#the nested bsg references

[swashbucklery]

Okay look aside from the fact that I will be screaming random BSG references from now until the end of time and you’re all going to have to put up with me, now that I’ve slept on this ep I am also having so many feelings.

Okay.

Because my first degree is in neuroscience and I am the first to admit all of my knowledge is dated bc it’s been ninety years since undergrad but this was like, THE debate we would have as goofy undergrads this is actually a huge scientific sticking point. And if you’re going to do it with robots I find it a lot easier to suspend my disbelief because like, yes sure it’s Tricia Helfer and if she gets stabbed she bleeds but also for some reason her spine glows because she’s got robot parts somewhere (?) so sure! Fuck it! It’s SPACE MAGIC.

But this show is alleging that - wait. Let me back up.

Because the debate is: what is consciousness made of. Is human intelligence the product of synapses firing in concert; if so then the logic follows that if you stack enough synapses together, an organism becomes self-aware. (How many synapses and to what degree of complexity is a whole other debate like; do pigeons have consciousness and intelligence and how do you measure it is a real study someone has done.)

If consciousness is greater than the product of synaptic function, is there some third element that contributes to consciousness and if so how do you account for it scientifically. If identity is the product of experience how are those experiences coded such that a pre-coded brain truly has the same layers of memory and experience. It’s not the same as just programming a hard drive; there’s epigenetics and complex layers of like. Oxidative stress and nutrition and the more you look at it the more intricate the system truly is. How do you know if two identical brains will add up to identical people but more importantly how do you make two identical brains?? It’s not just “wiring,” like you really have to do a deep dive all the way down and the scientific perfection and precision required for that is almost unfathomable.

And so then like. If Sara dies and then is cloned “perfectly,” is it still Sara and who decides if she’s still Sara and how does she know she’s still Sara?

(There is also, conceptually, the idea of Sara and Bishop as clones that somehow have individual identities vs the Ava’s of which there are many “copies” and the idea of like. What makes a clone a person and where is that line and they’re clearly driving towards the idea that all Ava’s are people but it’s clear that Bishop has a “scientific” “reason” for treating them the way that he does so. . .what is it.)

(But then also ALSO on top of that this is happening in a universe where magic and souls exist!!! Canonically and physically!!!! And how do you account for these concepts both existing simultaneously, because if there is a quantifiable soul then a fully programmed brain isn’t sufficient for identity or consciousness!)

((Unless we are alleging that there IS a soul and that this is the reason only one clone of Bishop can exist at once; that the soul travels between bodies and so when one body dies the soul migrates to his new one.))

((But then he needs some kind of continuous live uplinking system because if he himself has been murdered, and his aim is to be reborn with all of his memories including memories of his own death he has to be constantly storing that information somewhere which leads us to cylon base ships and look we’ve done it again, we’re back.))

((But then how are we accounting for the Ava clones; HOW MANY AVA SOUL TOKENS ARE THERE IN HELL or are we saying that they as a collective share a soul? But then how do you quantify units of soul or is it infinitely regenerative, in which case the distinction between a “single” soul vs one soul split infinitely is semantically meaningless?))

Anyway I started this post because I was going to go on a winding tangent about Sara and the idea of embodiment and identity and consent but I started thinking about the clone rules too hard and now here we are.