Transhumanism and You

[Midaychi]

 

Recently, I spotted a WIP gif animation that Ponies was working on that involved cortical stack uploading and Vox, and it got me wondering if it wasn't time to upgrade our station's technology and approach singularity?

 

Keep in mind that this is really just a radical rethinking, and ss13 as it is currently would not transfer over very well and I'm very aware.

 

As I understand it, here's the canon Vox lore for paradise, http://80.244.78.90/wiki/index.php/Vox

and according to the person who wrote the canon, the crew Vox are the cortical stack version of lobotomized. Their bluespace connection has been haphazardly severed or altered and no longer communicates with the Arkships.

 

Now let's put a theoretical situation: NT, or some other company, or some government funded operation in the area manage to reverse engineer cortical stacks to some degree. Not really enough for a full understanding, but enough to start deploying it in research outposts to understand it better.

 

The result: Numerous changes.

 

Gone is cloning. Now genetics and medbay oversee the growing and assembling of body parts and entire bodies of all the species. They also have devices that allow cortical stack implantation, brain to cortical stack uploading, and backup creation.

 

People can choose to inhabit a new body of not their original species, and species lines have blurred dramatically.

 

There are no longer cyborgs, but mechanical shells controlled by cortical stacks and overseen by the AI and its laws due to NT rules and regulations involving the use of their equipment. There are also more standard humanoid shells, similar to machine people to a fashion.

 

A known in-between is the research on mechanically augmented biological bodies, and the attempts of the research team to understand the field. Refining cortical stack use and reliability is also another goal they have in their agendas.

 

The station itself is loaded with brand new server technology linked with the telecoms that allows for the uploading and handling of consciousnesses. Rumors abound of the weaknesses of such a system, both in security and in morality, but are often decreed unfounded. Nanotrasen clearly protects its telecommunication and bluespace equipment with superior security measures.

 

The Arrivals shuttle is now simply a clone storage bay, where premade clones were prepared ahead of time for a broadcasted consciousness to be uploaded. Amenities have still been provided for transporting non-digitally uploaded crew.

 

Backups are now sent to Nanotrasen via commlink on a regular basis, to ensure the longevity of their 'valued' employees. Died? Went space coma? No problem, you might appear on a new station on a new shift later!

 

The Escape shuttle and escape pods are now only backup safety features. They are used in the highly unlikely event where the digital consciousness store is either sabotaged, unresponsive, destroyed, or otherwise unable to broadcast the crew. Escape is now handled directly by uploading the crew's consciousness through machines or possibly through a mass forced upload using the station's local bluespace array when applicable.

 

Syndicate and antag objectives definitely need a strong rethinking and re-implementation.

 

Malfunctioning Ais are now a much more real and meaningful threat, as is the possibility of them directly hacking digitally uploaded minds to assist in their purges.

 

Sects of people still believing the flesh to be reality choose to not be digitized, and choose to lack cortical stacks. While clearly inferior and lacking in backups, they also do not suffer from the wide new array of digital viruses and threats. Who's right? Whos wrong? Who knows?

 

Nanotrasen recommends updating your digital backup regularly, and denies stipulations and rumors of the incomplete digitization technology degrading consciousnesses or losing important data.

 

[Midaychi]

 

Also, while the AI is likely now just an uploaded consciousness saddled with laws and guidelines, it probably is separated from the crew as its own thing for various legal and security reasons.

 

Either that, or maybe the command staff can upload a new 'volunteer' taken from a crewmember's consciousness.

 

edit:

As an amendment, yes for some little-understood reason, attempts to have multiple instances of a consciousness active at once usually end in one consciousness and a bunch of ssd clones. Maybe it has something to do with quantum mechanics? Consciousness as a substrate? Derp?

 

On top of that, while having a backup of the entire crew you can just download to a new body at any time seems pretty OP for ss13, you have to remember that ICLY the memories of that backup only extend to when it was backed up, meaning that yes while you might have been eaten by a changeling, you wouldn't know that post-backup! You'd only know all the things you knew up to the point of getting backed up. Of course, your dead body could be dragged to medbay and uploaded, assuming the body was fresh enough and the brain and/or stack still there, for a new backup.

 

Also it's not like the servers are invincible. A good c4 or two and some sneaky teleportation and suddenly medbay is scrambling to use manual temp backup systems.

 

Over all, yes. Nt and the government and other corps attempt at this would basically be haphazardly improvised baby steps in comparison to the real technology of the Vox, and the crew of the Cyberiad would become NT's guinea pigs as they always do.

 

[tristan1333]

This would probably be fine if you were making a different server, but it would change way too much of this server.

[Fj45]

Yeah, this would be an insane amount of work. You would need to change almost every aspect of SS13.

[Midaychi]

 

Not entirely. The mechanical aspect isn't as daunting as I made it sound.

 

- Antag roles would need some different objectives and ways of accomplishing it.

 

-You'd have server equipment with a big database of people, the machines for uploading/downloading, and you'd have to work on the machinery for making parts and the mechanics for putting them together.. either manually or through machine interaction. Ultimately just a couple new interfaces and machines/surgery or robotics steps. Probably the most complicated change. You could even keep the old systems around as backups incase shit goes horribly wrong.

 

- Round joining would just need some fancy frilly animated art.

 

- Round ending would basically be a nuke explosion without the nuke unless you're a crazy non-stacker and taking an escape pod.

 

- You'd have to move ghosts over to cortical stacks rather than the brain.

 

- Some changes to robotics to use cortical stacks instead of mmis (except for those folk who choose to remain biological)

 

- some antagging mechanics for malf rounds

 

- some viruses that effect cortical stacks

 

 

That's all the required changes.

A lot is fluff and roleplay-wise, really. Some balancing issues need to be addressed of course, but ultimately not too many.

 

And eventually Robotics is planned to have a big overhaul, with IPC building and maybe implants/cybernetics.. so that could be added later.

 

[Fj45]

 

No, it would still be a huge amount of work. Sprites alone, its huge. Add coding, bugfixing.... ect.

 

All for what? A strange fluff/RP thing? That makes it harder for new people to understand? And kinda narrows almost every aspect?

I just don't really get why this is even needed, maybe on some kind of heavy RP server.

 

[chechico]

 

I work under the assumption that NT has a database with the cloning info for their crew members somewere in central and they will of course clone them if they die in a way that stops them from being recoverable (For a small fee of course)

 

The grateful crewmembers of course will work to repay the medical costs of the procedual. And those who survive the rounds gets their standard medical checks (wich ends with them being again scanned/preclonned and the older clone becomes synthmeat)

 

[Fj45]

 

I work under the assumption that NT has a database with the cloning info for their crew members somewere in central and they will of course clone them if they die in a way that stops them from being recoverable (For a small fee of course)

 

The grateful crewmembers of course will work to repay the medical costs of the procedual. And those who survive the rounds gets their standard medical checks (wich ends with them being again scanned/preclonned and the older clone becomes synthmeat)

 

No, thats waaay too generous for NT, only the ERT would have backups.

 

[Streaky Haddock]

It's not generous if it's a racket, Fj45.

[Fj45]

 

While I imagine NT would be scummy enough use it as a racket, why bother having large storage servers? Why bother leaving such large security problems? Why bother keeping the entire system maintained?

 

- when you can easily just replace the idiots with more idiots!

 

[chechico]

That would be ignoring the fact that training someone is expensive (specially those in high specialization possitions) and the old clones are a good source of synthmeat or for experimentation (And is my head-canon to justify being able to play the same character after a round where they get cut into pieces, brain stolen and deepfried and then turned into a burger with other body parts as condiments or something)

[Midaychi]

 

https://github.com/Baystation12/Baystation12/pull/8834

 

Soon

 

[Coldflame]

 

On the subject of transhumanism, I'd like to see robotic body parts expanded a bit more. If high-level research allowed robotics to construct limbs with advantages over normal limbs mid-endround, then they'd have something more to do than build a borg or two along with a ripley and odysseys(however the hell you spell the darned thing) before calling it a day and drinking themselves to death.

 

Upgraded limbs could carry advantages such as:

-Take more punishment before needing repair

-Punch harder

-Can operate in low-pressure environments to help attempt to secure rescue

-Confer resistance to hazardous materials and potentially stop electricity

-Potentially be equipped with tools (anything from the stuff you'd find in a toolbox to more specialised tools such as surgery gear or janitorial equipment)

-Combat uses such as a concealed firearm or an electrified punch

 

The disadvantage would come with difficulty of repair, production costs, and requiring amputation of limbs, potentially needing recharge for more exotic functions.

 

also this went completely off topic with the thread and I'm deeply sorry

 

 

[Midaychi]

^actually on topic

[veganzombeh]

I think this sounds like an interesting, but only for a server built primarily around this idea.

[Dark lord derpy]

I think an eclipse phase style server would be pretty awesome, replace aliens with different morphs, computer virus gametypes/events, mayby some way to hack into peoples brains and mess with them, while being a transhuman gives an advantage in many areas, occasionally a hacker might alter your speech so you can only say "HONK kill captain!" or something.

[CrAzYPiLoT]

As fj45 said, too much work. This is a really good idea for some Super-Heavy RP server, but this would require a month, if not more of coding, and another month of debugging. Not even talking about the sprites. It would also probably stop the server for about half an hour, so the update is applied.