Babylon 5: Revelations

[planescaped]

I am so jealous, this SOB get's to watch Babylon 5 for work... The vast majority of the show is at least good, over half could be considered great.

Probably get's a BJ while doing so and drinking 100 year old barolo...

[FaxModem1]

I am so jealous, this SOB get's to watch Babylon 5 for work... The vast majority of the show is at least good, over half could be considered great.

Probably get's a BJ while doing so and drinking 100 year old barolo...

Don't envy him so much. He reviewed Zardoz a few weeks back.

[Yukaphile]

@Wargriffing Probably not, but how does that diminish my point that we should be as humane as possible in dealing with prisoners? All too often armies and institutions have refused to do just that, and there's a reason they're remembered with disgust from decent-minded people. And spacing is most decidedly inhumane.

[MixedDrops]

Interesting, but now it's arguably even more horrifying because you're effectively sentencing the created personality to death of personality. What happens if the implanted personality doesn't want to go? Or if they feel they can do more good in the world than the original? Would they have no rights and be forced to undergo death of personality?

The only workaround I can think of is to ensure that the new personality is always willing to sacrifice their own life for another's; but in that case it seems you're still effectively sentencing the person to death, just in a manner that benefits society (i.e. the new personality donates they organs to strangers, joins a high risk profession that saves lives, etc...). That seems to lead to the same ethical questions as the life-transferring machine, just in a less obvious manner.

Good point. I mean, if we're limiting ourselves to the context of the show, they do create personalities who live only to serve (to the point where one is willing to die for the sins committed by their previous personality), so if it ever happened in the B5 universe I imagine the implanted personality would be perfectly willing to sacrifice themselves to preserve justice.

But I think the questions you're asking would be very interesting to explore. Since the new personality is crafted, I imagine it isn't too different from some of the questions that involve Data or The Doctor on Star Trek, except in this case, the existence of the new personality actively infringes on the right for another personality (the older one) to live a life they had no reason to be deprived of.

Of course, if we were so advanced in mapping out the human brain that we can actually save entire personalities on a computer, I have to imagine that building some kind of artificial body for the new personality wouldn't be out of the question.

[TGLS]

Also is shooting them really more humane then chucking them out into space?

Depending on where you shot them, death would be instantaneous or nearly so, but spacing would last several minutes and be very painful.

Well, the thing is spacing is kind of a trope that only really makes sense in space settings where firing weapons inside spaceships is ludicrously dangerous and the frontier is largely unpoliced (thus no lethal injection or other less painful forms of capital punishment).

[Darth Wedgius]

I think spacing is supposed to be uncomfortable. On a spaceship with a decent mission duration they should have the capability to fill a room with nearly pure nitrogen and give the traitor a quick, painless death. People have died by accident due to nitrogen releases causing the local partial pressure of oxygen to drop too low; the body doesn't really sense it happening.

[Yukaphile]

Can't they just sedate the traitor, then toss his unconscious form into space? If you're gonna asphyxiate, then make sure they are not conscious.