Science Fiction

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This magazine is aimed at fans and creators of sci-fi and related media of all kinds. It includes all content related to the sci-fi genre and only content related to the sci-fi genre. The goal is to build a community for everyone who enjoys science fiction and related topics. This includes the obvious books, movies, and TV shows, but also original writing, the discussion of writing SF, futuristic art and designs, and the science and technologies that inspire the sci-fi genre. **Team Top 20**

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What's your Sci-Fi unpopular opinion? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Anomandaris@kbin.social to c/scifi@kbin.social

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It's a slightly click-baity title, but as we're still generating more content for our magazines, this one included, why not?

My Sci-fi unpopular opinion is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is nothing but pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. I've tried watching it multiple times and each time I have absolutely no patience for the pointless little scenes which contain little to no depth or meaningful plot, all coalescing towards that 15 minute "journey" through space and series of hallucinations or whatever that are supposed to be deep, shake you to your foundations, and make you re-think the whole human condition.

But it doesn't. Because it's just pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. Planet of the Apes was released in the same year and is, on every level, a better Sci-fi movie. It offers mystery, a consistent and engaging plot, relatable characters you actually care about, and asks a lot more questions about the world and our place in it.

It insists upon itself, Lois.

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[–] CileTheSane@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Teleporters kill you and clone you. The person walking out of the teleporter may look like you and have your memories, but you are dead and that is a clone.

The process is likely incredibly painful, but because the memories of the clone are copied from just before the process started no one actually knows.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Heh. I just mentioned this one in another comment in this thread a short distance further up.

My response to this philosophy is... so? The end result is the same, it makes no difference to me.

Though we do know for a fact that it isn't painful, there was an episode where we saw Barkley go through a very slow transport sequence and he was aware through the process. He was nervous but not in pain.

[–] nymwit@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

If it's an exact copy then it's just a break in consciousness and it follows logically that there's no way to tell that the you that woke up is the you that went to sleep. Obviously a thought experiment since there's no such thing and it would depend on whichever imaginary teleportation technology. I don't agree with you so I'm gonna agree it's unpopular (ha!), congrats!

[–] argv_minus_one 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Teleporters kill you and clone you. The person walking out of the teleporter may look like you and have your memories, but you are dead and that is a clone.

This is pretty much the ship of Theseus problem applied to a human body. If all of the parts of a human body are replaced with identical replacements, is it the same human?

The vast majority of a human body already undergoes this—most cells repeatedly die and are replaced over the course of a full-length human life—but brain cells are a notable exception, and most of them last your whole life unless they are killed by trauma or disease. Therefore, we have no experience to tell us what would happen to someone whose brain is disassembled and reassembled in the same shape.

The process is likely incredibly painful, but because the memories of the clone are copied from just before the process started no one actually knows.

I doubt that. If the teleporter is of the variety that disassembles and reassembles the subject, then in order to transport the subject in one piece without tearing it apart, either the process has to be instant or the subject has to be completely time-frozen during transport—no movement, no heartbeat, no breathing, no neurons firing, no nothing. Either way, the subject never gets a chance to feel any pain from the process.

Of course, none of this applies to the variety of teleporter that moves the subject by distorting space around it (space folding, wormholes, etc).