MovieChat Forums > Altered Carbon (2018) Discussion > I am very interested to hear what our mo...

I am very interested to hear what our more religious members have to say about the concept of the stack [serious]


I marked the thread as serious because that seems to help on another site I go to.

I am genuinely interested in the opinions of people, whichever religion or belief, about your opinions about the stack, the sleeves and all that. Specifically, if you believe in a soul, what you think the repercussions would be regarding the changing of sleeves and changing of bodies etc. In fact, if you think it would have no impact at all, I would like to know why as well.

It was addressed in the show, with some people (in the show) saying that the soul died with the first iteration. It also had interesting ideas, such as whether you could bring someone back, if only for the purpose of resolving a crime, even though by religious right they refused to be brought back. This show touches on some really interesting issues.

I realize that a topic like this can get out of hand, but I trust if it does the moderators will step in.

So, if anybody has any interesting viewpoints to add I would love to hear them.

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I honestly don't think religious people watch shows like this or contemplate questions like you're asking. It's too challenging to their worldview.

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Analysing sacred texts such as Bible, Quran, Torah or Sutras, interpreting them and discussing theological and other metaphisical concepts can sometimes be more challenging than contemplating how can some concept presented in a new sci-fi TV show affect "soul" - definition of which varies not only from religion to religion but sometimes from person to person.

But maybe we live in a world where all religious people are like that guy standing on a street corner with "god hates fags" sign in his hands and all atheists are fedora-wearing pretentious twats whose best argumet against the existence of god is "lol snakes can't talk" and who consider themselves deep thinkers for daring to think about what would happen if we could switch bodies - unlike those filthy religious peasants.

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Actually you're referring to religious scholars, either formally trained or autodidacts. But now you're in turn guilty of generalizing since not all religious scholars are religious themselves. ;D

But even of those that are, they represent such a tiny fraction of the overall religious demographic that your insistence on the distinction just comes across as petty. It's just an empirical reality that the overwhelming majority of those who would call themselves religious are not religious scholars themselves, nor are they particularly learned of any religion outside of their own, generally speaking of course.

Anyway, I thought it was obvious I was speaking in generalities but apparently for you it wasn't obvious at all so I should have been more clear. But typically when someone refers to characteristics of a particular demographic I think it's pretty safe for you to assume they're speaking in generalities. It sounds like you've spent too much time around intolerant or ignorant fedora wearing atheists or members of the Westboro Baptist church, but rest assured, most people really don't think that way.

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That's the biggest load of uninformed, baseless horse shit I've read in ages!

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Basically, what the show tells us that humans discovered a way to clone not only bodies but also the souls, which impossible in most major religions. Only God has that power. The soul does die with the 1st iteration and what you're left with is a copy of you but not really you, because the soul doesn't transfer thru stacks. You can't digitize, capture and download it. Also, it doesn't need a body to exist but it needs a body to be in the world of the living. There are different worlds you see, the world of souls before birth, the world of the living and the Afterlife.

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"humans discovered a way to clone not only bodies but also the souls, which impossible in most major religions."


Exactly, but even from a secular perspective, it appears to be the fundamental shortcoming of transhumanist ideology. We need to resolve the hard problem of consciousness. We can't determine whether consciousness can transcend the current broadly accepted materialist paradigm of the mind-body problem until we can better define what consciousness even is; until we do the whole idea of uploading and downloading to different sleeves remains strictly in the realm of sci-fi/fantasy.

It won't stop guys like Kurziel from believing he can live forever, but I do look forward to see how the scientific consensus towards the hard problem of consciousness might change in our lifetimes and whether there might be any room for growth.

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Wh0a that was weird.

Anyone have any idea why the two previous posts, including a reply by me, got deleted and VZarastauphum's account appears to have been voided out and his posts zapped? It was a perfectly legit exchange about the hard problem of consciousness that could not have caused anyone any offense.

But I also wasn't aware this place engaged in any censorship.

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I am not a religious person, but from trying to understand a religious perspective, I think your answer is probably the most reasonable one I have read that makes sense to me.

Do you think your argument for the soul dying with the first iteration, has some bearing on the argument that the consciousness of the first iteration does not continue to the next iteration, and that the second iteration is merely a "good copy"? Do you think those two arguments are the same, share some similarity, or do you think that they are two different issues altogether?

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I think the argument holds whether if viewed from a religious or secular perspective. Just swap out the word "soul" for "consciousness" and we have the same problem.

From our limited scientific understanding of what consciousness is right now, it's hard to understand why the replica wouldn't just be a copy like an identical twin. The DNA might be an exact duplicate, but how does your consciousness actually transfer into that DNA to take that duplicate form? You might be indistinguishable from your copy to a 3rd person, but as far as the "you" that serves as your first person identity right now, why would your consciousness be transferred? It doesn't make intuitive sense that it would and if you assume it did it brings up all these philosophical questions, like what if there were 2 duplicates made of "you"? IF the claim is that there's a transferability of consciousness then how would you assume 2 forms? What if your old sleeve was kept alive, if you transfer to a new sleeve then does your old sleeve just stop functioning? Hard to see how it would transfer at all.

The assumption of transferability relies on the theory that your consciousness is merely data that can be copied independent of your physical brain cells but there's really nothing to suggest right now that's actually true. Is your mind just your physical brain operations or something more than that? This is the mind body problem philosophers had struggled with for centuries to resolve. Dualists like Descartes thought the mind and brain are separate substances, Monists believe they are one and the same. The scientific consensus over the last hundred years or so appears to have arrived at the monist materialist interpretation that your mind is your physical brain. Until proven otherwise, transferability remains a flight of sci-fi fantasy.

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Yeah... I think you just hit the nail right on the head there. I had something that nagged at me, but I couldn't put it into the words that you just did.

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If making a copy killed the original, the copy would think it WAS the original and kept living. To the last iteration, it would seem like immortality. The previous iterations would cease to be. It's much like children. Even if your child was a clone of you, it wouldn't be you. It wouldn't know that, though.

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Great point I hadn't thought of.

Though there'd be no reason creating a copy would kill the original. But it could be either intentionally killed or the copy could be just told that the original died in order to maintain the illusion of immortality, but it'd still be living under the illusory false pretense. It'd be like giving the copy "religion" by providing it with the comfort and security of the belief in its own immortality. :)

Probably unrealistic to think that illusion could be maintained for any extended period of generations before exposed to the truth of its fraudulence. But it's still an interesting idea. Say we could create clones of ourselves that would continue to live on and build on our own knowledge and experience that we've gained over our lifetimes, even though we know our consciousness wouldn't actually transfer. It'd be a more efficient way of having progeny. Instead of childbirth where the wisdom we try to pass onto our kids doesn't always survive their individuality and need to learn their own lessons the hard way, our duplicates could build on what we've accomplished to try to work toward a more perfect version of ourselves, and so on down the iterations.

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Actually scratch that. On second thought the idea still wouldn't work because of the impermeability of time.

Creating a duplicate wouldn't achieve anything because there's no reason that your copy would out survive you and live on like if you had a child that would grow up in future generations.

The duplicate might have all your present knowledge, but so what? It'd still have the same life expectancy in terms of years left that you had. There'd be no point to create the duplicate. d0h, I can't believe I didn't catch that fatal flaw sooner.

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You would have to "grow" a new clone from birth already having your experiences and memory. Maybe it would be tanked until physical maturity.

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Yeah but there'd still be the logistical impossibility of transferring intact memories and experiences of a fully formed adult brain into a developing infant baby and child brain.

I was thinking that problem could be leapfrogged if a clone of yourself could be genetically engineered by assembling an exact copy from the biological molecular ground up like we're capable of doing today with electronics assembly at the molecular level in fab labs. Biological cloning could at least be theoretically possible this way, but it doesn't help with the problem of extending your gained memories and experiences beyond your present life expectancy.

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You can put a cloned adult head with a baby body. Freaky, I know. But if that could make people live "forever" I think many would still do it.

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Well, we saw double stacking happen in the show, so it appears that copying mind/consciousness is also copying the soul (at least a digital version) and the stacks is this beyond human understanding alien technology.
They also showed us that mind can be uploaded into a virtual world, while the body and the stack become vacant for anyone else to be uploaded right after. In their future world brain is just the CPU for their Stack hard drive.
No matter what tho, when you die and your consciousness is saved to the stack, your original soul/mind dies. Whatever body the stack gets, it will be a pitch perfect copy of you. And copies degrade over time of constant resurrection.
Even if you make 2 doubles (which is illegal AF in their world) after they are created and go their separate ways, they will become different people, just like identical twins nowadays.

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Stack, changing sleeves etc. is not technically possible at the moment. So... evaluating all this from a religious point of view would be some sort of a speculation and science fiction of its own. However, as to the very concept of the stack - it could be analyzed from a modern social, psychological etc. perspective.

What is changing sleeves? Nothing more than a desire to remain physically immortal and a fear of physical death tunnelled into a SF concept. Most religions consider physical bodies to be but a small part of human experience and thus criticize clinging to pure physical existence labelling such desire as 'satanic'. Also, every founder of the three 'universal religions' had to embrace death at a certain point in his life thus becoming an example for the followers.

Somehow maintaining your physical body through the ages is just a remix on a medieval legend of 'wandering Jew' (which in turn was a form of critique of the physical immortality).

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We got into debates about this years ago with Star Trek. The transporter essentially murders you every time you step into it, and reproduces you far, far away. Everytime you transport, you're becoming a copy of yourself. How does one's soul know how to stay attached or follow you? Does a severed soul recognize you, even far away and just sling back into you like a bungee cord? Or do you lose your soul the first time you transport and now you're just a flesh robot rambling through the cosmos? The question becomes even deeper with Altered Carbon and entirely different bodies introduced. IMO, that soul has left the building, only the memories remain, but that doesn't mean another soul isn't merged with the body. Assuming souls are required for life.

I think people lose their souls all the time. I think they're interchangeable. I also believe in the OverSoul and a whole ton of crazy other crap. I think souls are made of basically The Force, the glue of universe, dark matter maybe, and like ectomplasmic ghosts it manifests and possess and sparks life every time anything lives anywhere. If the memories are strong enough, this impression, this rogue soul remains instead of returning to the "soup", and you get people who wake up one day with different personalities. Or the notion of reincarnation, if you will, in a fresh birth.

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A person who believed in a soul would likely believe this technology would never be possible.

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This all comes down to the question of soul. Religious people might believe this technology would never even work because the soul wouldn't transfer. Others might believe the consciousness IS the soul. I think an interesting extension of this question is as it relates to ai becoming aware, when they start to "feel," and care and love. Some people would believe that couldn't happen . . . but what if it did? That would have to change our whole understanding of soul and humanity. DesCartes said "I think, therefore I am," but we have computers now that for all intents and purposes do think. Amazon's Alexa can hold a more intelligent conversation than some people I know. A more appropriate phrase should be "I feel, therefore I am." When ai, or clones, or replicants, or androids, or whatever can love us back, will they have a soul?

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I don't think our more religious members would care to respond. If you allows, I would like to give a try. My opinion is a stack stores the digital copy of one's soul. From a religious point of view, blowing the soul (breath of life) into the body is considered as one becoming alive; And when the soul leave the body, it is considered as one's death. To those future human replicant, putting one's stack into a sleeve is considered his/her resurrection, in other words, becoming "alive". And when the replicant die, they take out the stack and then put into a new sleeve if he/she can afford that or deserve that.
Obviously, the digital copy of a soul is not a real soul, just like a human replicant is not a real human. Those being in the altered carbon world might need an altered religion to deal with that.

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The stacks and sleeves issue is disturbing. The show goes to point out that having "two versions of the same stack around at the same time is punishable by perma-death". The russian guy made a copy of himself and called eachother brothers, but it was the same memories and same person but two of them same time alive. This was important to show, because it establishes that in actuality those stacks make copies of your memories like a data storage. So its not really YOU, its just a data copy of your memories. Which is why the russian could have two versions of himself. So all those stacks and sleeves are copies of copies. The real person died a long time ago.

I wouldnt want a copy of myself walking around after I die. It wouldnt be the real me. Even if it had my memories.

So I was repulsed by the idea and premise. Its a cold evil world, where the sociopathic elite rule forever with stacks of wealth. Copies of people walking around that arent the real people. Its an affront to the natural order and mars the beauty of our existence. We arent meant to live here forever and we are meant to die. We die so others may get the chance to live.

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It's not only a copy of your memories but also a copy of your consciousness.
So the original body might be dead for centuries, but you are still able to develop new thoughts.

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Thats Semantics. Memories, Consciousness, not much of a difference.

Its still a copy, not the original. If the stack could play on a computer, instead of being placed in the base of the neck of a body, would there still be so much argument that its someones soul? It would be data playing on a computer that is all your memories and thoughts but its just a copy.

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To the static data on your computer no data can be added, except by someone else. Consciousness includes the ability of a human being to add data by himself. Just by reflection of the already present memories. This reflection - adding useful memories, forgetting useless ones - makes the consciousness. Your "copy" is just a backup of the consciousness at a certain moment while the original "working" one evolved in between.

It is already shown in season 1 when this rich guy lost all the memories (and consciousness) between his backup and his re-sleeving.

Not a native speaker. Hope you still understand...

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I appreciate your taking the time to write me and I understand what you wrote. But my contention is that whether you want to call it a consciousness or not, its still only a copy of the real one.

Thats why I pointed out the russian man who had two versions of himself simultaneously. It shows that its really only a copy.

They are working now toward creating an artifical consciousness, a computer that can think for itself. When that occurs, will you say the computer has a soul because it can think for itself? Dogs think for themselves, do they have souls? As a religious person, I have beef with this show because it diminishes who we are in this life and tries to make it out like our thoughts memories and consciousness dont matter much because they can be downloaded, uploaded, re-sleeved, etc. NO! The original YOU is gone...those things walking around with your memories are copies.

Another movie that touches on the subject is Chappie, its a film I liked more than I thought I would.

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Have a look at Transcendence too...

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