Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-26397825-20151211051732/@comment-24908808-20151229050559

Shadow at Morning wrote: Do note that while I agree with Phantom on the physical basis aspect (I'm not actually sure who developed the theory first), we disagree on the cause. I cannot attribute it to EM, because that can't affect things in the same way. Rather, I attribute to a new phenomenon emergent from the complex system, for reasons obviously unknown to us. Regardless, the only aspect of a person which pertains to the soul is the mind, which solely lies in the neural architecture. To affect the mind is necessarily to affect the soul; what is called the soul is generated and caused by the mind, which has its entire basis in the neural net. One cannot "only affect the mind" because the sum total of a person, their individuality, personality, nature, all the things associated with the soul, are shaped by the physiochemical actions of the brain, much of which is exclusively memory. To alter the memory is to shake their very identity.

That is the point. Identity rests solely in memory, which contain the experiences that shape them into who they are.

As to the teleporter problem, it is very much killing the person. Would you say that a person assembled technologically from disparate matter from a detailed body and brain scan is the same person as the original, or it is just a clone with the same memories?

No, they are not the same person, but they share the same personality/mindset/identity to the point where one can replace the other in those terms. So the latter; after all, they are not the original. Would you say that if a person walks into a device which scans their body and brain and then disintegrates them, then they are dead? I accept the continuity argument of the Ship of Theseus, but here there is no continuity. I think that, rather than getting scientific, this is getting psychological. It depends on what you believe in. I'll split it up, say, into the 'Original' and 'Spirit' for the lack of a better explanation. The Original is the 'shell', while the Spirit is the hermit crab that can move shells. If the shell is gone and the crab finds a different body, then simply the shell -- Original -- is gone and the crab -- Spirit -- finds a different body. It depends on who you consider the person - the Original body or the Spirit that contains their personality.

I hope that's an understandable metaphor. A semblance with the ability to throw memories might be possible, because it is so much more limited. Potentially extracting certain memories is possible, but that runs the risk of mind-reading.

Earlier we established a limit that the memory fades after a while and the person will forget having them. Perhaps they will remember their own reaction to the memory, but that is up to them to judge if mind-reading is an unfortunate consequence or an advantage.

I do not speak of the morality preventing the existence. My point was twofold. That the very act is unethical, and so it is a semblance the use of which would come under intense scrutiny. If the ability is unethical, and it is connected to the soul, which is connected to the mind, which contains the memory, which influences the personality, then the person who has the ability probably is unethical as well and will use it for world domination.

Ethics dictate action.

And that the most technologically advanced nation on the planet can barely do it after decades of research.

Wow, Atlas better live up to its standards quickly before people realise it's not as advanced as they claim.

So here is how it fit into the RWBY universe, correct? It's possible for it to exist, just not artificially (yet).