cryogenics, corpsicles and mind uploads: a discussion "reincarnation" in Science Fiction

[JaimeRetief]

Something of a discussion regarding a form of reincarnation began in my previous thread, between myself @psikeyhackr and @Ray McCarthy.
As the particular discussion is interesting I decided to create a "spin-off" thread about the various ways to cheat death in science fiction, and the social and economic impacts to fictional societies that immortality, resurrection or related technologies usually incur.

First, some background, as I think that it is safe to assume that many of us are probably not the strictest of theists I think that a perfectly functional explanation of the religious and mythological concept of reincarnation, which has likely influenced quite a few science fiction stories, is that the "next life" is little more than a carrot and stick approach created as a way to influence current behaviour and to persuade the average individual that some form of economics contribution towards that net life might be in order.
We've all hear about the Terracotta Army, the Pyramids and King Tutankhamen's lavish tomb, and those societies are far from the only examples of such contributions to the afterlife.

Next, there are several favourite tropes of science fiction, namely mind transfers, various forms of immortality through genetic modification or other medical procedures, and cryonic suspension.

Doubtlessly some of you are aware that there are actual companies that offer the freezing of a corpse in the hope that at some point the damages could be fixed and that the dead could be brought back to life.

We can list any number of examples of each of the above tropes, however are they employed as control devices used for social engineering and economic dominance, much like the religious concept, are they primarily used for something completely different?

Discuss, please.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Bujold's cryogenic suspension happens after a patient is either dead or has sufferend injuries so extensive as to make death certain under current conditions.

When Miles got his chest blown out he had to be preserved before brain damage occurred. In the fictional Vorkosiverse they can prevent death and regrow organs and surgically install them. But there is no restoration from brain death.

How fantastical to make the "science" is one of the issues every writer has to make with each story. I remember one story where the minds of the dead could be imprinted into other people's brains. So some people chose to have multiple minds inside their brains as signs of status. I do not recall the title but it was a very creepy story.

psik

 

[Cli-Fi]

Something of a discussion regarding a form of reincarnation began in my previous thread, between myself @psikeyhackr and @Ray McCarthy.
As the particular discussion is interesting I decided to create a "spin-off" thread about the various ways to cheat death in science fiction, and the social and economic impacts to fictional societies that immortality, resurrection or related technologies usually incur.

First, some background, as I think that it is safe to assume that many of us are probably not the strictest of theists I think that a perfectly functional explanation of the religious and mythological concept of reincarnation, which has likely influenced quite a few science fiction stories, is that the "next life" is little more than a carrot and stick approach created as a way to influence current behaviour and to persuade the average individual that some form of economics contribution towards that net life might be in order.
We've all hear about the Terracotta Army, the Pyramids and King Tutankhamen's lavish tomb, and those societies are far from the only examples of such contributions to the afterlife.

Next, there are several favourite tropes of science fiction, namely mind transfers, various forms of immortality through genetic modification or other medical procedures, and cryonic suspension.

Doubtlessly some of you are aware that there are actual companies that offer the freezing of a corpse in the hope that at some point the damages could be fixed and that the dead could be brought back to life.

We can list any number of examples of each of the above tropes, however are they employed as control devices used for social engineering and economic dominance, much like the religious concept, are they primarily used for something completely different?

Discuss, please.

Funny you should mention this. It's been on my mind a lot lately. Yes, for centuries mankind has strived for immortality. It is prevalent in every culture throughout time. If not worshiped outright there are underlying desires within the culture to be remembered for something. This also happens on a deep personal level as well. Immortality is two different things. Do you physically want to live forever? Do you want to be remembered?

I started my current WIP with the question: What comes after humanity achieves immortality? What is the next step? What will all culture strive for next? While my novel is primarily a time travel story, leading up to this point. It is all relevant to my plot. The ideas have been flowing ever since I asked myself this question six years ago.

 

[Vince W]

Frank Herbert's Dune series has a couple of forms of immortality. The first being the Other Memory of the Bene Gesserit. Other Memory is genetic memory that the BG have learned to access. It uses the trope that all our memories are stored in our DNA in some way. The only caveat is that the BG can only access the female line. Hence the need for the Kwisatz Haderach.

The BG use their memories to direct human development to lead to their male BG. Dune is the story of this thousand generation plan when it goes wrong at the very end.

In Dune Messiah we get a more direct form of immortality when the Bene Teleaxiu inadvertently create a clone of Duncan Idaho that is then leveraged into 'remembering' his former life. Again this falls under the idea that our DNA contains our memories.

 

[Vertigo]

Immortality and in particular the problems with it has long fascinated me. If - and it's a mighty big if - if we manage to achieve immortality I'd love to know how we would address the myriad problems that would arise:

1. Population: This is twofold: a) if no one dies (other than accidentally) then we would instantly have a population boom b) if we either freeze all of a woman's ova after puberty or if we manage to persuade a woman's body to keep producing eggs (would women really want to continue menstruating ad infinitum?) then the population problem increases by an order of magnitude. The difficulty is that just because we have immortality we're not suddenly going to lose the urge to procreate.

2. Stagnancy: How do individuals progress when no one retires and makes way for new blood. This includes business, royalty, aristocracy etc. Really not much incentive to hang around and wait for that opening.

3. Boredom: Do you really want to be a toilet cleaner for the next 500 years? Not everyone has an IQ of 150 for whom learning new stuff is a perpetual joy. When do you retire? Maybe you would work for 50 years then take a sabbatical and then re-train into a new skill. But how often can you keep on doing that and if you're not very smart can you even do it at all? Then, even when you take those sabbaticals there will come a time when you've lounged on every beach in the world, participated in every possible sport and now what... Maybe duelling might come back into fashion.

4. Marriage/partnership: I can't see many marriages lasting a couple of hundred years. We would have to adopt some sort of limited partnership contract that can eventually be exited without bankrupting all concerned.

5. Religion: most religions that believe in an afterlife would have a major problem, even those that believe in reincarnation would have a problem as they tend to rely on rebirth being the opportunity for a good person to move forward and a bad one to move back. I could imagine this particular issue resulting in full scale war.

6. Soldiers: Assuming we can't do the Bujold style reincarnation, would people really want to risk their immortal life by going to war. Yes I'm fully aware that contradicts the previous one!

There are many more but those are just the first few that spring to mind. Almost everything about all human culture and society is based on eventual death.

Nobody (or almost nobody) ever wants to die and so we want immortality but most don't stop to think about the consequences. I notice that most SF books that include some form of immortality that I've read simply ignore these issues though some do address them, often quite chillingly.

 

[JaimeRetief]

When Miles got his chest blown out he had to be preserved before brain damage occurred. In the fictional Vorkosiverse they can prevent death and regrow organs and surgically install them. But there is no restoration from brain death.

How fantastical to make the "science" is one of the issues every writer has to make with each story. I remember one story where the minds of the dead could be imprinted into other people's brains. So some people chose to have multiple minds inside their brains as signs of status. I do not recall the title but it was a very creepy story.

psik

What is dead?
Now it is the lack of brain activity, and even there it turns out that very low activity can actually be mistaken for non at all and sometimes legally brain dead patients have shown that they were in fact not dead after a few days, 100 years ago a lack of heartbeat was the criteria, I don't even want to think what our cavemen ancestors thought on the subject.
Furthermore there is a lot about the brain, a surprisingly resilient organ that can survive quite severe damage, that we do not know. For example there is an actual debate as to the exact places where long-term memory is stored, with some indications that this happens in the in the nuclei of the neurons and not the synapse.
As Dr. Manhattan put it

A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there’s no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?

Maybe in the year 2115 we will call someone dead only if the brain is completely obliterated or if the cells have been fully denatured.

 

[psikeyhackr]

What is dead?

For example there is an actual debate as to the exact places where long-term memory is stored, with some indications that this happens in the in the nuclei of the neurons and not the synapse.
As Dr. Manhattan put it
Maybe in the year 2115 we will call someone dead only if the brain is completely obliterated or if the cells have been fully denatured.

That is why I said this:

How fantastical to make the "science" is one of the issues every writer has to make with each story.

We know that brains can be damaged due to lack of oxygen even though they are still definitely alive. So it is not just a matter of life but maintaining the level of consciousness. This is another subject mentioned by Bujold in relation to damage from nerve-disrupters.

psik

 

[Ray McCarthy]

if we manage to persuade a woman's body to keep producing eggs

They are born with all the eggs they will ever have.

 

[JaimeRetief]

That is why I said this:


We know that brains can be damaged due to lack of oxygen even though they are still definitely alive. So it is not just a matter of life but maintaining the level of consciousness. This is another subject mentioned by Bujold in relation to damage from nerve-disrupters.

psik

You can also put neurons in liquid nitrogen, at -150 Celsius, and still have them function afterwards.
Why are we talking so much about Bujold, her science is pretty terrible, a number of hard SF writers have dealt with the issue of post-mortem cryonics and revivals. and I am far more inclined to trust their judgement on this than that of Bujold.
If we can extract the data and rebuild the CPU and memory I see no reason why we could not resurrect dead people, Lois Bujold on the other hand occasionally pushes some pseudo religious nonsense about souls.

 

[ralphkern]

In Endeavour and Erebus, humanity has started to speciate into five (There are more, but they implied rather than described) distinct categories. While immortality in itself isn't the goal of this division, a certain longevity is one of the results.

First there are the naturals. Baseline humans. There are a few reasons for being naturals. Whether religious, cultural or whatever. Bottomline they decide not to take one of the following.

Enhanced: Augmented humans. They tend to implant themselves with various upgrades. Common features include a HUD (pronounced 'Hood') Which allows an augmented reality to overlay the real world. They also have various enhancements commensurate with what they do for a living. For example soldiers have sub dermal armor and weapon systems. The vast majority of people, to a greater or lesser extent, are enhanced - even many of the people who purport to be naturals. They are also happy to replace word out body parts.

The Linked: One of the benefits of the HUD is the ability to communicate via mobile phoneesque tech with others, except with the ability to use it mentally. The majority of the Enhanced prefer to keep some semblance of privacy and have to use it via a positive command. There is a culture called 'The Linked' who simply keep that connection constantly open and have psychologically adapted into a kind of hive mind mentality. They are pacifistic rather than Borg like, but still treated with suspicion by others.

The Supported: As they grow old, they simply jettison their bodies and become a traditional brain in a jar type. These are slowly losing their links to the world, sometimes preferring to live in total VR.

The Skippers: Can be any of the above. Start travel subjectively is instantaneous, objectively it is proportionate to the distance traveled. Eg some 12 light years away takes 12 years. Some people want to just see what the future has to offer and are happy to 'skip' forwards in time like that.

As I say, there are more, but they are the ones that are explored in any depth in both books.

 

[psikeyhackr]

You can also put neurons in liquid nitrogen, at -150 Celsius, and still have them function afterwards.
Why are we talking so much about Bujold, her science is pretty terrible, a number of hard SF writers have dealt with the issue of post-mortem cryonics and revivals. and I am far more inclined to trust their judgement on this than that of Bujold.
If we can extract the data and rebuild the CPU and memory I see no reason why we could not resurrect dead people, Lois Bujold on the other hand occasionally pushes some pseudo religious nonsense about souls.

Where is the word cat stored in the brain? Is it the same for everyone? What about all of the other words for cat: gato, gata, mao, mau? How do they relate to the location of what a cat's fur feels like and what it feels like for a cat to lick your hand. We use the word memory for how a von Neumann machine stores data but it makes no difference whether it is ASCII or EBCIDIC. I have soldered computers together and worked with core memory. I am not impressed by the analogy between computers and biological brains.

I mention Bujold because you compared her work with Simak. Her mention of computers in most of her works is admittedly very superficial. But freezing a neuron and freezing a brain are a bit different in that we do not know how complex concepts are actually stored in the brain. Since I have not read that work by Simak I can't be certain what he was imagining but the reviews do not seem to mention any time limit for preservation after "death".

I suppose Memory is the work where Bujold talks most about the brain but there is no cryo-freezing in that story. Otherwise Falling Free and Komarr are the most "sciency" which are mostly engineering and "fantasy" physics. Although she doesn't usually go into scientific detail she maintains a very scientific attitude which I find many "SF writers" do not. Leviathan's Wake is a joke.

psik

 

[JaimeRetief]

Where is the word cat stored in the brain? Is it the same for everyone? What about all of the other words for cat: gato, gata, mao, mau? How do they relate to the location of what a cat's fur feels like and what it feels like for a cat to lick your hand. We use the word memory for how a von Neumann machine stores data but it makes no difference whether it is ASCII or EBCIDIC. I have soldered computers together and worked with core memory. I am not impressed by the analogy between computers and biological brains.

I mention Bujold because you compared her work with Simak. Her mention of computers in most of her works is admittedly very superficial. But freezing a neuron and freezing a brain are a bit different in that we do not know how complex concepts are actually stored in the brain. Since I have not read that work by Simak I can't be certain what he was imagining but the reviews do not seem to mention any time limit for preservation after "death".

I suppose Memory is the work where Bujold talks most about the brain but there is no cryo-freezing in that story. Otherwise Falling Free and Komarr are the most "sciency" which are mostly engineering and "fantasy" physics. Although she doesn't usually go into scientific detail she maintains a very scientific attitude which I find many "SF writers" do not. Leviathan's Wake is a joke.

psik

And I suppose that to some a prick of the needle feels like pleasure, and that light is darkness?
There are a number of computer architectures, with their own assembly languages, with different higher level programing languages working on top of those, and with various operating systems that manage and respond to system calls.
There was even an attempt to build computers working on trinary, and not binary logic.
But when all is said and done all those computers all do math with data in memory and all comply with the basic laws of physics, unless you wish to mix souls and quantum magic into this there must be an underlying layer of "assembly language" on which we run.As well as a minimalistic OS which helps us boot up.

As to Bujold's science, she writes character driven space opera, she is better at it than some people, definitely better than the whole of the Expanse.
However a hard science fiction writer she is not.

 

[JaimeRetief]

In Endeavour and Erebus, humanity has started to speciate into five (There are more, but they implied rather than described) distinct categories. While immortality in itself isn't the goal of this division, a certain longevity is one of the results.

First there are the naturals. Baseline humans. There are a few reasons for being naturals. Whether religious, cultural or whatever. Bottomline they decide not to take one of the following.

Enhanced: Augmented humans. They tend to implant themselves with various upgrades. Common features include a HUD (pronounced 'Hood') Which allows an augmented reality to overlay the real world. They also have various enhancements commensurate with what they do for a living. For example soldiers have sub dermal armor and weapon systems. The vast majority of people, to a greater or lesser extent, are enhanced - even many of the people who purport to be naturals. They are also happy to replace word out body parts.

The Linked: One of the benefits of the HUD is the ability to communicate via mobile phoneesque tech with others, except with the ability to use it mentally. The majority of the Enhanced prefer to keep some semblance of privacy and have to use it via a positive command. There is a culture called 'The Linked' who simply keep that connection constantly open and have psychologically adapted into a kind of hive mind mentality. They are pacifistic rather than Borg like, but still treated with suspicion by others.

The Supported: As they grow old, they simply jettison their bodies and become a traditional brain in a jar type. These are slowly losing their links to the world, sometimes preferring to live in total VR.

The Skippers: Can be any of the above. Start travel subjectively is instantaneous, objectively it is proportionate to the distance traveled. Eg some 12 light years away takes 12 years. Some people want to just see what the future has to offer and are happy to 'skip' forwards in time like that.

As I say, there are more, but they are the ones that are explored in any depth in both books.

Thanks, your universe sounds interesting, I will definitely add your book to my to-read list.
Is it hard science fiction with a bit of post-humanism, it definitely sounds like it is from your description?

 

[ralphkern]

Thankyou.

Endeavour is something of a future history, this stuff mostly provides the background for the main story. As the main characters explore deeper into space, each time they return home, they find humanity has moved on. Erebus, which is in for edits at the moment, is a little more settled in time (although does still cross large tracts) and goes into post humanism in a bit more depth.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ONA7G9Q/?tag=brite-21

or

http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fa...f=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1431897749&sr=1-1

A much updated version will be coming out tomorrow, edited by our very own Jennifer L Carson. (although Amazon can take a day or so for it to go online) so if you would hang fire till then, that would be awesome

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Soul/spirit - humanity's first great lie to itself.

 

[JaimeRetief]

Soul/spirit - humanity's first great lie to itself.

Well I guess that some people are just too special to believe that they are merely walking bags of chemicals, and that all that they are will disappear once they die.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I would think that Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil would come into this discussion. Attempting immortality (or at least longer longevity) through a body transplant, along with a good dose of your "pseudo-religious soul" stuff -- and Heinlein's characters are distinctly not religious, so it comes at it from an ironic, self-conscious direction.

 

[tinkerdan]

You leave out an important one::

Immortality and in particular the problems with it has long fascinated me. If - and it's a mighty big if - if we manage to achieve immortality I'd love to know how we would address the myriad problems that would arise:

1. Population: This is twofold: a) if no one dies (other than accidentally) then we would instantly have a population boom b) if we either freeze all of a woman's ova after puberty or if we manage to persuade a woman's body to keep producing eggs (would women really want to continue menstruating ad infinitum?) then the population problem increases by an order of magnitude. The difficulty is that just because we have immortality we're not suddenly going to lose the urge to procreate.

2. Stagnancy: How do individuals progress when no one retires and makes way for new blood. This includes business, royalty, aristocracy etc. Really not much incentive to hang around and wait for that opening.

3. Boredom: Do you really want to be a toilet cleaner for the next 500 years? Not everyone has an IQ of 150 for whom learning new stuff is a perpetual joy. When do you retire? Maybe you would work for 50 years then take a sabbatical and then re-train into a new skill. But how often can you keep on doing that and if you're not very smart can you even do it at all? Then, even when you take those sabbaticals there will come a time when you've lounged on every beach in the world, participated in every possible sport and now what... Maybe duelling might come back into fashion.

4. Marriage/partnership: I can't see many marriages lasting a couple of hundred years. We would have to adopt some sort of limited partnership contract that can eventually be exited without bankrupting all concerned.

5. Religion: most religions that believe in an afterlife would have a major problem, even those that believe in reincarnation would have a problem as they tend to rely on rebirth being the opportunity for a good person to move forward and a bad one to move back. I could imagine this particular issue resulting in full scale war.

6. Soldiers: Assuming we can't do the Bujold style reincarnation, would people really want to risk their immortal life by going to war. Yes I'm fully aware that contradicts the previous one!

There are many more but those are just the first few that spring to mind. Almost everything about all human culture and society is based on eventual death.

Nobody (or almost nobody) ever wants to die and so we want immortality but most don't stop to think about the consequences. I notice that most SF books that include some form of immortality that I've read simply ignore these issues though some do address them, often quite chillingly.

(7) Tooth decay:with all the advancements we have had throughout the centuries we have not conquered tooth decay and I can see immortality coming about with everyone having to eventually have implants.
oh and let's not forget
(8)Failing eyesight

Sure you might say that once we conquer death then we will have the answer to those; but how can you be so sure?

 

[Vertigo]

They are born with all the eggs they will ever have.

My exact point which is why I said "if we ever manage to persuade..." But actually if we just freeze all of them after puberty then there's still more than enough to cause a major population problem!

You leave out an important one::

(7) Tooth decay:with all the advancements we have had throughout the centuries we have not conquered tooth decay and I can see immortality coming about with everyone having to eventually have implants.
oh and let's not forget
(8)Failing eyesight

Sure you might say that once we conquer death then we will have the answer to those; but how can you be so sure?

Ah thank you, yes, not just teeth but bones as well; joints wear down and don't regenerate. I guess if we achieve immortality we'd probably eventually have to replace all our bones with metal ones (Echoes of Bujold again... though I agree with Jamie that she's far from being the best author to consider when discussing hard SF ideas). I guess it is conceivable that if we ever master stem cell technology it is possible that we may be able to get our jaws to fire up new teeth and our bone ends to regenerate themselves.

Bottom line is that there is an awful lot more to immortality than just not dying!

 

[tinkerdan]

Excellent and then there will be no end::

. I guess it is conceivable that if we ever master stem cell technology it is possible that we may be able to get our jaws to fire up new teeth and our bone ends to regenerate themselves.

Bottom line is that there is an awful lot more to immortality than just not dying!

::To what we might do.
First grow back a tail, maybe work on specialized hair or fur throughout the body. Maybe cats ears and eyes. Before we know it we'll be Barnum and Bailey's circus side show and immortal freak emporium. Live long in faux fur.