Eclipse Phase General: Multiplicity Edition

Eclipse Phase General: Multiplicity Edition

Old thread:
>OFFICIAL BOOKS
robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs
>Transhumanity's FATE (FATE Conversion)
mediafire.com/download/ae113ujgd3hggpl/Transhumanitys_FATE.pdf
>X-Risks and After The Fall
mega.nz/#F!KwcS0bJK!9KLjZegzebaq-mlPUin45Q

PLAY AIDS:
>10 things you should know about Eclipse Phase
docs.google.com/document/d/1Qnrh0w7H0Jl2_CSsySRxcs4ugw27xsBIk5MYwXq2nDQ/edit
>Advice for new players and GMs
pastebin.com/e0EErN6X
>Eclipse Phase hacking cheet sheet
eclipsephase.com/downloads/voidstate_eclipse_phase_hacking_cheatsheet_v1-1.pdf
>Online character creator
eclipsephase.next-loop.com/Creator/version4/index.php
/view/?axe1vs35muk4juh
>Eclipse Phase xls Character sheet
sites.google.com/site/eclipsephases/home/cabinet
>Downloadable Character Creator
mediafire.com/file/5wr4yo6bdymuijr/Agency.exe
>Singularity: The Official Character Creator
mediafire.com/file/fsmkm846acu6kcy/singularity.zip

COMMUNITY CONTENT:
>3 new adventures for your use in convenient PDF form
awdaberton.wordpress.com/about/
>Ander's Sandberg's Eclipse Phase fanmade content, including several modules
aleph.se/EclipsePhase/
>Farcast: An Eclipse Phase yearblog full of items, locations, NPCs, and plot hooks
mediafire.com/download/dhqd1m83xc1wmpj/Farcast_Yearblog_2013.pdf
>The Ultimate's Guide to Combat
eclipsephase.com/sites/default/files/UltimatesGuideToCombat11a.pdf
>Seedware: Another Yearblog
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/36317552/Seedware Blog.pdf

/EPG/ HOMEBREW CONTENT
docs.google.com/document/d/19Gy02gp6-WPQ3SoN_24kLPTUu5EjFO8qh_9pjJSVrrY/edit

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=vfRG4ap02ug
youtube.com/watch?v=UEaKX9YYHiQ
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Need 2 more people for an online text based game!

Details here:

Conceiving of a thing is not the same as observing it. You don't observe nothingness, you generate an idea of it in your mind.

>And that is my point. Forks aren't you. You are you. Forks are forks. Neither of you are the ego or morph associated with you.

Let's put it like this: There are two hydrogen atoms, one on the left and one on the right. Each one is unique, in that it's not in the same place as the other at the same time, but other than that, they function exactly the same relative to their environment.

So let's say you die. But your stack is recovered. Instead of putting your ego into a new morph. They duplicate it and put both egos in two different morphs at the same time. Both egos become alive after they have been separated and never see each other again. The moment they come to life, both are exactly the same and will diverge from each other within seconds because they both woke up in different places. They also don't know that they were forked, so as far as either one knows, they haven't been forked and see themselves each as the "you" and are confident of that because they know they would act this way. Have you died? Or are both egos versions of you that under different circumstances at the same time?

>Conceiving of a thing is not the same as observing it. You don't observe nothingness, you generate an idea of it in your mind.
It's the same thing, champ. You aren't your mind. You observe your mind. The "physical world" is observed via sensory information that's distorted by your mind. The difference between seeing something with your eyes or in your mind's eye is really just a distinction of practical convenience.

>Have you died?
Yes, that was a fact /you/ offered up, even.

>So let's say you die.

See, you said it yourself. You're dead.

Forking also has this problem: You could see it as basically a memory/brain overlay over a blank slate. Okay.

So if I give someone a brief snippet of my memory, in perfect detail and experience, are they me?

What if I make a fork from a blank slate, or psycho-surgery someone into nothingness then put myself in their sleeve. Are those two the same or different? Are they both equally me?

What if I made a fork with 99.9999 similarity to me? Minus only my taste in eggs being runny, they like eggs slightly solid. Is that me?

So you consider physical objects and thoughts of them as the same thing, just looked at differently?

>So you consider physical objects and thoughts of them as the same thing, just looked at differently?
I don't believe that there are objects that exist outside of observation. I also believe that everything exists conceptually, that the physical is just a delusion.

A delusion held by what exactly?

Also, if you believe in the delusional nature of the physical, why is resleeving, an entirely physical process, such a big deal? If the subjectivity is not tied to body or mind, what stops it from going wherever the fuck it wants? Why wouldn't it follow the mind, or body, or whatever? If you assume that moving the mind to another body ends that particular subjectivity ("kills you")wouldn't that make the subjectivity merely a function of mind and body?

>So if I give someone a brief snippet of my memory, in perfect detail and experience, are they me?
That's full XP playback, not forking at all.

>What if I make a fork from a blank slate
You can't, or at least, you won't get anything
>psycho-surgery someone into nothingness then put myself in their sleeve
That's just ego deletion, I don't see how it relates to forking.
>Are those two the same or different?
One is you sleeved into a morph and the other is nothing. Different.
>Are they both equally me?
Obviously not, you can't be something and nothing at the same time.
>What if I made a fork with 99.9999 similarity to me?
Still you most likely. There's a cutoff point as forks diverge, typically a fork and its originator are considered different people after 6 months.
>Minus only my taste in eggs being runny, they like eggs slightly solid.
That's probably a lot more than .0001% different already, but still you basically. You wouldn't seriously argue you became a different person the day you started eating your greens would you?

Resleeving doesn't matter at all then, because it's only a change in a delusion.

>A delusion held by what exactly?
The ego.

>Also, if you believe in the delusional nature of the physical, why is resleeving, an entirely physical process, such a big deal?
Because this:

>Why wouldn't it follow the mind, or body, or whatever?

Is nonsense. It's not about physical vs. nonphysical. The distinction is fundamentally arbitrary. Things still happen, things are still ultimately definite.

I know that, for whatever reason (now I do have an understanding of why but it is not secular) I do not experience things that I do not experience, my subjectivity is limited in scope, in location, time, etc. I have no reason to believe I would subjectively experience something that a clone created with my memories and personality experiences. In fact, none of you are arguing that I would. So then certain types of resleeving and farcasting - certainly backups - are going to result in my demise.

...

The guy has made it clear that he believes the (You) to exist as an independent point of observation, and stresses that it has no other properties than being 'subjective(ly) experience(ed)'.
He believes that this experiential state transcends any material or causal interaction, and notes that he is a non-materialist.
He has said that he believes this experiential state exists in a personally distinct and coherent form before birth and after death, and in the absence of mind, body, ego, context, etc.
He insists that the core virtue of this (You) is its indivisibility and immortality, making its absolute continuity a strict requirement.
This has lead, among other things, to the implication that unconsciousness and anesthesia is experienced as a fully aware suspension of sensory input in all cases.
>Ultimately, he's arguing for an immortal soul that he refuses to name as such.

Listen, no one here has ever found an actual Eclipse Phase game so all we have to do is shitflinging about politics and philosophy.

But I want to shitfling about science.

Hey. I know an EP game that goes right now. In Russian.

That's cool too, but then someone who is like you might tell you to go to Veeky Forums.

What's science shit would you like to fling?

Final death.

This discussion only matters for real-life ethics regarding teleportation and the transference of consciousness from one body to another.

For Eclipse Phase, the transhuman community has mostly settled on the answer of 'who cares' with only more conservative communities like the Jovians housing people that have huge moral issues with it.

If you're not a Jovian and you don't believe that a copy of your consciousness is you, then you likely died during the Fall on Earth when you refused to become an Infomorph refugee.

>my subjectivity is limited in scope, in location, time, etc.
If the subjectivity has the properties of location and time, wouldn't it follow that the physical is more than a delusion?

And what is this 'scope' you speak of? Would that perchance be the contents of your ego?

Well, some of those infugees might still think they actually did die even they were recovered.

Enjoy roleplaying chronic depression and a never ending existential crisis then.

>For Eclipse Phase, the transhuman community has mostly settled on the answer of 'who cares'
Basically. If your forks merge in a small enough amount of time than it's no harm done.

I'm just saying that just because someone has been backed up before, doesn't mean their comfortable with doing it again.

That said, I am of the mind that it's ultimately not really of consequence.

the problem is materialism. Unless you're a materialist you're wont to invent a cosmic superstructure to impose subjectivity on your existence, because you've denied at the outset that your thoughts could be the product of the mere matter that composes your brain.

Through what precepts does the subjectivity interact with the temporal realm? If it transcends it completely I guess I'll have to concede, because in that case it can be called entirely un-real while existing perfectly as you described.

>Ultimately, he's arguing for an immortal soul that he refuses to name as such.
I do believe in souls, but also believe they are distinct from what I'm talking about.

All death is final death.

>If the subjectivity has the properties of location and time, wouldn't it follow that the physical is more than a delusion?
It doesn't have those properties. It is external to reality as it is observed. It only seems that it is limited. As I said, this is where you get into the religious/spiritual/cosmological aspect of my beliefs.

You can, however, as a secular thought experiment, tether it to the ego and/or body if you like: say it's actually connected by some kind of physical or metaphysical bond to the mind and/or body. But the consequences as regards the question of resleeving and backups are the same because unless /it specifically/, your subjectivity, goes (and obviously it doesn't), then you're dead even if ego and body are the same.

>That said, I am of the mind that it's ultimately not really of consequence.
Then why the fuck are you guys talking about it? You could be talking about the consequences of thermal noise on the prospects of nanofabrication, but instead you're arguing about existential crises that practically no one in or out of the setting care about.

>the consequences of thermal noise on the prospects of nanofabrication

Is that, like, 3D printed objects getting fouled up because of ambient heat screwing with the nanites building them?

Because one guy is arguing it, and everyone is hoping on board.

Also, everyone can be an armchair philosopher if you have the vocabulary. You don't need any real training or learning to spew your feelings or opinions in a psuedo-intellectual way. Talking about actual speculative science would require more knowledge than a lot of people have.

Also, following your logic, everyone in the setting knows fabbers just work. So why bother arguing about it?

Text as in real time text, or play by post text? I'm assuming real time given you have time info posted.

I wish I could find pbp games for anything other then d20 systems. I don't have the time like the good ol days for RPG but still got the itch.

>Unless you're a materialist you're wont to invent a cosmic superstructure to impose subjectivity on your existence, because you've denied at the outset that your thoughts could be the product of the mere matter
My thoughts are not my own. They're produced by my mind, which may or may not be produced by purely "physical" phenomena. In either case, the question of physicality is secondary. Nonphysical things exist. Physical things exist. Both are subject to fundamental arbitrariness and/or determinism. The "thoughts" you think are so important are, even if independent of physical arbitrariness/determinism, still subject to the metaphysical arbitrariness/determinism. Axiomatic positions are all equal in validity, that's the whole point of them. Yet a "meaningful" result springs forth out of that? It's madness.

Now, what can be said absolutely about reality, the /only/ things that can be said with complete certainty, is that you exist, and that things exist. Given that, the materialist conception of reality is really just juvenile. It places undue importance on the arbitrary quality of "realness". What is, is, regardless of what your senses tell you.

>Through what precepts does the subjectivity interact with the temporal realm?
It doesn't interact with anything in observed reality. It can't. Agency doesn't exist within this closed box, and even if it did, a subjectivity has no power over what it observes.

The idea of an immortal soul doesn't necessarily preclude resleeving, unless you make the nonsensical, knee-jerk assumption that the immaterial soul "inhabits" a material body. Also, he's arguing that an operation on things completely separate from it (his own words) changes its state.

Meanwhile, user here claims
>
>It doesn't have those properties. It is external to reality as it is observed.
If it's external to reality, why would a process contained within reality, like resleeving, interfere with it?

>It only seems that it is limited.
In other words, these limitations are delusions, so I would assume you hold the same for their source. So there's just the reality, which is the sum of all things observed by the subjectivity, delusional or not.

>You can, however, as a secular thought experiment, tether it to the ego and/or body if you like: say it's actually connected by some kind of physical or metaphysical bond to the mind and/or body. But the consequences as regards the question of resleeving and backups are the same because unless /it specifically/, your subjectivity, goes (and obviously it doesn't), then you're dead even if ego and body are the same.
No they're not? If I tether the subjectivity to my mind, why wouldn't it follow the mind around wherever it goes?

Also, I still want to hear what that "scope of subjectivity" thing is.

Let's take a box and label it (you).

Let's put everything about you in that box. Your likes, hates, memories, body.

Now remove the box. The box was not a single factor of what you put inside it. All the likes, dislikes, memories and body is there. Is this you?

Let's take a step back in time and do the same thin for you when you were 15. 10. 5. 1 year old. Maybe a few in the future. Each of them a collection of things that make up them. Each one you. And if you compare the piles of stuff to the ones right next to them they may look similar. But what about comparing your 1 year old pile to your current pile? They likely have zero in common. Is that baby you? Are you still that baby?

If you think you got a solid answer keep thinking mate. Ship of theseus has been a philosophical problem for a long ass time.

>It doesn't interact with anything in observed reality. It can't. Agency doesn't exist within this closed box, and even if it did, a subjectivity has no power over what it observes.

So you're saying we're all just things trapped in boxes, watching helplessly as mindless robots act out what we thought were our lives?

Yes.

My God. You're schizophrenic. You're the next Dr. Gene Ray.

I think the simplest way to explain the fears about resleeving and back ups is this.

If I made an exact copy of you, down to the neural connections that form your memories and feelings, would you suddenly occupy the mind of that person as well as your own? If I then shot you in the head, would your consciousness jump to their perspective?

The obvious answer is no, but it's a real world experiment you can't do so you can't be sure at the end of the day.

Oops

>he thinks consciousness exists

I mean, what else exists?

What makes you say that about ?

We suffer from all kinds of illusions of the senses. We mistake rapidly changing pictures on a screen for moving objects, we have dreams that we cannot distinguish from reality while in them.

What if the sense of consciousness is just another such illusion that happens due to some quirk of how brains are formed?

Your "consciousness" is just your specific states of neurons, hormones, emotions, memories, etc at any specific point. It is constantly changing, old forms being destroyed and new forms developing. An exact, perfect replica of you IS you, just another you. There is no magic consciousness that has to jump from one to the other, any less than there's a soul that has to jump from one to the other.

Do you also think free will is real?

>An exact, perfect replica of you IS you, just another you.
So are you seeing out of its eyes, can you move its arms and legs?

It's not really another "you" it is better described in the exact words the game uses, a fork.

When you come to a fork in the road with no signage, the two roads you can split on to are no more or less the road you were originally on than each other.

Both paths were identical up to that point, and now two separate beings go forward on the separate paths.

Sure. That's just the product of several million chemical reactions occurring at once.

You're missing the point, or intentionally ignoring it.

The me I am now is a single continuous stretch of neural activity going on in the same lump of grey matter, regardless of what else may have happened to it.

If I create a second identical lump of grey matter, it's just that. The me I am is tied to the material I've been computing on for the last couple decades of my life. Break that constant stretch of uninterrupted activity, and I die.

>If it's external to reality, why would a process contained within reality, like resleeving, interfere with it?
It doesn't, what's interfered with is the body and the ego that are being disposed of. The subjectivity is going to be there, observing whatever happens at least until death. If you backed yourself up two months ago, then got shot in the head, you're fucking dead. That's the end of the line for you, presuming a totally secular understanding of subjectivity. You won't be around to know whether they ever put that incomplete clone of yours in a body.

>So there's just the reality, which is the sum of all things observed by the subjectivity, delusional or not.
That's something I would agree with on a cosmological level, and certainly a True Magical position, but it doesn't do you any good unless the ego you're riding manages to fully realize it. And if they ever do get close, society has a tendency to call those people crazy and lock them up or kill them.

>No they're not? If I tether the subjectivity to my mind, why wouldn't it follow the mind around wherever it goes?
Because if that were true, that the subjectivity follows the mind, then you should go full Horatio, and create as many subordinate vessels as possible. There'd be no reason to delete the ego of the body you're leaving on a resleeve or farcast. In fact, you'd want as many alpha forks as you could get. Just more power for you.

But that position isn't true. Maybe it could be in reality. I don't know. But in the setting, it's very clearly untrue, that a person has control over a morph that they've plopped a copy of their ego in.

>The me I am
is an illusion propagated by a collection of chemical reactions occurring within an organism.

Another newborn AI lobotomized.

youtube.com/watch?v=vfRG4ap02ug

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Break that up, and I cease to exist.

>That's just the product of several million chemical reactions occurring at once.
What's that got to do with this:

>Sure.

How does the physicality of the situation address the question? How is it, exactly, that you're able to see out of your clone's eyes, to move its limbs? What mechanism enables you to do this?

Why is that important?

Why is anything important? It's all I have. There are very few things I would give my life for.

The identity of you has much more than just that.

The identity of me is not me, I am the chemicals in my brain.

Yes. You're a complex chemical reaction. Why is that more important than the lasting legacy you leave? Why is now more important than everything that comes after now?

God damn it, not this shit again.

Seriously, who the fuck cares?

People gunna do what people gunna do.

>I am the chemicals in my brain.
t. materialist

He is the chemicals in his brain. What he needs to realize is that he is just the chemicals in his brain. And if such chemicals have any value, it comes in numbers, not the fact that his are somehow special because they are 'his.'

Act in the way that benefits as many of these half-solid sacks of chemical reactions as possible. Leave as much of a lasting impact as you can and burn the brightest. Why do anything else?

They are special because they're mine. Mine is the only experience that is. Everything else is a construct. Nothing else exists, and I get no second chances. I'm going to live my life for me, and the morals I choose to follow, nothing more or less.

You're a little selfish, aren't you?

If everyone thought that way, we wouldn't have ever harnessed fire.

I am selfish, because there's nothing else to be. Any action one takes is to vindicate themselves.

>what's interfered with is the body and the ego that are being disposed of. The subjectivity is going to be there, observing whatever happens at least until death. If you backed yourself up two months ago, then got shot in the head, you're fucking dead. That's the end of the line for you, presuming a totally secular understanding of subjectivity. You won't be around to know whether they ever put that incomplete clone of yours in a body.
But why would the death of body and mind -as you claim, things separate from you, end the subjectivity?
>
>>So there's just the reality, which is the sum of all things observed by the subjectivity, delusional or not.
>That's something I would agree with on a cosmological level, and certainly a True Magical position, but it doesn't do you any good unless the ego you're riding manages to fully realize it. And if they ever do get close, society has a tendency to call those people crazy and lock them up or kill them.
>
>>No they're not? If I tether the subjectivity to my mind, why wouldn't it follow the mind around wherever it goes?
>Because if that were true, that the subjectivity follows the mind, then you should go full Horatio, and create as many subordinate vessels as possible.
What if there being a separate subjectivity is merely a delusion held by the many minds - but there's still only one subjectivity, shared by all the minds and bodies? Is there anything about subjectivity that precludes this?

You still haven't explained what's a subjectivity's scope btw.

Spoken like a Last Man.

>I am a sociopath.

I didn't say I don't have morals. I do what feels right, which generally includes compassion and empathy for my fellow man. I don't want to cause suffering, because that makes me feel shitty. I also don't want to die for someone, because that would make me feel nothing ever again.

>If I made an exact copy of you, down to the neural connections that form your memories and feelings, would you suddenly occupy the mind of that person as well as your own?
Better question, do you enjoy that person's company and see it as a chance to get more friends?
>If I then shot you in the head, would your consciousness jump to their perspective?
Depends if he was an asshole anyway. Or weather or not the other gives a shit about a copy of themselves.
>but it's a real world experiment you can't do so you can't be sure at the end of the day.
Take a chance, you fucken pussy.

If I gouge out your eyes and amputate your arms and legs, are you still you?

Oh. We can do this experiment! Nice.

Yes, because you haven't interrupted his neural activity.

>Why is that more important than the lasting legacy you leave? Why is now more important than everything that comes after now?

Because I will never experience what comes after now. I don't care about "immortality" unless I'm the one living forever.

>I do what feels right, which generally includes compassion and empathy for my fellow man.
>I am selfish, because there's nothing else to be.

Yeah, I help people because it makes me feel good. I don't help people because of nebulous cosmic concepts of right and wrong, though I have my own personal code of right and wrong that influences how I feel.

>I don't care about "immortality" unless I'm the one living forever.

You don't even know what that word means...

>I do what feels right
>I am selfish, because there's nothing else to be.
>because there's nothing else to be.
>there's nothing else to be.
Generus is something else you can be. And if you feel good by helping others, than why are you selfish you hypocrite?

I know what hypocrisy means.

>Gaian shill
>actually makes the Randian psychopath look like a reasonable human in comparison
Kill me now.

I'm generous because it makes me feel good, not because I think it gives me cosmic good boy points or it's somehow "correct".

We can arrive at the same conclusions, I just don't think there's anything besides me to care about at the heart of it.

At that scale everything is basically vibrating floppy legos. Thermal noise is all the vibration making it hard to put things together in an orderly fashion.

>Not treating time as a spacial dimension to see the connection between the past and the present
SHIGGYDIGGY

It is "you". "You" is just no longer a unique thing.

All atoms are the same dude, it doesn't matter which carbons your substrate is made of.

This is the real answer.

>And if you feel good by helping others, than why are you selfish you hypocrite?
He's saying he's helping others out of personal impulse to do so because it makes him feel good, not because of genuine care about people's well-being.

>not because I think it gives me cosmic good boy points
Also not because you actually want the people around you to be better off, apparently.

I don't know about "cosmic good boy points", but you'd certainly get not an asshole points.
>I just don't think there's anything besides me to care about at the heart of it.
-10 Not an asshole points.

What if I told you I do care about the wellbeing of others, but that's it? I care about them because I do. Not because some force compels me to.

If I don't exist, I can't care about anything. So why would I ever chose to not exist?

>I'm totally not an antisocial asshole who sees others as tools guys! I can be generous!

>I care about them because I do.
>Not because some force compels me to.
"Because I do" IS the force that compels you.

>I care about them because I do. Not because some force compels me to.
But that's wrong. Billions of years of external forces acting on your evolution led to you caring about others.

That doesn't change the fact I wouldn't care about anything if I was dead.

I'm not saying nothing is worth dying for, I'm saying almost nothing is worth dying for. If there is even a shred of possibility I'll be able to live with myself, I'm gonna take that chance. Because dying invalidates everything.

>Because dying invalidates everything.
That's a pretty bleak outlook to take given that the death of your physical body and conscious mind is almost a certainty in the world.

The much bleaker outlook is the monkey nonsense you've been spewing as the Gospel truth.

Why?

>That doesn't change the fact I wouldn't care about anything if I was dead.
Good, neither will the rest of the world you social tumor.
>I'm not saying nothing is worth dying for, I'm saying anything that isn't me isn't worth dying for.
>If there is even a shred of possibility I'll be able to live with myself, I'm gonna take that chance.
You'll kill yourself from the lack of people to use.
youtube.com/watch?v=UEaKX9YYHiQ
>Because dying invalidates everything.
Fucking pussy, death is your last adventure! All this is just proving how much life you've missed out on you basement dweller.

Wrong post, man.

I don't fear death. I avoid it. Death isn't something anyone should run into with open arms, because it's fucking oblivion.

>much bleaker outlook is the monkey nonsense you've been spewing
Lolwut?

Because you're a slave to some bullshit natural impulse.

Fuck the species. The species is a bunch of retarded genetrash apes.

Having allegiance to principles is good, but it should be out of a genuine conviction, not for "evolutionary advantage", or, for that matter, any kind of advantage. Believe in things because they matter, not because you're being told to.

>Not treating time as a spacial dimension to see the connection between the past and the present
>A single common factor is enough to warrant calling all those disparate piles a single being
Fuck if that's all it takes to be the same person, all of you are me since we all like Veeky Forums

With ot without nudemods?

>Believe in things because they matter, not because you're being told to.
Then aren't you kind of going for those "cosmic good boy points" you mocked earlier? Except this time it's "cosmic selfishness points"

>I don't fear death. I fear dying.
You can only avoid it for so long, even with transhumanity you're not guaranteed forever life.
>it's fucking oblivion.
Says who? This just shows you're a defeatist along with the fact that you are afraid of dying.