Two sf story ideas
A couple of ideas for vaguely Singularitarian short stories that I've had kicking about for a while, but which I can't see how to take from "idea" to "completed story". If anyone wants to write them, be my guest. There are no doubt lots of reasons why these ideas are stupid, and I'd be grateful if you'd point them out to me. On the other hand, if someone has already written stories along these lines (which wouldn't surprise me in the least), can anyone supply a reference?
Idea 1: Direct Action
There's an idea prevalent among some s13ns that once we can emulate whole human brains on a computer, the cost of doing so will inevitably drop rapidly until we can all run millions of virtual copies of ourselves at greatly accelerated rates. Furthermore, this cost-drop will be a positive feedback loop: as emulation becomes cheaper and quicker, the uploads of the scientists working on it will become more numerous and smarter, leading to faster and faster progress. They predict civil-rights battles between uploads and humans still running on wetware: why should a wetware human have the right to consume energy and space sufficient for a city full of uploads?
To which I say "hyeah, right". First, I believe that the brain is probably taking advantage of quantum processes in its functioning (or perhaps, as Penrose suggests, even exotic physics that we don't yet understand), and that a software emulation would therefore need to be hugely detailed. So let's start off by assuming that whole-brain emulation is hard. Massive datacentre per brain, consuming a small city's worth of electricity, kinda thing. And this in a resource-constrained, Peak-Oil-and-climate-change environment. Let's throw the s13ns a bone and suppose that an upload runs a bit faster than wetware - 25%, say. Now, who would be uploaded in such a scenario? Not, I would think, the scientists. We're talking either those who have great personal wealth and income, a strong desire for immortality and little concern for the welfare of others, or those who stand to make a great return on investment by being just that little bit faster than their competitors. The super-rich and financial speculators, in other words.
Now, who thinks that this would make our society less unequal?
The story would take place in a datacentre: two activists have broken in with the intention of destroying an upload's computational substrate as a protest against the uploads' increasingly iron grip on the levers of power. Though they try to rationalise their actions as property damage and legitimate civil disobedience, they know emotionally that what they're doing is murder - and, though there's no case law either way, the uploads would probably get it prosecuted as such.
[There's an obvious problem with this setup: the banks would have a strong financial incentive to fund upload research once uploading proved viable, so the technology would get better. But perhaps not at the rate, or to the extent, that the s13ns predict: the existing uploads would want to keep the technology exclusive. I don't know if this is a fixable problem.]
Idea 2: Mark 12:18-25
18Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, 19Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 20Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. 21And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise. 22And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. 23In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. 24And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? 25For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
Two brothers are mountaineering in a remote region of the world, days from the nearest habitation. The elder is newly married; his wife is waiting anxiously for him back at home. The brothers are caught in a storm, and take shelter in a snow cave. The elder brother succumbs to frostbite, and then hypothermia. He falls asleep, expecting not to wake.
And then he wakes up. His eyes slowly focus, and he sees that he's in some kind of doctor's clinic, but the machinery looks far too advanced for La Paz. Maybe too advanced for London, come to that. Weird furniture, too. His eyes focus a bit further, and he sees the anxious faces of his brother and his wife - but they don't look quite right, they're somehow... ageless. And their body language is wrong.
It turns out that he's been dead for seventy years. He died in the cave, and his younger brother had to climb down and trek out alone. United in their grief, his brother and his wife - no, his widow - bonded and eventually married. They raised children together, and lived a long and mostly happy life together. And then his body was discovered again, and it turned out that there was just enough of his frozen brain left for the new medical technologies to resurrect him...
Idea 1: Direct Action
There's an idea prevalent among some s13ns that once we can emulate whole human brains on a computer, the cost of doing so will inevitably drop rapidly until we can all run millions of virtual copies of ourselves at greatly accelerated rates. Furthermore, this cost-drop will be a positive feedback loop: as emulation becomes cheaper and quicker, the uploads of the scientists working on it will become more numerous and smarter, leading to faster and faster progress. They predict civil-rights battles between uploads and humans still running on wetware: why should a wetware human have the right to consume energy and space sufficient for a city full of uploads?
To which I say "hyeah, right". First, I believe that the brain is probably taking advantage of quantum processes in its functioning (or perhaps, as Penrose suggests, even exotic physics that we don't yet understand), and that a software emulation would therefore need to be hugely detailed. So let's start off by assuming that whole-brain emulation is hard. Massive datacentre per brain, consuming a small city's worth of electricity, kinda thing. And this in a resource-constrained, Peak-Oil-and-climate-change environment. Let's throw the s13ns a bone and suppose that an upload runs a bit faster than wetware - 25%, say. Now, who would be uploaded in such a scenario? Not, I would think, the scientists. We're talking either those who have great personal wealth and income, a strong desire for immortality and little concern for the welfare of others, or those who stand to make a great return on investment by being just that little bit faster than their competitors. The super-rich and financial speculators, in other words.
Now, who thinks that this would make our society less unequal?
The story would take place in a datacentre: two activists have broken in with the intention of destroying an upload's computational substrate as a protest against the uploads' increasingly iron grip on the levers of power. Though they try to rationalise their actions as property damage and legitimate civil disobedience, they know emotionally that what they're doing is murder - and, though there's no case law either way, the uploads would probably get it prosecuted as such.
[There's an obvious problem with this setup: the banks would have a strong financial incentive to fund upload research once uploading proved viable, so the technology would get better. But perhaps not at the rate, or to the extent, that the s13ns predict: the existing uploads would want to keep the technology exclusive. I don't know if this is a fixable problem.]
Idea 2: Mark 12:18-25
18Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, 19Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 20Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. 21And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise. 22And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also. 23In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. 24And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? 25For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
Two brothers are mountaineering in a remote region of the world, days from the nearest habitation. The elder is newly married; his wife is waiting anxiously for him back at home. The brothers are caught in a storm, and take shelter in a snow cave. The elder brother succumbs to frostbite, and then hypothermia. He falls asleep, expecting not to wake.
And then he wakes up. His eyes slowly focus, and he sees that he's in some kind of doctor's clinic, but the machinery looks far too advanced for La Paz. Maybe too advanced for London, come to that. Weird furniture, too. His eyes focus a bit further, and he sees the anxious faces of his brother and his wife - but they don't look quite right, they're somehow... ageless. And their body language is wrong.
It turns out that he's been dead for seventy years. He died in the cave, and his younger brother had to climb down and trek out alone. United in their grief, his brother and his wife - no, his widow - bonded and eventually married. They raised children together, and lived a long and mostly happy life together. And then his body was discovered again, and it turned out that there was just enough of his frozen brain left for the new medical technologies to resurrect him...