Decided to give Altered Carbon another shot on Netflix. Season one. Not sure if I’ll try the second season.
It was better this time. Because I think it’s about an idea that’s on a lot of our minds lately: transhumanism. The idea that man and machine can and should become one and the same.
Is it ethical? Is it wise?
I remember liking both the book and the show, but I had a hard time suspending disbelief the first time around. The hard sci fi part of me wasn’t didn’t buying their method of space travel.
But this time around I realized I’d been looking at it all wrong. Whether it’s possible or not is irrelevant. These are the important questions: What is a human being and what is it worth? What, if anything, is the human soul? How are we different from animals or machines?
It has become common these days to think of the mind as software running on the hardware of the human body. Something that could be digitized and kept alive in an actual machine.
Is that possible and if so, what are the ethical implications? Especially if you think of the mind and the soul as essentially the same as I do?
I suspect that even if you could upload your mind into a machine or another body – something would be missing. Something important.
My outlook on that topic has changed over the years. Back when I was reading a lot of cyberpunk, I used to think I wanted that. Not anymore. Since it turns out we don’t understand consciousness, I don’t think they could get it all. And I don’t think that’s possible. I’m afraid I’d be giving myself a kind of lobotomy.
And if I’m wrong, if the soul CAN be copied, what does that imply? That it’s nothing special, only software. Would an exact copy of a person have rights ? The same rights as the original? Black Mirror has been all over that topic. The White Christmas episode… Shudder.
Assuming you could treat the human body as an expendable “sleeve,” what would that mean for society?
One obvious implication is massive disrespect for the human body.
And a massive loss of empathy. Especially from those who could afford multiple re-sleevings.
Which gets into the REAL point of the show as I see it: the immorality of immortality.
Notice the decadence of the Eternals. Notice the suffering in the world and how little they seem to care. Even the rich kids can’t grow up because there’s no place for them. No reason to be responsible.
Society is kind of that way as it is. The wealthy live longer than the rest of us. Better healthcare, better food, safer neighborhoods. Is that fair? And do we really want to make it eternal?
Los Tigres Del Norte – El Zorro De Ojinaga (The Fox of Ojinaga). A corrido about the drug kingpin who ruled much of the trade of marijuana and cocaine between Mexico and the US before the advent of the cartels.
The barker in front of the club called out with heavy reverb, “El B29-nine nine nine… Beeg surprise tonight-night-night…”
There was a big surprise all right, but not the one he meant. This was in the ‘80s, while I was on break from college. My first and last visit to Boys Town.
My uncle and a couple of his friends had invited me to go whitewater rafting on the Rio Grande, back when it had water.
After a long drive through West Texas, we arrived at our campsite in Lajitas on a Friday afternoon. We had some time on our hands and decided to go out for dinner, so we headed to the international bridge in Presidio.
We figured we would eat dinner at the train station in OJ, then check out Boys Town.
OJ was our nickname for Ojinaga. Boys Town was what everybody called the red light district. OJ’s red light district wasn’t as famous as the one in Acuña, but it had an anything goes reputation.
Going to Mexico was easy in the 80s. No passport, no fussing about walls. My uncle didn’t want to take his truck across, so we caught a ride from a resident on his way home for the evening.
We tapped the side of his pickup and he signaled for us to hop in the back. Common courtesy back then. He drove us to the checkpoint. From there, we walked to the end of the bridge where we found a taxi waiting.
He drove us to the train station, and agreed to return in an hour and take us to Boys Town. We finished dinner early and thought, why not catch a ride from the taxi parked out front? A taxi is a taxi, right?
We struck up a friendship with Driver Two, who I’ll call Roberto. He didn’t speak English, but my uncle’s friend Mando translated. He had a lot to say about Boys Town and how the girls there all liked white meat.
After a surprisingly long ride, we arrived at a collection of bars and clubs. He dropped us off and agreed to come back in a couple of hours.
The first bar was quiet and nearly empty. We chatted with the lady at the bar, who had a really cool bracelet made from old Pesos.
About half a beer later, a man burst in the door and tapped Mando on the back, hard. Taxi driver Number One had found us and he was pissed! Behind him was a cop with some kind of assault rifle.
“You made me come all the way back to the train station and you weren’t there,” he said in Spanish. “You’re paying my fare!”
Mando relayed the message. No arguments from us. We didn’t even bother to count. We just grabbed whatever bills we had and put them in his hand till he went away.
Lesson learned. Wait for your taxi.
We weren’t ready when Roberto came to get us. Mexico partied late! The strip clubs weren’t even open. He said he’d find us on his next trip out.
We looked for a more happening bar and figured, why not see a strip show? We weren’t there for the brothels. The barker at B29 Cabaret got our attention. What was the big surprise?
It was dark inside. My uncle and his buddies found a table and ordered a round of Dos Equis for themselves and a bottle of Coke for me.
Then an inebriated man at another table motioned for me to come over. Why me and for what? I was nervous as hell, but I went.
All he did was stick out his hand and say, “Americano.” He apparently liked the look of me and wanted to shake hands with an American. That memory really stuck with me.
Several beers and Cokes later, Roberto turned up. We still weren’t ready. He’d made several runs to OJ and back, but we still hadn’t seen a show. They were trying to find out how much beer they could sell us.
We invited Roberto to sit at our table and bought him a beer. He settled in and had several. He’d picked up enough fares for the night and was there to party.
After a while he got up and hollered. “Bring out the girls!” he said in Spanish. “These gringos want to see a show!”
And was there ever a show. Three girls came out and danced on the stage, then came out on the floor, between the tables, including ours. I’m sure I was blushing.
I thought they were cute, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as expected. I could tell they didn’t want to be there. They wouldn’t look you in the eye.
Then Spanish classical music began playing and out came a tall woman in a fancy dress and headdress. She wore a lot of makeup and had long, false eyelashes.
She held up a fan and performed a classical dance, demure, but flirty.
Then the DJ put on something with a beat. She thrusted her pelvis and gave all the drunks the come-on. She lifted her dress and did something with her high-heeled shoe. I saw a lot of tongue.
Then ta da! She tore off her top, took off her wig and took a bow. She was a he. My uncle and his buddies’ mouths were hanging open.
They were older than me and had their beer goggles on. I’d been drinking Cokes all night. I thought he was a woman, but too old for me and wearing too much makeup.
I just thought, huh. I guess that was the “beeg surprise.”
There were no more girls, but the night was far from over. A conjunto band started up. Mexican men wearing oversized cowboy hats and buckles danced with their wives (or girlfriends more likely). Roberto got up and spoke to the band.
We were all exhausted except Roberto. He was into the music. “I’m waiting to hear my song, then we can go,” he said. I was about to fall asleep.
All of a sudden, “Crash!” A man threw a metal chair in the center of the room, cursed in Spanish and stomped out and nearly slammed the door off its hinges.
I thought “Oh shit! Which way is north? Am I gonna have to walk to the border? What if he comes back in with a gun and starts blasting?”
But apparently that was par for the course at the B29. The band played another song and folks went back to their cervezas.
“We can go now,” Roberto said with a grin. He and the band had given us the REAL surprise.
He filled us in on the way back to OJ. The federales has just killed the local druglord in a shootout. The man who threw the chair was the druglord’s brother.
Roberto recognized him and thought it would be great fun to request a corrido about the shootout. Roberto wasn’t afraid of much apparently.
Incidentally, I read Druglord: Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin, by Terrence Poppa in the ‘90s and learned a few things about that night. The druglord who got shot had to be Pablo Acosta, who turns up in the Netflix show Narcos Mexico.
I haven’t found anything about Pablo having a brother, so maybe the guy meant compadre or associate. I don’t know who the band was, but the song was almost certainly “El Zorro de Ojinaga,” made famous by Los Tigres Del Norte.
Not sure what the cab driver’s deal was or why the chair thrower was so pissed. The song makes Acosta a tragic hero as far as I can tell. I reckon he must have had enemies though. Maybe it was just a case of “too soon.”
I’ve decided what I think makes the Netflix Show Travelers so interesting. It’s a time travel story, but really it’s a story about the ethics of human sacrifice.
The fact that the time travelers arrive in the 21st century by taking over other people’s minds, sets the tone right away.
They take the high road by (mostly) taking the minds of people who are about to die, but that’s a rather weak justification.
They area clearly trying to do the right thing, but they are still playing a hardcore game of Trolley Car Problem.
You know, the dilemma where one person is tied to one track, five people to another. You can throw a switch and kill one or do nothing and five will die. Which is the moral choice?
Travelers raises the stakes even higher. Which and how many individuals must be sacrificed in the past to save humanity in the future?
We make similar decisions in the real world. We can’t know the future, so there’s no way to justify the sacrifices of others that our society makes for supposedly greater cause. But we sure try don’t we?
The Director is in a better position than we are. It can know the future, sort of. But because it exists in multiple timelines, it can’t base its decisions on certainty, only probability. It’s very smart and it means well. But it makes mistakes, so do its operatives.
There’s no way to “win” the trolley problem. You have to make a bad choice. But you know the main characters are the good guys – because they’re the main characters.
Just like all of us. The stakes might not be as high as they are in Travelers, but everyone gets into damned if you do, damned if you don’t situations.
We also know when we didn’t really have to make that bad choice… But we know we’re the good guys – because we’re the main characters.
Waiting for the Director entity to arrive inside Ilsa, a 21st century super computer.
Netflix’s Travelers is a real head trip. It’s like a brutal version of Doctor Who, trying to “fix the timeline” where the Doctor is an artificial superintelligence with human special ops.
There are so many heavy topics I could get into with this show, but the one that just really hit me was the idea that you could have a relationship with an AI.
What would that be like? It could be like a grandparent who’s stuck around for a thousand years. You could get attached. Or it might come across like a boss, or a general, or maybe a prophet.
The main characters talk about it with respect and awe. I also get a sense that the entity also feels attached. To both humanity and to favored individuals.
I don’t know if machine consciousness is possible, but let’s just pretend that it is. What would it be like having a relationship with a superintelligence?
Imagine the awe you would feel. Because benign or evil, it would have power over you and you would be well aware of it.
It could outthink you. It could access more information in a second than you could learn in 100 lifetimes. It could compute an unimaginable number of probabilities.
In that scenario, you’re not talking to an individual, you’re talking to a POWER. It would be a bit like talking to a god, an angel, or perhaps a genie.
Frightening, but that’s also the best case scenario, imo, the one where you can have a relationship with the machine and it doesn’t just decide turn every atom it can into more of itself.
In the show, the Director seems to have a paternalistic relationship with the human race. I don’t like the idea of giving it that much power over us, losing that much free will. There is an insurgency in the future that feels similarly.
But there are worse ways it could go. It could be a master-slave relationship. Talking to a machine like that might be like dealing with a dictator or a mafia don.
Or we could just be tools, being told where we need to go to keep the machine running. No more a relationship than we have with our cells. Even worse, we could be seen as raw materials, or just in the way.
There’s no way to predict how all this will go, but we might as well start thinking about it.
What should Humanity as a whole, do if something like that arises? If we can’t stop it and can’t turn it off and they can outthink us and command every resource of the planet, we will have no choice. We will have to petition for a relationship.
Late Boomer's Den 
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