd be totally there for it! I have a vivid imagination, I'd love to have the body to do those things with!

Couple of other scenarios for you though.... have the equipment attached to the brain while you skydive... without a parachute! If it's transmitting to a receiver and recording... hehehe.

If bodies are going to be designed and manipulated, then there's no reason they can't adjust the body so they could make them sterile, thus disposing of the over population problem... besides, once you've lived for a few hundred years, I'm willing to bet the desire/need to reproduce will drop down a fair bit.

Storing a criminal's mind in HDD until the term is spent.. no, I don't think so... not unless the criminal actually has some functioning mind, otherwise it's just a complete waste of time and resources. OTOH, it does mean you can keep the mind intact, and if it becomes determined that the person was innocent, then it makes things a bit better on the stuff up...


So.. how about swapping sexes!

What about those of us that would consider such acts murder? I don't want to get murdered for some minor crime, especially since I don't agree with the death penalty ever.

[BroomJockey]

What about those of us that would consider such acts murder? I don't want to get murdered for some minor crime, especially since I don't agree with the death penalty ever.

Reasonably, how can you consider it murder? After all, you don't believe in a soul. If something is an exact duplicate of you, and the consciousness delivered to it doesn't perceive an interruption of consciousness, as in, it simply goes to sleep one night, wakes up the next morning, with no apparent changes (after all, identical bodies). You still exist. Everything you know, have seen, experienced, everything is still present. There's nothing special about your body or brain that keep it unique. I would honestly like to hear a justification that doesn't break down to "ineffable quality of being" that translates to "soul," since that's the one thing that would actually make the task impossible - the existence of a unique soul.

Besides, who said it would be used for minor crimes? Long-term storage would be the only way it would be cost efficient. That's major crimes.