Machine of Death, a recently released short-fiction anthology that hit #1 on Amazon, has a cover quote from Cory Doctorow containing the sentiment “Makes me wish I could die, too!”.
So far I haven’t seen any of the stories deal with how the machine affects the cryonics movement (start testing rats and then putting them in suspension, and try to either fool the machine or get a prediction that doesn’t match the cause of deanimation?) or physics (strong evidence against many-worlds?), or how it deals with mind copying (does it arbitrarily distinguish between the “original” and copies, thereby giving people a loophole to escape their deaths, or do all the copies end up dying in similar ways?), merging or reconstruction, or whether there’s a large-scale study of the effects of praying and making sacrifices to the obviously intelligent Predictor. On the other hand I’ve only just started the book, and there’s already been talk of another volume, so I hold out some hope.
The anthology’s concept seems to rule out an imminent positive singularity, since you’d expect to have over a century’s advance knowledge when predictions started reading “end of the universe”; but I wonder if an FAI could make a deal with the Predictor by precommitting to kill everyone in their appointed ways just before the universe ended. If the prediction required a person to be dead by a particular date, the AI would want to figure out how much of a person could be preserved while still having the Predictor consider them dead. Or maybe the Prediction Enforcer kills them in their appointed way heedless of the FAI, and the only difference the AI makes is in making it impossible for the Enforcer to disguise its actions as the arbitrary happenstance of life. (Back in 2006 I figured that was the only real possibility, since information going backward in time allows paradoxes; but now I see both as plausible.)
OT: I’m also curious what happens when you mix multiple people’s blood. Or if you developed the technology to transplant brains between bodies—does the prediction follow the body or the brain? What if you could clone a brainless body and test its blood before and after installing a brain? More generally, by what method does the machine decide who a particular blood sample “belongs” to a particular person, and what are the edge cases and ambiguities of that method?
The editors are currently accepting submissions for Volume 2 (deadline July 15), making me wish I had a story to submit exploring some of those questions.
Machine of Death, a recently released short-fiction anthology that hit #1 on Amazon, has a cover quote from Cory Doctorow containing the sentiment “Makes me wish I could die, too!”.
In one of the stories, “Flaming Marshmallow”, “zvyyraavhz fcnpr ragebcl” vf vagrecergrq nf zrnavat gur crefba jba’g qvr gvy gur arkg zvyyraavhz, juvpu vf frra nf tbbq arjf engure guna gur greevoyr arjf vg zvtug or sbe fbzrbar rkcrpgvat cebcre vzzbegnyvgl gb unccra ol gura.
So far I haven’t seen any of the stories deal with how the machine affects the cryonics movement (start testing rats and then putting them in suspension, and try to either fool the machine or get a prediction that doesn’t match the cause of deanimation?) or physics (strong evidence against many-worlds?), or how it deals with mind copying (does it arbitrarily distinguish between the “original” and copies, thereby giving people a loophole to escape their deaths, or do all the copies end up dying in similar ways?), merging or reconstruction, or whether there’s a large-scale study of the effects of praying and making sacrifices to the obviously intelligent Predictor. On the other hand I’ve only just started the book, and there’s already been talk of another volume, so I hold out some hope.
The anthology’s concept seems to rule out an imminent positive singularity, since you’d expect to have over a century’s advance knowledge when predictions started reading “end of the universe”; but I wonder if an FAI could make a deal with the Predictor by precommitting to kill everyone in their appointed ways just before the universe ended. If the prediction required a person to be dead by a particular date, the AI would want to figure out how much of a person could be preserved while still having the Predictor consider them dead. Or maybe the Prediction Enforcer kills them in their appointed way heedless of the FAI, and the only difference the AI makes is in making it impossible for the Enforcer to disguise its actions as the arbitrary happenstance of life. (Back in 2006 I figured that was the only real possibility, since information going backward in time allows paradoxes; but now I see both as plausible.)
OT: I’m also curious what happens when you mix multiple people’s blood. Or if you developed the technology to transplant brains between bodies—does the prediction follow the body or the brain? What if you could clone a brainless body and test its blood before and after installing a brain? More generally, by what method does the machine decide who a particular blood sample “belongs” to a particular person, and what are the edge cases and ambiguities of that method?
The editors are currently accepting submissions for Volume 2 (deadline July 15), making me wish I had a story to submit exploring some of those questions.