They're talking about the next 50 years (on CBC this am) holding *workable*
regeneration and disease treatment by some form of genetic approach both based
off the complete mapping of the human genome (which I imagine the first phase
to be done in the next couple or four years, and the follow on phase to be
completed over the next decades). They said they'd be able to regrow or
develop organic organ replacements. Just think of what this means for your
troopie in 2180.
Assume regeneration takes till 2050 to make doable. Then imagine that as the
equivalent of medicine in the 1850's. Then project forward to 2185, which
would be equivalent to the change from 1850 to 1985...
What this probably means is: 1) If a weapon kills you dead, you might not be
dead. If enough of you can be found intact (mostly brain), you can be regrown
and rehabbed. 2) If a weapon kills you dead so you can't be brought back, your
memories may be able to be mapped to a clone. 3) If a weapon wounds you badly,
stabilization will probably be so good that you can get to a med facility. If
so, you're probably gauranteed a near full recovery. 4) All of this will be
difficult by the 2060s, but potentially workable. By 2160, it'll be *easy* and
old hat.
This makes me wonder about the SG2 rules. Seems to me if I recall, you have a
1 in six chance of being okay, a 3 in six of being wounded, and a 2 in 6 of
being dead. That's okay, I guess. But you should recover (in a fairly
accelerated manner) nearly 100% of the 3 in 6 who were wounded for campagn
purposes. Recovery will not only be complete, but it will be darn quick I'd
think by this point.
Anyway, that's just a projection for those interested in how science will
affect campaign play in our future world.
:) Tom B
> Thomas Barclay of the Clan Barclay wrote:
> *workable* regeneration and disease treatment by some form of genetic
I saw something which suggested the first phase will be complete by this time
next year.
> What this probably means is:
Um, it's theoretically possible to grow a clone from one cell, given a
complete DNA 'strand'. However, without your memory and skills it would not be
'you'. And you'd need to accelerate growth hysterically to make it a
worthwhile propostion. I want my clone *now*, not in 5 years..
> 2) If a weapon kills you dead so you can't be brought back, your
Whole different kettle of fish that. We're only really basically beginning to
understand how memory and the brain and mind relate. Even *if* you could
(maybe via nanite tech) distinctly study each neurone in the brain, we're
talking about *billions* of neurones each of which has many connections. And
you clone from above will have probably developed different neurone
connections as it developed. You would have to take it's brain apart cell
by cell and re-wire it. Ouch. Again, nanite tech is a possible but
that's a lot of wires. I can't even get my christmas lights to work:). Oh and
you *do* backup your brain regularly, don't you?
> 3) If a weapon wounds you badly, stabilization will probably be so
Absolutely. I see it as being reasonable that if you are still alive (or in
fact, very recently dead even) and haven't suffered major brain trauma a full
recovery could be taken as read. At worst, you'd expect prosthetic technology
to be improved immeasurably, even without the possibility of actual limb
regeneration. As to stabilisation, just about every science fiction warfare
novel I've read has followed the idea that each soldier carries (or is
implanted with even) an emergency medical system that automatically stabilises
them and puts them into a very 'injury friendly' state until help arrives.
> 4) All of this will be difficult by the 2060s, but potentially
if the worst comes to the worst they could simulate you as a hologram. You'd
have to wear an H on your forehead though. A program I saw today postulated
the idea that as armies move to smaller groups of more highly trained
soldiers, more is spent on keeping them alive in terms of body armour etc. The
same should apply to medical technology I think.
TTFN
Jon
(snippage)
Jon burbled:
> postulated the idea that as armies move to smaller groups of more
Yeah, but later on you get peasants with crossbows and polearms, and you're
back to "cheap weapons, cheap soldiers, and if we lose a few, so what?"
> What this probably means is:
> Um, it's theoretically possible to grow a clone from one cell, given a
One thing for sure, the more you get back to work with the better. Will field
medics carry a brain freezer bag?
> Again, nanite tech is a possible
The only question is what do you call a cyborg?
> Again, nanite tech is a possible
" Sir! "
Particularly if he has his plasma gun close to hand.
> Again, nanite tech is a possible
> " Sir ! "
> Particularly if he has his plasma gun close to hand.
As in--
Don't shoot him it only makes him mad.
I buy the improved medical services, field stabilization etc. no question.
Though it's still pretty dangerous in smaller operations where you don't have
the infrastructure or resources to evac your forces in a timely manner since
it still seems to be a time issue.
> Jonathan White wrote:
> Um, it's theoretically possible to grow a clone from one cell, given a
> > 2) If a weapon kills you dead so you can't be brought back, your
I happen to agree with Jonathon here. That's where I fall off the boat, with
this whole proposition. Sure the guy gets blowed up. Is it proposed that a
replacement body is grown in a few hours or days? This is again another
attempt in the endless line of devaluing the "man" (or "woman") inside the
soldier's
body, and assuming a simple technical work-around, device or whatever .
Even if you could grow a body in a few days and you could just remove the
guy's
memory/mind imprints and throw it in a new body what about his "spirit?"
(Not in religious terms) What about the emotional trauma of finding yourself
in a whole new body with new sensation. Sure you could possible take DNA and
grow a match of what your body would have looked like if you had been
developed completely in a lab, but will it take into account that you sat in
front of a couch watching TV 11 hours a day, or ate Frankenberries for lunch
every monday, or spent eight hours on the range twice a week for ten years
honing reflexes muscles and skills? How will the cloned body be able to take
all of these external influences that went into making you YOU that are only
partly dealt with by DNA? An analogy: Sure Tom and I may have the exact same
shoe size but his shoes have molded to his feet after years of wear.. If I put
them on they won't fit right for some time or even ever and this will cause
performance discrepancies. All of these adjustments going into the emotional
self that make you effect or not. Not to mention the trauma of the actual
death or wounding that got you to where you need a new body. These to me do
not seem like issues that can be brushed under the rug when you plop someone's
memories into a new body. There's a lot of emotional damage that has to be
dealt with. And please
don't give me any BS about simply using drugs to deaden/fix these
issues.
BTW I'm no brain researcher but we have attended some very detailed workshops
on heart/mind synching, stress control and other issues along these
lines. (some of which has gone into the development of heart sensors which
help you detect people with a device forma a distance or behind a wall ala
Rainbow Six.") Summing up in very unscientific terms: The way you learn and
the way you build memory is facilitated by the fact that neuron synapses in
various parts of your brain through firing the same way over and over actually
build increased connections to each other, thicken and undergo some actual
physical transformation. So a cloned brain, while potentially of the same
capacity as
the one in my head would not have the same neuron "pathways/ interfaces"
established the same as the one I've been using for almost 40 years. So even
if you could imprint the exact memories on you new brain, your brain would not
be physically capable of processing them or working with them in the same was
as the old one.
I guess an analogy might be that if I worked out in the gym lifting weights
for two hours a a day for ten years my body would look much different than if
I chose an alternate path and decided to work in front of a computer screen
ten hours a day and hardly every got the chance to work out since I've been so
busy. In both cases I still have the same DNA in my body that started me along
my life a certain way. Clone my body then put "me" back into this new body. I
have to relearn or remap everything I do tho this new body which is completely
different than the "old shoe" I'm used to. This takes time. (years?) It also
would take toll emotionally.
> > 3) If a weapon wounds you badly, stabilization will probably be so
By the way if this technology advances to a point where all of Tom's
suppositions are fact, then it's pretty obvious that weapons would have to
advance ahead of this technology to ensure the complete obliteration of
anything you hit since a "kill" as we know it not would not really be a kill
in the future. I would submit that personal weapons would inevitably have to
advance to the point that if you hit something, then it simply would not exist
any further since any weapon that didn't do that would not be accomplishing
anything to further its cause in the long run. For every action a reaction....
> if the worst comes to the worst they could simulate you as a hologram.
I think a better tact to take in this. Either take fighting out to where it's
done by cyborgs or robots or even controlled by humans from somewhere else,
(there's been some of SF written along these line)
But to get to Tom's original point about how this effects a campaign I guess
you could easily develop a new casualty table that differentiates between
"wounded out for good", "wounded returns to some efficiency" in a few turns
and "wounded is available for the campaign again in x amount of time".
Cheers...
Los said--
> body, and assuming a simple technical work-around, device or whatever
(snip)
> BTW I'm no brain researcher but we have attended some very detailed
So even if
> you could imprint the exact memories on you new brain, your brain
The literature in the motivational field agrees that it takes at least 3 weeks
to change a habit, simply because that's how long it takes for the chemical
pathways to break down. Repeated stimuli make a
bigger/stronger path. Dr. Shad Helmstetter has written several books
on this.
I have serious doubts that we will _ever_ be able to map human
memories.
> > 3) If a weapon wounds you badly, stabilization will probably be
I disagree here. You are taking someone out of action. Even if he
puts on a close and comes back the next day--which I seriously
doubt--the enemy is having to pay for the clones, the technicians,
memory mapping, and storage space for all these. And imagine what it would do
to morale if you successfully raid the clone bank.
> Laserlight wrote:
> memory mapping, and storage space for all these. And imagine what it
Good point. If a med facility can bring N troopers back from the dead to
combat readiness within 24 hours, it suddenly becomes a much more juicy
interdiction target, Red Cross or no.
TTFN
Jon
> On Sat, 18 Dec 1999, Thomas Barclay of the Clan Barclay wrote:
> They're talking about the next 50 years (on CBC this am) holding
weeell, that all depends on how you define 'mapping the human genome'
(i'm
treading carefully here, as i seem to remember that there are *proper*
geneticists on the list:)). technically, mapping a piece of DNA means
identifying various 'landmarks', which is very useful, but doesn't get you an
actual sequence (all that CACATCACGCGCTATG stuff). then there's sequencing
DNA, which does get you actual sequence. then there's annotating the sequence,
which means figuring out what's a coding sequence, what's a regulatory
sequence, what's 'junk', what the structure of the various regions is,
assigning proteins to genes, etc.
as far as timescales are concerned, things are a bit up in the air at the
moment. it started out with public scientists (universities, institutes,
govenment labs, that sort of thing) doing it. the plan was to map the whole
genome, and then to sequence it; if you have a map, sequencing is easier, as
you have a rough idea of where you're going. this was all going very well,
with a first draft sequence scheduled for 2005 or something. then, along comes
Mad Insane Killa Craig Venter and his Celera Genomics posse and announces that
they, a private company, are going to sequence the entire genome by tuesday
week (well, maybe not that quick, but *fast*), using a different approach,
which involved a combination of some very clever software and a lot of cash
put into sequencing gear. the public lot respond by upping the tempo and
getting it done quicker, with the end result that we'll have a complete (if
gappy and inaccurate) sequence in a couple of years. probably sooner.
> They
you don't need a genome map (or sequence) to do this sort of thing; this is
cloning and tissue culture, which is a separate area. now, we will need to
know a *lot* more cell and molecular biology before we can grow organs in
jamjars, and gaining that knowledge may require genome sequence data, but it
probably won't require the entire genome.
> Just think of what this means for your troopie in 2180.
if he drinks too much, we can replace his liver. if he eats too many kebabs,
we can replace his heart. if he smokes too much, we can replace his lungs. if
he gets in a fight in a bar, we can give him a new eye. if he gets shot in the
head, we can, er, give him some aspirin. otoh,
squaddies are free to continue in their favourite past-times :).
no offence to soldiers, btw, i'm playing up a british stereotype here.
> Assume regeneration takes till 2050 to make doable. Then imagine that
this is the crunch: what they can do in 2160 is only vaguely related to what
we can do, or even think of doing, in 1999.
> 2) If a weapon kills you dead so you can't be brought back, your
this needs memory backup and restore, which is an entirely different
problem. the mind is the single biggest mystery facing science today -
we don't really even know where to start. it does seem likely, however, that a
mind is specified completely by a list of its cells and the connections
between them, and if you could record these, you would have a 'copy' of a
mind.
Hans Moravec (an old AI warhorse) writes about a (frankly terrifying) way to
do this in his book 'mind children', which involves going through the brain
layer by layer, scanning the cells, creating a computer model of them, and
then destroying the cells and replacing them with the simulation. you start
with a thinking head and an empty computer, and end with an empty head and a
thinking computer, without any loss of consciousness or identity in between.
he's talking about mankind transcending to computers, so he doesn't address
regenerating a mind from a computer record, but if you have cell culture and
some sort of magic micromanipulation and biochemistry technology, you should
be able to do it. Greg Egan talks about this sort of thing a lot too.
> This makes me wonder about the SG2 rules. Seems to me if I recall, you
after all, having your head forcibly broken into small parts is probably still
fatal, as is severe unattended bleeding, multiply punctured lungs or any one
of a very large number of battlefield injuries.
> But you should recover (in a
that's one way of looking at it. otoh, who's to say that weaponry hasn't
advanced, so that the damage done by a rifle is more severe, and thus
negates the effect of whizzy spare-part surgery.
otgh, historically (not sure about the last couple of decades), there have
always been more casualties from disease than from combat, so maybe the
real effect of advancing medicine is to cut down on rear-echelon losses,
and to reduce the effect of non-hospitalising issues such as cuts,
sprains and colds.
tom a
> Laserlight wrote:
> >the future. I would submit that personal weapons would inevitably
Well there's a point to some extent. but why allow the enemy to recvlaim teh
most valuable part of the "weapons system," the mind? Sure tactcially a
misison kill is a m,ission kill but in the long run (depending how fast you
could put a chassis back into operation after it was disabled), then you are
not doing yourself any good but not destroying the soldier completely.
Of course then the answer to that I suppose would be to map the guys,memory
and have it "on file" in case you lose the brain all together. And the next
logical step after that is to just find a few archetypes and map their minds
to hundreds or thousands of perfect clones.
> Well there's a point to some extent. but why allow the enemy to
Would such clone-teams be effectively telepathic?
"Carlos #1 is being fired on by sniper. If I, Carlos #37, were in
this situation I'd do A, then B, then C--so I can count on Carlos #1
to do the same and I can act accordingly"
Actually as the ability to prevent and repair physical injury get better and
better combat stress related injury. A major percentage of those not available
for combat on todays battle field becomes a major factor. The ability to
modify the mind chemically may make a greater impact on the Medical Corps
mission (to conserve the fighting strength) then the more difficult task of
regrowing troops.
The solder may have more desire to survive then to make sure he has a back
copy, the two may not be the main thing. In fact clones and tapes may make the
solder feel more expendable.
What matters most to the solder is how fast you can help him in the field to
take away the pain and give him a future after the war. To an army it is how
quickly you can get the man back to fighting. Sending in Lenny's clone may
have some strange effects on unit cohesion 3 days after he was wasted.
> By the way if this technology advances to a point where all of Tom's
Or, and maybe this is a big "or"), maybe the morality of war in 2180 is such
that the complete obliteration of the enemy soldier is not necessarily a
desired outcome. We know that the other guys' wounded will be back after
"treatment", but rather than giving each grunt a
super-dooper-trooper-zapper gurarenteed to atomize an enemy (and what
kind of weapon would this be? not much for "surgical precision" if you miss
with one of those.... kind of like shooting a trooper with a main gun from a
Slammers' tank... sure he'd be gone if you hit, but don't miss...) we just
assume that a big percentage of "kills" will be back, and we aim to win in a
SHORT period of time. Absolutely obliterating the enemy troopers
isn't the objective - but rather whacking a whole bunch of them quickly
and winning the campaign so that they don't have a chance to come back,
becomes the objective. And if the "small but really well trained and equipped
army" idea pans out, only a few casualties inflicted will have a bigger
relative effect anyway...
Besides, I don't buy the idea that a troopie with his legs missing will be
up and going in a few days - I think much more likely that treatment
will be more along the lines of what the PA soldiers in "The Ten Thousand Year
War" got - main character lost a limb, the suit stabilized him, he
shipped
back to rehab world where new limb grown BUT it took weeks/months of
regrowth and dexterity therapy before he was "combat ready" again. In this
kind of case, sure the LONG TERM survival of the badly hurt goes up LOTS, but
in the short term (the days or weeks of these short, sharp campaigns)
he is out of the fight - and tieing up medical resources, etc.
An odd idea here, following this line of thinking: if the medical technology
develops to the point that they can fix nearly anything, and the weapon
technology develops in response to the point that the objective is to destroy
then enemy utterly with each hit, doesn't that kind of change the psychology
of war a bit? Now (here in 1999), we want to win, and though there will be
soldiers who want to whack the enemy dead, not many (well, actually none) of
the soldiers I know really WANT to KILL the other guys. That may be part of
the job, but they don't specifically want to do it. If the weaponry becomes
such that a hit equals a kill, and killing utterly (like, no chance of regen)
becomes a necessary part of winning, then is it not a short step to "well, if
we have to kill him utterly to win, then why not whack his family as well so
there aren't going to be any
more of him...". Maybe I'm stretching here, but I kind of wonder if
changing the objective from "taking the other guy out of the fight or out
manoevering him so we don't have to fight" to "kill him" would make wars
rather different. Nuke his cities, do it fast, and make sure you do it utterly
so he can't do yours. It "ups the ante" rather a bit...
Anyway - just a thought.
"snip a bunch of medical and cloning stuff"
Well if you can clone the guy and have copies of his brain pattern why dont
you just send in a couple of dozen copies of Bill the wonder grunt? Imagine
the savings on training. And boy talk about unit cohesion. THey all think a
like.
Personally I dont think cloning would ever take the place of the soldier. The
human body is to complicated to reproduce exactly. The old brain pattern would
still have to get used to the new body. Might take quite a while. Anyway the
ethical questions of cranking out a bunch of Bills to go fight could get
sticky. What do you do with them after the fighting is over? What if Bill
#2341 does not want to be expendable anymore? I think there are enough books
and movies about this to fill a library. Bladerunner has this type of theme I
believe.
> Thomas Barclay of the Clan Barclay wrote:
Sounds like the classic SHADOWLINE by Glen Cook. The novel is a futuristic
depiction of a battle to the death between two mercenary bands over a valuable
mining site on a mercury like world.
If you read a little deeper, you notice that the entire thing is based on
Norse mythology, specifically Ragnarok, the twilight
> At 12:42 AM 12/20/99 -0500, you wrote:
I think as you and otehr point out there will be serious emotional
consequences to being rebuilt or put back in a new body and then being sent
back out. I mean, it still hurts to get blown up even in the 2190s I suppose?
<grin> I think it can be quite a detriment to know you are
fighting/working for an organization that now has even less concern for
your well being than it did before since it knows youa re utterly expendable.
> An odd idea here, following this line of thinking: if the medical
Well when we fight we are out to kill the other guy, not wound him or nick him
in the leg so he'll surrender. Sure know one really sets out to join the
military to be a killer but it is esentially one of the unspoken purposes or
means to an end, even if people don't admit it or whatever.
> If the weaponry becomes such that a hit equals a kill, and killing
Yes the entire slippery slope of this discussion is pretty much summed up
right there. Even though that has always been a goal (official or unofficial)
stated or unstated of wars where the extermination of one
race/nation/culture now it's much more clearer. Of course if you are
fighting another race (meaning aliens) then getting your society fighting to
extermination is easier to manage then if it's an intraspecies fight(though
with the right propaganda it can be managed.)
> Los wrote:
> I buy the improved medical services, field stabilization etc. no
I don't think that there'll be that big of a difference in survival rates
though.
Other techs are going to be increasing at the same rate. The future soldier
will probably be in powered armor. It might not be in the Battletech or
Strship Troopers league but the trend is to increase the soldiers protection
and loadout. Unless you can make stuff much lighter (and how much good would
very light armor do to protect from a kenetic kill weapon) you need to provide
some kind of powered assist to carry the weight. I suspect that in the future,
by the time you've delivered enough energy to penetrate the armor, having
enough left of the person inside to save would be a fluke. Maybe a self
sealing helmet that would seal and eject when it detects a sizable hit on the
body......the mental picture gives one
pause....
> > Whole different kettle of fish that. We're only really basically
If we get nanos to operate at a level that would be medically meaningfull in
battle, they could literally rebuild cells to their original state. Though how
you define tht original state is open to question.
G'day guys,
You've probably put this one to bed already too, but here's my razoo's worth
anyway.
Cloned replacement parts I can believe, cloned bodies with memory implants
nope. The following points have a fair bit to do with this opinion, yeah I
know we can't imagine the leaps we'll make (I'm a strong advocate of that
claim), but somethings just don't gel.
They have already mapped an entire chromosome (complete DNA strand) mind you
that's the shortest of the 25 or whatever it is humans have. They have
bio-frames upon which to grow organs that work and we'll have clone
organs within the next couple of decades probably, so organ even limb
transplants
by 2180 I can believe. However, ethcal issues aside, it would take 6+
years
to grow a human clone to adulthood safely - faster than that and there's
mammoth tissue problems. But that clone won't have the skills to survive in
society that's why evolution has broken our growth at 4 and given us an
extra 10+ years of slow physical growth so our brains can take
everything in we need to be adults before kicking back in onto normal
mammalian growth curve to finish us off to adult size. There's also the issue
of experience making the man (so to speak), identical twins are clones, how
many of them think exactly alike...none! Clones also recieve the cellular age
of the
individual their cloned from... Dolly is suffering hyper aging - she was
cloned from a middle aged sheep and her cells are aging as if they started
from middle-age not from birth, accelerated aging on that scale isn't
something I'd look forward too! Add to that a lot of the things you'd guess
are purely gene related aren't, handedness is actually related to the amount
of testosterone you recieve in uterine (in mum), for instance. As for
imprinting brains with captured memories, that's going to be VERY difficult
given we think they use quantum properties and no two brains are
exactly the same shape - you go trying to put my memories into Los and
they're not going to fit - you'd run out of room in the math area and
have extra in the motor skills area = square peg, round hole!
Brain-trasplants
are being discussed even now, but the patient ends up as a quadriplegic as you
simply can't realign all those neuronal connections, though I guess we may get
around that eventually.
Tom has a point, medicine will be streets ahead by then - nanites in the
blood stream, cloned parts (if/when you get to a medi-point) will see
our prospects increase (even with better weaponary I think the soldires would
still end a little better off), but I doubt it'll get to the point this
discussion did;)
Anyways just a few things to keep in mind.
Cheers
Beth
> Beth Fulton wrote:
> You've probably put this one to bed already too, but here's my razoo's
That takes brass.
> Cloned replacement parts I can believe, cloned bodies with memory
--->8---
I agree with the bulk of what you say. Just one or two quibbles.
I have an interest in cryonics, ie "Many were cold, but few are Frozen". The
big problem in this is that when the heads get thawed out, there is,
basically, freezer burn. I've seen pictures of a nice neural network before
freezing, after freezing (still OK), and during thawing (unavoidable ice
crystals totally disrupt the structure). I've also seen the results of an
algorithm that looks at the detritus, and attempts to deduce what it looked
like before the ice exploded the cell membranes, and created voids and
fissures in the connections. The results were staggering, a very good match
indeed. On the order of the difference between a neural network on Thursday
afternoon vs Saturday Morning. Enough to preserve the personality? Very
probably, it's a good bet IMHO. I'm willing to chance it anyway.
OK, so from a frozen head we can deduce what the fine structure of the
brain looked like. The only problem now is re-construction. Do we
attempt a repair, or just build a new one? Probably repair is easiest. This
requires a very significant advance in nanotechnology, so much so that if we
had it, we could do surgery on individual chromosomes to restore the missing
codons (and so rejuvenate on a cellular level, no
more hyper-aging of cloned tissue).
Basically, revivification from a cryonically preserved corpse will only be
possible until some time after we achieve personal immortality. I see this as
probably being technically possible within a few centuries at most. However,
there are so many ethical issues that may be raised in the meantime, that
legal complications may multiply the timescale by at least 10, and may prevent
it altogether.
Using similar technology to re-grow limbs, provide neural shunts around
gross disruptions (ie repair paraplegia caused by broken spinal cords etc) is
vastly easier. I expect this to be possible on a limited scale well before
2050, and possibly in a very limited sense even within 5 years.
One final point: if we can deduce the fine structure of the brain, simulation
of it using a different physical architecture may be a lot easier still.
Uploading one's personality into a digital model would be possible. But the
amount of information involved is significantly large, as to simulate the
brain of a mouse would take more data storage than exists in the world at the
moment just to hold a snapshot of the model,
let alone run it. There's also non-linear effects (ie Chaos) which means
the model might be so imperfect (quantisation too coarse) that the
resultant organism-model might not even be alive (however you may define
that).