 February 1, 2014 - 8:43pm | This is heavy but it made me think: happened to witness a dog getting hit by a car tonight. Not cool since it was a hit an run and the jerk had to know that he hit something but it's what it was. Anyway I was thinking that if this had been the Frontier where hover vehicles are more prevalent then the little dog would not have been hurt. So my reason the Frontier might be a cool place to live is that fewer animals would be hurt because while being run over my a vehicle with a hover fan might scare the piss out of them they should be relatively unharmed. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 6, 2014 - 3:32pm | EVE is a wonderful spaceship game ruined by human nature. THe spaceship captains in the game are immortal. When they are killed by a ship explosion, they have a mind backup placed in a new body. They used to be built into a pod on the ship but I think they've added walking around so they are no longer restricted to the pod. Eclipse Phase gives nearly everyone a cortical stack implanted in their brain that allows them to be restored from backup. Certain factions opt out of this. The setting plays with a fair bit of identity and body horror so a character might be killed on a mission, come back without the memories, and wonder why they're a giant robotic crab. I've always tried to weigh things like cybernetics by the sort of game advantage they give. If you just have a metal arm and it doesn't matter in game, I'm not sure why I need to assign a cost to it. If a cyber item duplicates a normal item, it's a matter of assigning a cost to having it all the time. I'm having thoughts.... |
 February 6, 2014 - 4:42pm | We have a monorail here. It went bankrupt within its first year, now it's taxpayer supported. Lucky us. Not that suprising, aren't most subways tax payer supported? Possibly, but I would also wager that most of those subways actually see some semblence of passenger use. I would also surmise that most subways have terminals that are convenient to their destinations...unlike this elevated disposal barge we have going from resort to resort --- or should I say (a city block from a resort) to (another city block from another resort). Package it up however you want, it's still a constipated turd that can't be pushed to usefulness. |
February 6, 2014 - 4:49pm | Re: cloning It would be a difficult endeavor for anyone to have a clone ready to go in the event of their demise. For starters, the clone would have to be of a simlar or close enough age to be recgnizable as the original...meaning every few years the clonee would have to hatch a new clone and the process would have to start from host birth. But more significanty: fingerprints. You simply can not replicate these, they are unique due to pre-birth placenta contact. So any clone would not have access to the host's assets, as the ID card has a fingerprint on file that will never match the duplicate clone's print. |
 February 6, 2014 - 7:23pm |
The Orions Arm galactic encyclopedia project has people upload to virtual space. Eventually entire trillions of citizens will exist "online". Would this devalue living a human life normally? |
February 6, 2014 - 8:46pm | Re: cloning It would be a difficult endeavor for anyone to have a clone ready to go in the event of their demise. For starters, the clone would have to be of a similar or close enough age to be recognizable as the original...meaning every few years the clone would have to hatch a new clone and the process would have to start from host birth. I don't think there's an absolute limit here. Human growth is slow because of regulation, not capacity. Some tissues grow very quickly (mucosal membranes particularly) and of course we all know about growth spurts. An advanced culture that could precisely control the hox genes and epigenetic environment could grow a human much faster than one matures without turning into one big hyperplasia. How much faster? Twice might be reasonable. Faster would require quite a bit of control over the emerging brain structure. The brains probably the only really hard limit on how fast you could make a clone assuming very advanced technology. Faster than that might be to not try to grow an infant. Instead, you do the Frontier equivalent of 3dprinting a skeleton to specification and grow the organs to put into it. Admittedly, assembly is a problem and the brain is still the most complex thing ever but you could conceivably (pardon the pun) make a human in a month or two. Six months might be reasonable for a human if the brain is difficult but not impossible. This method would probably be closer to what people think of as a clone than an actual infant clone. A lot of our appearance and other traits are due to epigenetic or environmental effects. Even identical twins tend to diverge as they age. A "printed" clone could be made very similar to your current state rather than what you'd look like if you had spent the first 20 years of your life in a vat. I'd probably still use a regression to the mean type effect on printed clones. The highest ability (or two) would fall by 5-10 and the lowest would raise by the same amount. You might drop all abilities by 5 just to keep players from regarding cloning as easy extra lives. Of course, this all ignores the idea of how you get the memories and personality into the clone. But more significanty: fingerprints. You simply can not replicate these, they are unique due to pre-birth placenta contact. So any clone would not have access to the host's assets, as the ID card has a fingerprint on file that will never match the duplicate clone's print. Fingerprints and a lot more. Your clone would probably look more like your sibling than you. A printed clone might have custom fingerprints indicating its status as a clone and whatever information is legally required. I'd assume that if replacement cloning is legal you create a trust to inherit all of your goods and the trust pays off the cloners and then discharges everything to your clone. Blankbeard-beta would be the legal successor to me and would get his own ID with his fingerprints. It'd be interesting law to find out if he'd be liable for a murder I committed just before getting killed and cloned. I keep getting div tags that mess up quoting. I accidentally editted part of your post when I was removing them, Shadow Shack. |
February 6, 2014 - 9:01pm |
The Orions Arm galactic encyclopedia project has people upload to virtual space. Eventually entire trillions of citizens will exist "online". Would this devalue living a human life normally? It really depends on what that existance is like. If I remember correctly, in Orion's Arm, virtual space is pretty much indistinguishable from normal space except that you get all the upside of living in the Matrix without any of the downside. In Accelerando, you can walk through your house normally, but your living room is in orbit around Mars, your kitchen is in the Oort cloud around Sirius, and the parlor is virtual space. In cases like these, I don't think it does devalue life inherently. There are dangers but they're different from normal space, not necessarily greater. The Matrix and Eclipse Phase both have negative vitual spaces. The Matrix is a prison. In Eclipse Phase, the rebelling AI's literally cut off billions of heads and uploaded the minds forcibly. The human factions keep anyone who isn't useful or able to buy their way out in virtual space as an underclass. Those who do get out often find themselves in very dehumanizing robot bodies. There's also a generation of kids who were raised in virtual space who grew up to be psychopaths. So it can go either way. :) |
February 6, 2014 - 9:42pm |
Scary thought, to be forcibly uploaded. I would like to plug in. The idea of being to experience actions or events while also being beyond the physicals of the real realm is enticing. I love hockey, I would love to experience the ice in an NHL game, but I wouldn't because my body wouldn't be able to handle it and I don't possess that skill. In a virtual setting I would, and I could and it would feel real to me. Good enough. That "good enough" or "paradise factor" is what would drive masses to upload voluntarily, be free from this world. The benefactor of caring for the data storage...wow. Someone with trust and position would need to protect that much "data" or "real" people. Eve, I just recently stopped my subscription, is a hostile place inhabited by kids with guns. Even in protected empire space it is dangerous, example...I was flying a 950 million ISK collateral contract of goods in a fast, cloaking hauler to a decent distance away. I would earn 5 million ISK for this run. It was a scam. A few systems later I was locked and destroyed by a player who was willing to lose his ship (because he would be automatically killed by CONCORD for killing me in protected space). My ship was lost, the goods lost, the collateral gone. That was a long, long....long road to get that 1 billion ISK. That ruined my game. Anyways, Eve point. The immortality drives men insane. They can kill, be killed, go right back in and burn over and over. They feed on it like rabid dogs, some of them out in null space. Their own empires established, egos run amuck. The very existence of peace rests on how much you are willing to pay. To some of these immortals...rebirth is sure, so risking their bodies to death is a small price to pay to have fun ruining another persons day. Cloning in Eden is outrageous, it has fowled humanitys existence. Frontier citizens would be warned to avoid Eden citizens at all costs. |
 February 24, 2014 - 12:26pm | Have you guys considered that the very long life spans is exactly the result of "virtual imortality" granted by medical cloning. What I'm saying is people in frontier have better youth rejuvinization science because they can visit the doctor when they are feeling old and they can get transplants grown from thier own DNA of younger healthier and totally compatible replacement body parts that are eaily grown in a lab. So I'm thinking that in a backwater world, poverty stricken planet, or among some factions that reject such unnatural practices the lifepans of those humans might be far less... like maybe 100 years. Longer than modern day humans due to medical science still being simply better but less than half the "average stated life span". Also... if its an average the standard diviation could be drastic. Maybe the super rich have the money to go to extreems in the cloning/replacement process and might live to be 400 years old while the poor only make it to 100 and the actual "middle class" might be in the 180-200 range. My thinking is that the extreme measures the super rich can afford that others can't rejuvinate the degridation of the brain as it ages and that is the main limiting factor in the "immortality" of the human race... they just can't keep the brain running forever. NOR can they transfer your brain/soul into another brain. ----------------------------------------------- |
February 24, 2014 - 12:32pm | And about a world with hovercars. You think getting rain puddles/mud spashed at you is bad now....imagine the debrit and dirt thrown all over the sidewalks and first two stories of every building. They might be able to fly over snow, but they would also push if everywhere else. I am thinking the tech that enables "hover vehicles" has to be something other than just air pressure. However, to make that believable they would need tech that is only a fraction of a step away from artifical gravity. Maybe they line the roads with magnets use that for hovering cars/trucks? That would mean snow would still be a problem unless the magnetic roads would also be able to melt the snow (which is believable). ----------------------------------------------- |
February 24, 2014 - 12:41pm | No magnet technology off road for hover vehicles. what about Zebs guide flit board? anti grav? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 25, 2014 - 4:03pm | One could always incorporate Lucasfilm repulsorlift technology. Or should I say repulsorlift lack of technology. After all, if the Geonosians were capable of crafting repulsor lifts for their "hoverwagons" that were toted around by pack animals. Oh, wait...they also designed the Death Star. So it begs the question, why did they need pack animals for their repulsorlift trailers? "We can design a Death Star, but we can't design a method of propulsion for a much smaller vehicle."  And about a world with hovercars.
You think getting rain puddles/mud spashed at you is bad now....imagine the debrit and dirt thrown all over the sidewalks and first two stories of every building. They might be able to fly over snow, but they would also push if everywhere else. I sort of touched on this earlier concerning "running over small animals". If you think about it, that hovercraft is pushing enough air with enough force to hoist that 1000 pound vehicle up into the air. If that air is sufficient for lifting half a ton, and with Newton's Law concerning force and opposite reactions tae into consideration, imagine what it can do to that 10 pound animal underneath. So much lighter dust and leaves? Yeah, it's gonna kick that up too.  |
