Humanity, and Where It Ends

Hey everyone! A couple of things before I go on.

The secret project has pretty much halted, except for some content I'm getting around to making. I've got a couple of ideas boiling over.


I added a new column to the left of some media I'm media-ing. It's not really all that important or anything, just something new I thought I'd add. On to the topic then.

SPARSE AND SUBTLE MASS EFFECT 3 SPOILERS AHEAD, Y'ALL

My Bio teacher started out the school year with a story. The story was of a most unfortunate man, named Joey, and all of the terrible things that happened to him. Piece by piece, limb by limb, Joey's body was replaced with technology. At the end of the story, everything was replaced, and Joey was declared an android.

Our job, as the students, was to decide when Joey stopped being human and became an android. Was it when his heart was replaced with an advanced pacemaker? Once his kidneys were gone, replaced with mechanical ones? Most of the class decided that once Joey's brain was replaced with a computer, then Joey ceased to be, and Joey* took over.

I finished Mass Effect 3 recently, and Christ was the ending bad. Like, I'm not sure how professional writers and directors could have created such a terrible ending. If a nuke exploded, destroying everyone and everything, it would have been infinitely better. It was really bad.

But that was just the ending. A lot of the lead-up to the ending was really fantastic. Some of the deaths of my favorite characters struck really hard, especially- well I'm not going to say it for you, but if you know what the Shroud is, then know I was close to bawling.

One of the subplots dealt with the Quarians and the Geth. Imagine iRobot, where all the robots go feral and kick the humans off of Earth. You are sent to either mediate between the organics (Quarians) and the robots (Geth), or to choose one side over the other. Going into this, the same thought probably ran through most gamers minds: Biological creatures are inherently more sacred than machines, so if need be I'll wipe out the machines. After all, you'd rather unplug your toaster than kill your parents.

But then we get into the specifics of it all. I won't spoil anything, but I'll say that it really becomes a difficult choice (spoiled somewhat by a YOU WIN EVERYTHING choice, but whatever). One of the Geth asked a question that really got me thinking.

The question was, "Does this Unit Have a Soul?"

After much deliberation, I've decided that anything that can ask questions like that is sentient. Any creature that can recognize itself as a being is worthy of the term sentient. To rephrase, being self-aware is what I think defines an intelligent lifeform from an unintelligent one.

Problem is, it's kinda hard to identify whether or not something is self-aware. It's not like your dog can tell you that. Maybe it's been trying to.

Before I go any further, it means that you know you exist. While that seems like an easy thing to us, having been collectively self-aware for quite a while, you've got to think about how hard it must have been for the first person to ask themselves that. I mean, how do you phrase that?

Anyway, I've also recently started Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I know, I game a lot. This game discusses augmenting humanity quite a bit. A gap has appeared, not unlike the one we have today between rich and poor, between augmented folk and normal ones.

The augmented people are naturally better at things. Chips let them think faster, move faster, be more precise, heal quicker, and tons of other great things. Why wouldn't any one want that?

The problem isn't that people don't want it. The problem is that people can't all get it. The rich are able to augment children from an early age to be smarter, better, faster than the other children, whom, even those who would've been geniuses, are held back by biology.

This gap isn't that different from the one in our society today. The people who can afford the newest and fanciest-schmanciest tech have it much better. But let's take it on more of a base level.

Imagine a child who grew to age 18 in northern Africa came to America, and began searching for a job. The education system in those countries is nowhere near what we have in the United States, so finding a job would be difficult. Well, more difficult than it is for everyone else amirite?

Is it fair that he cannot get a job because he lacks the education he never had a chance to get? No. Should he be given the job over a similar individual who does have that education and would be able to perform the job better?  No.

So what happens to the African child (http://tinyurl.com/2dgp5a5)Well, as of now, he doesn't get a job.

That's why I believe education is one of the greatest tools out there. But we're not here to preach about education, at least not in this post.

I was planning on discussing things like Google and what they are doing to our brains, and Facebook and all that, but maybe next time.