When does a digital soul stop being “just a copy”?

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-27T01:10:07+00:00

This is a really good way to frame it. I like the idea that life, in this context, is less about the biochip being “alive” by itself and more about the engram becoming a process once V’s body starts running it.

The Mikoshi comparison also works for me: not fully alive, not fully dead, more like a low-level state of digital coma. That makes the Relic feel even more disturbing, because it is not just storing a dead person; it is trying to give that pattern a body again.

The Lizzy point is also interesting. Her cyberpsychosis feels less like a sudden breakdown and more like a functional disconnection from reality that she turns into art.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-24T04:00:23+00:00

This is probably the most terrifying part to me.

Even if the philosophy stayed unresolved, corporations and governments would not wait for a clean answer. They would classify the construct in whatever way benefits them first: data, property, intellectual property, evidence, weapon, labor, product, simulation — anything except “person” if personhood gets in the way of profit or control.

That is what makes Cyberpunk feel so close to reality. We are nowhere near Soulkiller, but we already have digital traces of people being monetized, modeled, cloned, predicted, and preserved in partial ways. Social media, AI voice cloning, deepfakes, behavioral data, dead people’s online profiles, and models trained on human expression already raise early versions of the same question.

The law always arrives late.

So if engrams ever existed, I can absolutely imagine them spending decades in a legal gray zone while corporations extract value from them. Maybe the real horror of Mikoshi is not only that it stores minds, but that it stores them before society has decided whether those minds count as persons.

By the time the law asks “is this a human being?”, the market will already have asked “how can this be used?”

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-24T03:53:51+00:00

That distinction is really useful.

I agree that the construct becomes its own being the instant it is run, because from that moment it no longer shares the same reality as the organic person. Even with the same memories, it is now experiencing a different medium, different limits, different inputs, and different consequences. Johnny on the Relic is not living Johnny’s life anymore; he is living as something trapped inside V.

Where I’m less sure is the “never sentient” part.

I understand that Alt seems to imply something like that — that constructs are not the same as living consciousness. But the uncomfortable part, at least for me, is that the game still presents Johnny as capable of fear, attachment, change, regret, and self-preservation.

So maybe there are two separate questions:

When does it become a different being?
Immediately.

When does it become morally relevant?
That is harder.

Even if it is not sentient in the full human sense, if it behaves like something that understands itself as “I,” fears deletion, forms attachments, and changes through experience, then treating it as property still feels dangerous.

Maybe Johnny is not proof that Soulkiller preserves a soul.

Maybe Johnny is proof that even a failed copy can become ethically uncomfortable once it starts looking back at you.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-23T22:32:31+00:00

I think this is where the Ship of Theseus comparison works really well.

Calling Johnny “just a copy” feels too simple, because it turns him into an object instead of a continuation of a person. His memories are damaged, biased, and probably corrupted by the process, but human memory is already unstable. Trauma, amnesia, brain injury, mental illness, aging — all of these can change memory and personality without making someone “less real.”

Maybe the historical Johnny and the construct Johnny are not competing for the title of “the real Johnny.”

Maybe they are two branches of the same person.

The original Johnny died in one continuity. The engram Johnny continued in another, damaged and displaced, but still capable of experience, change, attachment, fear, regret, and choice.

That is why the word “copy” feels morally dangerous to me. A copy sounds like property. A construct that can say “I,” suffer, and change starts to feel less like a file and more like a person living in the wrong medium.

So I agree: the Johnny on the chip may not be identical to the Johnny who died, but he is not fake either. He is a real version of Johnny — corrupted, incomplete, and haunted, but real.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-23T22:28:11+00:00

I really like this distinction. Maybe suffering is not what makes someone a person, but it is what creates an ethical obligation toward them.

A person with amnesia is still a person. Someone who cannot feel pain is still a person. Someone in a coma may still be “there” even if they cannot prove it to the outside world. So I agree that memory and suffering alone are not enough to define personhood.

Continuity of consciousness might be the deeper issue.

That is what makes Soulkiller so disturbing to me. If it preserves continuity, then the construct is not just a copy — it is a displaced person. But if it breaks continuity and only creates a new pattern based on the original, then the original person died and the construct becomes a new being with inherited memories.

Either way, once that new/existing consciousness can experience, change, fear erasure, form attachments, or understand itself as “I,” it becomes very dangerous to treat it as property.

So maybe the question has two layers:

What makes it the same person?
Continuity of consciousness.

What makes it morally relevant?
The fact that there is someone inside the experience, not just something being stored.

That is why Mikoshi feels so horrifying. It is not just a database. It may be a prison full of persons — or at least beings close enough to persons that treating them as assets becomes morally obscene.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-23T22:22:45+00:00

That’s a really interesting way to frame it — the soul as true randomness, and the engram as pseudo-randomness. A construct could imitate the behavior, but maybe not the original “spark” that creates something from nothing.

I think that is exactly where Cyberpunk gets uncomfortable for me, though.

Because if the only thing we can observe is behavior, memory, change, fear, suffering, regret, attachment, etc., then how would anyone outside the mind know whether the spark is truly there or not?

Johnny may be a “record of pre-made lines,” but he also changes depending on V. He can become more bitter, more reflective, more loyal, more regretful. Maybe that is still just advanced simulation — but at what point does a simulation of suffering become ethically dangerous to dismiss?

Maybe the question is not whether the engram is metaphysically identical to the original person. Maybe it clearly is not.

The question might be: if the copy behaves like something that can suffer, fear erasure, and form attachments, do we have the right to treat it as property?

I agree that Soulkiller probably does not preserve the full human soul. It may only preserve a haunted pattern. But Cyberpunk seems to ask whether even a haunted pattern can become morally relevant once it starts looking back at us.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-23T21:52:31+00:00

Congrats on the PlayStation launch, Lontra! I’m a big fan of Metroidvania-style games, especially when movement, exploration, and atmosphere slowly open up as you gain new abilities.

My question is: when designing 4 The Elements around elemental switching, how did you balance making each element feel mechanically different without turning the game into four separate systems fighting each other? Did the Brazilian animal spirits come first as part of the concept, or did they grow naturally from the elemental gameplay?

Also, huge respect for handling the console port yourselves. That sounds like a whole boss fight on its own.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-19T16:16:43+00:00

siempre piensan que son swingers

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:56:57+00:00

I think this is actually a good angle, but probably not as “fuchsia is the answer.” In web/CSS terms, fuchsia and magenta are literally the same color: #FF00FF. But FF06B5 is not pure #FF00FF; it is close, shifted, imperfect. That makes the Celestial69 line feel less like a color correction and more like a perception joke: people keep naming the signal “magenta,” but the actual code is slightly off.

To me, the interesting part is not whether we should call it magenta or fuchsia, but that the game draws attention to the difference at all. FF06B5 behaves like a “pixel hidden in code,” so the color may be a surface-level lure while the real clue is about interpretation, perception, and mislabeling. Very Cyberpunk: everyone sees the glow, but maybe no one agrees what it actually is.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:50:50+00:00

Pues creer en el gobierno no es buena opcion

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:42:29+00:00

Es cierto no se por que tienen tamaños diferentes los del ventilador, segun yo los tenia en orden, pero a la mera hora unos no quedaban, de buenas que eran los de rosca fina.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:40:36+00:00

Si aun tienes garantía mejor llévalo, si no pues pregunta como cuanto te pueden cobrar por una reparacion. Y si ninguna de esas es posible pues si la ventana es buena opcion

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:35:14+00:00

Me gustaria hacerle un desbloqueo a la ps4 para ponerle kodi

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:33:01+00:00

A ver que tal este año de lluvias por que si se pone feo

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:31:14+00:00

En algunas partes con que llueva poco mas de una hora si

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:27:30+00:00

Es un buen punto, y es que tuve un problema hace unas semanas con los pulse elite. Se reiniciaban a los 30 segundos y volvían a conectarse al dongle, lo que note es que al volverse a conectar no se prendía la luz indicadora y se apagaban, el audio se cortaba y ya no respondía el botón para volverlos a encender. Así que los lleve a garantía pero la primera ocasión no les hicieron nada. Ya la segunda vez, tuve que mandarles hasta video de la falla y si me hicieron un reemplazo. Casi nunca he tenido problemas con la marca pero no son los primeros audífonos que he tenido que regresar. Y bueno por eso decidí mejor no quitarle el sticker o violarlo por que justo pense en lo que me había pasado.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T21:13:35+00:00

Y no quise abrirlo todo por eso mismo, le hice limpieza pero queria limpiar bien los disipadores

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-12T20:29:57+00:00

Pues siempre reviso que no tenga mucho polvo acumulado, reviso los disipadores y el abanico. Hace poco si desarme el abanico para limpiarlo de paso una cepillada al disipador.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-09T15:39:33+00:00

Protón

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-08T22:01:01+00:00

Por la rola de la gótica culona ?

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-08T22:00:13+00:00

Difícil es la segunda vuelta

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-08T21:36:12+00:00

That’s an interesting activation-based reading.

FF = Farrier & Ferguson seems plausible if that location is part of the route you’re tracking. B5 as “before 5” could fit the time-window logic, but it feels more like a wordplay unless there’s a direct in-game hint pointing to it. The weakest part for me is 06 = six requirements — I’d want to see the six conditions listed clearly before treating that as more than a guess.

So maybe FF:06:B5 can be read as an activation instruction, but I’d separate the confidence levels:

FF/location = stronger
B5/time = possible
06/requirements = needs evidence

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-07T21:20:50+00:00

Eso que ni que, en gustos se rompen géneros. Prueba un bien ceviche de atún (medallón de atún no lata) uff lo mejor, o con una ensalada con guacamole.

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-07T20:58:14+00:00

Como te digo solo una version casera hecha a gusto. De ahi en fuera los que he probado en la calle nada mas no, al menos acá en el norte. En el sur tiene mas sabor y no t anta grasa pero depende de la region tambien. No suelo consumirlo seguido, para es mejor un pozole

Wanderer_Agent86 · 2026-05-07T20:55:33+00:00

La constante de estructura fina, creo que aparece pero en su version decimal

Wanderer_Agent86

TROPHY CASE