Comments on: Beautiful World 11: Termination

By: Nicky

Nicky — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:26:19 +0000

I agree with Moment. You do an excellent job of putting Adam’s viewpoint into play, and really hit home with it. It makes me wonder where the universe, our universe, really does draw the line. Where is consciousness, really? Is it in that mass of grey and white matter that sits in your skull, or is it somewhere ephemeral? Can it be bottled, shunted, copied and pasted?

Well done! :)

By: Kristina Tracer

Kristina Tracer — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:54:58 +0000

It certainly isn’t my desire to create straw men; Adam’s concerns are real concerns. I disagree with him, but I wouldn’t be doing justice to the work if I were to present him as anything less than fully-formed. He’s certainly short here, but what hasn’t been visually covered to this point is all of the personal pain he’s tried to resolve getting to where he is at this point.

By: Momentrabbit

Momentrabbit — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:06:19 +0000

The eternal questions are still sticky in the future, I see. “What am ‘I’? Where do ‘I’ go when ‘I’ am not here? Can ‘I’ exist outside of the hardware that currently supports ‘me’?”

And really, how do *any* of us know any of this is real, once the neurotomes do their work? It could all be simulation.

Or am I just programmed to find that fascinating…

Nice. You really feel the struggle in Adam, and the certainty of John.

By: Channing

Channing — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:01:23 +0000

I’m… dreadfully sorry, I still can’t figure out how to use OpenID here. I know it’s probably something stupid and simple I’m missing but for now I guess you’ll just have to cope with knowing it’s me without actually having any fancy digital proof of this.

As always, I have to side with the Luddite here. He’s being overly brusque, verging on mean, but I can’t help but cut him some slack on this. So far, you’ve done wonderfully in presenting all these disparate viewpoints reasonably sympathetically without ever creating straw men — this chapter comes the closest so far, but you’re still clear of it, and I do so hope this trend continues.