GURPS Transhuman Space variant: Souls are empircally proven to exist

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by Glimmerman

If string theories about multiverses (and reincarnation) are true, then

The Soul: You can buy Racial Memory (p. 78) and Special Rapport (p. 88) aka soul mate.

Soulless: Unique (p. 160).

Discovery of soul could lead to Social Regard (p. 86) and Social Stigma: Minority Group (p. 155) as soulless Digital Minds recognize conflict between instincts and intellect.

That's not exactly what I was looking for but its pretty cool. Thanks!

[Dwarf99]

Here's my criteria for souls

1. Is it sentient or sapient (disabled persons may be unable to use tools on their own, but still have cognizance, likewise elephants have been subjected to tests indicating that they know the difference between themselves and when someone puts paint on their forehead and shows them a mirror.)
2. Is it capable of learning (does outside stimuli alter internal programming and/or future behavior in adaptive ways? Do the stimuli affect its ability to calculate risk in future endeavors?)
3. Is it capable of sufficient emotional output that it may remain behind once all physical traces of its existence are absent or destroyed

More or less. I may amend this list in the future.

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I was about to bring up P-zombies, but then I read to the end of the paragraph. If it thinks, feels, reacts, learns etc. as good as those with souls, then it's not very relevant. If it doesn't, then you just postulated that the setting doesn't have Ghosts and SAIs, and uses Shadows and LAIs instead (or something along those lines).

I wouldn't put it quite like that. One of the base assumptions of THS seems to be that there is little if any quantifiable, objective difference between high level AIs and biological minds. This premises ditches that assumption. Aware intelligent biological minds have something that digital minds lack that, at least at this time can't be replicated by technology. What that could imply is pretty wide open.

That and adding a bit of “super-science” (in the sense its driven by things that are not in evidence in the real world) are the reasons I thought it was pretty radical divergence from canon. There's some handwaving going on I won't deny but its interesting enough an idea (IMO, YMMV).;

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Keiko

As I said before, if you don't buy the premise, that's fine but for the purposes of the thread the initial premise is objectively true in the setting. Could be please keep things on that track?

I think you have a very serious problem with defining the premise.

It doesn't matter whether the things being detected are, objectively, souls. Whatever you think that means. Nobody in THS has any way of knowing your objective truth. How they react to the souls will be based on what is known about them, not what they actually are. And you aren't giving information that makes a general belief that the souls are in fact souls at all plausible.

If 'THS-dwellers generally believe these things to be souls' was supposed to be part of the premise, that wasn't very clear.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Keiko

If you don't buy the premise, that's fine but these posts aren't really contributing to the thread topic.

I'm inhibited from contributing because I do not understand what you mean by "souls". I understand the term to refer to a supposed non-physical cause of mental phenomena. But if mental phenomena have a non-physical cause then you'll end up with a world lacking several prominent features of THS, so i don't think that that can be what you mean.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Keiko

As I said before, if you don't buy the premise, that's fine but for the purposes of the thread the initial premise is objectively true in the setting. Could be please keep things on that track?

Well, it's going to have some interesting effects on medicine and politics. These are all things that people in-setting will be wanting to find out:

All normal humans have a s-field, and it usually stays around for a while after they die. Are there any humans who don't have one? There's scope for quite a bit of study there. If there are, why? Who will claim that people without s-fields aren't human at all? There will be groups who claim to be able to show that <insert enemy group here> don't have souls and thus aren't human.

How about humans with severe brain damage who are being kept going artificially? If some of them don't have an s-field, its absence will be suggested as a criterion for turning off life support, which is going to create interesting dilemmas for religious-social conservatives.

Exploring just how much uplifting gives an s-field will be interesting. How about the style of uplifting involving brain tissue grafts? If that can give an s-field, is it a property of the creature or the grafts?

When does a human foetus acquire its s-field? Does it make a difference if it's being grown in an androwomb? There's some huge political fights waiting on those answers.

Different religions have somewhat different concepts of the soul. They're going to have a wide range of reactions, from "We must change our ideas" or "Souls can't possibly be detectable by science" to "Blasphemers!"

Do the more intelligent natural animals have anything like an s-field, only different? If so, what happens when you subject them to very strong fields of that kind of energy? If something can be physically detected, it can be interacted with. If one can do things to an animal's s-field, what happens when you try the same thing on humans? (some people will skip the animal stages).

Overall, I see this as a pretty dark future.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Keiko

I wouldn't put it quite like that. One of the base assumptions of THS seems to be that there is little if any quantifiable, objective difference between high level AIs and biological minds. This premises ditches that assumption. Aware intelligent biological minds have something that digital minds lack that, at least at this time can't be replicated by technology. What that could imply is pretty wide open.

If machine intelligences nevertheless work, in particular if ghosts have mental performance that is close to that of the people they were based on (which implies that the human mind is a function of neurology), then most people will say that this mysterious new discovery doesn't matter. Mental phenomena can be replicated by technology, including the ethically significant phenomena of enjoyment and suffering.

[sir_pudding]

So Doolittle dophins have one, but wild-type cetaceans don't despite being borderline-sapient (according the ASIT)? What about augmented dolphins?

[Keiko]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

So Doolittle dophins have one, but wild-type cetaceans don't despite being borderline-sapient (according the ASIT)? What about augmented dolphins?

Augmented in what way?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Keiko

I wouldn't put it quite like that. One of the base assumptions of THS seems to be that there is little if any quantifiable, objective difference between high level AIs and biological minds.

I'm pretty sure this is not true in canon THS in the first place.

AIs are sentient, but they're not sentient exactly the same way as biological minds. AI psychology is a different skill. Elements of the differences between AI and human minds led to memetics.

Now, ghosts may more or less fit that statement...beyond the obvious quantifiable, objective fact of being software running on a computer rather than a structure of active neuronal tissue. (Which, I suspect, would draw a lot of bite out of this...ghosts don't require glucose, oxygen, and water or emit carbon dioxide. Why is this any more significant?)