Ever been curious about the research process for a video like this? How about a look at the raw editing timeline? Check out this companion video on Nebula for a step-by-step walkthrough of the months-long creation of this essay! nebula.app/videos/jacob-geller-how-a-head-transplant-video-comes-together
when you said a return to regularly scheduled existential dread, you sure meant it. well done jim, this is the only video of yours that has struck the dread into me just from the title.
Jacob Geller: Come for the beard. Stay for the perfect articulation of existential terrors you’ve spent a decade trying to suppress. Also stay for the beard.
The different segments of this video are transplanted onto each other, giving the illusion of the continuing of each sentence while knowing there was some section of each video that we lost and will never be able to see. This channel is so good that I have trouble wrapping my head around it (no pun intended).
I think the issue with the "you die when you sleep because your consciousness is interrupted" line of thinking is the fact that your brain is never truly "off". There's no memory snapshot followed by a shutdown. In computer terms, there's no "suspend to disk", only "suspend to RAM", thought considering how our brains work during sleep even the "CPU" arguably still runs in "maintenance mode".
My thoughts exactly. Nobody really knows what "consciousness" even is or what biological process it refers to, so how could we possibly know that being asleep/dormant isn't just an altered state of consciousness? I prefer to not worry myself over possibly "dying" every night and being replaced with a new version of myself as it doesn't really affect anything in the long run. Especially because we dream when we're asleep. That's probably where we go.
Even when damaged, when that data is corrupted or needing to be de-fragged, the mind never shuts down, only operates in "safe-mode". If those electric impulses cease, you're dead. But that never happens until clinical brain-death, that's the actual medical line you have to cross to be considered "dead". So yes, she has a point, but is also hampered by the 1940s-1980s technology of the setting. The MRI, CAT, and PET technology just wasn't extant or accessible to a resistance fighter. So, she was correct, merely unaware that the brain thankfully never enters such a state until the "computer" the mind is running on dies anyways.
@@XDWASDX Most likely not. There's no way for our brain to make a permanent save therefore that simply can't evolve to be a thing. Considering that people who die in peace don't tend to experience that, it's most likely simply a panic reaction of our brain, desperately digging through our long term memory to find some memory capable of getting it out of the situation.
It’s actually subtly genius that this video is separated in completely distinct sections with only single sentences joining them. It’s not wholly unlike a body joined to a head that wasn’t a part of it, connected by a spinal cord and a few sutured veins and arteries.
The fear and dread I got every time the video jumpscared me into a new section was thrilling. Very much replicated the disorienting feeling of being suddenly transferred over into a new body in a new place… the gut-wrenching horror of discontinuity.
Thats a very vague connection to make. Of course a video essay is going to be segmented for added coherency. Even if it was done for intentional symbolism, it’s not that clever tbh.
I have a chronic illness called Crohn's disease, and my immune system fights off organs that do belong to me. I self medicate with immune suppressants to keep me going, and medications are a completely normal part of my daily life. Despite this, most of the time I am completely healthy. Several times throughout the days between my shots I forget that I'm even sick. Though I understand the concern for new medical procedures, I know how important they are as the test subject of a new immune suppressant and the practice of using Ultrasound technology to monitor bowels. While medical advancements can be scary, more often than not they're for the better. I trust my medicine and I trust my doctors.
As someone with Ulcerative Colitis, this describes my perspective very well. Im scared of having to have surgery for it, using new medication, and the such, but at the same time i understand the importance and effectiveness of all of these. The medical advancements that we have made from even 50 years ago is astonishing and we can only imagine it will get better. Anyway I wish you the best with having to deal with crohns.
@@hi__im_zack4890 Just a quick word: the importance of surgery in UC differs from that in Crohn. Removal of the colon in a person with UC eliminates the risk of developing colorectal cancer (one of the most dreaded long-term complications, which you've probably heard of being a patient), and allows for much lower doses of medications to be necessary (as you can imagine, just taking immunosupressive doses of steroids is not the healthiest thing to do in the long run, let alone other immunosupressants, biologic or not). On the contrary, surgery in Crohn's disease can alleviate symptoms and local complications (abscesses, strictures etc.), however even if you remove the affected parts of the colon, the disease is almost guaranteed to relapse in a new, previously healthy section. Of course, in both diseases, medications are still needed to avert other, systemic complications (like, for example, colitis-related arthritis). You, being a patient, probably know this stuff inside and out, and I'm sure your choice to not undergo surgery was well-motivated, and by no means I'm willing to interfere with that. I'm just writing this for other people to have perspective on things :) Stay strong!
@@Falaxuper I fully agree with you. And I think the differenced between the two diseases is very important. My perspective definitely comes from the UC side of things. Also, to update what i said a little bit, It's not that I want to do everything in my power to avoid surgery because I know the benefits. Rather, it is just scary, as are most large changes in life. When/If I choose that surgery is the best option for me, I'm comforted in knowing that many people say their lives significantly improved and because I know that scientific advances have led us to more effective and safe ways to do it. And I think I missed that in my other comment, so thanks for bringing this perspective.
Most of my dreams are extremely boring and hardly worth remembering. But there are a couple I've never forgotten. When I was much younger, I had a dream that the world had come to an end. I don't remember why, but there was no possibility of rebuilding. Instead, those who survived wound up transferring their consciousness to a digital haven. It was meant to be a peaceful replica of Earth but it was teeming with these horrible monsters. In the end it was discovered that these monsters were the remnants of the human and animal testing that had been done in order to perfect the technology. Fragments of those minds were stuck in a sort of limbo, unable to fully live or fully die. Consciousnesses broken and lost and angry. There was some more stuff in that dream but goodness was that unsettling. I can't remember it perfectly and have lost much of the details as often happens with dreams. But I can still recall that awful horrified feeling. Deeply unpleasant.
I had a similar idea, it wasn't a dream but a sci-fi story idea about a colony ship in space carrying a virtual world with it's own mythos and history simulating hundreds of thousands of years and NPCs being indistinguishable from the Players. There were corrupted entities only referred to as demons but their origins were the result of some organic space debris colliding with the ship and then fusing to the electronics seeking to wake up and devour the people. One by one players begin to wake up onto a ship with dwindling resources and horrifying eldritch monstrosities prowling the ship with robots desperately trying to quarantine the infected sections of the ship like a tumor. But honestly this idea is much more compelling and I might want to use it for my story. The demons in the simulation are the broken fragmented consciousnesses of the test subjects for this experimental technology and the simulation keeps trying to wipe them out but it fails each time. Also as a less important note, the virutal reality is a tolkien-esque fantasy world that it's creators directly cited as Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft being the inspiration for this passion project. Originally this video game was a simple sandbox fantasy game but with dying of earth and their outrageous popularity overshadowing it's muses, they were the lead project designers in creating the Simulacra which is a spiritual successor to their earlier project. It took so much time for them to make that they became Thesian Cybernetic abominations, slowly loosing their mind with each augmentation and then when the project was complete they'd join the same fate of the many corrupted test subjects still trapped within the simulation. TLDR; Game Devs make a cool game then get recruited by the government to be the lead developers of a new kind of virtual sandbox for the sleepers onboard a colossal ark ship. Along the development of the game, it took almost a century to complete and the developers went mad with hundreds of human animal test subjects being sacrificed to the simulation. In the end, the project was successful but aside from the sapient NPCs and players, there are ghosts haunting this simulation and they threaten the long term stability of this voyage.
This resonated with me on a level I didn’t expect, the further I got into it. I have amnesia, and only really started “becoming a person” less than a year ago now. I feel a lot like I’m a new soul in this body, but I can’t deny the old resident, and it still sleeps in the bones.
"I can't deny the old resident, and it still sleeps in the bones". That is some fantastic writing there. Would make great song lyrics. Perhaps the new you should look into making music?
One of my favorite parts of SOMA it's the "Coin flip", a way the main character rationalizes what's happening to him that he wins a "coin flip" so his thoughts keep going. There is no coin flip, we just change POV, it's just a cope from him
@@Reggae-Gandalf Cheers mate, the video also mentions him further into the vid. I am sufficiently mindfucked and will now play japanese goblin as a way to cope from how bloody everything is.
When I was a kid I watched the Jimmy Neutron episode where they swapped bodies. In the episode the swapping was a fluke that Jimmy could not replicate, so instead he emptied both of their brains content into one computer, and then his friends had to individually decided what aspects of each of their personalities belonged to each upon reupload. Heaven help us if we ever not only can copy a soul, but fragment it like that.
The thing about her speech, is that the brain is still active when you sleep. Its not like your brain stops when you pass out, its merely another state that the body can be in
But there's no guarantee your consciousness still exists while you're asleep. The experience of self we perceive is just a byproduct of the signals between the neurons in our brain, not the cause behind them. If changes occur in your brain while you sleep, it's very possible that the "self" that wakes up is not the same one that went to sleep. Tbh honest that consequence doesn't terrify me as much as another conclusion you can derive from all this: there's no such thing as free will, every decision we take is predetermined by the chemical processes that may happen inside our brains in response to external input, your "self" or consciousness plays no role in it.
@@mrporcupine4140 Sorry for coming across as rude there, it's just an idea i've long since fully accepted since free will doesn't even make sense as a concept, since I can't imagine anything that isn't either random or caused by previous events, or somewhere on that spectrum. Except maybe something caused by future or seemingly unrelated events, but still it's not free will.
Imagine just being a brain hooked up to an external life source. Fully conscious…..but not body or head….the thought of that makes me feel like I need to throw up. Thanks Jacob for the existential breakdown.
I've thought about this and I wonder if it would actually be like sleeping. You would dream and such. With no body, you have no external stimuli to sense and it's those senses of the body that make us think, react and then act. Like waking up, you first open your eyes, roll over because you are uncomfy, slowly realise you are awake and need a pee or need to eat (to sustain the body) and so you get up and do what you have to do. Without that stimuli would your brain do anything? Would you think anything? Or would you just drift in an endless dreamscape as your neurons fire off randomly in the dark?
Okay so as a nurse I know Polyethylene glycol is also known as Miralax. It's typically used to help relieve constipation so when I heard him mention it used in nerve tissue studies I was VERY confused. I did some googling and it is, indeed, the same substance. Pretty cool how something I give patients almost everyday has such potential!
if we got to the point where spinal editing can be done seamlessly with the same thing that makes one poo better I'll be 100% convinced we live in the matrix
The digital brain reminds me of how Terry Pratchett describes the experience of a ghost: they feel detached and uncaring because part of your original personality comes not just from the electrical signals in the brain but also all of the chemicals and juices your brain is floating in
Soma doesn't get nearly enough attention, it's one of the most compelling stories in all of media to me and I played it on the deathless mode and enjoyed every minute. Great video!
There seems to be a growing body of evidence showing that memory, and with it conscience, does not solely reside in the brain itself - that in order to exist and maintain itself, what makes up memory needs to interact with the body that contains it in predictable patterns. Sensory information needs to bounce back to the brain in ways that the brain knows in order to evoke and maintain memory. (Don't grill me on this, I just watched and read some talks and papers from a Prof. Naccache). If it's true, then even if a brain were to be perfectly transplanted onto a new body, with the spinal cord fused and the nerves functional, the mind might not stay the same over time as it adjusts to how these new nerves react, to whatever memories this new body carry. We might just not be a brain - we're a brain and a body, a brain and million of neurons located outside of it and the spinal cord (the gut for instance!! so full of neurons it could be a second cognitive network). The soul is contained in all of that's under the skin. Fascinating video, I already can't wait to watch it again.
"the gut for instance!! so full of neurons it could be a second cognitive network," what does this mean for fecal/microbe transplants then? Is this an injection of new knowledge at least, if not new self? If we take a more holistic approach to self then what does that mean when we've already been blithely changing those parts?
Small creatures have more decentralized nervous systems. Like, a bug cut in half and both halves continue moving and reacting to stimuli independently. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if we prove our own nervous system is less central then we think it is. Obviously our brain is still the big boy important part but moving or losing the other parts may indeed have surprising, unexpected results.
What's nightmarish about this, to me at least, is to imagine what must be going on in the monkey's thoughts. From what I understand of it, it sounds like the body itself wasn't being kept alive by the brain's signals to the muscles, but rather by mechanical processes which kept the lungs and heart working. So this isn't so much of a "head transplant" as it was hooking a head up to what was essentially a biological machine that kept it alive. The body it was hooked up to was little more than a life support system that kept the brain active. But think about this for a second... that means that the monkey's brain would be trying to tell it to do the things it normally would, but it wouldn't be able to. It would try to breathe, but it has no lungs with which to take a breath. It would try to move, but it's not actually connected to the muscles of the body, so nothing would happen. It could just... observe its surroundings and respond to stimuli on its face.
These are essentially the same conditions that a quadrapeligic live with. For them, they eventually come to terms with it, understanding whats wrong with their body. (Or if they dont accept it... A few seek assisted suicide). If they cant talk, they use other methods of communicating. What was probably p@ssing off that monkey was everything you just mentioned... Because there's no way a doctor can explain to a monkey why theyre incapable of moving their limbs, or feel anything from the neck down. If that happened to me and I couldnt comprehend why it was happening, I'd be pretty p@ssed too.
Honestly, this doesn't scare me. It never has. I don't suffer from existential dread from the cessation of my active consciousness. I find it FASCINATING that I might be replacing myself every night. I'm not afraid of the dark underside of teleportation - as long as it works properly. I'm also not afraid of the concept presented in SOMA. I'm fearful of the PROCESS of dying, but not death itself. It's such an incredible situation to BE and to BE AWARE that I'm just happy I can say 'I AM' in any capacity. Even if I'm less than a blink in the face of existence.
Sorry to bring this up, but what if someone takes a copy of your consciousness and puts it onto the internet? What if different individuals or whole corporations replicated it a gazillion times for various purposes, including exploiting and torturing you, and reshaping your memories and emotions and your perception of time as they see fit into the most perverted and abhorrent forms imaginable - and there's nothing you can do about it because you are just a defenseless consciosness trapped on a hard drive, and even the dream or imagination of ever escaping can easily be deleted from you. Honestly I hope a technology like in soma never comes to fruition, since it would enable humans to create something wayyy worse than hell, but I suspect otherwise.
I have actually managed to fall asleep while staying conscious a couple of times not on purpose or anything, it starts as a typical sleep paralysis, random shadows and voices, can't move, but if you know what it is it's not scary. If you manage to ignore it and keep observing you get a really weird feeling of sinking feet first into the bed, I think it's when your brain stops registering signals from the body, and that's how it interprets it - 0g experience. And then a lucid dream starts. It doesn't last very long unfortunately, but that alone makes me pretty sure that sleep doesn't end your existence, the process that is you still goes on, even if memory forming is usually disabled.
I've had that happen a few times too. It's almost like lowering my head and torso below the surface of a pool while keeping my hands on the rim, and then pulling myself back up, only with sleep instead of water. The lucidity of the dream fades if you lower yourself too far. I've never been knocked unconscious by concussion, but I've done it by standing up too quickly while dehydrated, and that's another one that you can touch the edge of without falling through.
Wake Initiated Lucid Dream. WILD. It’s a technique to get into a lucid dream from an uninterrupted state of consciousness. It’s a very, very strange, state of being, and difficult to accomplish, so props to you.
What does a brain with no body feel? Not being able to feel anything at all but still being able to think is the closest thing we have to "man-made horros beyond our comprehension".
The worst thing about this video is that it ended. I could have watched this video for ten more hours. This is one of my favorite video essays I've ever seen.
This reminds me a lot of the conceit of Mass Effect 2, where you wake up 2 years after fully being thrown out of your spaceship with no oxygen and falling into the gravitational pull of a nearby planet and being missiled onto it - they explain that they retrieved “what was left” of your body and rebuilt you. They aren’t specific about “what was left” and Shepard worries about whether or not they are the same person post-reconstruction. A lot of the worry stems from like, if they’ve been altered for nefarious purposes but I always wondered about how the consciousness was transferred, because how the hell was the brain preserved after such a violent death? It’s a little hand-wavey in the game, obviously, but I always found it really disturbing to think about. Just like this video! Great work!
I always thought the implication was that the consciousness _wasn''t_ transferred, that ME1 Shepherd absolutely did die, but Cerberus would prefer ME2 Shepherd to believe that they were resurrected, not constructed.
Well a brain does store information, assuming we can ever decode the (appears to be random blots on neuron shafts) patterns of the brain matter, you could assumedly rewrite or even add to a person's memory, with A.I and that person's history you do have available you could artificially make a reconstruction of self that'd have enough information to not question is it the real self.
The story of soma really shocked me. Even though I realized that the brain is copied when the player changes bodies in the middle of the game. I still was blinded to what was going to happen in the end and when I saw the ending it really horrified me thinking of living on a dead world in the dark forever.
This essay makes me think of Theseus’ paradox: if you take a ship and slowly replace all the parts until there is no original parts of the ship left, is it still the same ship? At what point does it become a different ship? Scientifically, our consciousness may be entirely contained in the body, but if you were given a new one would it become your body? Is replacing a kidney really as inconsequential if it seems if the rest of your body continuously rejects it until you die? What about muscle memory? How would the body adjust if it was given a new body to give commands to, one that has a completely different muscle memory? Would you be able to override it, or would it’s instincts kick in? How much are we really in control of our own selves?
Since its a different body, and therefore different muscles, how much of the muscle memory you have would feel natural to you. Id imagine youd have to re-learn many things (if not all thing) to function at all assuming your nervous system is successfully "set-up". I Had a dream about this once, a nightmare rather, where i would switch consciousness with random people/animals. It was very scary, the feeling of my body not moving or functioning the way it normally should. The dysmorphia and confusion.
Makes me think successfully transplanting the head/brain would be the easy part of the treatment. The physiotherapy and therapy therapy necessary to get the patient back to some decent quality of life would be the biggest mountain after the initial operation. Makes me think it'd be like reliving one's birth up to their first memory all over again except you're conscious this time, getting used to your body all over again
In fact, David Hume explicitly talks about a ship in his Treatise of Human nature, to show how identity doesn't really make sense even on inanimate objects. i very much recommend the read
Maybe I'm thinking too simplistically, but I don't see a problem with the breakdown of the illusion of continuity. In my mind, it's horrifying to kill the "copy" of yourself in SOMA, because it's basically another sapient being that was just created. If they want to die, they can do it themselves.
Yeah, same. In my opinion, that's a whole separate person who just happens to be configured the same way I was. They're not "me" anymore, and we would eventually go on to become more obviously different as we go experience different things
Funnily enough, one of my favorite villains in media comes from _Battle Angel Alita_ in the form of Desty Nova. Desty Nova is, in the initial chapter of the story, studying "karma" by transplanting brains into new cybernetic bodies, essentially resurrecting various characters with unfinished business as revenants, fully equipped with new tools and bodies to accomplish their new aims (usually revenge against the protagonist Alita). He's a master surgeon who uses nanobots and is killed multiple times by the protagonist, only to raise from the dead with his body fully healed or himself restored in a clone from backup memories. It's revealed later that he was a formerly a citizen of a sky city where the inhabitants have their brains replaced with a microchip when they come of age. He is, as you might guess, quite thoroughly insane, but simultaneously unconcerned with existential dread. By the sequel series, there are several clones of himself bumping around, which sometimes work with or against each other, each with subtly different personalities pursuing different goals. None of the Desty Novas, as you might expect, seem at all troubled with notions of being "real" or the fact that they have clones of themselves running about, except insofar as they view each other as potential hindrances or allies. In most incarnations, he seems concerned with advancing his scientific research or finding a worthy successor to continue his work.
This reminded me of the respawn stations from Borderlands 2. There was that one line where it told that your original body died the first time you respawned and now your a clone with all the memories of your previous experiences. Gave the game a kind of uncanny feeling to it.
That's what the Star Trek teleporters would do. They would disassemble you and store your atoms for use when someone beams in and you'd be assembled from atoms on hand at your destination.
@@mikedrop4421 IIRC the idea that transporters are cloning machines was kind of disproven when it showed that the person was fully conscious through the whole thing and even waits in that atomized space while they get beamed like waiting in a glowy elevator. It shows the chain of consciousness isn't broken. But then again, there's still the whole Ryker thing. Maybe you don't actually get destroyed, but there's still a chance you're duplicated.
Back when I was 14, I used to consciously keep myself awake at night and sometimes pull all-nighters because I was too afraid of the possibility of my continued existence ending, and me not being able to know, as I just "reloaded" my consciousness in the morning. By now it's not really a problem anymore, not because I've found a solution, but because I've grown apathetic to it. But this video talked right back to that core in me that still fears, and I've never felt more understood with my terror. Thank you. Wolfenstein and SOMA will definitely be played.
This hits home!!! I always had to do lots of physical activity to make myself pass out. I also avoided taking baths because the shower makes me think about the heat death of the universe. Oh well.
I like to remind myself that our brains at no point "switch off", the gears always keep on turning. It just switches gears and goes into maintenance mode, in which it's completely unnecessary to make new memories, because the brain is busy going through what we're already remembering - hence the dreams, which, if you ever noticed, are only remembered if REM sleep is interrupted. Otherwise they fade away without the brain having made a record by the time we wake up autonomously. It's never an on-off switch, it's a gear switch. That's still plenty mindblowing, but easier to digest, personally.
@@ThatGezaDude important to note that if your brain does in fact switch off, that's also not the end of existence as it theoretically can be switched on. It doesn't matter that time continued while the brain was dormant. From the perspective of the brain itself there was no break.
Fun fact about Frankenstein: While Victor/Shelley refuse to tell Robert Walton (or the reader) about the actual process used to make the creature, what Victor _does_ say* implies that the creation process was more alchemy than electricity (though electricity _was_ still involved). *Particularly the materials he gathers, from not only graveyards but _slaughterhouses._ Also all the alchemy texts he read, that's what elementary literature classes call a "context clue".
Can't overstate how well Tekla's VA plays her- the absolute cracked out "I haven't slept for past several days" delivery of a person who just want a thing out of just their head so the revelation feels at least partially more real than a second before
I’m getting my PhD in neuroscience and the question of the location of the soul isn’t one i often think about, so thank you for this video! But something interesting I can add that we’re learning as biology progresses is that what actually makes up “you” is more than just your brain. The way you think and feel is heavily influenced by your immune system, your microbiota, and so many other systems that reside below your head. Hell, even your spinal cord neurons can learn! As a result of this, I’m not convinced that a head transplant/brain scan would fully replicate the consciousness of a person in the way soma portrays it and I think the way the doctor hoped. It’s an interesting thought experiment regardless.
Yep, I would like to second this. The brain and the rest of the body are intricately linked with each other and the mind, the self, is the whole embodied operating organism as it interacts with its environment. Still a very interesting and fun video, and aesthetically very well made, as always.
Agreed. A digital "copy" of you would be a copy in the same way a photograph is a copy of the external world. It could probably replicate many important aspects of a person, but it would be completely unable to capture some things. I think that, if that is truly possible (and that's a big if), a digital consciousness wouldn't be the same person as the original, but a new one that closely resembles the original.
That makes sense. If you're different physically, and have different physical scenarios/sensations/stimuli, you'll at least eventually become someone slightly different than before. Take me, for example. Part of who I am, and who I know myself as, is my body. My uniquely weak back aka back problems, yet uniquely thick, strong legs, for example. Even before I started working out, I could crouch for hours on end scrubbing a floor, no problem. But if I have to bend slightly forward to work with some food for 45 minutes nonstop? I start to really feel it. In some weird way that's part of my identity. Not to mention all the little things I like and don't like about myself physically. I walk a certain way. I work out a certain way. I instinctively physically react a certain way to literally everything that happens to and around me. If my entire physical being from the neck down changed, even slightly, that would eventually change who I am.
yeah somehow in this video there seemed to be even a more restrictive assumption, namely that you "are" your consciousness. and i agree that this whole digitization of the brain seems overblown - fundamentally we are machines of biology, and this whole quest of trying to isolate the soul to one physical location feels misguided. if you instead take the soul to be, as you suggest, the amalgamation of a number of your biological processes (including but not limited to brain activity), then the monkey experiment did not show the soul can be transplanted. in fact, the very rejection would show that the opposite is true - the soul does not only live in the brain
that makes heart and other transplants all the more traumatic…. literally losing pieces of yourself. There was a 80s twilight zone episode on this that was neat
This is the reason I love Ghost in the Shell. The idea of transhumanism and the soul is so interesting, and I'm not at all sure about if there's even an answer for it
I prefer GitS (and Altered Carbon) which are more optimistic than SOMA. People pretend soma is more realistic but we really don't know, whether we have a soul. We might just discover we have one, that we can control it and those stories are more interesting to me than the ones where we don't because they are often pessimistic.
@@IIxIxIv Yeah, the cynicism really weighs down on the plot of some narratives. Still, I enjoy being able to enjoy both the incredibly optimistic and incredibly pessimistic aspects of the topic
If the definition of “soul” is a non-physical phenomenon composed of the totality of your character/personality/motivations/tendencies, memories, mental capacities, etc., then I’ve accepted that the concept of a soul is simply wishful thinking. If the physical brain is damaged, we lose these things in proportion to the level of damage that the brain region sustains. Wounds show this with an abundance of clarity. If the damage is chemical, we see this as well, with better clarity all the time. If it’s simply aging of the original brain, we see this here too. And these are evidence against the idea that, once the brain is fully dead or destroyed, the “soul” simply floats away unharmed, housed in nothing. I concede that there are MANY unknown phenomena, and that there’s a slim chance that the “soul” is some sort of persistent electromagnetic pattern that could be self-sustaining, propagating only through the most sparse amount of matter, and able to exert influence on the physical world, but that’s so unlikely that I can’t believe it until there’s some sort of actual evidence. We don’t know of any other comparable phenomena, so it’s kind of easy to dismiss, unless a truly revolutionary discovery is made to support it. I think the idea of a soul is simply a comforting thought to most people, and persists because we’d LIKE it to be true, but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. I believe a perfect copy of “me” would be just as valid as I am, and should probably be given the same consideration that we give children. If we create a being, whether it’s a natural biological child or a clone or a neural copy, we have an ethical responsibility to treat that being well. I believe this because the suffering of a consciousness seems equivalent whether it’s identical to another or not, whether it’s housed in fatty brain cells or silicon circuitry. If it’s real consciousness, it’s suffering is real, and should be minimized. But that’s an opinion, and I’m happy to hear your thoughts to the contrary.
I don't know if this is unusual or not, but I've always conceptualized my brain as being the repository of my being. I can't think of a time when a head transplant would've bothered me outside of practical concerns like chance of failure.
Same. Even though there are parts of my brain that do things I don't want it to do/have no control over it's still the closest answer that I have to who I am. If my brain still exists, to a certain extent, I still exist.
@@JNCressey That threw me for a loop. If I close my eyes and half of my hemisphere is replaced, the no longer with me part transplanted into another body, in which one will I be once I wake up? My answer would be nowhere. I'd be dead and both people who emerge will have maybe part of my configuration but it wouldn't be my POV anymore. And now I became afraid of brain surgeries, thank you.
This was a horrifying journey through my existential dread. Thank you for that. LOL There were numerous points I had to pause the video to let my anxiety levels lower again, but I couldn't simply turn the video off and leave it forever. I needed to hear the entire thing.
Yeah, I luckily got that existential dread when watching this video in highschool. It's an hour long existential nightmare about Soma and it's basically shaped a lot of my current thinking process for true artificial intelligence up to this point. (I'm not talking about AI art or anything like that, I mean real AI that can think, feel, wonder) If you're ready, I'll just have the link waiting for you. It's definitely a lot... ruclips.net/video/J5fpTvdExsY/видео.html
So, I have a childhood trauma related dissociative disorder that I didn’t know about for most of my life. I found out at 30 years old. And honestly, a lot of the discussion and questions in this video are familiar and relevant to me. Especially the mathematician character, her string of questions in particular is very relevant, as well as the game Jacob describes where people continue to exist and suffer once their consciousness is copied, realizing that they don’t get to access the consciousness that got sent out for a better life. Of course the big difference here, and the thing I want to preface with, is that I don’t personally experience my DID as or believe I’m literally “different people in one body,” and the idea, at least when applied to myself, feels wholly absurd. All of the fragments and alters are me, removed from each other and a sense of self by amnesia walls and dissociation. So my relating to this topic is on a different level, as the separation of identity I feel is, in a practical sense, perceived, and not somehow tangible. Though the resulting identity confusion, suffering, loss of time and control, and linear, narrative memory disorganization is quite tangible to me. But yeah, realizing at 30 that I, in essence, had several “me”s that WOULD occasionally wake up as me, not realizing there were …others, and move through the world was indescribably disorienting and overwhelming (even if it ultimately made a lot of sense retrospectively). The “copying” of the self to escape suffering as explored in this video seems to be so inherent an idea to humans that, if the suffering happens early and consistently enough, even one’s own brain will make (a version of) the attempt (obviously DID is far more complicated, and cannot actually be accurately described as simply copying one’s consciousness to escape suffering, but the theme tracks imo). So, in response to the mathematician, I can confirm at the very least that within my own experience of a different self waking than the one who went to sleep does absolutely fuck you right the hell up. And losing the thread of memories, and feelings related to the memories of your life does also very much fuck you up. Many of the anchors people use to craft a sense of identity have been lost for me, and as a result there were a whole lot of moments of this video I deeply related to on an experiential level, if for a very different reason than head transplantation or the movement of my consciousness to a different corpse. But the sense of abandoning a suffering self to “move” elsewhere, potentially unaware of the suffering self left behind, or the suffering which happened in the meantime, is quite relatable. As the crux of DID is the separation of fragments of self so that one might maintain a barrier between oneself and overwhelming inescapable trauma, it means that someone IS out, experiencing that trauma, and going on to hold it, potentially alone and in silence, while the host moves through life blissfully unaware (though at least in my case still deeply suffering with mental illness I couldn’t understand). I could go on an on about the way this hit me in the feels in terms of narrative connection to one’s life, the identity loss that comes with fragmentation (regardless of the awareness of it, interestingly), etc. but I won’t because it would be long and rambling. So, I’ll just say that this video resonated with me in a way I was seriously not expecting, and which gave me a new angle for which to consider my experience while also making me feel deeply, deeply, sad and hollow. I’m off now, to go deal with this immense grief and discomfort somehow, but yeah, thank you for yet another stellar and thought provoking video. Really really good stuff.
Thanks for sharing all this. You're a really great writer and what you wrote gave some answers to a lot of questions I've had about DID. It's so strange that even when you were unaware of what was happening, you still felt the underlying trauma and experienced fragmentation in your life. I'm really curious about your alters, when and why do they come out when they do and which part of you is able to recognize them as alters and hold onto what they experienced? Also, what's the path forward, is there some kind of integration process where you bring all these various aspects of yourself together and hopefully come to embody some kind of wholeness again?
I don't have DID, or really anything at all really, I'm pretty much neurotypical, but I guess I can sort of understand when looking at stuff that past me wrote and did. I look at that and I know it's me, I know I'm the one who did that, but it doesn't feel like something I'd do, but at the same time it does. It's like I was a different person in the past, but still the same person, it's weird. It feels surreal looking at the old things I did and made, because I know that *I* made that, I have memories of making it, but it doesn't feel like I did it; It feels like some other person had my body for a bit and did a thing that I retained memories of. My thought patterns then weren't the same as mine now, but they were similar; my though patterns rhymed with myself in the past, but they weren't the same. It's weird, and really makes you realize that there is no such concept as a single, unchanging "soul", we're all just biological machines, streams of consciousness don't really exist, it's all just made up concepts made by the same biological machines trying to justify their own existence.
Identity loss is really interesting because it deals with existential questions while staying within the same consciousness. People change over time (or in this case, fragment at some point in time) yet at the same time: It's still you despite everything. It makes introspection hit really hard.
"it's a warning that accomplishing things no one thought possible comes along with the responsibility for problems no one yet has the answers to" I mean this is poetry no matter the subject, and why I feel so blessed for free access on youtube to a creator like Jacob. I love all your stuff. Cave-diving to Wolfenstein, I can't get enough of this
If the soul is not a thing, but rather an action performed by things, then there is no paradox. You are simply the universe "peopling", physical matter doing a little dance, performing a you. You are not the matter, you can be performed many times. But it's still you, because you are a happening, not an object.
39:00 solid minutes of fantastic orgasm of jew boi jacob geller, lol i know 2 jew youtubers i watch and 2 A sexual *thinks to Jaiden* right 3. 4 if u include me, but i belivr in sperating the art from the artists unless the art is the artists, so yeah i guess just 3... for NOW!
@@KP-lq2hz Ontological Paradox is one of the few places in philosophy where a real conclusion can be met. Simply by observing a-priori, we see that the logical pressure of paradox leads directly away from the western idea of "objects", and straight towards the idea of "patterns". This even allows the preservation of the soul, as the soul exists purely in the abstract, as an action and pattern, not an implementation. This allows the soul to be copied as many times as you want, throughout all mediums, without invalidating it's existence. It is itself a meta-pattern, and thus resistant to material probing.
The longer I had watched the deeper my thoughts and realization became. That scene in Soma where you watch you're original body with your past conscious sleep and can choose to kill it terrifies me. If you were the sleeping host, would you want the clone to kill you? It's a thought. And the idea that that basically is you, without being you. And the crisis of looking at basically yourself, knowing it's still you. What a mind bash.
i've always had these kind of thoughts, where i'd leisurely think if i could clone myself, i'd make one do my work, one to watch tv, one to do fuckall, etc. but it always made me think, would the me whose working be envious of the me who's just slacking around? or are the decisions each individual clone makes something that i would think of myself? like wondering how exact copies of yourself might do things differently than how you might do it, it intrigues me and gives me psychic damage at the same time. and which one would be the "real" me, at that point. can the "real" me be determined by the actions they would take? it's too much thinking put into silly thought i'd usually have when procrastinating but idk.
Remember how in the lead up to Metal Gear Solid V, people thought the doctor from the opening hospital sequence looked exactly like a doctor who was in the news for attempting a head transplant, and so people thought there was gonna be a head transplant in the MGSV narrative? Good times. Remember when Chico was Quiet?
Except that was literally a marketing stunt for the game, and was foreshadowing the actual twist of MGSV involving a person being medically transitioned into another person
as someone with a major dissociative disorder, i.e. i'm not "me" all the time, stuff like this, like the concept, always felt profound and familiar at the same time to me. it's like being in a body that isn't yours all of a sudden, without surgery or anything science fiction-y. wonderful vid
I have some minor dissociative symptoms, I see it like this: In that moment I’m just recognizing my body. I personally believe (kind of touched on in the video) that we exist as souls, attached to our physical consciousness (in the brain). When we dissociate, I think that’s just our souls tripping up and being like “ohhhhh shittttt I have a physical body I forgot abt for a sec”. So in my sight, yes you are you all the time. But you’re not a human, you’re a soul existing in a human. So when you feel weird about your body, it’s probably because it’s just your shell
@@discordlexia2429 "parts" of me go dormant or quiet sometimes, but I don't "lose" them; they're always there, like the endless backlog of info your brain perceives and stores but that you may very rarely or never need to recall... It's still there, "parts" of you don't just fall out and it doesn't feel like anything is lost. I'd compare it to realizing you haven't seen or spoken to a particular person in a long time. They're still around, somewhere, just not where you are, and not lost or gone for good
@@owenfolsom9875 that's absolutely what dissociation is, like depersonalization as I experience it is that "oh my god I'm in a body, that's so fucked up" type feeling. Not sure where I stand on the concept of souls exactly but I agree that at the end of the day we aren't exactly, strictly, human; we're the series of electrical impulses that allow us to live and function (which imo is equatable to the concept of a soul) Where it gets fucky for me personally is that with my particular disorder it truly doesn't feel like I'm "me" all the time, or experiencing parts of my life directly: a lot of memories feel secondhand like I didn't form them myself but was rather told, how "I" behave is not how /I/ behave once I'm /me/ and in control again. Don't even get me started on when I'm piloting the body with another "me", with an entirely different sense of identity than I have... Whew!
I've had depersonalisation & derealization symptoms once (not full born dissociative disorder) back when I was 16 after a bout of psychosis from a mental breakdown (and exacerbated by drugs, it was my fault honestly lol). Damm, can't imagine what living with similar(?) symptoms every single day are like. Hope things are easier to manage for you.
You know, I think the craziest thing is that in a few hundred years (if we survive) we’d probably have already have made a head transplant or something similar- and our extisential nightmare we’re currently feeling will be the same reaction we have to a heart transplant. I also know that we’ll have new fears about science that we currently can’t even begin to think about… not because we’re dumber, just because we lack context. Like if one of us somehow lived long enough to hear about the horrors and think about them… they’d soon just become normal. Isn’t that crazy?
This also made me remember the character(s?) from Invincible, the Mauler Twins. They constantly copy/paste their entire selves into new cloned bodies, not knowing which one is the original, and ever creating new consciousnesses that are the same person, but at the same time not really the same. I find that so cool, maybe the best concept in that show/comic
This gets even more mind bending when you look into societies that didn't have the same biomedical concept of death and view it as a continuation of existence through preserving the body as much as possible. The horror of a lack of continuity can result in a completely different ontological understanding of death to the point where death doesn't exist.
Absolutely! A whole other layer to the conversation is cultural concepts of death, both in medical ethics and spirituality. How might a culture that believes total destruction/ decomposition of the body is necessary for the spirit to pass on (i.e. Indian open pyres, Tibetan sky burials) react to the idea of continuity of consciousness?
@@sarawhitley6168 I was thinking the Ancient Egyptians myself. They believed that the body and soul were intrinsically linked, to the point where, in order for the soul to be preserved after death, the body must be as well. One thing I wondered while watching the video was how the heart weighing ceremony would work if the soul in question had had a heart transplant before they died.
@@festethephule7553 haha that's a great thought. One could imagine a super advanced ancient Egyptian society where Pharoahs keep individuals around for organ transplants and make sure they live a pious life (according to their customs) so that if the Pharaoh did need a transplant his holy body wouldn't be tainted when it came time for his judgement. Or maybe a crazy Pharaoh from those times had the head priest killed and the latter's heart placed in his body when they embalmed him thinking that way he would guarentee it would be judged righteous when he died.
Once again, you've made content about art that is, itself, nothing short of an artistic masterpiece. The moment I realized that the concept-transitions from one idea to another in this video weren't just a cute gimmick, but rather, *mirroring the way consciousness could be seamlessly transitioned from one body to another...* I was almost *mad* at how genius it was. Great work as always Mr. Geller :D
@@420pbomb You're one of the people who says "the door is just blue cuz it's blue >:(" when your english teacher tells you to do any degree of literary analysis huh
But this proves absolutely zero about souls unless you for no reason at all assume the "Soul" is housed in a particular part of the body which is not the head, should it exist. you cannot prove whether or not people have souls without a means of defining what a soul is in the first place and how it would work.
@@zeehero7280 Putting a brain from one body into another isn't what casts doubt onto the concept of souls in this essay, it's putting a MIND from one host into another. If consciousness can be simulated, then what we call a "soul" can be artificially created on a whim, which rather muddies the whole premise.
I'm a bit of a transhumanist. I've always been theoretically comfortable with the idea of losing my legs since our technology has reached a point where people without legs can compete in the Olympics. I'd ideally like to live forever. If this means my brain is transplanted into a robot body, then I accept that idea, even considering the losses of some of my senses and maybe what is currently understood as being "human". The idea of a head transplant is fascinating to me. An edit, to catch up after watching the video: I love the horror of SOMA, even if I disagree with it fundamentally in its view of humanity. I do not believe that we would kill ourselves en masse in some desperate bid to continue our existence. I definitely believe it would happen for some people, ones who didn't understand or didn't believe the reality of the procedure, but I think many of us would view it as you view becoming a parent. You live on, or at least a version of you does, and that's something to be celebrated rather than lamented as this bleak finality. I would still like to live forever, a continuous experience without end, but even if that can't happen, if there is some undiscovered barrier, or the limits of science as it is now are proven definitive, I could settle for knowing I would persist in some form. Even to toss the notion aside, I am happy with the life I have lived and would be glad to exist as a memory, that kind of immortality that is a cliche of numerous iterations.
A mechanical leg has advantages: •No muscle fatigue, because there is no muscle. (No more leg days) •Can be easily replaced, in theory it's easier to make a mechanical leg than an organic one. (I don't know man, where could we possibly harvest human flesh, muscle, bone and alive nerves....hmmmmm. Also, maybe...just maybe I can break a leg more often.) •May be cheaper than a leg transplant in the future. Cons (that maybe fixed) •Limited flexibility, eh wtf...imagine competing on a bionic limb contest (Maybe some robotic people could get around this.) •Not very good looking rn (Ehhhh) •May be less powerful (I doubt our technology can be on par with the average power of a human leg in terms of carrying weight and kicking) •Does not heal
My desire(although I'm not the author of the original comment, but I still fully agree with him) is to see what's next for this world, for humanity itself, I want to see, to experience just how far into the universe will we reach. The horrors of the inevitable death and unknown end have haunted me for years, ever since I stopped believing in god, afterlife, etc. But I have found peace by just accepting death. Every single one of us humans will someday die, it might happen very soon, or it might happen in hundreds of years, if we find a way to preserve a brain for such a long time that is. And while we are alive, we must enjoy it to our fullest: see the world, see all the different people, make a lot of new relationships, value our loved ones and spend plenty of time with them, try to achieve our dreams, so that in the end we wont be regretting it. I may not see the progress that humanity will make, but I'll surely enjoy my time in this horrifying wolrd.
@@turpal-alididaev6410 There is something terribly freeing in finding a way to accept death as inevitable and it comes for us all... Not just knowing, but understanding and fully feeling it to your core. I've spent most of my life preoccupied with death. It's not a pastime I would ever recommend to anyone, but there's a peace in the understanding. As far as the original topic, I don't think I would ever want unnaturally extended life or even immortality- I've seen faaaarrrr too many loved ones die... I couldn't live with the knowledge that I would eventually live in a world devoid of every last single person I've ever loved, ever cared for. Knowing I would see the end for everyone near and dear would destroy my mind. The religion part, I get. My lifelong religion, Christianity, is so easy to hate. I've never, ever tried telling anyone they need Jesus nor have I ever felt any sense of superiority in my chosen belief system... As most Christians do. I hate hypocrisy. The body of Christian church is hypocritical. They think they're racking up afterlife points by trying to impose biblical law, and therefore their idea of how everyone else should live, onto every person within earshot. The best part is the irony: they're self-perceived scholars who miss the one steadfast rule in practicing Christianity- to show God's love by showing love to every living thing. I'm writing a novella here so I'll fasttrack what I'm getting at- I have always been a skeptic to the point of not believing in God for years... at least not an Abrahamic God. I had a thought at the end of that period: law of conservation of energy in regards to our brain and therefore possible existence of a soul. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transfered. Our brains are constantly firing electrical impulses, our brain being where everything that makes us who we are is located, being personality, emotions, consciousness, etc.. When we die, our energy has to go somewhere, even if to a collective energy unit or through dissipation. I feel in that sense that some experience comes after the body dies.
SOMA is one of my favourite horror games due to this. The existential questions it asks just creates this pit in my stomach to think about. It's so terrifying to me. Especially since I have no real understanding of consciousness. I only know that I am sometimes conscious and sometimes I'm not.
I have a feeling a lot of people with PTSD or certain anxiety disorders would be good people to talk with this about. For my part, I experienced childhood abuse and there are various times when bodily reactions will determine the state of my consciousness. And there are also feedback loops where a stimuli can cause a bodily reaction, which can change consciousness, which can cause a bodily reaction, etc. It's not inevitable and I've found that during meditation there is more awareness of what is a bodily sensation, what's going on in the background of the mind, as well as what is consciousness. But then I also feel like questions of subconsciousness (? on if that'd be the appropriate term here) often get lost in such discussions, as we are very attached to our feelings of agency and that being a defining human feature.
Absolutely! I have cptsd/anxiety issues from child neglect and I totally feel you. As well I have a chronic issue, HMS disorder which affects mainly the collective tissue running under all my skin making muscles and joints weaker. People like me can 100% attest to the amount my memory and trauma are stored as equally in my body as in my brain. We are just beginning to understand the extent of connective tissues role in our nervous system and further brain input
I cannot begin to fully articulate how terrifying it would be to experience the world in a different body that does not have the same reactions as before, or, atleast, the expected reactions. It'd be a constant "thought there was another step there"/"I thought this jug was going to be heavier". Even the idea of waking up "perfect" one day is kinda terrifying, although also fascinating. Not just a different body, but also a brain. It sounds more like a horror idea then a fantasy.
This is the same reason I believe the soul is not only attached to the brain, but the entirety to the human body. I have PTSD caused by SA and I can certainly tell, the body remembers. If my body were to depart and be attached to another human head, would Kass B's body react the same as mine does? Would the body fight but the brain resist (or straight up not understand) the body's resistance?
I remember some podcast conversation where they were talking about the absolute horror that the Star Trek transporter would actually be. The consciousness being fully destroyed every time the person was dematerialized and yet the newly replicated version of them having all their memories, so being unable to tell that that destruction took place. There would be a continuity to everyone on the outside looking in, but in essence every new location would be a perfect clone.
Could not the same argument be made about the "absolute horror of sleep" one consciousness dies at the end of every day while another arises with the sunrise
Borderlands actually directly lampshades and makes fun of this concept. One of the random quotes you could hear at the respawn station is "try not to think about how you are a perfect clone of yourself from the very first time you died".
This is only true if you for some reason tether your notion of the self to a specific location, or an uninterrupted process. You can, if you want to, but a definition based on the pattern of your mind seems like it works a lot better. I mean, otherwise you need to make sure the person that wakes up from anesthesia is the beneficiary of your will before you go under.
I love the way that Jacob explains things in his writing. It's a red string cork board of text connections and a central theme or topic. It's elegant, it's well-structured despite its inherent level of madness, and well-practiced. Astonishing. Absolutely astonishing. (I'd like to make note of this here that I'm young, and that this kinda things inspires me to improve and perfect the skills that I have been born with--namely writing in this case--and that is more than I can ask of any RUclipsr or media celebrity. It makes me very happy, and thank you).
Your writing and scripts are of a similar quality to television specials. That you work with remarkably less resources is a testament to your skills. Thank you for the video.
I can't believe you mentioned Brandy's book, I literally freaked out with excitement! My mom has been friends with her since they were little. I've only met her in person a couple times since she's traveled so much, but she's such a great person, very interested in death and the history of medical tools and that sort of thing. Awesome video as always! :)
Okay, I'd just like to say that this essay was amazing, and also actually caused me to think about this problem in a slightly different way than I had before. So, SOMA is basically a dystopian exploration of the Transporter Problem. An oft-used example is Star Trek, where people are routinely atomically disassembled and reassembled as a mode of transportation. If Picard or Kirk transport themselves, then is the Picard or Kirk that comes out the other side still them? What changed for me on listening to this is that I realized something- Kirk and Picard know the Transporter Problem exists. They have to. Their society is too advanced not to be aware of that particular philosophical quandry on levels we can't even fathom. But they don't care. The Federation, in Star Trek, is effectively a post-*consciousness* society, because (as mentioned in lore) each person in the Federation pursues self-betterment above all else, as opposed to wealth or power or fame. They pursue their goals not to accumulate things for themselves, but to better themselves and their minds. So, in that case... Why does it matter if they get transported and their consciousness dies? The palace of experiences and memories they built still exists. It still lives, and it still pursues self-betterment. It will continue to improve- the continuation of consciousness is simply unnecessary for the continuation of the process of self-betterment. All that matters for that purpose is the preservation of information. If the ultimate goal of your existence is to make yourself the best you can be, then you are fulfilled at every moment of your existence. If your every molecule is bent towards the evolution of your experiences, then something as small as consciousness-death is inconsequential, if the experience or outcome that will result from that consciousness-death will serve your goals. In essence, you are not *you*. You are your goals, and every second you spend trying to achieve them, you grow closer to yourself. In that context, the Transporter Problem becomes a non-issue that can be easily side-stepped. Though I doubt the people who made Star Trek and all its offshoots thought it through that far, since if this is the case then by rights every alien from a different culture they put through a transporter should have an existential crisis the moment they're told how exactly the transporter works. I have no clue. I'm just a dumbass on the internet. But still, it's cool to think about, right? And having an alternate way to conceive of something as intangible as 'existence' will be more and more useful as time and technology march on, so hopefully this bumbling rant will have some value in that regard.
@@fyrea Very true, from a certain point of view. I felt it was more interesting to approach it from a more worst-case view of the Transporter Problem, but thank you for the input nonetheless! Also, yes I do believe the reassembled person has the same atoms in Star Trek- which doesn't make too much sense, as in that case you're still limited by having to propel the same amount of mass as what would normally constitute a person to the desired location, in which case simply sending a shuttle is probably more efficient. Though, since fundamental principles f physics like the translight barrier just don't exist in Star Trek, I suppose we can just write it off as Clarketech...
Oh, right. I also forgot to mention that there's an interesting difference between Star Trek and Soma, in that the Transporter is 'cut-and-paste', down to the quantum level, since I'm fairly certain it kinda just sidesteps the fact that making a perfect clone of anything is impossible by destroying the original beforehand. So technically the Kirk or Picard that were beamed down to the planet are exact copies of their disassembled previous selves, while the copies in Soma are all very slightly different, albeit on a stupidly small level. Then again, yes,a continuous existence is a neurochemical illusion in the first place. So maybe it's just as easy to maintain the illusion as it is to destroy it- maybe consciousness is more durable than we think, especially when you take into account that information can't be destroyed, only the interpretation can change. Who can really say?
I think the transporter version of "you" is still "you"--just instantly broken apart and rebuilt at an atomic level. It's mathematically a = a. So there's no loss of identity unless there's a mistake and you get two outputs. And then they get to have a fight like two Kirks or two Rykers. So it's still all good. The Federation society would find head transplants as barbaric as we do.
That's one thing that kinda bugged me about the video. I know for a fact that Joseph has consumed and understood both Book and Movie versions of Annihilation, and thus should be more than aware that the Self is ever-changing and the notion of it being continuous or having some break in continuity from sleep, coma, or teleportation is laughable. You are not the same body or brain that you were five minutes ago, or one minute ago, and even by the time you reach the end of this sentence things are getting real fuzzy. The human body and brain are Ship of Theseus-ing themselves at every moment.
The concept of the consciousness, soul, brain, etc. as explored in this video is so interesting to me with its intersection with dissociative disorders, more specifically the DID/OSDD family. You have a somewhat understood psychological process, medically analyzed. You also have someone existing on two planes at once. Someone with new consciousnesses essentially uploaded to their head. Someone who does not have a continuous conscious existence, and more than that, has parts of what they know are their conscious existence that nobody can find and parts of and parts that multiple individuals each remember as part of their own continuity. You don't just wake up the next day in your bed and wonder where your consciousness was in that time. One of you wakes up in that bed, goes to work, and comes home, and that is their existence on that day. One wakes up after opening that door in the evening after work. That is their existence. The very idea of a completely linear one-dimensional conscious existence is fundamentally impossible with things like dreams and comas and all that, as is it in head transplants, digital consciousnesses, and more outlandish seeming concepts. But this form of existence makes the mundane out of one of the most complex forms the consciousness web can take. When you add in the parts such as memory repression and uncovering, introjection, dormancy, integration, and the rest of it, the whole thing becomes even more complicated. We can't make a consistent working model of the singular linear continued conscious existence because it... doesn't exist
one theory of that family of disorders (as i've heard it from a friend who has DID) is that everyone's identity is naturally split into "parts" corresponding with different emotional states when extremely young, and typically those fuse into one during early childhood. the trauma that causes DID and OSDD disrupts this process and leaves people with the chance to split throughout the rest of their lives, essentially. definitely food for thought when it comes to a philosophical view of consciousness
The same day I found this video, I had just watched a movie called Self/Less; it touches on a lot of the same sort of themes of consciousness and soul, as well as immortality and the ethics of using a body that isn't your original. It's directed by Tarsem Singh, who I have a feeling you would appreciate in general for his incredible artistic eye. But this was a really interesting piece, thank you so much for putting it together. Can't wait to watch the behind the scenes!
This reminds me of a short story I wrote in Highschool about a scientist that basically makes a robotic clone of himself, eventually leading to his own suicide, SOMA hadn’t come out yet but it’s basically what happens to a lot of people, and has a conversation with his robotic self who essentially makes the argument that the robotic him is more him than the biological one, citing how while the organic one will age, become less coherent over time and die, the Android would retain who he was at the moment of his creation, living many times longer than the scientist ever could and with his extended time achieving much more than he ever could. Furthermore, the organic body was redundant now, the Android now had his consciousness and was in their minds the successful version of them, while the organic body was essentially what was left behind, a failure in their eyes. Despite the Android keeping the organic version alive, the scientist killed himself as he couldn’t not cope with his own redundancy and saw that his consciousness would live in in the Android, what I thought interesting was while they still shared the same memories, experiences and opinions in many ways, they came to a different conclusion proving that they’d diverged, the process of being reborn and the experience of being made aware of ones own obsolescence making them two very different people. The Android viewed himself as a more true to himself version of the two, having achieved his ambition, and while the scientist agreed he couldn’t live as the organic body and thought that self termination as close as he could get to continuing to metaphorically live on.
I'm not quite sure why the realisation that there's someone just like you but better (?) would make one suicidal. Because unless #2 is literally an omnipotent god they can't do two completely different tasks or experience two things at the same time either. There are most likely already people very similar to you by pure chance, that's not a logical reason to just give up. Just accept that a copy of you can never be "you" and good luck to both versions.
And interestingly although the android may not die for a long time and will continue with his current ideals and existence whose to say without the android the scientist would have changed his mind or come to think differently of things while the android stayed as his current self not changing in perception of things due to his supposed immortality. Thanks for sharing 👍 super interesting
There is a mission in Borderlands 3 called "Head Case" that is exactly this. A girl gets her head separated from her body and her mind is put into a VR simulator to torture her, the mind gets a new body but the head is still alive, conscious, and has the same identity and memories to the girl.
You continuously make some of the most fascinating, informative and well-spoken videos I have ever seen. Way better than most of the stuff you can find on history channel. Huge props to you
This is genuinely more horrifying than any horror media I've ever experienced. Especially the concept of SOMA and moving on to a new body, but really just being a copy.
There's no such thing as "just being a copy" the "copy" is a completely different being from the "original", at the point that it is created they immediately separate from each other, two different conscious beings, so there's no copy, only a different original
Unlike most video essayists, he knows how to create mood and atmosphere. His presentation has careful stylistic choices instead of just dumping info while a clip plays. Honestly, right now I'm in a kind of weird, self-reflective, existential space because of this video.
i always thought about the soul in regards to star trek teleportation. iirc the teleporters work by disassembling your very atoms and then transporting them one by one, because all we are is a collection of atoms. but this is why, in the motion picture, when the teleportation goes wrong it's agony for those who died. because their entire existence was being ripped from themselves. so i always thought, 'if you teleport, do you die? your atoms disappear and reappear, you're still you, but are you still /you/? will my consciousness die and be replaced by an exact replica of mine, with all my thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions?' i'm glad i'm not alone in this doubt
Our body is in a constant state of change. You lose thousands of skin cells in a single cut. You lose atoms, but you are still you. I do not believe the concept of the “self” is spiritual or materialistic. It is merely an illusion projected by the current state of the trillions of cells in your body (which are all living things in their own right)
@@LewisMatson-Morse sleeping is really freaky when I really think about it. Sometimes the idea of being unconscious for 8 hours and waking up with no awareness can be kind of creepy
@@LewisMatson-Morse you could say the same about sleeping, only sleeping isn't literally tearing your atoms from one another and then reassembling them when you wake up
hey jacob! i just want to say, the content you produce is just unprecedented. i have literally never seen this kind of content before. sure, i saw philosophy content, content philosophizing some concepts or 'things', but i have never seen so many unique questions about the related topic asked, such impactful insights. congrats on being one of a kind brother. keep on being awesome.
If you like stories like these, highly recommend both the "We are Bob" and "The Quantum Thief" sci-fi book series. Both deal with the implications and consequences of digitized minds and the essence of the "self"/"soul"
4:28 - 4:46 There's always something about Geller intros that spooks me but this one gave me chills. I know about the concept of SOMA and haven't personally played it because the existential dread would make me panic too much to get through the game, but that thought, the thought of taking someones entire head off and placing it on someone else's body scares the shit out of me.
I just finished watching Severance one or two weeks ago and decided to watch this video but wasn't expecting to get bombarded with these ideas, amazing as always!
I feel like the Mauler Twins from Invincible are also relevant in relation to SOMA. When one dies, the other clones himself and transfers his consciousness to the clone, but both of them believe they’re the original, because the alternative would lead to madness. “Welcome to the land of the living, *clone.*” “Ugh, don’t start with that.”
I'd argue Robot is the better reference. The Mauler twins are unable to fully grasp that they're both the same person, and so fall to infighting for no reason. Robot, though, gets it in a way they don't. He's the same person, just relocated.
I had never played or seen a walkthrough of SOMA. I saw this video, got to the SOMA part, got interested, stopped watching the video and went to watch the game. It's been a day and I've already experienced the whole thing, ending and all. 24 hours later I'm back to finish the video and holy shit what a fucking rabbit hole. Wasn't expecting an an existential conundrum a day ago from just watching a video about head transplants. Thank you.
When I was around 9 years old, I was diagnosed with autism. I was taught that I was different, but that I should do my best to fit in. To look at what others are doing. To copy their mannerisms. To copy other people. When I was 16, I was in a very dark place mentally. To get out of it, I repeated phrases to myself. Phrases about how I deserve to be happy. About how I should be less hard on myself. Eventually, I started to feel hope again. And with that hope came a desire to know myself, a desire to know what I wanted. In order to figure out what I wanted, I created four versions of myself in my head, who all wanted things I wanted, but those things were distinct from each other. They would argue for hours about what was best for me to do. And then… the voice that had been telling me that I deserved to be happy, my own voice… It merged with those four characters in my head to make… someone. This person wasn’t me, not fully, because it only had my desires. But then another character seemed to emerge all on its own. The half that had been missing. It had my feelings, my fear, my joy. And then those two parts of me fought. And then the two made peace. And then they started working together, better and better. And then they became companions. Friends. I would imagine them talking to each other, not as different people from me, but as different parts of me. They would figure out what I wanted. And then I would go into the world and I would slowly change my actions to better reflect what my different parts wanted. I was still copying other people but I was becoming more me. I started to push myself more and more and… I’m 28 now. A few days ago, I tried to make one of the people in my head talk to my friend. And I failed. As soon as my friend started talking to me, I switched into the person they expected me to be. The person I had trained myself to be. I realized just how automatic this switch had become. Even though my outside self reflected my internal desired and feelings, it still felt like there was this barrier, separating my two modes of being. There are two versions of ‘me’. The fist version is the one I am around others. The second version is a collection of people in my head. But it seems that collection of people accurately represents ‘me’. It represents me more that the person I am around others. So then surely I should try to stop the switch from happening. I should try to stop switching to a single, untrue version of me. I should be multiple people full time. Right? … The idea of being a single person in a single body is a difficult idea for me to let go off. If we’re doing this, we’re not just swapping one identity for another identity. We’re swapping one identity for multiple. We’re changing what it means to be a person, at least for us. And I’m… unsure what that means… But I suppose we’ll find out together.
@@VHSo_o honestly it doesn't to me. I think part of did is there not really being a "you" which it sounds like op is talking about. It sounds more like op is experiencing a form a masking. I dont want to diagnose anyone but yeah talking to a professional about it might be beneficial. At least for some more insight and advice about where to go from here
I literally can't wrap my head around how anyone would think the SOMA brain scan idea would somehow extend their personal life, instead of leaving them trapped while some other newly formed consciousness continues as a copy. Does it all come down to what Jacob said about it being copy/paste not cut/paste?
Listen to anyone talk about "uploading" their mind to a robot body. There is an inherent belief that it is a transfer, that there is something that needs to move between the two. Accepting the idea that it is copy paste leads to the uncomfortable question of what exactly your consciousness is.
@@cmdrfelix1286 my personal theory has always been the only way to do it is slowly replacing one cell at a time with a digital cell, replicating the way cells in our body die naturally over time. Otherwise it's just copy paste; but if we follow the Ship of Theseus paradox then would reassembling the old cells recreate us? BUT if we use the Ship of Theseus paradox then we have already been replaced by a new version of ourselves, so it should be the same experience as getting older.
There is a Black Mirror special chapter (i think that it is the Christmas special) whose plots goes around this idea we also have a memory "transplant/copy) sscene in Invincible
For all we know the consciousness or soul could move between the body to the robot body. It's not like we have a set idea of how the soul functions. It may be able to inhabit a robot body just as easy as our human ones.
these concepts terrify me a lot tbh, but they're endlessly fascinating to explore. the severing and/or continuation of consciousness gives me a lot of existential fear. sleep doesn't phase me, as that feels like a natural process and we still have some awareness from dreams and being able to be woken up-- that requires awareness! but, i've been under anesthesia countless times in my life, and that's not sleep. i've been under twilight sedation once as well, and the understanding that my memories of the procedure simply didn't form or were erased due to medication makes my skin crawl. i have complex PTSD and it's now generally understood that we can be traumatized by things that happen to us before we can form memories. the limbic system holds these responses, i believe (i am not an expert). does my brain hold the experiences i had under anesthesia somewhere in there? considering the surgeries i've had, one being major neurosurgery, it's alarming to say the least. (please don't avoid medical care if you need it. this discussion is philosophical in nature)
This also doesn't consider how much of our brains are dedicated to controlling the bodies we do have. Here's what I mean: I had top surgery four years ago. I was super excited and happy to get it done, but there was something uncanny about it too. The parts of my brain dedicated to sensory input on my chest were still there, even though the chest was not. Running a hand over the incision felt like a jump over a part that was missing. In time the feeling faded, but sometimes I still feel the faint sense of missing flesh. If I had this experience when a relatively small portion of my body was removed, I cannot imagine how a brain would cope with being in a different body.
@@haphazardlark1502 I guess? But also not really? Having not had phantom limb, I can't say if it's the same or different. But I think it's different. First because there is (likely) no injury to the boob that is the reason for it's removal, there'd be no sensation that an injury is still there. Secondly, because the removal is desired and welcome, there is a feeling of no-longer-there, but not a feeling of loss (in a both physical and emotional sense). Also, the feeling lessens over time. But also, maybe not. It's not something I've seen described by others that have had top surgery, and I felt pretty well informed going into top surgery. I'm not sure why it's not talked about, because it makes sense for it to happen. Perhaps people are so happy with the procedure that they don't think about neurological anomalies? (Perhaps I am particularly preoccupied with neurological anomalies?)
@@haphazardlark1502 Not sure if this is a serious question, but the answer is no. Phantom limb syndrome happens to LIMBS, which have (I hope I got this right) afferent as well as efferent nerves. Basically, you can MOVE your limbs by sending signals from your brain. You can't move your boobs, there are no muscles for it, and no nerves to tell them how to move. Phantom limb happens because the brain can still send commands to the limb, so the limb still "exists" in the motor representation in your brain. That doesn't apply to boobs. So you can't get phantom boob syndrome any more than you could get phantom fat syndrome from liposuction. No disrespect meant to your boobs, btw. I love boobs!
@@echojardini If you had big boobs, so that your body learned to counterbalance them, and your arm and torso movements had to take them into account, either you or just the nonconscious "processing level" part of your brain would be initially confused by their absence. But you wouldn't get actual phantom "limb" syndrome, because that has to do with the efferent nerves that carry signals from the brain to the muscles, to move your limbs and such. Boobs don't have muscles, they're not subject to voluntary movement, so no phantom boob syndrome.
This is the first time I've heard about Soma, but the premise reminds me of a short novel by Polish sci-fi writer, Jacek Dukaj - The Old Axolotl. In short, all biological life has been wiped out by a mysterious radiation, but some people manage to upload their minds into whatever robots they have at hand - and then they just exist in this new, lifeless reality for decades and centuries. It's a fascinating, solemn exploration of what makes us human, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it.
Hey that book, I heard of it cause I watched a Netflix series about a plane which is apparently based on that book but seemingly does *not* include that thing you mentiomed, but then again i havent seen season 2 yet. Its called "Into the night"
When I realized how insanely relevant this video was to the big creative project I'm working on at the moment I honestly kind of lost it a bit. For the last few months I've been, y'know... rereading Frankenstein and taking notes and recording quotes, looking at how organ donation works and how typical organ donation doesn't include your brain but you can sign up specifically to donate your brain after you die. About how in 2011 The CDC released a comic about surviving a zombie apocalypse that was supposed to be a parallel to prepping for a hurricane. Meanwhile that same year the Department of Defense actually released a hypothetical plan for dealing with an actual real life zombie apocalypse. But yeah, I'm up to my head in this stuff and I'm so excited to look more into some of the stuff talked about in this video. The idea of the soul is never directly named in what I have planned in my story at the moment, but personhood is something that's a pretty major theme and the center of a pretty major confrontation. The main character in the story is a sort of frankencreature (that's what I've been calling them)- sewn together out of individual body parts and brought to life etc. etc. They don't know much about their existence past this, while the creator doesn't intend to abandon her creation, she ends up doing so anyways. Dr. Hugh intends to sedate her creation (later named Emmett) through the night and get back to her project in the morning, but Emmett wakes up later in the night and escapes their restraints. Long story short, Emmett finally returns to the lab they were created in and confronts their creator, and it's revealed that Dr. Hugh was attempting to bring someone specific, a longtime friend and coworker she had a falling out with and died years later, back to life. Though Hugh was inspired by Frankenstein, she thought that the primary mistake he made was failing to create his creature with a purpose- he was pretty much just made to prove that Frankenstein could bring something back to life. Hugh thought it would be fairly useless to create an undead monster just for the sake of it, so she concentrated on the idea of bringing someone back to life so they could continue to general human knowledge etc. But Emmett is not who she was trying to bring back. Emmett is their own person with their own thoughts and personality and experiences. The most they remember from their previous life are the echos of more subconscious things; preexisting language passageways in their inherited brain, muscle memory, etc. Throughout the confrontation, Hugh desperately attempts to trigger the memories of her deceased friend, making references to memories Emmett doesn't have. When Hugh finally breaks, finally admits that her friend is fully and truly gone, she starts to wonder what went wrong. Her friend's brain was completely undamaged, if everything else reanimated fine, then surely the friend would've come back, right? At the mention of the brain being undamaged, Emmett laughs a bit. The friend had died. Maybe the cause of death was completely unrelated to the brain, but it had ceased to function. It had turned off, and there was zero intention for it to ever be turned on again. There's no way in their mind that wasn't in some way traumatic, they themself get nightmares about being frozen alive from their brain and body's memory of being frozen before being assembled. Would the friend even want to come back? they ask. Dr. Hugh flippantly replies that of course she would've wanted to come back. Her life had been cut off short, and for a long time, they had been friends. Emmett asks if she would've wanted to come back into a body that wasn't hers, one that was not exactly human. Emmett is fine with it, but that's because its /their/ body. Also, hey, how long has it been since you two were friends, anyways? You think there might've been a reason you two fell apart? But yeah uh that's a culmination of an arc to a story I'm creating. Slowly. In some form or another. Hopefully I don't regret sharing a bit I'm fairly proud of in the comments of a youtube video lol. EDIT: if you wanna see where this whole *gestures vaguely* thing is going, i would recommend subscribing to my channel for at least a bit! at least like, a week. don't mind the years old videos on there. because i've gotten a pretty big positive response to this story on youtube, i'm going to attempt to make a short little video explaining where you can follow the development of it once i have that all sorted out a bit more properly. at the moment it's a bit scattered but this has kind of given me a push to start consolidating it into something a bit more accessible.
@@springshowers4754 ditto, im utterly fascinated by this comment i haven’t even watched the damn video yet! i am so interested in consuming this story once it is out!
I made this comment up the top, but I was really intrigued by this comment and I thought I'd add to the thread. Spoilers for Agents off Shield Series 4 Okay, does anyone remember the Life Model Decoys and the Framework arc? Radcliff was betrayed and killed by Aida, but his consciousness was retained and stored in the Framework. The Russian guy had his head lopped off, which he was severely opposed to, until it happened when he was knocked out and ended up in control of an army of duplicates of himself. His duplicates were surprisingly quick to adapt to the initial shock of finding his preserved head, remotely still controlling his actions. Even May, Fitz and Coulson were taken and swapped out with LMD's, still believing themselves to be the original. Even when LMD May learnt she wasn't the original, that she was made of metal and synthetic skin, when she lured LMD Coulson into a trap to take both of them out together, she admitted she was afraid of dying. She would give her life to protect her original body and consciousness, to protect her friends on the Zephyr, but the knowledge that this version of her would come to a very definitive end very soon, still terrified her. I don't know what to make of all this, but I feel I have to discuss it more, if only to make sense of it all.
This is basically the Buddhist concept of "anatta". From this concept, one can argue a continuous process from the beginning of the Universe to your current conscious experience with every part of it being "you". This also allows for a more robust understanding of reincarnation, since all consciousness experiences are equal. There is no difference between me and you. It's a view I've always found comforting and solved my existential crisis of nearly a decade. It brings you at home in the universe
How are all conscious experiences equal ? The simple 3D input maybe, but as a simple question, why don't all the students of the same class get the same scores in tests ? At the very least there are different perceptions that exist.
@@Alfred5555 the fact of conscious experience are all equal but the experience itself is all different and unique. The same way yellow is still yellow on a flower or on a wall or on your shirt.
@@Alfred5555 People do not experience everything at once, all time time. It’s not “the same”, it’s “equal”. The same way you and I would have equal treatment in a hospital, not the same treatment.
@@mynameisambertoo7379 The guy said "there is no difference between me and you" so I don't think he means the abstract concept of two differently sized buckets holding equal amounts of water, he is using equal to imply the same in all ways that matter. And I already said how perhaps you could call physical 3D experiences equal, obviously mental experiences are almost impossible to be equal, so idk why'd just say the same thing but opposite back to me. If we didn't get the same treatment then our treatment was not equal, you could say the quality, or time taken, or value of the treatment was equal, but unless it was the exact same treatment then you could not call it equal. Equal literally and philosophically means "the same". The words origin comes from meaning "even" or "level" as in when you weigh two items on a set of scales they balance to be "evenly" "level" with each other because they have literally the same weight, then the word "equal" developed out of this. You could say that the sets of scales were used to weigh items different in all sorts of ways though, not items just the same, and yes but the original usage of the word "equal" as I have just explained was short for "is the same weight". If people looked at the two items on the scales objectively they wouldn't call them equal just because they have equal weight, they would simply say they have equal weight. You are simply using the word "equal" wrong. Or actually the original commenter and likely you too are using the word with it's exact proper connotation of "the same" and it's your idea that is wrong.
@@alexgaggio2957 Then this is not "conscious experience". We have no idea if the yellow that you perceive is the same as the yellow I perceive, we just happen to both call those things yellow. But in more concrete terms your referral to how the colour yellow is still yellow no matter what item it is, is objectivism, exactly as I said, we would all likely agree that physical 3D experiences can be "equal" or the same as another (because we can objectively measure most of them), but the cognitive mental experience would be most likely all completely different for every person (hence perhaps why we can hardly even express things like colours with physical communication). But this would mean as I said that all "conscious experiences" are not equal, only physical experiences can likely be equal, and even though we all likely share similar physical reactions to said physical experiences, suggesting the cognitive experience was also similar, it does not make the whole conscious experience equal or the same, either relatively or literally. When you say "conscious" do you mean "physical" ? Because it's quite funny to see someone else comment trying to explain yourself for you but by saying the exact opposite to what you have said in this reply, they essentially said that it's the physical aspect of an experience that doesn't matter or can be different, but the mental experiences are all the same, i.e. going to a hospital, getting different treatments, but our experiences being the same.
This reminded me (especially the story of soma) of a research paper I wrote for my 10th grade speech course. Although it wasn’t quite about head transplants, it was about time travel and conscious existence. I made the claim that acts of subconscious practices can be concluded as time travel. Like sleeping and waking up to the future. Being in a coma and time traveling years ahead. And even conscious travel like looking at a childhood photograph and time traveling back to the past through our memories.
One of my favorite parts of SOMA is at the end when you're on the ark and you answer a questionnaire that you had done earlier in the game. The questions ask you things like "Do you feel comfortable with where you are" and "Does this feel real" along with several others like them. This questionnaire comes right after finding out your previous self was left on station at the bottom of the ocean. It really makes you question weather or not it was worth it; combined with the thought of how several other versions of you had to die in order for you to get to this "paradise" you had been working towards.
I am infinitely terrified of death and always fantasized about digitalizing the brain and moving it onto a computer or something. But no matter how much I try to rationalize it, copying a consciousness onto a digital medium is simply not a method of moving *you* over. It makes a copy of you and then that copy lives on while you die. There are hundreds of scenarios where this continues to be the case. I always struggled with that inevitability, because even if we do somehow achieve the technology to digitize the brain, like for instance in Cyberpunk 2077, you still have to kill the original person. It would take more time to figure out how to move the real person over without killing them, than to figure out how to digitize them in the first place. I mean, when you go to sleep, do you die? When you die and get resuscitated, have you died? Are you still you? Has the consciousness before died or not. The present nature of our being is so difficult to comprehend and grasp that it leaves me in constant doubt about how anything even happens. When I wake up in the morning, I feel like I didn't die, but I'm not the one who died. I woke up, therefore I'm not dead. But the me who fell asleep, maybe did? You, as you exist, always assume the benefit of the survivor. You can never view the world from the point of view of the unfortunate entity, because your very existence makes that an impossibility. I won't go on a massive tangent beyond what I've already said, because that is a looping monologue that can go on seemingly forever. But I will share an idea I came up with while struggling to process my own existence and mortality. In an event of a digitalization, I figured there might be a chance of actually making it happen without you dying. I came up with it having referenced many different talks and discussions on the controversial epilepsy treatment which severs the main connection between the halves of your brain. Long story short, epilepsy is a neurological disease caused primarily by signal issues occuring when your left and right side of the brain communicate. A radical, and permanent solution was to sever the halves, however, due to how our brains develop, this was initially recognized as only viable in toddlers, since their brains were not developed enough to have a significant portion of their growth on the non dominant hemisphere. I think they have since abandoned the treatment, much like they would have lobotomy, as it did seem quite barbaric. Some older patients have told horror stories about how their non dominant side of the body behaved independently, as though it had a mind of its own, which is essentially what happened, but because it was the non dominant side of the brain, it only had access to half your sight, hearing and one arm and leg. Most of your behavior is coordinated subconsciously, but there are some activities that the other half of the brain could take control over within their own tools. Unfortunately, because they couldn't speak, and because their side of the brain was significantly under developed, as it was the non dominant one, that side usually had the mental capacity of no more than a 5 year old child. Either way, as I was pondering those whacky stories, I realized you can technically transfer your consciousness into a digital medium while preserving continuity of thought and existence. It is quite drastic and traumatic, but I do believe it is the only way to guarantee the process does not kill the old you, at least not in the way that the dying part would consider the death of self. You simply must hook up the brain to a digital medium and allow it to exist in that form uninterrupted for an extended period of time. Once you have your brain in both your head and on a hard drive, but remaining connected at all times, you become a singular entity. You'd have the experience of having your bodily senses, but also the senses provided by the machine, whatever sensors it may have, cameras, microphones, etc. You could learn how to exist as this expanded entity for a while and exist in this weird state of seeing yourself through both your own eyes, but also the cameras of the computer, seeing your own body but also seeing the computer looking back at you, and recognizing it as an extension of yourself. Then, after a long enough time adapting, and making sure a full conscious redundancy is achieved, you can then shut down your body. It will be like an amputation. You'll go blind in your eyes, you won't hear anything through your ears anymore, some memories will fade, some part of you will vanish, but will not have died. Neither of you would have died because you were both just one entity. Only half of you was removed, and that is definitely a tangible loss, but your consciousness goes on uninterrupted, just like in the epilepsy surgery patients. This is of course a massive hypothetical and is likely never going to come anywhere close to being feasible, but as far as thought experiments go, It's the only solution I found to this copy and past problem. Thanks for listening to my TedTalk.
That long adjustment process is exactly how I imagine transfer-of-consciousness would work! Ultimately, it would be a means of “true” preservation over just copying sentience (it’s also the only one I would try were it feasible lol)
Your solution doesn't guarantee will persevere tho. If instead of killing your biological brain you simply separated the two, there's no guarantee that would be part of the computer, and instead remained in the body. In the case of the epilepsy patients, their consciousness got split in two. From the point of view of each of their new consciousnesses they kept existing and just lost access to a big part of their experience, but the that existed before arguably died. You could argue that the was always part of the dominant half, and so it would always end up persevered, but what about the computer brain? Did the always live in the biological brain and just learned to use the computer brain as an extension? The in your body would still die, which just might be the that is writing this, while the brain has developed a separate identity. If you want complete digitalization without a risk of breaking the stream of consciousness you'd need to do it progressively, for each neuron, add a sythetic neuron that reacts exactly as its biological counterpart, have them both run at the same time and then simply remove the biological one. Repeat billions of times. Since you're changing just a single neuron at a time your consciousness has time to change and adapt to the synthetic neurons. Your personality might slowly change but the stream of consciousness is never interrupted unless there just so happens to be a single individual neuron that is .
@@spliter88 Well yes, that's more or less what I meant, I just said it in simpler terms without being so specific with every neuron and so on. I think with the brain hemisphere separation, while yes, the non dominant side gets its own separated personality, I was illustrating a point that as soon as that separation occurs, you create that new entity, and to that entity, it is near on a death experience, as it just lost about 80% of its brain capacity, memory and capability. What I was trying to illustrate is that there is a difference between the act of separating the two sides, and killing one of them before separation. I think that as long as these two sides are connected, by killing one rather than severing the connection, you do not create a new entity, you trim the existing one. The other part is so reliant and subservient to the bigger chunk, that is not an identity on its own until the moment of separation. If it dies prior to that moment, it doesn't die, the primary identity is instead just partially diminished. What I am trying to avoid is the instance an identity realizes it has been separated and then is subsequently killed. That is a disqualifier for me. I think that can be avoided as long as multiple sources of the identity are in constant connection, forming just one, rather than a multitude.
Man I recently got into your page and subscribed because of the Pinocchio synopsis, but man, the way you explain things, and the stories that you tell is very soothing, even if it’s unsettling and very informational keep up the good work man❤
For being a horror game, I consider Soma one of my favorites as a story about the synonymous nature of hope and desperation. Simon wouldn’t have been in that office if he wasn’t both desperate and hopeful enough that the treatment would work. Those that killed themselves to be in ark wouldn’t have done it without both the need to escape and the belief that they would live on the ark. Even Catherine and Simon launching themselves in the end, despite its consequences, was an act of desperation and hope. As far as a horror games go, it’s the one game I’ve played that I think has managed to capture the essence of what drives humans and furthermore, the willingness to stretch what it means to be human. The only other game I can think of that has done similar is The Talos Principle and I hope future game studios look towards the opportunity to do so.
This video feels like it was made for me. I've been thinking about the concept of continuous existence ever since I heard someone theorize that if teleportation required disassembling and reassembling a person atom-by-atom, then surely they would have died and been replaced with a perfect replica, but of course nobody could tell the difference. Excellent video :)
Oh my god, finally! Someone who realizes how terrifying Star Trek transporters actually are. Literally everyone I’ve talked about this to didn’t get it.
@@DavidSartor0 So the way transporters work in ST is they disassemble you to the molecular level and transmit those molecules to another place where they are put back together. Theoretically, if that process killed a person, we would have no way of knowing since it would appear the same person came out the other side, same DNA, same memories, and with their sense continual existence unbroken. But really, the person you sent through the transporter is dead and even that person’s copy wouldn’t know a difference
There's a bit to unpack on this, and I love the deep discussions on this because I really want more people to think long and hard about the concept of identity and self. Especially when you become a subject of that for most of your life. I want the discussion about what it means to be you, just because you have someone else's eyes, arm, leg, kidney, or heart. And I want to hear people really stop thinking about the 'original' being the superior, or truer sense of self. Because it really isn't a healthy way of seeing what the world has to offer. I say this, because I am a twin, ( I know, it's a stretch) and I get the jokes that like to tease me and my sister about our identities. Many friends and family innocently mistaking our interests as 'the same' or comparing one another like one would discuss a fantasy football game match up, or being accused of being responsible for the actions of your twin sister, and thus judged on the actions of someone else instead of your own. You grow up starting to realize that your identity outside of yourself is separate from the identity people place on you, and it is a nightmare trying to make people SEE that without sounding upset over a petty mistake like accidentally calling you by your twin sister's name, or assuming that because you told one of us something, that the other would inherently know. Jokes that range from 'It's okay if you die, we have a backup' to 'Which one is the evil twin?' has really dried up my well of humor these days when people discuss twins, or triplets like aliens despite the fact that they are no different than siblings born a year apart from each other. It may all seem harmless, but when you grow up with it, it adds up, and you constantly end up thinking about all those stories of clones, in movies and television, and how utterly disposable they all are to the 'REAL thing'. Imagine being asked a question as a child, to another child in a play ground that 'You're just a clone of your sister, technically. So which one is the REAL you?' Bringing it back to subject: One day we may be able to manufacture entire bodies in a lab, and connect our brains to them in order to extend their lives, I hope that we have a better grasp of identity than we do today. Just look up Clone/twin tropes on tv tropes and decide just how likely we're going to treat people when we reach the stage of making bodies to help a human life.
wow, that was some incredible insight.. Well, for what its worth, ive already made it clear to my loved ones that im going to have my head cyrogencially frozen, then grafted to a new body one thousand years in the future, or whenever they have the technology to do so. Also, im ordering Shaq's body. Having said that i dont believe in the concept of a soul, so i wouldnt be going thru this existential crisis like half of our country lol
It's because of this that I find myself jumping to the idea of the universe experiencing itself. Ends and beginnings never made much sense even when you're talking about 'souls' as is. Sense we're constantly changing our physical parts, our electric bits. But the idea that we're all just one being is much more terrifying in it's own way.
This is why we pretend like we're not. I kind of love the idea that reality exists because God couldn't stand being alone forever, so it pretends like it isn't.
I totally agree. The simple idea of conscience in a pure biologic machine is really odd if you do not accept that conscience can come from any complex system, we are consciences that know that are consciences, but the universe itself and many of it sub systems are complex enough to be consciences themself, humanity as a group is one. It's just that our brain(mostly the linguistic part) like to think that it is the only thing that "thinks", if every thing the thought is, is a mechanical/chemical process... almost everything around us "think".
I’ve always loved the line “I shot him and his soul spattered itself up Ong the wall. Every through he ever had, sliding down its surface with bits of bone and promise”
Have you ever heard of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment? It starts like this: A ship sets sail and on its journey every part is progressively replaced until, when it reaches its destination, everything has been replaced. The question it asks is: is it still the same ship or something completely new? When used in the context of the human body it can lead to several questions involving the idea of the soul and lead down quite the thought spiral.
Ever been curious about the research process for a video like this? How about a look at the raw editing timeline? Check out this companion video on Nebula for a step-by-step walkthrough of the months-long creation of this essay! nebula.app/videos/jacob-geller-how-a-head-transplant-video-comes-together
when you said a return to regularly scheduled existential dread, you sure meant it. well done jim, this is the only video of yours that has struck the dread into me just from the title.
Hmmmm, you should read the Unwind series.
16:04 went full soy mode for a bit
I did and it was excellent, and very helpful!
@@reversemudkip8798 what does that even mean?
Jacob Geller: Come for the beard. Stay for the perfect articulation of existential terrors you’ve spent a decade trying to suppress. Also stay for the beard.
Personally it helps me process and further my beliefs and positions on such terrors
what? no i came for the existential horror the beard is just a little bonus like a happy meal toy
Newcomers fangirl for the beard, but soon enough you see past it to ~T H E~L I P S~
Also those thicc eyebrows ...
Damn, I'm blind and only come for the creeping dread - is Jacob a beardy hunk?
The different segments of this video are transplanted onto each other, giving the illusion of the continuing of each sentence while knowing there was some section of each video that we lost and will never be able to see. This channel is so good that I have trouble wrapping my head around it (no pun intended).
good catch
Daaaaamn 😮
I did appreciate this little artistic twist. Geller is incredible.
Good on you for spotting that... Had you never said it, I wouldn't have noticed it
what does that even mean?
I think the issue with the "you die when you sleep because your consciousness is interrupted" line of thinking is the fact that your brain is never truly "off". There's no memory snapshot followed by a shutdown. In computer terms, there's no "suspend to disk", only "suspend to RAM", thought considering how our brains work during sleep even the "CPU" arguably still runs in "maintenance mode".
My thoughts exactly. Nobody really knows what "consciousness" even is or what biological process it refers to, so how could we possibly know that being asleep/dormant isn't just an altered state of consciousness? I prefer to not worry myself over possibly "dying" every night and being replaced with a new version of myself as it doesn't really affect anything in the long run. Especially because we dream when we're asleep. That's probably where we go.
Even when damaged, when that data is corrupted or needing to be de-fragged, the mind never shuts down, only operates in "safe-mode".
If those electric impulses cease, you're dead. But that never happens until clinical brain-death, that's the actual medical line you have to cross to be considered "dead".
So yes, she has a point, but is also hampered by the 1940s-1980s technology of the setting. The MRI, CAT, and PET technology just wasn't extant or accessible to a resistance fighter.
So, she was correct, merely unaware that the brain thankfully never enters such a state until the "computer" the mind is running on dies anyways.
Wait so is the “life flashing before one’s eyes” concept real? Do we desperately try to hard save our memories just in case we’re revived?
@@XDWASDX
Most likely not. There's no way for our brain to make a permanent save therefore that simply can't evolve to be a thing. Considering that people who die in peace don't tend to experience that, it's most likely simply a panic reaction of our brain, desperately digging through our long term memory to find some memory capable of getting it out of the situation.
it makes even less sense when you consider actual brain dead people have reported conscious experience
It’s actually subtly genius that this video is separated in completely distinct sections with only single sentences joining them. It’s not wholly unlike a body joined to a head that wasn’t a part of it, connected by a spinal cord and a few sutured veins and arteries.
The fear and dread I got every time the video jumpscared me into a new section was thrilling. Very much replicated the disorienting feeling of being suddenly transferred over into a new body in a new place… the gut-wrenching horror of discontinuity.
I love that I wasn't the only one who noticed this
wow, almost as if that's the whole point of a segue
Thats a very vague connection to make. Of course a video essay is going to be segmented for added coherency. Even if it was done for intentional symbolism, it’s not that clever tbh.
@@impulse_xs There's a bit of a difference between the segmentation seen in other video essays compared to this one.
I have a chronic illness called Crohn's disease, and my immune system fights off organs that do belong to me. I self medicate with immune suppressants to keep me going, and medications are a completely normal part of my daily life. Despite this, most of the time I am completely healthy. Several times throughout the days between my shots I forget that I'm even sick. Though I understand the concern for new medical procedures, I know how important they are as the test subject of a new immune suppressant and the practice of using Ultrasound technology to monitor bowels. While medical advancements can be scary, more often than not they're for the better. I trust my medicine and I trust my doctors.
Well said
As someone with Ulcerative Colitis, this describes my perspective very well. Im scared of having to have surgery for it, using new medication, and the such, but at the same time i understand the importance and effectiveness of all of these. The medical advancements that we have made from even 50 years ago is astonishing and we can only imagine it will get better. Anyway I wish you the best with having to deal with crohns.
@@hi__im_zack4890 Just a quick word: the importance of surgery in UC differs from that in Crohn. Removal of the colon in a person with UC eliminates the risk of developing colorectal cancer (one of the most dreaded long-term complications, which you've probably heard of being a patient), and allows for much lower doses of medications to be necessary (as you can imagine, just taking immunosupressive doses of steroids is not the healthiest thing to do in the long run, let alone other immunosupressants, biologic or not). On the contrary, surgery in Crohn's disease can alleviate symptoms and local complications (abscesses, strictures etc.), however even if you remove the affected parts of the colon, the disease is almost guaranteed to relapse in a new, previously healthy section. Of course, in both diseases, medications are still needed to avert other, systemic complications (like, for example, colitis-related arthritis). You, being a patient, probably know this stuff inside and out, and I'm sure your choice to not undergo surgery was well-motivated, and by no means I'm willing to interfere with that. I'm just writing this for other people to have perspective on things :) Stay strong!
@@Falaxuper I fully agree with you. And I think the differenced between the two diseases is very important. My perspective definitely comes from the UC side of things.
Also, to update what i said a little bit, It's not that I want to do everything in my power to avoid surgery because I know the benefits. Rather, it is just scary, as are most large changes in life. When/If I choose that surgery is the best option for me, I'm comforted in knowing that many people say their lives significantly improved and because I know that scientific advances have led us to more effective and safe ways to do it. And I think I missed that in my other comment, so thanks for bringing this perspective.
Felt that brodi, I have it too and let’s just say constantly enflamed intestines, restricting bowel movements sucks
Fantastic! Man-made horrors beyond my comprehension! (Great video Jacob you just constantly find new things that terrify me)
I love when a RUclipsr brings into question my very existence.
I FR SAY THIS EVERY TIME HE UPLOADS‼️
RIP to your comprehension but I'm different.
Was about to comment this but then I saw yours lol
there are no man-made horros beyond our comprehension
Most of my dreams are extremely boring and hardly worth remembering. But there are a couple I've never forgotten. When I was much younger, I had a dream that the world had come to an end. I don't remember why, but there was no possibility of rebuilding. Instead, those who survived wound up transferring their consciousness to a digital haven.
It was meant to be a peaceful replica of Earth but it was teeming with these horrible monsters. In the end it was discovered that these monsters were the remnants of the human and animal testing that had been done in order to perfect the technology. Fragments of those minds were stuck in a sort of limbo, unable to fully live or fully die. Consciousnesses broken and lost and angry.
There was some more stuff in that dream but goodness was that unsettling. I can't remember it perfectly and have lost much of the details as often happens with dreams. But I can still recall that awful horrified feeling. Deeply unpleasant.
Somewhat unrelated but this would be an amazing concept for a video game/movie/novel.
holy shit
I had a similar idea, it wasn't a dream but a sci-fi story idea about a colony ship in space carrying a virtual world with it's own mythos and history simulating hundreds of thousands of years and NPCs being indistinguishable from the Players. There were corrupted entities only referred to as demons but their origins were the result of some organic space debris colliding with the ship and then fusing to the electronics seeking to wake up and devour the people. One by one players begin to wake up onto a ship with dwindling resources and horrifying eldritch monstrosities prowling the ship with robots desperately trying to quarantine the infected sections of the ship like a tumor.
But honestly this idea is much more compelling and I might want to use it for my story. The demons in the simulation are the broken fragmented consciousnesses of the test subjects for this experimental technology and the simulation keeps trying to wipe them out but it fails each time. Also as a less important note, the virutal reality is a tolkien-esque fantasy world that it's creators directly cited as Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft being the inspiration for this passion project. Originally this video game was a simple sandbox fantasy game but with dying of earth and their outrageous popularity overshadowing it's muses, they were the lead project designers in creating the Simulacra which is a spiritual successor to their earlier project. It took so much time for them to make that they became Thesian Cybernetic abominations, slowly loosing their mind with each augmentation and then when the project was complete they'd join the same fate of the many corrupted test subjects still trapped within the simulation.
TLDR; Game Devs make a cool game then get recruited by the government to be the lead developers of a new kind of virtual sandbox for the sleepers onboard a colossal ark ship. Along the development of the game, it took almost a century to complete and the developers went mad with hundreds of human animal test subjects being sacrificed to the simulation. In the end, the project was successful but aside from the sapient NPCs and players, there are ghosts haunting this simulation and they threaten the long term stability of this voyage.
It kind of reminds me of a mix of Soma and Nier. Definitely unsettling either way 😅
@@caitlynlucianoNier?
This resonated with me on a level I didn’t expect, the further I got into it. I have amnesia, and only really started “becoming a person” less than a year ago now. I feel a lot like I’m a new soul in this body, but I can’t deny the old resident, and it still sleeps in the bones.
is this the youtube account of the person you are now, or the one before? did you find a note with the password on it?
@@aspatuarymax1470
Well considering the fact that the account is 9 years old, I'd say it's probably the latter.
@tb4546 please tell me more about what happened! Is your personality the same, based upon what people in your life have said? I'd love to know more
@@WB-se6nzI’m me now . I forgot
"I can't deny the old resident, and it still sleeps in the bones". That is some fantastic writing there. Would make great song lyrics. Perhaps the new you should look into making music?
"I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth" is such a good quote
Right? Shelley has written some pretty good stuff
I'm not sure there's a western book with more fire quotes
@@itsRhodi it really bogs my mind how she was ONLY 19 wen she wrote the first edition
@@HxH2011DRA Damn dude, haven't seen you in ages in a comment section, nice to see you still going strong with that name.
One of my favorite parts of SOMA it's the "Coin flip", a way the main character rationalizes what's happening to him that he wins a "coin flip" so his thoughts keep going.
There is no coin flip, we just change POV, it's just a cope from him
Watching joseph anderson's video on soma gave me existential dread for days on end
@@blenky5516 Cheers for the kind recommendation.
My mind is so tainted by the internet that I chuckled when I read the word cope
@@mujik4276 I'm unironicly coping rn after finishing this vid man...
@@Reggae-Gandalf Cheers mate, the video also mentions him further into the vid.
I am sufficiently mindfucked and will now play japanese goblin as a way to cope from how bloody everything is.
When I was a kid I watched the Jimmy Neutron episode where they swapped bodies. In the episode the swapping was a fluke that Jimmy could not replicate, so instead he emptied both of their brains content into one computer, and then his friends had to individually decided what aspects of each of their personalities belonged to each upon reupload. Heaven help us if we ever not only can copy a soul, but fragment it like that.
In 2300 immortal Jeff Bezos will use soul fragmenting ober generations to create the perfect Amazon worker 😊😊
The thing about her speech, is that the brain is still active when you sleep. Its not like your brain stops when you pass out, its merely another state that the body can be in
But does that not make it more complicated for those continuity lovers since the brain doesn't need you?
But there's no guarantee your consciousness still exists while you're asleep. The experience of self we perceive is just a byproduct of the signals between the neurons in our brain, not the cause behind them. If changes occur in your brain while you sleep, it's very possible that the "self" that wakes up is not the same one that went to sleep. Tbh honest that consequence doesn't terrify me as much as another conclusion you can derive from all this: there's no such thing as free will, every decision we take is predetermined by the chemical processes that may happen inside our brains in response to external input, your "self" or consciousness plays no role in it.
@@mrporcupine4140 Wait, the lack of free will is new to you? I figured that 1 out the day I learnt physics exists.
@@stm7810 Oh, no, I've thinking about it for a few years now, it has just never stopped haunting me.
@@mrporcupine4140 Sorry for coming across as rude there, it's just an idea i've long since fully accepted since free will doesn't even make sense as a concept, since I can't imagine anything that isn't either random or caused by previous events, or somewhere on that spectrum. Except maybe something caused by future or seemingly unrelated events, but still it's not free will.
Imagine just being a brain hooked up to an external life source. Fully conscious…..but not body or head….the thought of that makes me feel like I need to throw up. Thanks Jacob for the existential breakdown.
That sounds nice actually, like dreaming.
I've thought about this and I wonder if it would actually be like sleeping. You would dream and such. With no body, you have no external stimuli to sense and it's those senses of the body that make us think, react and then act. Like waking up, you first open your eyes, roll over because you are uncomfy, slowly realise you are awake and need a pee or need to eat (to sustain the body) and so you get up and do what you have to do.
Without that stimuli would your brain do anything? Would you think anything? Or would you just drift in an endless dreamscape as your neurons fire off randomly in the dark?
There’s actually a whole choose your own adventure game based on that lol
@@MsScarletwings name?
@@MsScarletwings do you know the name
Okay so as a nurse I know Polyethylene glycol is also known as Miralax. It's typically used to help relieve constipation so when I heard him mention it used in nerve tissue studies I was VERY confused. I did some googling and it is, indeed, the same substance. Pretty cool how something I give patients almost everyday has such potential!
if we got to the point where spinal editing can be done seamlessly with the same thing that makes one poo better I'll be 100% convinced we live in the matrix
@@matheussanthiago9685 it's the devs reusing assets to save time, lol.
You can not severe the silver cord and then put it back on line, if that was the case people in wheelchairs would be able to walk again
@@bettyivy763 maybe not now, but one day perhaps we’ll be able to
@@corvidinthewoods1263 one day
The digital brain reminds me of how Terry Pratchett describes the experience of a ghost: they feel detached and uncaring because part of your original personality comes not just from the electrical signals in the brain but also all of the chemicals and juices your brain is floating in
Soma doesn't get nearly enough attention, it's one of the most compelling stories in all of media to me and I played it on the deathless mode and enjoyed every minute. Great video!
I watched a Let's Play on it and even then I could tell that it's such an amazing story. That game is so deeply disturbing and fantastically written.
@@xaf15001its a shame its forgotten
There seems to be a growing body of evidence showing that memory, and with it conscience, does not solely reside in the brain itself - that in order to exist and maintain itself, what makes up memory needs to interact with the body that contains it in predictable patterns. Sensory information needs to bounce back to the brain in ways that the brain knows in order to evoke and maintain memory. (Don't grill me on this, I just watched and read some talks and papers from a Prof. Naccache). If it's true, then even if a brain were to be perfectly transplanted onto a new body, with the spinal cord fused and the nerves functional, the mind might not stay the same over time as it adjusts to how these new nerves react, to whatever memories this new body carry. We might just not be a brain - we're a brain and a body, a brain and million of neurons located outside of it and the spinal cord (the gut for instance!! so full of neurons it could be a second cognitive network). The soul is contained in all of that's under the skin.
Fascinating video, I already can't wait to watch it again.
"the gut for instance!! so full of neurons it could be a second cognitive network," what does this mean for fecal/microbe transplants then? Is this an injection of new knowledge at least, if not new self? If we take a more holistic approach to self then what does that mean when we've already been blithely changing those parts?
@@Sagalink no idea! I haven't dug into it. Look up the gut-brain connection if you want to start diving into the question
its absurd to only identify yourself with the brain organ and not the rest of the body
Small creatures have more decentralized nervous systems. Like, a bug cut in half and both halves continue moving and reacting to stimuli independently.
I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if we prove our own nervous system is less central then we think it is.
Obviously our brain is still the big boy important part but moving or losing the other parts may indeed have surprising, unexpected results.
@@Sagalink Maybe we are microbes themselves, living in symbiosis with this material construct.
What's nightmarish about this, to me at least, is to imagine what must be going on in the monkey's thoughts. From what I understand of it, it sounds like the body itself wasn't being kept alive by the brain's signals to the muscles, but rather by mechanical processes which kept the lungs and heart working. So this isn't so much of a "head transplant" as it was hooking a head up to what was essentially a biological machine that kept it alive. The body it was hooked up to was little more than a life support system that kept the brain active.
But think about this for a second... that means that the monkey's brain would be trying to tell it to do the things it normally would, but it wouldn't be able to. It would try to breathe, but it has no lungs with which to take a breath. It would try to move, but it's not actually connected to the muscles of the body, so nothing would happen. It could just... observe its surroundings and respond to stimuli on its face.
These are essentially the same conditions that a quadrapeligic live with. For them, they eventually come to terms with it, understanding whats wrong with their body. (Or if they dont accept it... A few seek assisted suicide). If they cant talk, they use other methods of communicating.
What was probably p@ssing off that monkey was everything you just mentioned... Because there's no way a doctor can explain to a monkey why theyre incapable of moving their limbs, or feel anything from the neck down. If that happened to me and I couldnt comprehend why it was happening, I'd be pretty p@ssed too.
Now imagine the still living but severed brain. Imagine its terror waking up without /any/ sensory input.
@@raviolizuhauf6086 and the horrifying attempts to create something as the brain will try to do
Maybe the monkey wasn't pissed. Maybe it was terrified.
i have no mouth but i must scream
Honestly, this doesn't scare me. It never has. I don't suffer from existential dread from the cessation of my active consciousness. I find it FASCINATING that I might be replacing myself every night. I'm not afraid of the dark underside of teleportation - as long as it works properly. I'm also not afraid of the concept presented in SOMA. I'm fearful of the PROCESS of dying, but not death itself. It's such an incredible situation to BE and to BE AWARE that I'm just happy I can say 'I AM' in any capacity. Even if I'm less than a blink in the face of existence.
Gigachad take
Shut up nerd fascinate this ratio
you’re truly built different
Sorry to bring this up, but what if someone takes a copy of your consciousness and puts it onto the internet? What if different individuals or whole corporations replicated it a gazillion times for various purposes, including exploiting and torturing you, and reshaping your memories and emotions and your perception of time as they see fit into the most perverted and abhorrent forms imaginable - and there's nothing you can do about it because you are just a defenseless consciosness trapped on a hard drive, and even the dream or imagination of ever escaping can easily be deleted from you.
Honestly I hope a technology like in soma never comes to fruition, since it would enable humans to create something wayyy worse than hell, but I suspect otherwise.
@@superpartes4990 who cares its a copy, L
I have actually managed to fall asleep while staying conscious a couple of times not on purpose or anything, it starts as a typical sleep paralysis, random shadows and voices, can't move, but if you know what it is it's not scary. If you manage to ignore it and keep observing you get a really weird feeling of sinking feet first into the bed, I think it's when your brain stops registering signals from the body, and that's how it interprets it - 0g experience. And then a lucid dream starts.
It doesn't last very long unfortunately, but that alone makes me pretty sure that sleep doesn't end your existence, the process that is you still goes on, even if memory forming is usually disabled.
bro is woke
@@steezymarlon1384💀💀
I've had that happen a few times too. It's almost like lowering my head and torso below the surface of a pool while keeping my hands on the rim, and then pulling myself back up, only with sleep instead of water. The lucidity of the dream fades if you lower yourself too far.
I've never been knocked unconscious by concussion, but I've done it by standing up too quickly while dehydrated, and that's another one that you can touch the edge of without falling through.
Wake Initiated Lucid Dream. WILD. It’s a technique to get into a lucid dream from an uninterrupted state of consciousness. It’s a very, very strange, state of being, and difficult to accomplish, so props to you.
@@braxinIV Well, not like I was trying, guess got lucky, never had it again.
What does a brain with no body feel? Not being able to feel anything at all but still being able to think is the closest thing we have to "man-made horros beyond our comprehension".
Jacob could make a 45 hour video talking about the history of snails and I would still watch every second of it.
The Monkey's Paw curls a finger: your wish is granted, but its main focus is Junji Ito's Slug Girl
A 45 "what" video? 45 hours? 45 days? 45 years? Or just minutes? 😁
@@vladtepes1047 sounds like a banger, I'd totally watch
@@Paraselene_Tao oh the things I'd do for a 45 year Jacob Geller video
I now wish for a 45 minute long Jacob Geller video on snails
The worst thing about this video is that it ended. I could have watched this video for ten more hours. This is one of my favorite video essays I've ever seen.
This reminds me a lot of the conceit of Mass Effect 2, where you wake up 2 years after fully being thrown out of your spaceship with no oxygen and falling into the gravitational pull of a nearby planet and being missiled onto it - they explain that they retrieved “what was left” of your body and rebuilt you. They aren’t specific about “what was left” and Shepard worries about whether or not they are the same person post-reconstruction. A lot of the worry stems from like, if they’ve been altered for nefarious purposes but I always wondered about how the consciousness was transferred, because how the hell was the brain preserved after such a violent death? It’s a little hand-wavey in the game, obviously, but I always found it really disturbing to think about. Just like this video! Great work!
I always thought the implication was that the consciousness _wasn''t_ transferred, that ME1 Shepherd absolutely did die, but Cerberus would prefer ME2 Shepherd to believe that they were resurrected, not constructed.
@@DStecks Your memory is intact though?
Well a brain does store information, assuming we can ever decode the (appears to be random blots on neuron shafts) patterns of the brain matter, you could assumedly rewrite or even add to a person's memory, with A.I and that person's history you do have available you could artificially make a reconstruction of self that'd have enough information to not question is it the real self.
The story of soma really shocked me. Even though I realized that the brain is copied when the player changes bodies in the middle of the game. I still was blinded to what was going to happen in the end and when I saw the ending it really horrified me thinking of living on a dead world in the dark forever.
Yes. SOMA is the greatest game no one is ever gonna play.
@@PaschanTOPs It has been played plenty, mr dramatic
That's literally one of the ends of dark souls 3.
god same happened to me
That whole coin toss concept stuck with me. Stuff of nightmares
This essay makes me think of Theseus’ paradox: if you take a ship and slowly replace all the parts until there is no original parts of the ship left, is it still the same ship? At what point does it become a different ship? Scientifically, our consciousness may be entirely contained in the body, but if you were given a new one would it become your body? Is replacing a kidney really as inconsequential if it seems if the rest of your body continuously rejects it until you die? What about muscle memory? How would the body adjust if it was given a new body to give commands to, one that has a completely different muscle memory? Would you be able to override it, or would it’s instincts kick in? How much are we really in control of our own selves?
Well we have something called not renaming ships and then adding block numbers or I for "improved" after it. Checkmate Theseusists.
Muscle memory is really just a memory of specific movement, it is stored in brain.
Since its a different body, and therefore different muscles, how much of the muscle memory you have would feel natural to you. Id imagine youd have to re-learn many things (if not all thing) to function at all assuming your nervous system is successfully "set-up". I Had a dream about this once, a nightmare rather, where i would switch consciousness with random people/animals. It was very scary, the feeling of my body not moving or functioning the way it normally should. The dysmorphia and confusion.
Makes me think successfully transplanting the head/brain would be the easy part of the treatment. The physiotherapy and therapy therapy necessary to get the patient back to some decent quality of life would be the biggest mountain after the initial operation.
Makes me think it'd be like reliving one's birth up to their first memory all over again except you're conscious this time, getting used to your body all over again
In fact, David Hume explicitly talks about a ship in his Treatise of Human nature, to show how identity doesn't really make sense even on inanimate objects. i very much recommend the read
Maybe I'm thinking too simplistically, but I don't see a problem with the breakdown of the illusion of continuity. In my mind, it's horrifying to kill the "copy" of yourself in SOMA, because it's basically another sapient being that was just created. If they want to die, they can do it themselves.
Yeah, same. In my opinion, that's a whole separate person who just happens to be configured the same way I was. They're not "me" anymore, and we would eventually go on to become more obviously different as we go experience different things
this, definitely why The Prestige deeply disturbed me as a child.
Funnily enough, one of my favorite villains in media comes from _Battle Angel Alita_ in the form of Desty Nova. Desty Nova is, in the initial chapter of the story, studying "karma" by transplanting brains into new cybernetic bodies, essentially resurrecting various characters with unfinished business as revenants, fully equipped with new tools and bodies to accomplish their new aims (usually revenge against the protagonist Alita). He's a master surgeon who uses nanobots and is killed multiple times by the protagonist, only to raise from the dead with his body fully healed or himself restored in a clone from backup memories. It's revealed later that he was a formerly a citizen of a sky city where the inhabitants have their brains replaced with a microchip when they come of age. He is, as you might guess, quite thoroughly insane, but simultaneously unconcerned with existential dread.
By the sequel series, there are several clones of himself bumping around, which sometimes work with or against each other, each with subtly different personalities pursuing different goals. None of the Desty Novas, as you might expect, seem at all troubled with notions of being "real" or the fact that they have clones of themselves running about, except insofar as they view each other as potential hindrances or allies. In most incarnations, he seems concerned with advancing his scientific research or finding a worthy successor to continue his work.
God, that sounds absolutely fascinating and makes me want to pick this up. Thank you for your contribution to the discourse!
This reminded me of the respawn stations from Borderlands 2. There was that one line where it told that your original body died the first time you respawned and now your a clone with all the memories of your previous experiences. Gave the game a kind of uncanny feeling to it.
That's what the Star Trek teleporters would do. They would disassemble you and store your atoms for use when someone beams in and you'd be assembled from atoms on hand at your destination.
you're*
Ricks clone family
@@rurogliding5317 ah shit, someone killed a decoy family
@@mikedrop4421 IIRC the idea that transporters are cloning machines was kind of disproven when it showed that the person was fully conscious through the whole thing and even waits in that atomized space while they get beamed like waiting in a glowy elevator. It shows the chain of consciousness isn't broken. But then again, there's still the whole Ryker thing. Maybe you don't actually get destroyed, but there's still a chance you're duplicated.
Back when I was 14, I used to consciously keep myself awake at night and sometimes pull all-nighters because I was too afraid of the possibility of my continued existence ending, and me not being able to know, as I just "reloaded" my consciousness in the morning. By now it's not really a problem anymore, not because I've found a solution, but because I've grown apathetic to it. But this video talked right back to that core in me that still fears, and I've never felt more understood with my terror. Thank you.
Wolfenstein and SOMA will definitely be played.
This hits home!!!
I always had to do lots of physical activity to make myself pass out. I also avoided taking baths because the shower makes me think about the heat death of the universe. Oh well.
@@mrpedrobraga Have you ever been to theory for these perceptions ?
I like to remind myself that our brains at no point "switch off", the gears always keep on turning.
It just switches gears and goes into maintenance mode, in which it's completely unnecessary to make new memories, because the brain is busy going through what we're already remembering - hence the dreams, which, if you ever noticed, are only remembered if REM sleep is interrupted. Otherwise they fade away without the brain having made a record by the time we wake up autonomously.
It's never an on-off switch, it's a gear switch. That's still plenty mindblowing, but easier to digest, personally.
@@ThatGezaDude important to note that if your brain does in fact switch off, that's also not the end of existence as it theoretically can be switched on. It doesn't matter that time continued while the brain was dormant. From the perspective of the brain itself there was no break.
Soma will probably traumatize you if you still have problems like this. I would go to a therapist.
Fun fact about Frankenstein: While Victor/Shelley refuse to tell Robert Walton (or the reader) about the actual process used to make the creature, what Victor _does_ say* implies that the creation process was more alchemy than electricity (though electricity _was_ still involved).
*Particularly the materials he gathers, from not only graveyards but _slaughterhouses._ Also all the alchemy texts he read, that's what elementary literature classes call a "context clue".
Can't overstate how well Tekla's VA plays her- the absolute cracked out "I haven't slept for past several days" delivery of a person who just want a thing out of just their head so the revelation feels at least partially more real than a second before
I’m getting my PhD in neuroscience and the question of the location of the soul isn’t one i often think about, so thank you for this video!
But something interesting I can add that we’re learning as biology progresses is that what actually makes up “you” is more than just your brain. The way you think and feel is heavily influenced by your immune system, your microbiota, and so many other systems that reside below your head. Hell, even your spinal cord neurons can learn! As a result of this, I’m not convinced that a head transplant/brain scan would fully replicate the consciousness of a person in the way soma portrays it and I think the way the doctor hoped. It’s an interesting thought experiment regardless.
Yep, I would like to second this. The brain and the rest of the body are intricately linked with each other and the mind, the self, is the whole embodied operating organism as it interacts with its environment.
Still a very interesting and fun video, and aesthetically very well made, as always.
Agreed. A digital "copy" of you would be a copy in the same way a photograph is a copy of the external world. It could probably replicate many important aspects of a person, but it would be completely unable to capture some things.
I think that, if that is truly possible (and that's a big if), a digital consciousness wouldn't be the same person as the original, but a new one that closely resembles the original.
That makes sense. If you're different physically, and have different physical scenarios/sensations/stimuli, you'll at least eventually become someone slightly different than before.
Take me, for example. Part of who I am, and who I know myself as, is my body. My uniquely weak back aka back problems, yet uniquely thick, strong legs, for example. Even before I started working out, I could crouch for hours on end scrubbing a floor, no problem. But if I have to bend slightly forward to work with some food for 45 minutes nonstop? I start to really feel it. In some weird way that's part of my identity. Not to mention all the little things I like and don't like about myself physically.
I walk a certain way. I work out a certain way. I instinctively physically react a certain way to literally everything that happens to and around me. If my entire physical being from the neck down changed, even slightly, that would eventually change who I am.
yeah somehow in this video there seemed to be even a more restrictive assumption, namely that you "are" your consciousness. and i agree that this whole digitization of the brain seems overblown - fundamentally we are machines of biology, and this whole quest of trying to isolate the soul to one physical location feels misguided. if you instead take the soul to be, as you suggest, the amalgamation of a number of your biological processes (including but not limited to brain activity), then the monkey experiment did not show the soul can be transplanted. in fact, the very rejection would show that the opposite is true - the soul does not only live in the brain
that makes heart and other transplants all the more traumatic…. literally losing pieces of yourself. There was a 80s twilight zone episode on this that was neat
This is the reason I love Ghost in the Shell. The idea of transhumanism and the soul is so interesting, and I'm not at all sure about if there's even an answer for it
Try watching Psycho Pass season 1. Very thought provoking when it came down to the Sybil system.
You might like 'Altered Carbon' on Netflix. It's based on the concept of transplanting consciousness
I prefer GitS (and Altered Carbon) which are more optimistic than SOMA. People pretend soma is more realistic but we really don't know, whether we have a soul. We might just discover we have one, that we can control it and those stories are more interesting to me than the ones where we don't because they are often pessimistic.
@@IIxIxIv Yeah, the cynicism really weighs down on the plot of some narratives. Still, I enjoy being able to enjoy both the incredibly optimistic and incredibly pessimistic aspects of the topic
If the definition of “soul” is a non-physical phenomenon composed of the totality of your character/personality/motivations/tendencies, memories, mental capacities, etc., then I’ve accepted that the concept of a soul is simply wishful thinking.
If the physical brain is damaged, we lose these things in proportion to the level of damage that the brain region sustains. Wounds show this with an abundance of clarity. If the damage is chemical, we see this as well, with better clarity all the time. If it’s simply aging of the original brain, we see this here too. And these are evidence against the idea that, once the brain is fully dead or destroyed, the “soul” simply floats away unharmed, housed in nothing.
I concede that there are MANY unknown phenomena, and that there’s a slim chance that the “soul” is some sort of persistent electromagnetic pattern that could be self-sustaining, propagating only through the most sparse amount of matter, and able to exert influence on the physical world, but that’s so unlikely that I can’t believe it until there’s some sort of actual evidence. We don’t know of any other comparable phenomena, so it’s kind of easy to dismiss, unless a truly revolutionary discovery is made to support it.
I think the idea of a soul is simply a comforting thought to most people, and persists because we’d LIKE it to be true, but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
I believe a perfect copy of “me” would be just as valid as I am, and should probably be given the same consideration that we give children. If we create a being, whether it’s a natural biological child or a clone or a neural copy, we have an ethical responsibility to treat that being well. I believe this because the suffering of a consciousness seems equivalent whether it’s identical to another or not, whether it’s housed in fatty brain cells or silicon circuitry. If it’s real consciousness, it’s suffering is real, and should be minimized. But that’s an opinion, and I’m happy to hear your thoughts to the contrary.
I don't know if this is unusual or not, but I've always conceptualized my brain as being the repository of my being. I can't think of a time when a head transplant would've bothered me outside of practical concerns like chance of failure.
Same. Even though there are parts of my brain that do things I don't want it to do/have no control over it's still the closest answer that I have to who I am. If my brain still exists, to a certain extent, I still exist.
what about a hemisphere transplant?
@@JNCressey That threw me for a loop. If I close my eyes and half of my hemisphere is replaced, the no longer with me part transplanted into another body, in which one will I be once I wake up? My answer would be nowhere. I'd be dead and both people who emerge will have maybe part of my configuration but it wouldn't be my POV anymore. And now I became afraid of brain surgeries, thank you.
This was a horrifying journey through my existential dread.
Thank you for that. LOL
There were numerous points I had to pause the video to let my anxiety levels lower again, but I couldn't simply turn the video off and leave it forever. I needed to hear the entire thing.
Yeah, I luckily got that existential dread when watching this video in highschool. It's an hour long existential nightmare about Soma and it's basically shaped a lot of my current thinking process for true artificial intelligence up to this point. (I'm not talking about AI art or anything like that, I mean real AI that can think, feel, wonder)
If you're ready, I'll just have the link waiting for you. It's definitely a lot...
ruclips.net/video/J5fpTvdExsY/видео.html
So, I have a childhood trauma related dissociative disorder that I didn’t know about for most of my life. I found out at 30 years old. And honestly, a lot of the discussion and questions in this video are familiar and relevant to me. Especially the mathematician character, her string of questions in particular is very relevant, as well as the game Jacob describes where people continue to exist and suffer once their consciousness is copied, realizing that they don’t get to access the consciousness that got sent out for a better life.
Of course the big difference here, and the thing I want to preface with, is that I don’t personally experience my DID as or believe I’m literally “different people in one body,” and the idea, at least when applied to myself, feels wholly absurd. All of the fragments and alters are me, removed from each other and a sense of self by amnesia walls and dissociation. So my relating to this topic is on a different level, as the separation of identity I feel is, in a practical sense, perceived, and not somehow tangible. Though the resulting identity confusion, suffering, loss of time and control, and linear, narrative memory disorganization is quite tangible to me.
But yeah, realizing at 30 that I, in essence, had several “me”s that WOULD occasionally wake up as me, not realizing there were …others, and move through the world was indescribably disorienting and overwhelming (even if it ultimately made a lot of sense retrospectively). The “copying” of the self to escape suffering as explored in this video seems to be so inherent an idea to humans that, if the suffering happens early and consistently enough, even one’s own brain will make (a version of) the attempt (obviously DID is far more complicated, and cannot actually be accurately described as simply copying one’s consciousness to escape suffering, but the theme tracks imo).
So, in response to the mathematician, I can confirm at the very least that within my own experience of a different self waking than the one who went to sleep does absolutely fuck you right the hell up. And losing the thread of memories, and feelings related to the memories of your life does also very much fuck you up. Many of the anchors people use to craft a sense of identity have been lost for me, and as a result there were a whole lot of moments of this video I deeply related to on an experiential level, if for a very different reason than head transplantation or the movement of my consciousness to a different corpse.
But the sense of abandoning a suffering self to “move” elsewhere, potentially unaware of the suffering self left behind, or the suffering which happened in the meantime, is quite relatable. As the crux of DID is the separation of fragments of self so that one might maintain a barrier between oneself and overwhelming inescapable trauma, it means that someone IS out, experiencing that trauma, and going on to hold it, potentially alone and in silence, while the host moves through life blissfully unaware (though at least in my case still deeply suffering with mental illness I couldn’t understand).
I could go on an on about the way this hit me in the feels in terms of narrative connection to one’s life, the identity loss that comes with fragmentation (regardless of the awareness of it, interestingly), etc. but I won’t because it would be long and rambling. So, I’ll just say that this video resonated with me in a way I was seriously not expecting, and which gave me a new angle for which to consider my experience while also making me feel deeply, deeply, sad and hollow. I’m off now, to go deal with this immense grief and discomfort somehow, but yeah, thank you for yet another stellar and thought provoking video. Really really good stuff.
Thanks for sharing all this. You're a really great writer and what you wrote gave some answers to a lot of questions I've had about DID. It's so strange that even when you were unaware of what was happening, you still felt the underlying trauma and experienced fragmentation in your life. I'm really curious about your alters, when and why do they come out when they do and which part of you is able to recognize them as alters and hold onto what they experienced? Also, what's the path forward, is there some kind of integration process where you bring all these various aspects of yourself together and hopefully come to embody some kind of wholeness again?
You're magnificently articulate for someone who lives with indescribable self-separation.
Please write more, friend !
I don't have DID, or really anything at all really, I'm pretty much neurotypical, but I guess I can sort of understand when looking at stuff that past me wrote and did. I look at that and I know it's me, I know I'm the one who did that, but it doesn't feel like something I'd do, but at the same time it does. It's like I was a different person in the past, but still the same person, it's weird. It feels surreal looking at the old things I did and made, because I know that *I* made that, I have memories of making it, but it doesn't feel like I did it; It feels like some other person had my body for a bit and did a thing that I retained memories of. My thought patterns then weren't the same as mine now, but they were similar; my though patterns rhymed with myself in the past, but they weren't the same. It's weird, and really makes you realize that there is no such concept as a single, unchanging "soul", we're all just biological machines, streams of consciousness don't really exist, it's all just made up concepts made by the same biological machines trying to justify their own existence.
Identity loss is really interesting because it deals with existential questions while staying within the same consciousness. People change over time (or in this case, fragment at some point in time) yet at the same time: It's still you despite everything. It makes introspection hit really hard.
@@enzomelo6131 As a psychologist, that's really insulting. Teal Swan is a pop-psychologist hack
"it's a warning that accomplishing things no one thought possible comes along with the responsibility for problems no one yet has the answers to"
I mean this is poetry no matter the subject, and why I feel so blessed for free access on youtube to a creator like Jacob. I love all your stuff. Cave-diving to Wolfenstein, I can't get enough of this
Vsauce, Alan Watts, and Bhuudisim answered all these questions long ago.
ruclips.net/video/fXW-QjBsruE/видео.html
This should clear things up.
If the soul is not a thing, but rather an action performed by things, then there is no paradox. You are simply the universe "peopling", physical matter doing a little dance, performing a you. You are not the matter, you can be performed many times. But it's still you, because you are a happening, not an object.
39:00 solid minutes of fantastic orgasm of jew boi jacob geller, lol i know 2 jew youtubers i watch and 2 A sexual *thinks to Jaiden* right 3. 4 if u include me, but i belivr in sperating the art from the artists unless the art is the artists, so yeah i guess just 3... for NOW!
@@thegrandnil764 And a host of actual philosophers did it before them.
@@KP-lq2hz Ontological Paradox is one of the few places in philosophy where a real conclusion can be met.
Simply by observing a-priori, we see that the logical pressure of paradox leads directly away from the western idea of "objects", and straight towards the idea of "patterns".
This even allows the preservation of the soul, as the soul exists purely in the abstract, as an action and pattern, not an implementation.
This allows the soul to be copied as many times as you want, throughout all mediums, without invalidating it's existence. It is itself a meta-pattern, and thus resistant to material probing.
The longer I had watched the deeper my thoughts and realization became. That scene in Soma where you watch you're original body with your past conscious sleep and can choose to kill it terrifies me. If you were the sleeping host, would you want the clone to kill you? It's a thought. And the idea that that basically is you, without being you. And the crisis of looking at basically yourself, knowing it's still you. What a mind bash.
i've always had these kind of thoughts, where i'd leisurely think if i could clone myself, i'd make one do my work, one to watch tv, one to do fuckall, etc. but it always made me think, would the me whose working be envious of the me who's just slacking around? or are the decisions each individual clone makes something that i would think of myself? like wondering how exact copies of yourself might do things differently than how you might do it, it intrigues me and gives me psychic damage at the same time. and which one would be the "real" me, at that point. can the "real" me be determined by the actions they would take? it's too much thinking put into silly thought i'd usually have when procrastinating but idk.
Your narrative style is insane. Masterful camera cuts, synced up thematic speeches, passion and pose. You're a cool creator man.
Remember how in the lead up to Metal Gear Solid V, people thought the doctor from the opening hospital sequence looked exactly like a doctor who was in the news for attempting a head transplant, and so people thought there was gonna be a head transplant in the MGSV narrative? Good times.
Remember when Chico was Quiet?
I remember speculations behind ep. 54.
Seems pretty standard for metal gear ngl
Remember when Ocelot was the sunglasses?
You mean when the audience were better writers with clearer imaginations than Kojima?
Except that was literally a marketing stunt for the game, and was foreshadowing the actual twist of MGSV involving a person being medically transitioned into another person
as someone with a major dissociative disorder, i.e. i'm not "me" all the time, stuff like this, like the concept, always felt profound and familiar at the same time to me.
it's like being in a body that isn't yours all of a sudden, without surgery or anything science fiction-y.
wonderful vid
Have you ever just lost *part* of your self? Like, you're exactly the same but you suddenly don't have empathy and that doesn't feel strange to you?
I have some minor dissociative symptoms, I see it like this: In that moment I’m just recognizing my body. I personally believe (kind of touched on in the video) that we exist as souls, attached to our physical consciousness (in the brain). When we dissociate, I think that’s just our souls tripping up and being like “ohhhhh shittttt I have a physical body I forgot abt for a sec”. So in my sight, yes you are you all the time. But you’re not a human, you’re a soul existing in a human. So when you feel weird about your body, it’s probably because it’s just your shell
@@discordlexia2429 "parts" of me go dormant or quiet sometimes, but I don't "lose" them; they're always there, like the endless backlog of info your brain perceives and stores but that you may very rarely or never need to recall... It's still there, "parts" of you don't just fall out and it doesn't feel like anything is lost. I'd compare it to realizing you haven't seen or spoken to a particular person in a long time. They're still around, somewhere, just not where you are, and not lost or gone for good
@@owenfolsom9875 that's absolutely what dissociation is, like depersonalization as I experience it is that "oh my god I'm in a body, that's so fucked up" type feeling. Not sure where I stand on the concept of souls exactly but I agree that at the end of the day we aren't exactly, strictly, human; we're the series of electrical impulses that allow us to live and function (which imo is equatable to the concept of a soul)
Where it gets fucky for me personally is that with my particular disorder it truly doesn't feel like I'm "me" all the time, or experiencing parts of my life directly: a lot of memories feel secondhand like I didn't form them myself but was rather told, how "I" behave is not how /I/ behave once I'm /me/ and in control again. Don't even get me started on when I'm piloting the body with another "me", with an entirely different sense of identity than I have... Whew!
I've had depersonalisation & derealization symptoms once (not full born dissociative disorder) back when I was 16 after a bout of psychosis from a mental breakdown (and exacerbated by drugs, it was my fault honestly lol). Damm, can't imagine what living with similar(?) symptoms every single day are like. Hope things are easier to manage for you.
You know, I think the craziest thing is that in a few hundred years (if we survive) we’d probably have already have made a head transplant or something similar- and our extisential nightmare we’re currently feeling will be the same reaction we have to a heart transplant. I also know that we’ll have new fears about science that we currently can’t even begin to think about… not because we’re dumber, just because we lack context. Like if one of us somehow lived long enough to hear about the horrors and think about them… they’d soon just become normal. Isn’t that crazy?
This also made me remember the character(s?) from Invincible, the Mauler Twins. They constantly copy/paste their entire selves into new cloned bodies, not knowing which one is the original, and ever creating new consciousnesses that are the same person, but at the same time not really the same. I find that so cool, maybe the best concept in that show/comic
This gets even more mind bending when you look into societies that didn't have the same biomedical concept of death and view it as a continuation of existence through preserving the body as much as possible. The horror of a lack of continuity can result in a completely different ontological understanding of death to the point where death doesn't exist.
Absolutely! A whole other layer to the conversation is cultural concepts of death, both in medical ethics and spirituality. How might a culture that believes total destruction/ decomposition of the body is necessary for the spirit to pass on (i.e. Indian open pyres, Tibetan sky burials) react to the idea of continuity of consciousness?
@@sarawhitley6168
I was thinking the Ancient Egyptians myself. They believed that the body and soul were intrinsically linked, to the point where, in order for the soul to be preserved after death, the body must be as well. One thing I wondered while watching the video was how the heart weighing ceremony would work if the soul in question had had a heart transplant before they died.
@@festethephule7553 haha that's a great thought. One could imagine a super advanced ancient Egyptian society where Pharoahs keep individuals around for organ transplants and make sure they live a pious life (according to their customs) so that if the Pharaoh did need a transplant his holy body wouldn't be tainted when it came time for his judgement. Or maybe a crazy Pharaoh from those times had the head priest killed and the latter's heart placed in his body when they embalmed him thinking that way he would guarentee it would be judged righteous when he died.
Once again, you've made content about art that is, itself, nothing short of an artistic masterpiece.
The moment I realized that the concept-transitions from one idea to another in this video weren't just a cute gimmick, but rather, *mirroring the way consciousness could be seamlessly transitioned from one body to another...* I was almost *mad* at how genius it was.
Great work as always Mr. Geller :D
I DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE THIS THAT'S SO COOL
Your way over thinking this lmao
@@420pbomb You're one of the people who says "the door is just blue cuz it's blue >:(" when your english teacher tells you to do any degree of literary analysis huh
But this proves absolutely zero about souls unless you for no reason at all assume the "Soul" is housed in a particular part of the body which is not the head, should it exist. you cannot prove whether or not people have souls without a means of defining what a soul is in the first place and how it would work.
@@zeehero7280 Putting a brain from one body into another isn't what casts doubt onto the concept of souls in this essay, it's putting a MIND from one host into another.
If consciousness can be simulated, then what we call a "soul" can be artificially created on a whim, which rather muddies the whole premise.
I'm a bit of a transhumanist. I've always been theoretically comfortable with the idea of losing my legs since our technology has reached a point where people without legs can compete in the Olympics. I'd ideally like to live forever. If this means my brain is transplanted into a robot body, then I accept that idea, even considering the losses of some of my senses and maybe what is currently understood as being "human". The idea of a head transplant is fascinating to me. An edit, to catch up after watching the video: I love the horror of SOMA, even if I disagree with it fundamentally in its view of humanity. I do not believe that we would kill ourselves en masse in some desperate bid to continue our existence. I definitely believe it would happen for some people, ones who didn't understand or didn't believe the reality of the procedure, but I think many of us would view it as you view becoming a parent. You live on, or at least a version of you does, and that's something to be celebrated rather than lamented as this bleak finality. I would still like to live forever, a continuous experience without end, but even if that can't happen, if there is some undiscovered barrier, or the limits of science as it is now are proven definitive, I could settle for knowing I would persist in some form. Even to toss the notion aside, I am happy with the life I have lived and would be glad to exist as a memory, that kind of immortality that is a cliche of numerous iterations.
A mechanical leg has advantages:
•No muscle fatigue, because there is no muscle. (No more leg days)
•Can be easily replaced, in theory it's easier to make a mechanical leg than an organic one. (I don't know man, where could we possibly harvest human flesh, muscle, bone and alive nerves....hmmmmm. Also, maybe...just maybe I can break a leg more often.)
•May be cheaper than a leg transplant in the future.
Cons (that maybe fixed)
•Limited flexibility, eh wtf...imagine competing on a bionic limb contest (Maybe some robotic people could get around this.)
•Not very good looking rn (Ehhhh)
•May be less powerful (I doubt our technology can be on par with the average power of a human leg in terms of carrying weight and kicking)
•Does not heal
I don't want ghost pains
Genuine question:
Is your desire to live forever rooted in desire to see what comes or a fear of experiencing the unknown end?
My desire(although I'm not the author of the original comment, but I still fully agree with him) is to see what's next for this world, for humanity itself, I want to see, to experience just how far into the universe will we reach. The horrors of the inevitable death and unknown end have haunted me for years, ever since I stopped believing in god, afterlife, etc. But I have found peace by just accepting death.
Every single one of us humans will someday die, it might happen very soon, or it might happen in hundreds of years, if we find a way to preserve a brain for such a long time that is. And while we are alive, we must enjoy it to our fullest: see the world, see all the different people, make a lot of new relationships, value our loved ones and spend plenty of time with them, try to achieve our dreams, so that in the end we wont be regretting it.
I may not see the progress that humanity will make, but I'll surely enjoy my time in this horrifying wolrd.
@@turpal-alididaev6410 There is something terribly freeing in finding a way to accept death as inevitable and it comes for us all... Not just knowing, but understanding and fully feeling it to your core. I've spent most of my life preoccupied with death. It's not a pastime I would ever recommend to anyone, but there's a peace in the understanding.
As far as the original topic, I don't think I would ever want unnaturally extended life or even immortality- I've seen faaaarrrr too many loved ones die... I couldn't live with the knowledge that I would eventually live in a world devoid of every last single person I've ever loved, ever cared for. Knowing I would see the end for everyone near and dear would destroy my mind.
The religion part, I get. My lifelong religion, Christianity, is so easy to hate. I've never, ever tried telling anyone they need Jesus nor have I ever felt any sense of superiority in my chosen belief system... As most Christians do. I hate hypocrisy. The body of Christian church is hypocritical. They think they're racking up afterlife points by trying to impose biblical law, and therefore their idea of how everyone else should live, onto every person within earshot. The best part is the irony: they're self-perceived scholars who miss the one steadfast rule in practicing Christianity- to show God's love by showing love to every living thing.
I'm writing a novella here so I'll fasttrack what I'm getting at-
I have always been a skeptic to the point of not believing in God for years... at least not an Abrahamic God. I had a thought at the end of that period: law of conservation of energy in regards to our brain and therefore possible existence of a soul. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transfered. Our brains are constantly firing electrical impulses, our brain being where everything that makes us who we are is located, being personality, emotions, consciousness, etc..
When we die, our energy has to go somewhere, even if to a collective energy unit or through dissipation. I feel in that sense that some experience comes after the body dies.
SOMA is one of my favourite horror games due to this. The existential questions it asks just creates this pit in my stomach to think about. It's so terrifying to me. Especially since I have no real understanding of consciousness. I only know that I am sometimes conscious and sometimes I'm not.
I have a feeling a lot of people with PTSD or certain anxiety disorders would be good people to talk with this about. For my part, I experienced childhood abuse and there are various times when bodily reactions will determine the state of my consciousness. And there are also feedback loops where a stimuli can cause a bodily reaction, which can change consciousness, which can cause a bodily reaction, etc. It's not inevitable and I've found that during meditation there is more awareness of what is a bodily sensation, what's going on in the background of the mind, as well as what is consciousness. But then I also feel like questions of subconsciousness (? on if that'd be the appropriate term here) often get lost in such discussions, as we are very attached to our feelings of agency and that being a defining human feature.
Absolutely! I have cptsd/anxiety issues from child neglect and I totally feel you. As well I have a chronic issue, HMS disorder which affects mainly the collective tissue running under all my skin making muscles and joints weaker. People like me can 100% attest to the amount my memory and trauma are stored as equally in my body as in my brain. We are just beginning to understand the extent of connective tissues role in our nervous system and further brain input
I cannot begin to fully articulate how terrifying it would be to experience the world in a different body that does not have the same reactions as before, or, atleast, the expected reactions.
It'd be a constant "thought there was another step there"/"I thought this jug was going to be heavier".
Even the idea of waking up "perfect" one day is kinda terrifying, although also fascinating. Not just a different body, but also a brain. It sounds more like a horror idea then a fantasy.
@@Acrossthegulfofspace Same!! I've done EMDR therapy, and in nearly every single one, it would cause phantom pain and twitching. Brains are so weird!!
Fellow child abuse victim here, do u also involuntarily pull your arms to your chest like a dinosaur or suffer random jerks when frightened?
This is the same reason I believe the soul is not only attached to the brain, but the entirety to the human body. I have PTSD caused by SA and I can certainly tell, the body remembers.
If my body were to depart and be attached to another human head, would Kass B's body react the same as mine does? Would the body fight but the brain resist (or straight up not understand) the body's resistance?
I remember some podcast conversation where they were talking about the absolute horror that the Star Trek transporter would actually be. The consciousness being fully destroyed every time the person was dematerialized and yet the newly replicated version of them having all their memories, so being unable to tell that that destruction took place. There would be a continuity to everyone on the outside looking in, but in essence every new location would be a perfect clone.
Yes! Crossed my mind as well while watching this.
Could not the same argument be made about the "absolute horror of sleep" one consciousness dies at the end of every day while another arises with the sunrise
I heard this from a breaking bad episode
Borderlands actually directly lampshades and makes fun of this concept. One of the random quotes you could hear at the respawn station is "try not to think about how you are a perfect clone of yourself from the very first time you died".
This is only true if you for some reason tether your notion of the self to a specific location, or an uninterrupted process. You can, if you want to, but a definition based on the pattern of your mind seems like it works a lot better. I mean, otherwise you need to make sure the person that wakes up from anesthesia is the beneficiary of your will before you go under.
I love the way that Jacob explains things in his writing. It's a red string cork board of text connections and a central theme or topic. It's elegant, it's well-structured despite its inherent level of madness, and well-practiced. Astonishing. Absolutely astonishing.
(I'd like to make note of this here that I'm young, and that this kinda things inspires me to improve and perfect the skills that I have been born with--namely writing in this case--and that is more than I can ask of any RUclipsr or media celebrity. It makes me very happy, and thank you).
Your writing and scripts are of a similar quality to television specials. That you work with remarkably less resources is a testament to your skills.
Thank you for the video.
I can't believe you mentioned Brandy's book, I literally freaked out with excitement! My mom has been friends with her since they were little. I've only met her in person a couple times since she's traveled so much, but she's such a great person, very interested in death and the history of medical tools and that sort of thing. Awesome video as always! :)
Okay, I'd just like to say that this essay was amazing, and also actually caused me to think about this problem in a slightly different way than I had before.
So, SOMA is basically a dystopian exploration of the Transporter Problem. An oft-used example is Star Trek, where people are routinely atomically disassembled and reassembled as a mode of transportation. If Picard or Kirk transport themselves, then is the Picard or Kirk that comes out the other side still them?
What changed for me on listening to this is that I realized something- Kirk and Picard know the Transporter Problem exists. They have to. Their society is too advanced not to be aware of that particular philosophical quandry on levels we can't even fathom.
But they don't care.
The Federation, in Star Trek, is effectively a post-*consciousness* society, because (as mentioned in lore) each person in the Federation pursues self-betterment above all else, as opposed to wealth or power or fame. They pursue their goals not to accumulate things for themselves, but to better themselves and their minds. So, in that case... Why does it matter if they get transported and their consciousness dies? The palace of experiences and memories they built still exists. It still lives, and it still pursues self-betterment. It will continue to improve- the continuation of consciousness is simply unnecessary for the continuation of the process of self-betterment. All that matters for that purpose is the preservation of information. If the ultimate goal of your existence is to make yourself the best you can be, then you are fulfilled at every moment of your existence. If your every molecule is bent towards the evolution of your experiences, then something as small as consciousness-death is inconsequential, if the experience or outcome that will result from that consciousness-death will serve your goals.
In essence, you are not *you*. You are your goals, and every second you spend trying to achieve them, you grow closer to yourself. In that context, the Transporter Problem becomes a non-issue that can be easily side-stepped.
Though I doubt the people who made Star Trek and all its offshoots thought it through that far, since if this is the case then by rights every alien from a different culture they put through a transporter should have an existential crisis the moment they're told how exactly the transporter works. I have no clue. I'm just a dumbass on the internet. But still, it's cool to think about, right? And having an alternate way to conceive of something as intangible as 'existence' will be more and more useful as time and technology march on, so hopefully this bumbling rant will have some value in that regard.
@@fyrea Very true, from a certain point of view. I felt it was more interesting to approach it from a more worst-case view of the Transporter Problem, but thank you for the input nonetheless!
Also, yes I do believe the reassembled person has the same atoms in Star Trek- which doesn't make too much sense, as in that case you're still limited by having to propel the same amount of mass as what would normally constitute a person to the desired location, in which case simply sending a shuttle is probably more efficient. Though, since fundamental principles f physics like the translight barrier just don't exist in Star Trek, I suppose we can just write it off as Clarketech...
Oh, right. I also forgot to mention that there's an interesting difference between Star Trek and Soma, in that the Transporter is 'cut-and-paste', down to the quantum level, since I'm fairly certain it kinda just sidesteps the fact that making a perfect clone of anything is impossible by destroying the original beforehand. So technically the Kirk or Picard that were beamed down to the planet are exact copies of their disassembled previous selves, while the copies in Soma are all very slightly different, albeit on a stupidly small level.
Then again, yes,a continuous existence is a neurochemical illusion in the first place. So maybe it's just as easy to maintain the illusion as it is to destroy it- maybe consciousness is more durable than we think, especially when you take into account that information can't be destroyed, only the interpretation can change. Who can really say?
I think the transporter version of "you" is still "you"--just instantly broken apart and rebuilt at an atomic level. It's mathematically a = a. So there's no loss of identity unless there's a mistake and you get two outputs. And then they get to have a fight like two Kirks or two Rykers. So it's still all good. The Federation society would find head transplants as barbaric as we do.
thank you for this example, it helped me grasp and wrestle with the scary concepts presented in this video and not freak out haha
That's one thing that kinda bugged me about the video. I know for a fact that Joseph has consumed and understood both Book and Movie versions of Annihilation, and thus should be more than aware that the Self is ever-changing and the notion of it being continuous or having some break in continuity from sleep, coma, or teleportation is laughable.
You are not the same body or brain that you were five minutes ago, or one minute ago, and even by the time you reach the end of this sentence things are getting real fuzzy. The human body and brain are Ship of Theseus-ing themselves at every moment.
The concept of the consciousness, soul, brain, etc. as explored in this video is so interesting to me with its intersection with dissociative disorders, more specifically the DID/OSDD family. You have a somewhat understood psychological process, medically analyzed. You also have someone existing on two planes at once. Someone with new consciousnesses essentially uploaded to their head. Someone who does not have a continuous conscious existence, and more than that, has parts of what they know are their conscious existence that nobody can find and parts of and parts that multiple individuals each remember as part of their own continuity. You don't just wake up the next day in your bed and wonder where your consciousness was in that time. One of you wakes up in that bed, goes to work, and comes home, and that is their existence on that day. One wakes up after opening that door in the evening after work. That is their existence. The very idea of a completely linear one-dimensional conscious existence is fundamentally impossible with things like dreams and comas and all that, as is it in head transplants, digital consciousnesses, and more outlandish seeming concepts. But this form of existence makes the mundane out of one of the most complex forms the consciousness web can take. When you add in the parts such as memory repression and uncovering, introjection, dormancy, integration, and the rest of it, the whole thing becomes even more complicated. We can't make a consistent working model of the singular linear continued conscious existence because it... doesn't exist
one theory of that family of disorders (as i've heard it from a friend who has DID) is that everyone's identity is naturally split into "parts" corresponding with different emotional states when extremely young, and typically those fuse into one during early childhood. the trauma that causes DID and OSDD disrupts this process and leaves people with the chance to split throughout the rest of their lives, essentially. definitely food for thought when it comes to a philosophical view of consciousness
The same day I found this video, I had just watched a movie called Self/Less; it touches on a lot of the same sort of themes of consciousness and soul, as well as immortality and the ethics of using a body that isn't your original. It's directed by Tarsem Singh, who I have a feeling you would appreciate in general for his incredible artistic eye. But this was a really interesting piece, thank you so much for putting it together. Can't wait to watch the behind the scenes!
This reminds me of a short story I wrote in Highschool about a scientist that basically makes a robotic clone of himself, eventually leading to his own suicide, SOMA hadn’t come out yet but it’s basically what happens to a lot of people, and has a conversation with his robotic self who essentially makes the argument that the robotic him is more him than the biological one, citing how while the organic one will age, become less coherent over time and die, the Android would retain who he was at the moment of his creation, living many times longer than the scientist ever could and with his extended time achieving much more than he ever could. Furthermore, the organic body was redundant now, the Android now had his consciousness and was in their minds the successful version of them, while the organic body was essentially what was left behind, a failure in their eyes. Despite the Android keeping the organic version alive, the scientist killed himself as he couldn’t not cope with his own redundancy and saw that his consciousness would live in in the Android, what I thought interesting was while they still shared the same memories, experiences and opinions in many ways, they came to a different conclusion proving that they’d diverged, the process of being reborn and the experience of being made aware of ones own obsolescence making them two very different people. The Android viewed himself as a more true to himself version of the two, having achieved his ambition, and while the scientist agreed he couldn’t live as the organic body and thought that self termination as close as he could get to continuing to metaphorically live on.
I'm not quite sure why the realisation that there's someone just like you but better (?) would make one suicidal. Because unless #2 is literally an omnipotent god they can't do two completely different tasks or experience two things at the same time either. There are most likely already people very similar to you by pure chance, that's not a logical reason to just give up. Just accept that a copy of you can never be "you" and good luck to both versions.
And interestingly although the android may not die for a long time and will continue with his current ideals and existence whose to say without the android the scientist would have changed his mind or come to think differently of things while the android stayed as his current self not changing in perception of things due to his supposed immortality. Thanks for sharing 👍 super interesting
There is a mission in Borderlands 3 called "Head Case" that is exactly this. A girl gets her head separated from her body and her mind is put into a VR simulator to torture her, the mind gets a new body but the head is still alive, conscious, and has the same identity and memories to the girl.
You continuously make some of the most fascinating, informative and well-spoken videos I have ever seen. Way better than most of the stuff you can find on history channel. Huge props to you
This is genuinely more horrifying than any horror media I've ever experienced. Especially the concept of SOMA and moving on to a new body, but really just being a copy.
There's no such thing as "just being a copy" the "copy" is a completely different being from the "original", at the point that it is created they immediately separate from each other, two different conscious beings, so there's no copy, only a different original
I cant put into words the way your videos make me feel. What I can say without a doubt is that I like them a lot. Keep up the fantastic work!
I can. I feel enraptured by these essays. :)
Unlike most video essayists, he knows how to create mood and atmosphere. His presentation has careful stylistic choices instead of just dumping info while a clip plays. Honestly, right now I'm in a kind of weird, self-reflective, existential space because of this video.
Gives me shivers every time
I feel sick
i always thought about the soul in regards to star trek teleportation. iirc the teleporters work by disassembling your very atoms and then transporting them one by one, because all we are is a collection of atoms. but this is why, in the motion picture, when the teleportation goes wrong it's agony for those who died. because their entire existence was being ripped from themselves.
so i always thought, 'if you teleport, do you die? your atoms disappear and reappear, you're still you, but are you still /you/? will my consciousness die and be replaced by an exact replica of mine, with all my thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions?'
i'm glad i'm not alone in this doubt
You could say the same thing about going to sleep. You, or at least what you think is you, stops for but a moment are you the same once you awake?
Our body is in a constant state of change. You lose thousands of skin cells in a single cut. You lose atoms, but you are still you. I do not believe the concept of the “self” is spiritual or materialistic. It is merely an illusion projected by the current state of the trillions of cells in your body (which are all living things in their own right)
@@LewisMatson-Morse sleeping is really freaky when I really think about it. Sometimes the idea of being unconscious for 8 hours and waking up with no awareness can be kind of creepy
@@LewisMatson-Morse you could say the same about sleeping, only sleeping isn't literally tearing your atoms from one another and then reassembling them when you wake up
@@TalkingWithTom fair
hey jacob! i just want to say, the content you produce is just unprecedented. i have literally never seen this kind of content before. sure, i saw philosophy content, content philosophizing some concepts or 'things', but i have never seen so many unique questions about the related topic asked, such impactful insights. congrats on being one of a kind brother. keep on being awesome.
in case no one else has mentioned it: the long takes you do are amazingly impressive, on top of being a great video all around.
If you like stories like these, highly recommend both the "We are Bob" and "The Quantum Thief" sci-fi book series. Both deal with the implications and consequences of digitized minds and the essence of the "self"/"soul"
will do
I can attest to this. "We are Bob" and the rest of the books in the series are a great read/listen.
The game that made me consider the self was soma
And house of leafs
i prefer video games like Soma. Reading books is so... last gen.
4:28 - 4:46 There's always something about Geller intros that spooks me but this one gave me chills. I know about the concept of SOMA and haven't personally played it because the existential dread would make me panic too much to get through the game, but that thought, the thought of taking someones entire head off and placing it on someone else's body scares the shit out of me.
its an amazing game. very desolate and lonely. perfect pacing so you can mull over the fuck shit that happens
I cringed with every pageflip while you discussed the monkeys man. You really know how to send a story home. My consciousness is colored impressed.
I just finished watching Severance one or two weeks ago and decided to watch this video but wasn't expecting to get bombarded with these ideas, amazing as always!
I feel like the Mauler Twins from Invincible are also relevant in relation to SOMA. When one dies, the other clones himself and transfers his consciousness to the clone, but both of them believe they’re the original, because the alternative would lead to madness.
“Welcome to the land of the living, *clone.*”
“Ugh, don’t start with that.”
thought about this too! esp with the "coin flip" being something they mentioned, too
I'd argue Robot is the better reference. The Mauler twins are unable to fully grasp that they're both the same person, and so fall to infighting for no reason. Robot, though, gets it in a way they don't. He's the same person, just relocated.
I had never played or seen a walkthrough of SOMA. I saw this video, got to the SOMA part, got interested, stopped watching the video and went to watch the game. It's been a day and I've already experienced the whole thing, ending and all. 24 hours later I'm back to finish the video and holy shit what a fucking rabbit hole. Wasn't expecting an an existential conundrum a day ago from just watching a video about head transplants.
Thank you.
YESSS god I love SOMA. I watched a playthrough years ago and it stuck so hard with me. it's not perfect but I love it so very much.
I had the same thing when I played in 2020. Had an existential crisis for a whole month after finishing the game
I just came across your channel this week, and your video essays are just amazingly poignant. Thank you for all that you do.
Your ability to put me in the headspace of people I’ve never met over decades is an amazing talent.
When I was around 9 years old, I was diagnosed with autism. I was taught that I was different, but that I should do my best to fit in. To look at what others are doing. To copy their mannerisms. To copy other people.
When I was 16, I was in a very dark place mentally. To get out of it, I repeated phrases to myself. Phrases about how I deserve to be happy. About how I should be less hard on myself. Eventually, I started to feel hope again.
And with that hope came a desire to know myself, a desire to know what I wanted. In order to figure out what I wanted, I created four versions of myself in my head, who all wanted things I wanted, but those things were distinct from each other. They would argue for hours about what was best for me to do.
And then… the voice that had been telling me that I deserved to be happy, my own voice… It merged with those four characters in my head to make… someone. This person wasn’t me, not fully, because it only had my desires.
But then another character seemed to emerge all on its own. The half that had been missing. It had my feelings, my fear, my joy. And then those two parts of me fought. And then the two made peace. And then they started working together, better and better. And then they became companions. Friends.
I would imagine them talking to each other, not as different people from me, but as different parts of me. They would figure out what I wanted. And then I would go into the world and I would slowly change my actions to better reflect what my different parts wanted. I was still copying other people but I was becoming more me. I started to push myself more and more and…
I’m 28 now. A few days ago, I tried to make one of the people in my head talk to my friend. And I failed. As soon as my friend started talking to me, I switched into the person they expected me to be. The person I had trained myself to be. I realized just how automatic this switch had become. Even though my outside self reflected my internal desired and feelings, it still felt like there was this barrier, separating my two modes of being.
There are two versions of ‘me’. The fist version is the one I am around others. The second version is a collection of people in my head. But it seems that collection of people accurately represents ‘me’. It represents me more that the person I am around others.
So then surely I should try to stop the switch from happening. I should try to stop switching to a single, untrue version of me. I should be multiple people full time. Right?
…
The idea of being a single person in a single body is a difficult idea for me to let go off. If we’re doing this, we’re not just swapping one identity for another identity. We’re swapping one identity for multiple. We’re changing what it means to be a person, at least for us. And I’m… unsure what that means…
But I suppose we’ll find out together.
I do the same thing! but it still leaves me torn a lot of the time. It's strange to see the experience put into words
It sounds like you might be plural, hun.
I'd look into that, there's a very understanding community
Pathetic.
@@VHSo_o honestly it doesn't to me. I think part of did is there not really being a "you" which it sounds like op is talking about. It sounds more like op is experiencing a form a masking. I dont want to diagnose anyone but yeah talking to a professional about it might be beneficial. At least for some more insight and advice about where to go from here
@@charliec1116 plurality is not DID
I literally can't wrap my head around how anyone would think the SOMA brain scan idea would somehow extend their personal life, instead of leaving them trapped while some other newly formed consciousness continues as a copy. Does it all come down to what Jacob said about it being copy/paste not cut/paste?
Listen to anyone talk about "uploading" their mind to a robot body. There is an inherent belief that it is a transfer, that there is something that needs to move between the two. Accepting the idea that it is copy paste leads to the uncomfortable question of what exactly your consciousness is.
@@cmdrfelix1286 my personal theory has always been the only way to do it is slowly replacing one cell at a time with a digital cell, replicating the way cells in our body die naturally over time. Otherwise it's just copy paste; but if we follow the Ship of Theseus paradox then would reassembling the old cells recreate us?
BUT if we use the Ship of Theseus paradox then we have already been replaced by a new version of ourselves, so it should be the same experience as getting older.
There is a Black Mirror special chapter (i think that it is the Christmas special) whose plots goes around this idea
we also have a memory "transplant/copy) sscene in Invincible
@@Smackteo exactly. It’s the difference between a replica and a repair
For all we know the consciousness or soul could move between the body to the robot body. It's not like we have a set idea of how the soul functions. It may be able to inhabit a robot body just as easy as our human ones.
Jacob, I have to say, I love all of your content and I watch your videos on repeat every single day, you make amazing stuff, keep working
these concepts terrify me a lot tbh, but they're endlessly fascinating to explore. the severing and/or continuation of consciousness gives me a lot of existential fear. sleep doesn't phase me, as that feels like a natural process and we still have some awareness from dreams and being able to be woken up-- that requires awareness! but, i've been under anesthesia countless times in my life, and that's not sleep. i've been under twilight sedation once as well, and the understanding that my memories of the procedure simply didn't form or were erased due to medication makes my skin crawl. i have complex PTSD and it's now generally understood that we can be traumatized by things that happen to us before we can form memories. the limbic system holds these responses, i believe (i am not an expert). does my brain hold the experiences i had under anesthesia somewhere in there? considering the surgeries i've had, one being major neurosurgery, it's alarming to say the least.
(please don't avoid medical care if you need it. this discussion is philosophical in nature)
This also doesn't consider how much of our brains are dedicated to controlling the bodies we do have. Here's what I mean: I had top surgery four years ago. I was super excited and happy to get it done, but there was something uncanny about it too. The parts of my brain dedicated to sensory input on my chest were still there, even though the chest was not. Running a hand over the incision felt like a jump over a part that was missing. In time the feeling faded, but sometimes I still feel the faint sense of missing flesh.
If I had this experience when a relatively small portion of my body was removed, I cannot imagine how a brain would cope with being in a different body.
Yeah, just like people who lose a limb and still feel pain where it used to be.
You mean to tell me if I finally get top surgery I could get phantom boob syndrome
Brains are wild
@@haphazardlark1502 I guess? But also not really? Having not had phantom limb, I can't say if it's the same or different. But I think it's different. First because there is (likely) no injury to the boob that is the reason for it's removal, there'd be no sensation that an injury is still there. Secondly, because the removal is desired and welcome, there is a feeling of no-longer-there, but not a feeling of loss (in a both physical and emotional sense). Also, the feeling lessens over time.
But also, maybe not. It's not something I've seen described by others that have had top surgery, and I felt pretty well informed going into top surgery. I'm not sure why it's not talked about, because it makes sense for it to happen. Perhaps people are so happy with the procedure that they don't think about neurological anomalies? (Perhaps I am particularly preoccupied with neurological anomalies?)
@@haphazardlark1502 Not sure if this is a serious question, but the answer is no. Phantom limb syndrome happens to LIMBS, which have (I hope I got this right) afferent as well as efferent nerves. Basically, you can MOVE your limbs by sending signals from your brain. You can't move your boobs, there are no muscles for it, and no nerves to tell them how to move. Phantom limb happens because the brain can still send commands to the limb, so the limb still "exists" in the motor representation in your brain. That doesn't apply to boobs. So you can't get phantom boob syndrome any more than you could get phantom fat syndrome from liposuction.
No disrespect meant to your boobs, btw. I love boobs!
@@echojardini If you had big boobs, so that your body learned to counterbalance them, and your arm and torso movements had to take them into account, either you or just the nonconscious "processing level" part of your brain would be initially confused by their absence. But you wouldn't get actual phantom "limb" syndrome, because that has to do with the efferent nerves that carry signals from the brain to the muscles, to move your limbs and such. Boobs don't have muscles, they're not subject to voluntary movement, so no phantom boob syndrome.
This is the first time I've heard about Soma, but the premise reminds me of a short novel by Polish sci-fi writer, Jacek Dukaj - The Old Axolotl. In short, all biological life has been wiped out by a mysterious radiation, but some people manage to upload their minds into whatever robots they have at hand - and then they just exist in this new, lifeless reality for decades and centuries. It's a fascinating, solemn exploration of what makes us human, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it.
Hey that book, I heard of it cause I watched a Netflix series about a plane which is apparently based on that book but seemingly does *not* include that thing you mentiomed, but then again i havent seen season 2 yet. Its called "Into the night"
The video essay was good, but seeing your easel go ass over teakettle was something I could truly relate to.
Keep up the good work!
Cheers
The editing in these videos is honestly inspired
When I realized how insanely relevant this video was to the big creative project I'm working on at the moment I honestly kind of lost it a bit. For the last few months I've been, y'know... rereading Frankenstein and taking notes and recording quotes, looking at how organ donation works and how typical organ donation doesn't include your brain but you can sign up specifically to donate your brain after you die. About how in 2011 The CDC released a comic about surviving a zombie apocalypse that was supposed to be a parallel to prepping for a hurricane. Meanwhile that same year the Department of Defense actually released a hypothetical plan for dealing with an actual real life zombie apocalypse. But yeah, I'm up to my head in this stuff and I'm so excited to look more into some of the stuff talked about in this video.
The idea of the soul is never directly named in what I have planned in my story at the moment, but personhood is something that's a pretty major theme and the center of a pretty major confrontation. The main character in the story is a sort of frankencreature (that's what I've been calling them)- sewn together out of individual body parts and brought to life etc. etc. They don't know much about their existence past this, while the creator doesn't intend to abandon her creation, she ends up doing so anyways. Dr. Hugh intends to sedate her creation (later named Emmett) through the night and get back to her project in the morning, but Emmett wakes up later in the night and escapes their restraints.
Long story short, Emmett finally returns to the lab they were created in and confronts their creator, and it's revealed that Dr. Hugh was attempting to bring someone specific, a longtime friend and coworker she had a falling out with and died years later, back to life. Though Hugh was inspired by Frankenstein, she thought that the primary mistake he made was failing to create his creature with a purpose- he was pretty much just made to prove that Frankenstein could bring something back to life. Hugh thought it would be fairly useless to create an undead monster just for the sake of it, so she concentrated on the idea of bringing someone back to life so they could continue to general human knowledge etc. But Emmett is not who she was trying to bring back. Emmett is their own person with their own thoughts and personality and experiences. The most they remember from their previous life are the echos of more subconscious things; preexisting language passageways in their inherited brain, muscle memory, etc.
Throughout the confrontation, Hugh desperately attempts to trigger the memories of her deceased friend, making references to memories Emmett doesn't have. When Hugh finally breaks, finally admits that her friend is fully and truly gone, she starts to wonder what went wrong. Her friend's brain was completely undamaged, if everything else reanimated fine, then surely the friend would've come back, right? At the mention of the brain being undamaged, Emmett laughs a bit. The friend had died. Maybe the cause of death was completely unrelated to the brain, but it had ceased to function. It had turned off, and there was zero intention for it to ever be turned on again. There's no way in their mind that wasn't in some way traumatic, they themself get nightmares about being frozen alive from their brain and body's memory of being frozen before being assembled. Would the friend even want to come back? they ask. Dr. Hugh flippantly replies that of course she would've wanted to come back. Her life had been cut off short, and for a long time, they had been friends. Emmett asks if she would've wanted to come back into a body that wasn't hers, one that was not exactly human. Emmett is fine with it, but that's because its /their/ body. Also, hey, how long has it been since you two were friends, anyways? You think there might've been a reason you two fell apart?
But yeah uh that's a culmination of an arc to a story I'm creating. Slowly. In some form or another. Hopefully I don't regret sharing a bit I'm fairly proud of in the comments of a youtube video lol.
EDIT: if you wanna see where this whole *gestures vaguely* thing is going, i would recommend subscribing to my channel for at least a bit! at least like, a week. don't mind the years old videos on there. because i've gotten a pretty big positive response to this story on youtube, i'm going to attempt to make a short little video explaining where you can follow the development of it once i have that all sorted out a bit more properly. at the moment it's a bit scattered but this has kind of given me a push to start consolidating it into something a bit more accessible.
this is really interesting! is there any way to read it once you're finished?
@@springshowers4754 ditto, im utterly fascinated by this comment
i haven’t even watched the damn video yet!
i am so interested in consuming this story once it is out!
David! David, it's Marvin! Your cousin, Marvin Cronenberg! You know that knew plot you were looking for? Well, listen to THIS!
that's good keep writing soldier o7
I made this comment up the top, but I was really intrigued by this comment and I thought I'd add to the thread.
Spoilers for Agents off Shield Series 4
Okay, does anyone remember the Life Model Decoys and the Framework arc? Radcliff was betrayed and killed by Aida, but his consciousness was retained and stored in the Framework. The Russian guy had his head lopped off, which he was severely opposed to, until it happened when he was knocked out and ended up in control of an army of duplicates of himself. His duplicates were surprisingly quick to adapt to the initial shock of finding his preserved head, remotely still controlling his actions. Even May, Fitz and Coulson were taken and swapped out with LMD's, still believing themselves to be the original. Even when LMD May learnt she wasn't the original, that she was made of metal and synthetic skin, when she lured LMD Coulson into a trap to take both of them out together, she admitted she was afraid of dying. She would give her life to protect her original body and consciousness, to protect her friends on the Zephyr, but the knowledge that this version of her would come to a very definitive end very soon, still terrified her. I don't know what to make of all this, but I feel I have to discuss it more, if only to make sense of it all.
This is basically the Buddhist concept of "anatta". From this concept, one can argue a continuous process from the beginning of the Universe to your current conscious experience with every part of it being "you". This also allows for a more robust understanding of reincarnation, since all consciousness experiences are equal. There is no difference between me and you. It's a view I've always found comforting and solved my existential crisis of nearly a decade. It brings you at home in the universe
How are all conscious experiences equal ? The simple 3D input maybe, but as a simple question, why don't all the students of the same class get the same scores in tests ? At the very least there are different perceptions that exist.
@@Alfred5555 the fact of conscious experience are all equal but the experience itself is all different and unique. The same way yellow is still yellow on a flower or on a wall or on your shirt.
@@Alfred5555 People do not experience everything at once, all time time. It’s not “the same”, it’s “equal”. The same way you and I would have equal treatment in a hospital, not the same treatment.
@@mynameisambertoo7379 The guy said "there is no difference between me and you" so I don't think he means the abstract concept of two differently sized buckets holding equal amounts of water, he is using equal to imply the same in all ways that matter.
And I already said how perhaps you could call physical 3D experiences equal, obviously mental experiences are almost impossible to be equal, so idk why'd just say the same thing but opposite back to me.
If we didn't get the same treatment then our treatment was not equal, you could say the quality, or time taken, or value of the treatment was equal, but unless it was the exact same treatment then you could not call it equal. Equal literally and philosophically means "the same".
The words origin comes from meaning "even" or "level" as in when you weigh two items on a set of scales they balance to be "evenly" "level" with each other because they have literally the same weight, then the word "equal" developed out of this. You could say that the sets of scales were used to weigh items different in all sorts of ways though, not items just the same, and yes but the original usage of the word "equal" as I have just explained was short for "is the same weight". If people looked at the two items on the scales objectively they wouldn't call them equal just because they have equal weight, they would simply say they have equal weight.
You are simply using the word "equal" wrong. Or actually the original commenter and likely you too are using the word with it's exact proper connotation of "the same" and it's your idea that is wrong.
@@alexgaggio2957 Then this is not "conscious experience".
We have no idea if the yellow that you perceive is the same as the yellow I perceive, we just happen to both call those things yellow.
But in more concrete terms your referral to how the colour yellow is still yellow no matter what item it is, is objectivism, exactly as I said, we would all likely agree that physical 3D experiences can be "equal" or the same as another (because we can objectively measure most of them), but the cognitive mental experience would be most likely all completely different for every person (hence perhaps why we can hardly even express things like colours with physical communication). But this would mean as I said that all "conscious experiences" are not equal, only physical experiences can likely be equal, and even though we all likely share similar physical reactions to said physical experiences, suggesting the cognitive experience was also similar, it does not make the whole conscious experience equal or the same, either relatively or literally.
When you say "conscious" do you mean "physical" ? Because it's quite funny to see someone else comment trying to explain yourself for you but by saying the exact opposite to what you have said in this reply, they essentially said that it's the physical aspect of an experience that doesn't matter or can be different, but the mental experiences are all the same, i.e. going to a hospital, getting different treatments, but our experiences being the same.
This reminded me (especially the story of soma) of a research paper I wrote for my 10th grade speech course. Although it wasn’t quite about head transplants, it was about time travel and conscious existence. I made the claim that acts of subconscious practices can be concluded as time travel. Like sleeping and waking up to the future. Being in a coma and time traveling years ahead. And even conscious travel like looking at a childhood photograph and time traveling back to the past through our memories.
this channel is an absolut gold mine, thank you
One of my favorite parts of SOMA is at the end when you're on the ark and you answer a questionnaire that you had done earlier in the game. The questions ask you things like "Do you feel comfortable with where you are" and "Does this feel real" along with several others like them. This questionnaire comes right after finding out your previous self was left on station at the bottom of the ocean. It really makes you question weather or not it was worth it; combined with the thought of how several other versions of you had to die in order for you to get to this "paradise" you had been working towards.
I am infinitely terrified of death and always fantasized about digitalizing the brain and moving it onto a computer or something.
But no matter how much I try to rationalize it, copying a consciousness onto a digital medium is simply not a method of moving *you* over. It makes a copy of you and then that copy lives on while you die. There are hundreds of scenarios where this continues to be the case. I always struggled with that inevitability, because even if we do somehow achieve the technology to digitize the brain, like for instance in Cyberpunk 2077, you still have to kill the original person. It would take more time to figure out how to move the real person over without killing them, than to figure out how to digitize them in the first place.
I mean, when you go to sleep, do you die? When you die and get resuscitated, have you died? Are you still you? Has the consciousness before died or not. The present nature of our being is so difficult to comprehend and grasp that it leaves me in constant doubt about how anything even happens. When I wake up in the morning, I feel like I didn't die, but I'm not the one who died. I woke up, therefore I'm not dead. But the me who fell asleep, maybe did? You, as you exist, always assume the benefit of the survivor. You can never view the world from the point of view of the unfortunate entity, because your very existence makes that an impossibility.
I won't go on a massive tangent beyond what I've already said, because that is a looping monologue that can go on seemingly forever.
But I will share an idea I came up with while struggling to process my own existence and mortality.
In an event of a digitalization, I figured there might be a chance of actually making it happen without you dying. I came up with it having referenced many different talks and discussions on the controversial epilepsy treatment which severs the main connection between the halves of your brain. Long story short, epilepsy is a neurological disease caused primarily by signal issues occuring when your left and right side of the brain communicate. A radical, and permanent solution was to sever the halves, however, due to how our brains develop, this was initially recognized as only viable in toddlers, since their brains were not developed enough to have a significant portion of their growth on the non dominant hemisphere. I think they have since abandoned the treatment, much like they would have lobotomy, as it did seem quite barbaric. Some older patients have told horror stories about how their non dominant side of the body behaved independently, as though it had a mind of its own, which is essentially what happened, but because it was the non dominant side of the brain, it only had access to half your sight, hearing and one arm and leg. Most of your behavior is coordinated subconsciously, but there are some activities that the other half of the brain could take control over within their own tools. Unfortunately, because they couldn't speak, and because their side of the brain was significantly under developed, as it was the non dominant one, that side usually had the mental capacity of no more than a 5 year old child.
Either way, as I was pondering those whacky stories, I realized you can technically transfer your consciousness into a digital medium while preserving continuity of thought and existence. It is quite drastic and traumatic, but I do believe it is the only way to guarantee the process does not kill the old you, at least not in the way that the dying part would consider the death of self.
You simply must hook up the brain to a digital medium and allow it to exist in that form uninterrupted for an extended period of time. Once you have your brain in both your head and on a hard drive, but remaining connected at all times, you become a singular entity. You'd have the experience of having your bodily senses, but also the senses provided by the machine, whatever sensors it may have, cameras, microphones, etc. You could learn how to exist as this expanded entity for a while and exist in this weird state of seeing yourself through both your own eyes, but also the cameras of the computer, seeing your own body but also seeing the computer looking back at you, and recognizing it as an extension of yourself. Then, after a long enough time adapting, and making sure a full conscious redundancy is achieved, you can then shut down your body. It will be like an amputation. You'll go blind in your eyes, you won't hear anything through your ears anymore, some memories will fade, some part of you will vanish, but will not have died. Neither of you would have died because you were both just one entity. Only half of you was removed, and that is definitely a tangible loss, but your consciousness goes on uninterrupted, just like in the epilepsy surgery patients. This is of course a massive hypothetical and is likely never going to come anywhere close to being feasible, but as far as thought experiments go, It's the only solution I found to this copy and past problem.
Thanks for listening to my TedTalk.
I’d rather have the option to die. I’d also rather stay organic.
"When you die and get resuscitated, did you die? Are you still you?"
new fear unlocked
That long adjustment process is exactly how I imagine transfer-of-consciousness would work! Ultimately, it would be a means of “true” preservation over just copying sentience (it’s also the only one I would try were it feasible lol)
Your solution doesn't guarantee will persevere tho.
If instead of killing your biological brain you simply separated the two, there's no guarantee that would be part of the computer, and instead remained in the body.
In the case of the epilepsy patients, their consciousness got split in two.
From the point of view of each of their new consciousnesses they kept existing and just lost access to a big part of their experience, but the that existed before arguably died.
You could argue that the was always part of the dominant half, and so it would always end up persevered, but what about the computer brain?
Did the always live in the biological brain and just learned to use the computer brain as an extension?
The in your body would still die, which just might be the that is writing this, while the brain has developed a separate identity.
If you want complete digitalization without a risk of breaking the stream of consciousness you'd need to do it progressively, for each neuron, add a sythetic neuron that reacts exactly as its biological counterpart, have them both run at the same time and then simply remove the biological one.
Repeat billions of times.
Since you're changing just a single neuron at a time your consciousness has time to change and adapt to the synthetic neurons. Your personality might slowly change but the stream of consciousness is never interrupted unless there just so happens to be a single individual neuron that is .
@@spliter88 Well yes, that's more or less what I meant, I just said it in simpler terms without being so specific with every neuron and so on. I think with the brain hemisphere separation, while yes, the non dominant side gets its own separated personality, I was illustrating a point that as soon as that separation occurs, you create that new entity, and to that entity, it is near on a death experience, as it just lost about 80% of its brain capacity, memory and capability. What I was trying to illustrate is that there is a difference between the act of separating the two sides, and killing one of them before separation. I think that as long as these two sides are connected, by killing one rather than severing the connection, you do not create a new entity, you trim the existing one. The other part is so reliant and subservient to the bigger chunk, that is not an identity on its own until the moment of separation. If it dies prior to that moment, it doesn't die, the primary identity is instead just partially diminished. What I am trying to avoid is the instance an identity realizes it has been separated and then is subsequently killed. That is a disqualifier for me. I think that can be avoided as long as multiple sources of the identity are in constant connection, forming just one, rather than a multitude.
one of my most favourite youtube videos of all time, thank you
Man I recently got into your page and subscribed because of the Pinocchio synopsis, but man, the way you explain things, and the stories that you tell is very soothing, even if it’s unsettling and very informational keep up the good work man❤
For being a horror game, I consider Soma one of my favorites as a story about the synonymous nature of hope and desperation. Simon wouldn’t have been in that office if he wasn’t both desperate and hopeful enough that the treatment would work. Those that killed themselves to be in ark wouldn’t have done it without both the need to escape and the belief that they would live on the ark. Even Catherine and Simon launching themselves in the end, despite its consequences, was an act of desperation and hope.
As far as a horror games go, it’s the one game I’ve played that I think has managed to capture the essence of what drives humans and furthermore, the willingness to stretch what it means to be human.
The only other game I can think of that has done similar is The Talos Principle and I hope future game studios look towards the opportunity to do so.
This video feels like it was made for me. I've been thinking about the concept of continuous existence ever since I heard someone theorize that if teleportation required disassembling and reassembling a person atom-by-atom, then surely they would have died and been replaced with a perfect replica, but of course nobody could tell the difference. Excellent video :)
Oh my god, finally! Someone who realizes how terrifying Star Trek transporters actually are. Literally everyone I’ve talked about this to didn’t get it.
Was it CGP Grey’s video “The Trouble With Transporters”?
@@connorwalters9223 I don't actually remember where I first heard it. But I'm sure that video is exactly what I mean.
@@codeofclaw Like those people you talked to I don't get it. Can you explain what's scary?
@@DavidSartor0 So the way transporters work in ST is they disassemble you to the molecular level and transmit those molecules to another place where they are put back together. Theoretically, if that process killed a person, we would have no way of knowing since it would appear the same person came out the other side, same DNA, same memories, and with their sense continual existence unbroken. But really, the person you sent through the transporter is dead and even that person’s copy wouldn’t know a difference
Love how interesting this video is, the questions he askes, the pointa he takes up.
Another favorite essay, you really make ‘em like no other Jacob
Ahh, finally, the Jacob Gellering of SOMA. Feels good man. Fantastic essay as usual, your editing is great in this one!
There's a bit to unpack on this, and I love the deep discussions on this because I really want more people to think long and hard about the concept of identity and self. Especially when you become a subject of that for most of your life. I want the discussion about what it means to be you, just because you have someone else's eyes, arm, leg, kidney, or heart. And I want to hear people really stop thinking about the 'original' being the superior, or truer sense of self. Because it really isn't a healthy way of seeing what the world has to offer.
I say this, because I am a twin, ( I know, it's a stretch) and I get the jokes that like to tease me and my sister about our identities. Many friends and family innocently mistaking our interests as 'the same' or comparing one another like one would discuss a fantasy football game match up, or being accused of being responsible for the actions of your twin sister, and thus judged on the actions of someone else instead of your own. You grow up starting to realize that your identity outside of yourself is separate from the identity people place on you, and it is a nightmare trying to make people SEE that without sounding upset over a petty mistake like accidentally calling you by your twin sister's name, or assuming that because you told one of us something, that the other would inherently know.
Jokes that range from 'It's okay if you die, we have a backup' to 'Which one is the evil twin?' has really dried up my well of humor these days when people discuss twins, or triplets like aliens despite the fact that they are no different than siblings born a year apart from each other. It may all seem harmless, but when you grow up with it, it adds up, and you constantly end up thinking about all those stories of clones, in movies and television, and how utterly disposable they all are to the 'REAL thing'.
Imagine being asked a question as a child, to another child in a play ground that 'You're just a clone of your sister, technically. So which one is the REAL you?'
Bringing it back to subject:
One day we may be able to manufacture entire bodies in a lab, and connect our brains to them in order to extend their lives, I hope that we have a better grasp of identity than we do today. Just look up Clone/twin tropes on tv tropes and decide just how likely we're going to treat people when we reach the stage of making bodies to help a human life.
wow, that was some incredible insight.. Well, for what its worth, ive already made it clear to my loved ones that im going to have my head cyrogencially frozen, then grafted to a new body one thousand years in the future, or whenever they have the technology to do so. Also, im ordering Shaq's body. Having said that i dont believe in the concept of a soul, so i wouldnt be going thru this existential crisis like half of our country lol
Just notice
Those are looong takes without cuts, after filming people talking for a while I can't help but applaud you for your flow and confidence
YOU SIR ARE AN ARTIST
It's because of this that I find myself jumping to the idea of the universe experiencing itself. Ends and beginnings never made much sense even when you're talking about 'souls' as is. Sense we're constantly changing our physical parts, our electric bits. But the idea that we're all just one being is much more terrifying in it's own way.
This is why we pretend like we're not. I kind of love the idea that reality exists because God couldn't stand being alone forever, so it pretends like it isn't.
I totally agree.
The simple idea of conscience in a pure biologic machine is really odd if you do not accept that conscience can come from any complex system, we are consciences that know that are consciences, but the universe itself and many of it sub systems are complex enough to be consciences themself, humanity as a group is one.
It's just that our brain(mostly the linguistic part) like to think that it is the only thing that "thinks", if every thing the thought is, is a mechanical/chemical process... almost everything around us "think".
I’ve always loved the line “I shot him and his soul spattered itself up Ong the wall. Every through he ever had, sliding down its surface with bits of bone and promise”
Where'd this sentence come from and where can I read more?
@@oddballprevaricator4043 i honestly dont remember but i need to find it, I think it was a script though
@@FANDOMlong-live-US We need the script!
Have you ever heard of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment? It starts like this: A ship sets sail and on its journey every part is progressively replaced until, when it reaches its destination, everything has been replaced. The question it asks is: is it still the same ship or something completely new? When used in the context of the human body it can lead to several questions involving the idea of the soul and lead down quite the thought spiral.