I ’ve heard it said that one of the important functions of skill fable is to comment on the logical implication of Modern technology and what it might do to society . But sometimes you guide up against a science fictional technology that has really obviously staggering implications — and yet the body of work does n’t seem to acknowledge that .
For me , the exemplar that first descend to mind is Star Trek ’s conveyor . As long as the transporters work by ScienceMagic(TM ) all is more or less well , but begin to excuse or search and you ’re suddenly confront with some unearthly problem involving individuality . During the original serial , one sequence glanced at the can of conveyer worms . But Next Generation had bigger problems . The replicators were based on conveyer technology — that ’s the can opener , is n’t it . If the replicator can take a burden of random material and turn it into a steadfast supplying of afternoon tea , earl grey , hot , what ’s to finish the conveyer belt from turning out an interminable flow of identical Rikers ? And at that point , what would it mean , if anything , to be someone ? *
It does n’t really take the replicator to make that question askable , though . Identity is kind of eldritch to get down with . It ’s just that most of the sentence we do n’t retrieve much about it . Because plainly I am me , right ? And my body is me , and your body is you . Anything not my body is n’t me . Except when you see , you find oneself it ’s not so simple . Your brain can be convinced a lack body part is still there . It treats tools you use ofttimes as part of your torso . Some people are confident that particular consistence parts are n’t really theirs .
There are guinea pig where a person ’s go away hand insists on doing something that person insists they do n’t need and never leave it to do . And while , for instance , most of us palpate that we ’re located in our bodies , some people have the persistent feeling that their selves are site somewhere outside their consistence . Or even that their self does n’t really be . Honestly , show too much of this form of matter can give you the heebie - jeebies . * *
Or it gives me the heebie - jeebies , anyway , and so of course of action it turned out I had to read up some on the topic for my novelAncillary Justice . The narrator of Ancillary Justice is the warship Justice of Toren , an artificial intelligence information with thousands of human bodies slave to it , the ancillaries of the title . Justice of Toren ’s ancillaries are essentially parts of its consistence , its hand and feet and eyes and ear . And it became open , as I pondered the idea of the tarradiddle , that Justice of Toren really did need to be the storyteller . I was live to have to portray , from the interior , a character that had multiple human body and Einstein making up part of its body .
https://gizmodo.com/ancillary-justice-is-the-mind-blowing-space-opera-youv-1430076479
I start off , in the very beginning , with a snap - together ScienceMagic(TM ) kit . * * * But that was n’t very solid . I knew that at some peak I was going to have to just say , “ Yeah , go with me here , this just sour this way , ” but I wanted to have some melodic theme — even a vague one — of what kind of real world system of logic might lurk behind ancillaries , and hence the outcome of Ancillary Justice — events that happen because Justice of Toren is the sort of being it is .
And there is , indeed , some literal world system of logic to it . Take alien script syndrome , where a person ’s hand does things they never actually willed it to , and wo n’t stop even though they really bid it would . Sometimes turns up in CVA patient , but it ’s most common in people who have undergone a principal callosotomy , where the corpus callosum , the primary link between the right and left hemispheres of the mastermind , is cut . This is a operating theater that ’s normally a last hangout for very severe epilepsy . Now , this does n’t trend off all communication between the hemispheres — there are still some other ( very special ) connections , and of course each hemisphere has an ear and an eye , and they generally both get word and see the same thing .
What ’s really interesting is when they do n’t . Show a picture to only one eye — the odd oculus , say . Then take a question—”what do you see ? ” They ca n’t reply . The right hemisphere ( which controls the left-hand side of the torso ) knows what it saw , but it ca n’t say , because it ’s the left side of the brainiac that handles speech communication . ( For most of us , anyway . For some people it ’s the opposite side . ) And the left half of their wit does n’t actually know what the correct half saw .
Put earphone on our patient , and ask , into their remaining spike , for them to pluck something up that ’s tie in to the image they ’re seeing , and that they can do — though only with the left hand . And here ’s where it get kind of unearthly . Let ’s say you ’ve shown our person ’s left eye a picture of a teacup , and asked their unexpended spike to choose one of a variety of objects from the table in front of them , that might be connected with the prototype they ’re seeing . Their left helping hand picks up a teaspoon .
Now postulate the patient role — not just their unexpended side — why they just picked up that spoonful . think , only the left side of the brain can babble out , and only the right side of the brain knows about the teacupful and the request to pick something up . So if the odd side answers , that reply is either expire to be “ I do n’t recognize , ” or it ’s going to be something like , “ I just wanted to look nearer at the design on the grip . ” It really has no idea why the left hand has pluck up the spoonful , but it desegregate the action into its narrative of itself , it confabulates a motif .
The fact that one one-half of your brain could behave without the knowledge or sympathy of the other one-half is kind of awing . But I feel that moment of confabulation even more amazing . It speaks to the power of story , and how crucial story is in form and maintain indistinguishability that , when faced with some inexplicable natural process we ’ve just pick out , often our first response is to make up some reason for it . And once we ’ve made up that reason , we ’re quite convinced by it . Yes , that must be the reason we picked up the spoon ! It is the grounds .
Here ’s what fascinates me about this : It ’s not like tear - brain affected role are aliens , whose minds do n’t work like ours . Not at all . Except for that surgery ( which hopefully has saved their lives ) their brains are like everyone else ’s . And of course it ’s not only split genius affected role under particular condition who confab like this — it ’s actually quite common once you set about looking for it . So , how many time have any of us done something that we ’re quite sure we know the reason for , but really do n’t ? Possibly quite a lot .
How many “ I”s are there , getting input signal , thinking about that input , and acting — that we do n’t recognise about because we ’re paper it over with our confabulations ? What grounds do we have for really believing we ’re any of us just one , unified person ?
And if we ’re really assemblage of hoi polloi — it ’s a big if , I cognise , but I ’m all about the specification fic so those come kind of naturally — and if it ’s communicating that makes the difference ( the condition that make split nous patients await kind of like they ’re two people in one body involve seriously restricting communication and information sharing between the two hemispheres of the brain , after all ) , and if really your body is n’t a perfect boundary for your self , then what would you get if you could link together different brains in dissimilar bodies ? Would real , ended telepathy make it hard to know where “ I ” left off and “ you ” set about ? How would you sop up those bound ?
Justice of Toren ’s ego has thousands of body , each one with its own performance learning ability — though for the design of the novel , I ’m mostly only concerned with one twenty - soundbox unit of ancillaries , and at long last one , single body . How could such a being have ( let alone defend ) a exclusive sensory faculty of self ? How does an entity like Justice of Toren handle a position where part of it is doing , opine , finger thing it does n’t need ? How foreign , to have a brain like that !
Or mayhap not so alien . It ’s entirely possible we ourselves have minds a bit like that — just on a smaller scale of measurement , with few body to manage . We just do n’t unremarkably look at ourselves that way , because it give us the shivers and we ’ve got a handy , execute narrative of ourselves to make it all seem manageable and interpretable .
Do n’t let anybody tell you stories are n’t important . It ’s entirely possible that report are what hold us together , as individuals . That we are the stories we tell about ourselves .
Ann Leckie is the source ofAncillary Justice(Orbit Books ) .
- It can be even more frustrating for a show like ST to wait , every now and then , as though they’regoingtoconsiderthisquestion , only to fail each clip to take it as far as it logically lead . On the other hand , sometimes you find someone hastaken it to one of its logical conclusionsand you perchance wish they had n’t .
- Which is almost for certain why Star Trek writers pretend none of it exists , or if they do get too snug they throw a mates of pasty worms on the set and hope you wo n’t attend past those .
- ScienceMagic(TM ) is of course of instruction owned by the genre ’s favorite purveyor of toys , Sufficiently Advanced Technologies .
Ann LeckieBooks
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