[ExI] Defeatist Science Fiction Writers

[Lee Corbin]

Stefano wrote in the thread "Death gives meaning to life?"

> [Lee wrote]
>> it's been understood that one will of course have "backups" throughout
>> any region of space in exact analogy to off-site storage of important
>> computer data.
> 
> Yes, it came to my mind, Schild's Ladder being even more a case in
> point than Glory, where they are relatively casual about the loss of
> one of more "individualities" (the real loss being considered that of
> experiences and data collected since the last backup) as long as
> copies are kept somewhere and can restored on the desidered support.

Egan is defeatist. He ought to have grown up on Horatio Alger
stories, full of can-do, overcoming insurmountable obstacles,
and "never say die".  All too often his characters become bored
with living (after a few million years) and choose to die.

It's outrageous. There are ALWAYS new things to explore. And
even if they weren't, there is just something wrong with you if you
happen to find stuff boring.  (Unless you're bored because you know
of something so much *better* to go do  :-)

Boredom should be and will be under our control, of course.

> OTOH, it might be argued, even though this is in my view a purely
> nominalistic argument, that the destruction of a given, working copy
> of your identity would be "death" and that your restored backup would
> be an identical individual rather than your mythical "self", so that
> the loss would be prevented for your community and/or the universe,
> but not really for the "self itself".

Well, some of us disagree  :-)  Some of us think a person
to be an objective fuzzy set in the space of all algorithms,
but let's wait a few more weeks before going there yet again  :-)

> The real issue, however, is that
> Egan's virtually "immortal" characters, while being , do accept
> reasonable risks whenever this is worth doing - or even chose to be
> terminated, sometimes, as it happens in Diaspora.

Yes, and, you mentioned "Glory" here:

> ...it came to my mind, Schild's Ladder being even more a case in
> point than Glory, where they are relatively casual about the loss of
> one of more "individualities" (the real loss being considered that of
> experiences and data collected since the last backup) as long as
> copies are kept somewhere and can restored on the desidered support.

Yes, but to me it's even worse. At the end, there is a perfectly
comfortable person who really has the ability to commit instant
suicide at any point if she wishes, and so cannot be tortured.
Okay, so she was logical (to me) to judge that only if she "died"
could "she" resume the more attractive existence back in the
Amalgam. (To my way of thinking, Egan truly does grok identity.)

But why not at least *try* to have it both ways? I don't recall.
Shouldn't she have been able to just cut off communication with
the Amalgam (she was being held prisoner though allowed almost
complete freedom on a pretty nice planet)? Then she could
continue to do interesting things there, while they, figuring she
was dead, restored another copy back home.  But Egan seems
to often have a thing against copies. (Oh, oh---Again, we should
wait a while before "it" starts again.)

> The real issue, however, is that Egan's virtually "immortal"
> characters, while being , do accept reasonable risks whenever
> this is worth doing - or even chose to be terminated, sometimes,
> as it happens in Diaspora.

Yes, but from our point of view here, isn't that nuts? Whatever
possesses Egan?  As I say, "where there is life and energy, there
can be happiness" (unless something is medically wrong with you).

I think that I know what happened to Arthur Clark, Greg Egan,
and many more (but didn't happen to the earlier Heinlein or Laumer).

Lee