Babylon 5: Epiphanies

[hammerofglass]

However, our brains are where our consciousness comes from. In essence, we ARE our brains, and the rest of the body is just the meatsuit we ride around in. So a technological implant that alters the structure of your brain is something that risks changing or destroying who you are as a person, your internal sense of self.

An implant somewhere else that affected your hormones or blood sugar would do that just as effectively.

[Frustration]

Psychologists have pretty conclusively demonstrated that the state of our bodies profoundly affect our minds to the point that, while the brain is obviously critically important to cognition, the mind cannot be said to exist entirely within it.

For example, our experience of our own emotional states depends greatly on physiological feedback from the body. People with broken necks and resulting paralysis report feeling that their emotions are intellectualized and 'shallow'.

[clearspira]

Psychologists have pretty conclusively demonstrated that the state of our bodies profoundly affect our minds to the point that, while the brain is obviously critically important to cognition, the mind cannot be said to exist entirely within it.

For example, our experience of our own emotional states depends greatly on physiological feedback from the body. People with broken necks and resulting paralysis report feeling that their emotions are intellectualized and 'shallow'.

I find it hard to agree with that. I watched a documentary about Christopher Reeves a few months back told from the perspective of those who knew him through his final years and he is on camera gushing about his wife and son, the charity work that he was doing, his patronage to disabled charities, his hopes and dreams for a recovery, and his continued love of acting of which he was still doing right up to his death. This was not a shallow man. If anything, what he lacked in body he made up for in feeling twice fold. I would go as far as to call him an inspiration.

[clearspira]

It's all fun and games until the corporation that installed your cyberware disables your serotonin unless you pay an additional subscription.

That's the issue. We could have it either way, but history shows we'll pick the dystopia nearly every time.

Humans are not great at collective decision-making.

This is going to be controversial but I firmly believe that half of the human race would gladly become the next Hitler if given the opportunity. My proof is this: think of every dickhead that you have met in your life. The bully, the crook, the tinpot dictator who fined you for not shovelling snow, the guy who beats his wife, the middle manager who treats his staff like shit... and then imagine those people in absolute control of a military superpower and tell me that you think the world would be a better place.

And that's only the ''normal'' people. Imagine the Klan members, the INCELs, the radical bigots, the fundamentalists, the terrorists, the people who miss the Confederate South, the people who think that the world went to shit when ''Them Pesky Others'' got the vote.

The reason why we idolise Victoria Cross winners or Medal of Honor winners. The reason why we adore superheroes. The reason why there is there a Second Amendment. The reason why we like to hope that there is a Heaven and a Hell, is because fundamentally, we all know deep down that there aren't all that many truly good guys in the world and so we cling to the few that are whilst recognising that probably no one is coming to help when something goes bump in the night.

Basically this is my long-winded way of saying that yes, I agree. Human beings as a group rarely choose paradise. Or indeed altruism of any kind.

[Frustration]

I watched a documentary about Christopher Reeves a few months back told from the perspective of those who knew him through his final years and he is on camera gushing about his wife and son, the charity work that he was doing, his patronage to disabled charities, his hopes and dreams for a recovery, and his continued love of acting of which he was still doing right up to his death.

All quite irrelevant to the point I am making, which is what full paraplegics themselves report about how they experience their emotions. Without feedback from the rest of their bodies, their emotions aren't experienced the same way.

[Deledrius]

Basically this is my long-winded way of saying that yes, I agree. Human beings as a group rarely choose paradise. Or indeed altruism of any kind.

It's a fascinating thing, because we do sometimes. There are a great number of successes, too.

But it's hard to not notice the many failures; we hold ourselves back.

[hammerofglass]

Going the other way there's also a bunch of things that can go wrong purely in the brain (chemical, psychological, or both) that can make you percieve your body as a meatsuit you ride around in which is fundamentally seperate from "you". Depression, PTSD, severe stress, etc. Been there, would not recommend.

[Frustration]

I particularly dislike the medicalization of depression, as it simply has no scientific basis - it's just an assertion made because people consider medical illnesses to be deserving of sympathy and sufferers rightfully resent not being taken seriously.

[Fianna]

Difference is that body chemistry's influence on the brain is, by its nature, constantly shifting and transitory. What a change in body chemistry does to your mental state, another change can change back. But once you start cutting up brain tissue to make room for cybernetic implants, you can't UNcut it.

[Frustration]

Even if we develop the ability to regrow brain tissue, getting that new tissue to interface usefully with the rest of the brain is horribly complex, and the brain develops 'organically' with all parts influencing the others. It's little use to be able to grow a whole new brain that has no information or personality in it - you'd get a vegetable or at best an animal mind.