Telepathic Matrix

[bvanevery]

We have free will, and we are individuals.  That is the empirical reality of the universe we live in, what we are as a species.  Debating that we are otherwise is mostly sophistry.  Exceptions can be made for actual group behavior, such as how people behave in crowds, or in political indoctrination, or in cults.

Determinism is mostly the claim that we aren't deciding anything, that we only "believe" we are deciding things, and that all our actions have some kind of infinitely externally traceable cause.  I say it's rubbish.  Nobody's ever going to be able to trace out these causes and prove them in any way.  Typically, the "trace debug" necessary to determine someone's causality, would have to be larger than the universe itself, to account for everything in the universe.

We don't have to know exactly why we can make decisions, to know that we are making decisions.

We may not get to know why the Big Bang happened.  Only that it happened.

[Hierophant]

Okay, again, it doesn't really matter to me why you believe it. For the record, I think you're absolutely wrong, but I'm not trying to have a debate on whether free will exists or not. I'm trying to understand why you're creeped out by concepts centered around the loss of individuality. I absolutely do not believe in free will and so such concepts do not bother me at all, so I thought there might be a connection there. Not sure why you're trying to turn this into a defense of free will.

[bvanevery]

Probably you should contemplate your own biases for awhile, as to why you see or don't see connections.  Free will means we are individuals exercising it.

[Hierophant]

All right, I understand the general idea of what you're trying to say, so I'm not gonna belabor that point.

After thinking about it some more, I think we just have incompatible concepts of what "individuality" is. When you say individuality, I understand this as meaning that the mind remains one coherent whole, is not broken into, violated, and so on, that you are still a distinct mind from the other minds around you (like the more succinct definitions given elsewhere: "separate existence" and "distinct existence"). But that doesn't seem to be your view, since you are also against the “loss of self” example, which does not involve any of these things. Likewise the SMAC ending does not seem to involve these things either, as the people involve still persist as individual entities which seem to be whole (although it's impossible to tell for sure). So whatever your definition of individuality is, it seems to be narrower than mine, if I am understanding you correctly. This is probably what is leading to my misunderstanding.

[bvanevery]

But that doesn't seem to be your view, since you are also against the “loss of self” example, which does not involve any of these things.

That is your claim.  It does involve those things.  You just don't believe it does.

This is probably what is leading to my misunderstanding.

I think it is actually more likely that you are parsing the end game text with legalese, to construct a viewpoint that is favorable to your preferences.  Whereas I tend to recall every sci-fi show about societies of incessant telepaths and how well that went for them.  Being part of Planet's hive mind is even worse and the game text is pretty clear that individual human identity is effaced, that you get pretty much the gesture of Deidre or whatever in the new consciousness.  Not actual Deirdre behaving as Deirdre did as a corporeal being.

Your individuality becomes a mere ingredient in a cosmic stew.  You're a spice.

[Nexii]

It's written in the interludes that one may go back and forth from the collective consciousness to an individual human body. Also that body returns to Earth to colonize it with humanity and birth a new Planet consciousness. So nothing is destroyed or given up really. Likewise, I can't understand the aversion to the story's ending. It's win for all sides, perhaps almost too good to be true

[bvanevery]

A body is not a mind.  Do you not remember Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

[Hierophant]

I don't understand. Are you claiming that using meditation to dampen or suppress your sense of self is destroying the separation between your mind and other minds?

[bvanevery]

At this point I think the discussion is going to go nowhere, unless we start quoting the actual narrative text from the game.

[Hierophant]

I did quote the narrative text. And it does seem to indicate the persistence of individual consciousnesses through the use of names, although as I said, it's not proof of anything.

[bvanevery]

It does not.  Here's the beginning of the exact text you quoted:

"In such times of repose, You often sift through Your personalities and recall Your former selves. Your alpha self derives from an individual once called $NAME1.

There is no Deirdre anymore.  You are not Deirdre anymore.  You are something that has an ingredient of Deirdre, and a whole lotta other ingredients, that get shuffled around all over the place.  Deirdre added her thought pattern into this big brain entity and that's it, she's gone.  There's a gesture of her in there.  Nobody exists recognizably as human individuals anymore, the way we know of ourselves now, and have continuity in our own selves.  The self is badly blurred.

It's rather similar to a description of schizophrenia + Alzheimer's.  No thanks!

[Nexii]

Orbital insertion begins and you tingle with the excitement of your new mission and with the joy of having returned to human form. Yes, you left a copy of your personality among the Planetmind's giant matrix, but this copy, this human being $NAME1 now waking to lead the first Seed mission, this is the only self now immediate to you and therefore the only real you. You are flesh again, and so quite mortal, and for this too you rejoice.

It seems that post Transcendence, self/collective blurs into one rather than seen as a duality.

[Hierophant]

How could the person's self be copied and put in a body if the self is gone and melded with other ones?

Again, it doesn't seem like the separation between one's mind and other minds is broken. It must, no doubt, be breached, so that might represent a breach of individuality according to you bvanevery. However, what is said hardly corresponds to symptoms of "schizophrenia + Alzheimer's." I am not comfortable using real-life diseases that actual people suffer from to describe this hypothetical scenario, anyway, but I hardly think you can equate, say, telepathy (which is what this seems to be more like) with schizophrenia.

[bvanevery]

I'm perfectly willing to compare mental impairments, because that's what the source material does anyways.  Nexii left out the part where floating around inside the Planet mind clearly sucks:

^  You despaired when Planet invited $NAME5 to join its dominant self, and
for a decade or more you moped about the bizarre virtual reality of the Undermind
with no coherent purpose, a lost spirit unable to die. But when the Seed missions
began, the Voice/Planet personality herself sought you out in the abyss and convinced
you to accept command of the {Prodigal Son}.
^  "Earth$NAME3, you are unfulfilled here and I have need of you. In ages to come
I shall have need of allies, sister Minds, if I am to keep the flame of conscious
thought from guttering out as the universe contracts or else expands to dust. Take
with you the gift of life, the seeds of all our species. Spread them to the stars,
across the galaxies, creating new civilizations, new minds, and enlisting the aid
of any you encounter. Go forth, Earth$NAME3. Go forth and multiply."

At a minimum, this is a Purgatory.  And that's assuming all this re-enviornmenting, saving, and copying, actually retains the person and isn't fundamentally altering them.  Plenty of sci-fi stories have been written on the latter theme.  Here's one from Star Trek TOS about getting dumped into an android body: What Are Little Girls Made Of?

So you finally got out of Purgatory.  Greaat.  Maybe don't wanna ever go back?  Immortality ain't all that great if you're just put on ice suffering for awhile, then some Planet mind deigns to send you out on errands again finally.  I'd seriously start thinking about those planet core singularity bombs, if I hadn't thought of them already before "signing up".

I'm not even clear when someone gets this Epilogue?

[Hierophant]

Well of course you're in Purgatory, you lost the game. They wouldn't reward you with a "good ending" if you lost the game.

But either way, taking it at face value, I don't understand why you are not happy about this quote: it actually shows individuality! You're actually unhappy in the planetmind because you didn't get to be top dog. If your mind got mixed with everyone else's into one big planetmind, why would planetmind be unhappy about some part of itself not being more central than another? Do you mourn that your pancreas is inferior to your heart?