I'm sure most everyone in this forum is getting familiar with the way death works in my project. If not, see the flavors for stopping reloading thread. To just quickly throw the setup of my project out there: The gameplay is 3rd-person action RPG gunslinging, the theme is dark cyberpunk, the avatar is immortal, and his grunts (his allies, buddies, and hired mercenaries), being normal, can die, and will stay dead forever. So how would you percieve a gadget that works like the retina-scanner used in The 6th Day? Basically, you can 'back-up' the brain (memory and personality) of individuals, then implant them onto someone or something else in the case of their death. I would only want to take the 6th Day routine as far as the brain, so only the mental skills of that individual would transfer over. The physical skills would be lost. If I did have this type of system, it would have to be limited; the implanting would only be possible if the original character dies. If the player was able to clone brains at will, it would pretty much null the gameplay. Here are some problems I have with it: - Evil? Could you / would you imprint the memory over another living person? Or in the case of synthetic or robotic.. - Soulless? Is it the same person? Or a copy? If the player feels connected to an NPC, is that connection severed here? Or does something even more weird happen? Is mental cloning better than death? Or would it feel better just to let them go? If the player respects an NPC to a great extent, does that change the situation? - No AI humanity. All of these ethical situations will likely disolve if the AI of my game is so robotic that characters feel like machines anyway. So does that mean that implementing this system should limit the humanity of my AI? For example, what if the player can form romantic relationships with his allies? Is that possibility thrown out with the inclusion of mental cloning? Would the player happily clone those individuals? Or would they accept their fate? Is the choice itself damaging? - Slightly unbalanced. Hackers and genius characters would be much more useful to clone, and would lose virtually nothing with mental cloning (they may actually gain something). With physical characters, you only get back a personality. There may be answers to all of these problems. So theories about how to do so would be interesting. Also feel free to add any of your own personal problems with the idea behind mental cloning. I would appreciate it if opinions based on specific religions are given as an outsider, whether or not you are an outsider. Ie, "Buddhism followers believe this and that." instead of "This and that is true / false". I'm pretty sure everyone in here is mature enough to accept that others have different beliefs, but there's really no reason to test that theory.

One of my own ideas about how to improve the situation with some of my listed problems would be to avoid the feeling of 'a copy'.

Instead of implanting "memories and personality" onto synthetic bodies after someone dies, their physical body (or what's left of it) could be brought to a special location to be transferred. The entire persona, the person themself, including all non-physical properties. The player does not need to know specifics about the operation. Just that a mostly-dead/dying buddy went in, and came back out with a new body.

If this change were to be put into place, some of the gameplay elements would change. The player would no longer have to "back up" people in case they die.

That's a tricky one to answer, and if you go into too much discussion you end up talking about body vs soul, science vs religion and all that.

The idea in The 6th Day is that your memories, and a dna imprint were scanned, then a clone was produced from that. As the clone was grown swiftly it would have all the physical and, due to the imprinting, all the mental capabilities of the person. Of course this process can only be performed on newly grown clones. But then if people are just our physical and mental make up, then what impact does that have on our interpersonal relationships. They are only meaningful because our memories say they are. And then our memories could be false as well. Also, there would be nothing stopping a person from cloning someone while they are alive, unless it was governed somehow.

I think the biggest thing is that the new person isn't you. They have all your memories and physical body, but they are a new person. Which doesn't help you out at all, especially when you are dead. To society as a whole though it wouldn't make much of a difference. The new person is just the same as the old, so what's the big deal?

The other side of it is that science has discovered the soul, or consciousness or whatever as a tangible and manipulatable object, and then can pull it into a new body. Meaning that even if you die they can ressurect you, as you, not as someone else. New bodies made without this would not be whole, and perhaps there could be a way to detect it with a device.

If it's not a main point of the game I wouldn't touch on it. If it's about the gritty environment and the cyberpunk feel concentrate on that and give a "ordinary person's" view of the process, like you said: Almost dead guy goes in and comes out brand new. They might think it's great science but it could be a cloning abomination, but people outside the hospital wouldn't know.

Hope this give you something to think about.

Quote:Original post by Parthon
I think the biggest thing is that the new person isn't you. They have all your memories and physical body, but they are a new person. Which doesn't help you out at all, especially when you are dead.

Absolutely. I think even the director and writers of The 6th Day movie must have missed that. In some scenes, the bad guys didn't care if they died because they knew they would be cloned and keep living. But the truth is that they wouldn't. Somone else would live their life from then on. And that's not a religious condition; it's cold hard fact. Even though the new person thinks they are you, the old you has died and gone wherever it is that dead people go. Either the writers were confused, or the bad guys were really dumb.

Quote:The other side of it is that science has discovered the soul, or consciousness or whatever as a tangible and manipulatable object, and then can pull it into a new body. Meaning that even if you die they can ressurect you, as you, not as someone else. New bodies made without this would not be whole, and perhaps there could be a way to detect it with a device.

If it's not a main point of the game I wouldn't touch on it. If it's about the gritty environment and the cyberpunk feel concentrate on that and give a "ordinary person's" view of the process, like you said: Almost dead guy goes in and comes out brand new. They might think it's great science but it could be a cloning abomination, but people outside the hospital wouldn't know.

That's why I noted (in my reply) that the player should have no idea what happens to bring these people back. The physical brain could have been swapped. And/or perhaps other specific parts of the original body. There would be no way to discover the technical specifics, so the player would have to attach their own theory. I'm not sure if that's safe or not.

But does this limit how long the player can wait after such a death to transfer someone? And does it make the transfer itself seem pointless? Perhaps it would be better to just allow rebuilding components of bodies with man-made parts. In effect, the person would not be transferred, but would be reconstructed. Repaired. They would be permenantly fitted with mechanical or synthetic parts to replace that which was damaged. Even if that means everything that is physically visible. Robocop.

Lots of sci fi I've read goes into all kinds of details about how humans are immortal by downloading and backing up their brains into storage devices and then their bodies are able to be recreated as younger versions in cloning facilities.

I dont think we could ever be comfortable with this even though we use the word download we all know that it is just an act of copying what is there. Even a clone wouldnt neccesarily be an exact copy of your phyisical body because they would not be able to recreate the exact way you were first grew and born.

There are lots of problems with this as well, you would have to accelerate its growth in some areas and also inhibit it in others because if left to its own devices it would develop into a full human, and you would have to kill it for the new owner to take over. Also there is new studies that suggest that our bodies function as our mind as well, organs that are transplanted can contain feelings and emotions, our hearts set up feedback loops with our brains which can act like a small mind.

I dont think anyone really believes cloning is a viable way to immortality there is too many unknowns with it. The only viable means I think would be gene manipulation or reanimation of sizable dead tissue where the missing parts are cloned. In a game you could look at it this way any body parts can be cloned including brains. For it to be the original person it needs some of the existing tissue and a certain amount of time for the two to be acclimatised to one another. You could say the existing tissue remembers and forces the new tissue into its old form. The downsides could be that some injuries are just beyond ressurection and too many injuries or not enough time to recover could result in oddities of behaviour or an unviable reanimation.

Quote:Original post by Torquemeda
There are lots of problems with this as well, you would have to accelerate its growth in some areas and also inhibit it in others because if left to its own devices it would develop into a full human, and you would have to kill it for the new owner to take over.

With the idea used in The 6th Day, I don't think the clone is literally killed. Just that it is "written over" with someone else's memories. You've essentially killed the opportunity for that person to age with a unique perspective, and forced it to emulate someone else. They didn't really explore a situation where the clone itself might have it's own life before the copy. You might even theorize that the previous person's memories would remain after the copy.

Quote:Also there is new studies that suggest that our bodies function as our mind as well, organs that are transplanted can contain feelings and emotions, our hearts set up feedback loops with our brains which can act like a small mind.

It's difficult to imagine what it would be like to experience a different body than the one you're born with. I would think that one would be so accustomed to the way things feel and react, things such as just the way the inside of your mouth feels with your tongue, that switching into someone else's body might drive you nuts. At the very least, it would take a very long time to adjust.

[theory rant]
Humans have a basic understanding of how global some physical (and even mental) feelings are, or at least enough to communicate them, to create and test medicine, and to aid in treatment of. But do we really know how dramatically different each of those feelings could be for individuals other than ourself?

I've theorized about something I would call "noise". A noise would be something that is constant. It's so constant, that your brain has either shut off feedback from it (because it is useless in such a constant state), or you've just become so accustomed to it that you no longer realize it's there. A permanent pain in a bone, for example. Or a permanent itch on your back. Maybe the front of your head feels like someone is pushing on it. Or your third right rib feels like it's slightly burning. It's possible that someone could unknowingly have so many of these noises, all of them being turned on at once could drive someone else completely out of their mind.

I would imagine that these types of physical effects, if they exist, would contribute to the development of our personality and change the way we deal with specific situations.
[/theory rant]

Quote:In a game you could look at it this way any body parts can be cloned including brains. For it to be the original person it needs some of the existing tissue and a certain amount of time for the two to be acclimatised to one another.

I was thinking of an important in-game contact. Basically, the player could continue playing normally and leave a 'dead' ally behind (characters can be helped to recover from most wounds, but not all). If he calls this contact within a certain amount of time after the mission (let's say 1 day), they will 'recover' the body and work to 'save' that person.

Since my game has already been planned to have robotic and synthetic replacements for body parts, that could come into play here as an alternative to death. Some really cheap parts could be free. Meaning that even with no money, anyone can be saved from any death. But the parts would be so cheap, they would need "upgraded" in order for that person to function as well as they did with living tissue parts. The free parts would be a little clumbsy and prone to error. And they would not automatically upgrade in the traditional RPG sense as tissue parts will (such as strength and agility attributes).

I really do think I enjoy the idea of body rebuilding more than mental cloning. The 'save' solution feels a lot more friendly than the 'copy'. And the effect on gameplay is basically the same. Except that with rebuilding, the player can continue to upgrade the replaced parts of his grunts as he earns money.

Quote:I think the biggest thing is that the new person isn't you. They have all your memories and physical body, but they are a new person.

What makes them a new person? This is where you begin to delve into the religious debates about the soul. As well as the theory of predefined existence. For example in the 6th day the "bad guys" were not worried about dieing because they didn't believe in the after life. Therefore for all intensive purposes the "clone" was them. Without a mean of being able to differentiate between the two beings then all you can do is assume they are the same person. As humans it is impossible to know if what happens to us really happens. For all I know I could be stuck in a coma in a hospital attempting to design a game for the masses.

The 6th Day brought this issue to the surface when they allowed two of the same "person" to meet one another. Due to the theory that no two things alike can obtain the same space it is reasonable to conjecture that there has to be a difference between the two people. That difference manifests itself at the point the they both experience one another.

The Island is another good example to examine. Within this movie the "clones" did not get the mental imprint but only a physical. Therefore you have an obvious difference between the people because of the difference of experiences. Although the two people shared a similar thought pattern through their experience they reacted differently to similar situations.


I have the opinion though that generally people will not relate to something they don't perceive as real. It is a major conception of humanity that clones are not "real" because of religious beliefs.

You could always go with an idea that the 5th Element used to "reconstruct" the person who was injured. This was not so much cloning as it was taking a living portion of the person and redefining it's features. I feel that people may connect with this much better because the life is still considered the same life because death hasn't totally won out.

Quote:The physical brain could have been swapped.

This may just be a back hand way of using cloning. Especially if the bodies look the same. Changing how a character looks mid stream will cause some sort of detachment which could be good or bad. Meaning a player could have the interest of reconnecting with the "new" character or just not care because chances are they will change appearances again.

Quote:They would be permenantly fitted with mechanical or synthetic parts to replace that which was damaged. Even if that means everything that is physically visible. Robocop.

This could work. A good example of this idea can be found in the movie Appleseed. The female character learns that her cybernetic protector is the man she once loved. It is an interesting concept, but I think it would only work in certain cases. After awhile though I think players will lose interest because after so many "deaths" all you have is a talking robot.

A system of death that I am planning on using in my game deals more with healing and recooporation. When a character is injured then they will play accordingly . As they heal, their stats and skills return back to normal. There is one major flaw in this idea though, and that is why don't they die? To be honest I havnt gotten that far into it. :)

Anyways, I hope this helps. Alot of it is just my personal opinion so take what you will.

Quote:Original post by xevoxe
For example in the 6th day the "bad guys" were not worried about dieing because they didn't believe in the after life. Therefore for all intensive purposes the "clone" was them.

Even if the clone felt like it had survived the death, the person who died literally did not. So the bad guys still had a reason to worry. They were just too incompetent to realize it. You can create hundreds of clones to survive into the future who believe they are you, but you yourself, you will not experience that reality.

Quote:The 6th Day brought this issue to the surface when they allowed two of the same "person" to meet one another. Due to the theory that no two things alike can obtain the same space it is reasonable to conjecture that there has to be a difference between the two people. That difference manifests itself at the point the they both experience one another.

There's actually no two copies of something existing at once. Think of it as recording a movie onto a CD by copying from another. Both CDs exist before any copying takes place. You're simply imprinting the recorded memory from one onto the other, making them appear to be the same. If you believe in a soul, then that soul would certainly still be there for both people. You've simply tricked one unique individual person into believing they are the other unique individual person, by giving them all of their memories.

Quote:A system of death that I am planning on using in my game deals more with healing and recooporation. When a character is injured then they will play accordingly . As they heal, their stats and skills return back to normal. There is one major flaw in this idea though, and that is why don't they die? To be honest I havnt gotten that far into it. :)

Both friendly and enemy death will actually be rare in my game as well. Unlike many other games, people are very vulnerable to injury. If you shoot someone in the leg, it will most likely drop them instantly. But at the same time, it won't be easy to take lives unless you're trying to do so (head shots, bombs, etc). And in most situations, there won't be a reason for it.

I don't think the bad guys were stupid, they just had a different viewpoint to what you do.
If there was a teleporter that scanned a body down to the atomic level, destroyed the body, then reconstructed the body from new atoms at a different location with different atoms, is that person you?
What about if the teleporter transmitted your original atoms along with the data to build you, is that person you now? If not, why not? All that has happened is your atoms have been translated, something we do every time we walk. And if you are the same person when the same atoms are used, but aren't when different atoms are used, then why? Atoms are a much smaller part of what makes a person them than their memories.

If it's only atoms that make us who we are, then we're a different person every 7 years as the vast majority of our atoms are replaced. Should we be worried that in 7 years from now, a person that shares our thoughts, memories, relationships and assets is walking around, but they are atomically a different person?

For some atheists who don't believe in a soul, memories and thought processes are what make them who they are. If an exact copy was made of a person and the original person is destroyed, if they define themselves as their thoughts and memories, it is a perfectly valid to believe that the person has continued living. Different to what you believe, perhaps, but still a valid belief. Something you're mature enough to accept (sorry, couldn't help myself, I'm a sucker for irony). The beliefs that the bad guys embody form part of the Transhumanist movement.

If a copy of a person is made and they are both allowed to live, then they form new memories, and become different people. If the original is destroyed at the instant of copying, then the two copies have no time to diverge in their memories and thinking patterns, they remain the same person.

When you rip a music CD to your ipod, the storage media changes. You don't have to relearn the words to the song though. The qualitites of the song transcend the storage medium.

I don't consider any of what I have just written as gospel, they are just some of the arguments supporting one version of what "self" is.

[Edited by - CIJolly on October 14, 2006 4:33:00 PM]

Quote:Original post by CIJolly
I don't think the bad guys were stupid, they just had a different viewpoint to what you do.

I suppose that you could suggest that the copy is literally you, in every sense. But that's not going to make the you which is still dying feel much better about it. The you which is dying is the one that was trying to live on through a clone. You, as the clone, would feel that it was successful, and wouldn't care one way or the other.

Personally, I would care one or the other before I attempted to live on by cloning myself. But I guess it could be just a viewpoint.

Yep. Definitely going with limb replacement and organ restorative reconstruction in my game. Yeppers.