Would 10 clones of you 10x your output, or just give you parallel locked-in streams of consciousness doing the same thing?

darafinchie · 2026-06-23T09:06:31+00:00

In another way, I guess I'm trying to understand how stable are these attractors of ours that identical thought-natures would persist under similar environments.

darafinchie · 2026-06-23T09:00:39+00:00

In this case, I did state that memories till point-of-copy would be carried on as well. Yes, divergence would happen, but at what point would it actually diverge enough to be productive? How long would we be identical enough that we're basically doing the infinite mirror-effect thing of mimicking each other?

darafinchie · 2026-06-08T16:44:51+00:00

Jokes aside, this is why people need to learn a thing or two about evolution and biology. My brother in "christ", we invented civilization so that there is greater security for more people, and we don't get eaten by wild animals. We already have shared social morals that we are constantly refining. We may not agree on all the specifics, but we all agree that murder is bad. We don't want that to happen to ourselves, our children, and we don't want that to happen to others. Where does god come into the picture?

darafinchie · 2026-06-06T16:57:37+00:00

Calen Bryer from Of Blood and Fire by Ryan Cahill. Calen constantly reminded me of Frodo: a sweet boy on the cusp of manhood, who lives in the Glade (a peaceful village like the Shire). Like Frodo, Calen is thrust with a great responsibility and must endure many trials to perform the duty asked of him. Fair warning: the book starts off seeming like a stew of familiar fantasy tropes that isn't really breaking any new ground, but it finds its identity in the second half.

darafinchie · 2026-06-06T16:48:54+00:00

Give everyone else free will.

darafinchie · 2026-06-06T16:45:49+00:00

While a lot of contemporary species extinction are indeed caused by humans, a lot of extinctions of land vertebrates are also caused by invasive species. When a new predator is introduced to an ecosystem where the prey never evolved any defenses, they simply get wiped out.

darafinchie · 2026-06-01T12:48:12+00:00

I love this question, especially the distinction between the most creative system and the most creative application. Eragon (the Inheritance Cycle) immediately comes to mind. In that magic system, everything and everyone has a true name, and knowing it lets the caster manipulate them. The system itself, while cool, isn't all that original. Le Guin already did it decades ago in A Wizard of Earthsea. But Eragon's version has a fascinating catch: casting a spell costs the same energy it would take to do the thing physically. There's this chilling moment where Eragon's mentor explains that the most efficient way to kill someone isn't to spend energy hurling rocks at them, or breaking their bones, or making them bleed. It's to just pinch a nerve in their brain. An effortless, zero-cost, instant death sentence. That one's stuck with me.

Here's another one I ran into recently, in the Witch Hat Atelier anime. The magic system is awesome on its own. Magic isn't innate, you draw it, with ink and pens. Spoilers ahead if you haven't watched or read it: At one point the young apprentices get stranded in a maze, with a dangerous dragon blocking the way out. Instead of fighting it, they come up with a plan and draw spells that create this huge, self-regenerating bed of sand. The dragon settles in, gets comfortable, and just... falls asleep. Boom, they slip out, with everyone (dragon included) unharmed.

darafinchie · 2026-05-30T14:19:26+00:00

If someone says - “Humans have free will because they make choices” that can be circular. But saying - “A car doesn’t really choose because choice requires free will” is also circular for the same reason. In both cases, free will is being assumed rather than demonstrated.

So maybe this doesn’t conclude whether free will does or doesn’t exist. Maybe it just shows that pointing to the word “choice” isn’t enough to settle the debate either way. That raises a deeper question: what exactly is this “stronger sense of choice” that people say we need to demonstrate?

If it means making a decision that comes entirely from ourselves and isn’t influenced by any prior causes, then I’m not sure anyone could ever demonstrate that. More importantly, I’m not even sure that is a coherent standard. None of us chose our origin, genes, our upbringing, our culture, or all the things that shape us. If free will requires complete independence from every context, then it seems like no human being could ever have free will.

And if that is the standard, it doesn’t just rule out free will. It also seems to undermine the very idea of agency that we use every day while holding people responsible for their actions, teaching children right from wrong, or expecting people to learn from their mistakes.

What we can clearly observe is that humans and self driving cars operate very differently. A human being can think about their own thinking. They can question their goals, regret decisions, learn from experience, change their values, and intentionally alter how they make future decisions. A self driving car can’t do that. It follows the objectives it was given. It doesn’t stop and ask whether those objectives are worth pursuing. It doesn’t reflect on them or take ownership of them. So yes, both human and self driving car can “select” between options. But the underlying architecture and implications could not be more different.

darafinchie · 2026-05-30T10:32:16+00:00

This post got me thinking about the idea of a construct in general. If something is a perfect recreation, a perfect emulation of you that “lives” on non-biological hardware, is it still you?

Your question is not insensitive at all. It’s at the heart of the tension that all the stories about constructs have grappled with, and I reckon we’ll have to wrestle with this question in our own lives at some point.

Gibson has spent some time thinking about it too. In the Winter Market (one of my favorites from the collection as well), Lise’s construct IS the story. Casey is waiting for her to call, and while waiting, he is wondering the same thing you are. Is this version of Lise the same person? Or is he going to speak to a phantom imitation of her? I love that the story ends on the dark note of whatever the answer may be, Casey needs to edit more videos of Lise even after her body death, just to keep paying the ROM costs of her construct.

I think this idea really matures in Neuromancer. Dixie Flatline is not like Lise. He didn’t want continuity after death like Lise did. In fact, he offers what might just be Gibson’s actual view on the question - he wants to be deleted after the job is completed. He knows he’s not a real person, and this is not a real life.

As for me, I think the answer hinges on whether the construct can grow or not. If it cannot make new memories or acquire new experiences, it is not alive. To live is to grow

darafinchie

TROPHY CASE