Actually, Artemis died 20 years before we even heard from them. They were always a ghost in the machine.
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This always tripped me out! Like, I could imagine every Traveller is the same person, but all in different dimensions of existence. Which is why I think the Anomaly is incredibly important since it exists everywhere at once. One thing I don’t like and absolutely love about the current story in NMS is that there are sooo many unanswered questions. A lot of which can be filled in with some imagination, but I am dying for a clear ‘ending’ or sorts where most everything is explained.
But like… part of me loves that mystery and unknown! But… I gotta know!! lol
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This was my thinking too but, if the mind still lives even in a sim; is the person alive in the sim or dead because they have no body?
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From a purely scientific perspective, the “mind” is how the connections between your brain cells are configured. Therefore, your mind cannot exist outside your body. There is no “uploading” your mind into a machine; you could copy your brain cofiguration into digital format, but it would only be a copy, it would not be “you”. Any science-fiction story that says otherwise is not being realistic.
For this whole Dreamer narrative to be possible, we would have to make a stretch. Supposedly we are getting back their memories that are lost in the simulation. That only makes sense if the W/ARE device copied their memories and destroyed the connections in their brain that stored them. So we are basically getting back the copies of their memories so that their brains can learn them again.
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If all were purely science in that perspective then emotion is an illusion and all acts that can be passed to another such as an act of love or kindness is merely a falsehood within the connections of the mind. So, if able to associate with other people, other minds; then the question becomes a matter of are you able to interact with another mind or is all interaction just within your own mind?
As we look at the firings in a brain on an electric scale and apply this to who a person is as they think, act, and all that led to that point; if data can be transfered why can the mind not be the same?
A telephone takes a voice from one point and transports it as data and reconfigures it to the opposite end and must reconfigure the data as it once was. This is (not to be ironic) not a copy I would exactly say, but maybe an echo? If this is so and this is an act of reconfiguration of the dreamer’s mind, then would this not be the ‘Echo’ from the ARG?
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“Emotion is an illusion” is not scientific, it’s philosophical. Emotions can be scientifically defined as chemical changes in the endocrine system, a very tangible thing.
And in that vein, since the “Echo” as you call it, of the person’s mind, no longer has that physical body with hormones and other physical aspects, including the brain cells, it really cannot be the same being anymore, as it can no longer experience and exist in the same way.
If the body dies, the being is dead, even if some digital Echo exists, to answer your original question.
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A fascinating topic…life after death…but one that not even science has the answer for…not yet anyway. Personally I think we are more akin to software than anything else.
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There is an intermediate option that could work… Since consciousness seems to be in the processes of the neural network, a mind could be slowly augmented with working artificial pathways that would coexist, allowing for the organic consciousness to slowly colonice the artficial paths… Neuroplasticity used to first expand and lastly fully substitute every organic cell.
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That would be quite an extreme trauma…and would probably drive most people insane…to have their consciousness transferred into a body that does not feel or function as a human one and one with entirely different sets of needs.
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Considering the apparent quantic nature of our mind, it would also have to be a destructive process… The result would be a mind/brain/copy/clone and likely an insane one at that… Or every familiar stimuli simulated so that it wouldn’t know better.
A “RAM” and “hardrive” upgrade that amplifies your capabilities and that can slowly substitute the “softdrive”.
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It’s the old debate of what constitutes identity. While this view is quite pragmatic, it’s not complete. The body is not a static thing and is constantly rebuilding itself. At the lowest level, we swap out 95% of the atoms our bodies consist of in five years. A level higher, we replace almost all of our cells over the course of 7 years. Again a level higher we are an amalgamation of macro- and microorganisms, some of which not even a part of our bodies but just living in symbiosis with it, almost all of them replaceable with the necessary technology.
At the end of the day, regarding identity as a problem of configuration doesn’t seem such a bad approach. And configuration is data.
The remaining question is, how advanced is technology for re-applying that configuration to an actual physical form in the WT-universe.
Since dead bodies are a problem, we have to assume that it’s not much more advanced than in the real world, so your point still stands.
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Someone catch me up. Are y’all talking about the Live Chat Sessions? I don’t have the patience to read thru the ‘discussion’, today if it’s off topic. Thanks.
There isn’t much to say about the live chat sessions really…not much was learned or done there.
Re-Greetz, all.
Been away the weekend, back home now.
This looks interesting…
I so need to catch-up. O_o
By the way (re the prev)
Been reading up on the solution double-transposition thingy… (I’m not all clued up in cipher stuff, but I like to think my Brain can learn rather quick, and numbers and patterns often stick out, for me… plus, Iove a good BrainStorm.)
I wanna try and understand how the solution was reached, and then how the bloody thing works (from raw data to translated) – logic is suggesting how i should use the AEDBC (etc whatever) posted with the deciphered process list of filenames ((dammit!! so many Es and Xs, how did I not think of that?)), but I can’t brain right now…
Has anyone posted a “how-to” for others to “catch-up” with, and/or learn from…?
I’d be grateful . . .
153 replies on the thread, so it may take me awhile to catch up on this one…
I’ll presume you’ve all elected someone already, and some sort of first “live” interactions have been experienced?
HERE’S A THOUGHT / IDEA
Could there be any MERIT in, perhaps, running TWO PARALLEL THREADS per “puzzle” or “event” – 1 for “Discussion” (more broadly, or bouncing ideas between each other), and 1 for “Incremental Processing / Solutions”? eg in the prev, we might put the LINKS to Reddit, Discord, the Google Shared Spreadsheets, a SINGLE COPY of the Server List of 10, the Paired List, copy of all-the-same raw data, etc etc in the INCREMENTAL thread, so anyone can “more easily” get caught up on what’s already been “discovered”, then bounce back to DISCUSSION to groupthink…?
Thanks for tolerating my brain-farts. 
LOL
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Hi @kyle-culver,
Thanks SO much for creating a YouTube link. 
Unfortunately, having been away, the links @SingularGleam shared … are only “empty black boxes” for me, now… 
(Will need to check and see if @LPlaysGaming caught / shared / mirrored any…)
Cheers!
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Even These?
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You can read the conversations here, the streams themselves were quiet streams without much chat or noise…just a display of the streamers text messaging back and forth with one of the characters in satcom.
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I have to agree with you, @DarthTrethon, it seemed quite “short-lived”.
However, I get a feeling it may have been even a bit “probing” within the community, e.g. who Streams, who can do so on relatively short notice, how “prepared” the distributed (Discord, Reddit, here) sub-communities are, how inter-connected, AND – most of all, I imagine – who’s “done their homework” and/or can exhibit the most “functional knowledge / understanding” of the Dreamers (hence live 1-on-1 Q&A).
As I’m only now 60/157, I’ve still some catching up do to here, but would like to share this thought at this point:
I can see more of this type of 1-on-1 LIVE event occurring in the future, to give others the chance to flex their EMPATHIC (careful, not “telepathic”) abilities, as well as their sense of Leading a “searching conversation” with meaningful questions and (as has been mentioned elsewhere) emotional triggers, in order for us to gather as much pertinent info as poss, in our overall mission to rescue the Dreamers from their waking-sleep through helping them to piece together their memories…
To that end, I have another thought or three…
e.g. Toby and his Elephant, and reading with mum about “people & animals” (as a compromise); vs Eun Ha and her “hide & seek” w her bro, and her closing comment of “nothing I say matters” . . . 
If there IS a potential that ANY of them had met any of the others IN the DreamSpace, OR if there might be any “bleed-through” of any Memories BETWEEN DREAMERS, it might behoove us to POSE QUESTIONS to Dreamers using one detail from another Dreamer.
e.g. Maybe try asking Eun Ha if she’s ever spotted any Elephants in her “Dream State”… or asking Toby if he ever “felt dirty” (ref Eun Ha’s brother after playing hide & seek).
Also, if Toby’s elephant is UNNAMED, it might only be so if - for example - in his present condition he doesn’t remember that he named it. IF we were to suggest “helping” him to NAME the toy elephant and - for sake of a Disney reference being an easy go-to - suggest the name DUMBO, at the same time we might get the opportunity to see if that word triggers any emotional reaction and other entrenched memory, e.g. having ever been TEASED and called “Dumbo”…
(Ok, more catching up…)
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Those work for me…they should be good.
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Thanks, @SingularGleam for the Catch-Up links post.
Just watching Claire at the mo…
Sthg REALLY STOOD OUT for me, here:
“I love how different writers can expose different sides of the same characters.”
If there’s any META to this stuff, I’m already reading into it that “Claire” (and the others) may possibly be “played” (LIVE) by different people…
This would make sense in the way that the ARG company’s TEAM working on WT / Myriad will “share the workload” in bringing this all to life . . . . .
…and…
“The best villains are always relateable. No villain thinks they’re a villain, right?”
This comment – esp. for me, being somewhat “new” to the community – recalls the early “mistrust” the script allowed a player to (choose to) have, questioning Emily’s role, as she’s working with / part of V/-RE (W/ARE).
Say Emily “is a/the villain”; it’s right that she may not see herself as one, for whatever reason(s).
… one of which could even be… that either she’s a virtual construct, only, …
OR,
… that the “Emily” entity is “incomplete”, and in fact “the rest” of Emily is the 2nd Dreamer – the one without a name (just a number)…
… that perhaps the “Emily” we encounter has the ability to “bridge” us and the Dreamers cuz she exists in that in-between space…
… and ultimately, we will need to discover proof of this, and “recombine” Emily with (those numbers) into a complete entity-mind in order to SAVE the Real Emily from the server(s) / system(s) . . .
Yeah, it’s a helluva s-t-r-e-t-c-h, but that’s what my Brain just RANDOMLY came up with . . . . . X
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