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[Amperzand]

Convert the solar system into a computronium-shelled dyson sphere and upload your sentience onto it.

[90908]

Convert the solar system into a computronium-shelled dyson sphere and upload your sentience onto it.

Problem is that it would be a copy of you. Technically speaking you would die.

Instead, plug your brain into the FUCKING MASSIVE WORLD BRAIN OF MASSIVE and put some engines on it. Capture the sun's power and race into eternity with your computer brain ship.

[Culise]

Convert the solar system into a computronium-shelled dyson sphere and upload your sentience onto it.

Problem is that it would be a copy of you. Technically speaking you would die.

Eh, I've always thought the continuity problem is overrated.  If you look at it from a certain perspective, you already lose continuity of self every time you go to sleep. ^_^

[Tack]

Personally I consider my meatsack to be a pretty good approximation of my continuity.

If someone were to float my brainpiece in jello, I'd consider that kosher.
Were someone to dice and upload it, I'd consider that a soulless copy.

[Rolepgeek]

That's why I like dreams, and the idea of mind transition meeting the perceptions of the two bodies temporarily.

But I also probably would find that I'd turned out alright, if it was non-continuous.

It's still me, after all, in the important sense of the word. Multiple existing at once created issues, but other than that, consciousness ain't exactly some external objective force, so I have no real reason to believe I wouldn't essentially said up in a new body. Be a very odd and disorienting experience, though, nonetheless, I expect.

[i2amroy]

Personally I consider my meatsack to be a pretty good approximation of my continuity.

If someone were to float my brainpiece in jello, I'd consider that kosher.
Were someone to dice and upload it, I'd consider that a soulless copy.

What if we replaced it piece by piece with equivalent electrical ones, maintaining continuity of consciousness during the surgical procedure (just like they do in a handful of specific types of brain surgery), then repeated the whole process again, abstracting each piece one at a time to a matching software process run on general hardware instead of physical specialized hardware?

[Egan_BW]

I'd prefer to keep adding more and more extensions to my brain until the meat part is comparatively worthless.

[Rolepgeek]

I'd prefer to keep adding more and more extensions to my brain until the meat part is comparatively worthless.

The meat part handled the nitty gritty of controlling and maintaining a body; balance and sensory-motor tasks are difficult for computers. Logic function are not.

[Egan_BW]

Firstly, I can always just add meat if I need it. Secondly, I'd say it's likely that coordinating a body is something that's hard for both meat and metal brains. We just happen to have the right programing for it, which could be carried over. Thirdly, who needs a body when your brain is a planet?

[Rolepgeek]

Firstly, I can always just add meat if I need it. Secondly, I'd say it's likely that coordinating a body is something that's hard for both meat and metal brains. We just happen to have the right programing for it, which could be carried over. Thirdly, who needs a body when your brain is a planet?

No, you really can't just add meat. I'm currently working as an assistant in a neurology research lab, and if I have learned anything it is that brains are absurdly complicated. You can't just add neurons to a system and expect it to integrate.

And coordinating a body is more difficult for computers/direct computing systems than an actual brain for a number of reasons, the most convincing of which is probably that the primary function of most biological neural networks is precisely that, and has been optimized for since the dawn of synapses, essentially. It really isn't about 'the right programming'.

Also, I like having physical sensation and an actual body, and have very little need for a brain much larger than a house, which would mostly be distributive interlinking storage space anyway.

[Parsely]

So I'm writing this story, the premise of which is: 16th century technology people find giant war mechs, 9-15m tall, with appropriately sized weapons (20-100mm cannons and rockets, as well as non-chemical weapons that they can't understand like DEWs and railguns) attached to them, buried underground. I probably won't actually talk about this in the story because I'm not confident I can give a plausible explanation, but let's say I gave them a quarter century to reverse engineer the mechs and the weapons. They understand propellant and have examined and co-opted the idea of cartridge ammunition, and they've also adapted the breech block technology of modern artillery. They can reproduce both of these technologies (with one caveat: cartridges don't have built in primers yet), however, they lack the industrial capability to mass produce any of these things in significant numbers, and it's in these early days when ammunition and cannons are scarce that mechs find their place on the battlefield as formation-breaking cavalry.

I want the mechs to have large crews. How can I justify this? The mechs must have some kind of mechanical (i.e. non-digital) way of piloting them that medieval people could plausibly work out given enough time. How would you even describe the controls for a bipedal walking tank? If I can solve these problems of describing the mech's interior and what the crew is doing inside, I can actually write the story. For now I'm just refining my ideas for plot points and characters, and just drafting the outline over and over and bulking it up into a summary.

[Tack]

I'm currently working as an assistant in a neurology research lab, and if I have learned anything it is that brains are absurdly complicated. You can't just add neurons to a system and expect it to integrate.

Aw seriously? You can't just suspend a brain in stem-cell brew and watch a ganglial spiderweb form?

[Arx]

How are they propelling the mechs? What part of the 16th, bearing in mind that the paper cartridge was in use by ~1590?

If the mechs are something in the vein of spider tanks, operating with relatively simple oscillating chechanics in the legs, then the legs could have their stride lengths and/or speeds individually controlled with what amounts to a mechanical gear transmission. That already gives you the roles of spotter/navigator, pilot, and possibly some kind of gear monkey in the underdark to unjam things when they inevitably get stuck under fire.

Weaponry can be managed almost identically to naval gunnery, with a crew of two or more on each weapon to manually shove it around to aim, clean, and reload. I can't think of any good reason for them to try any more sophisticated controls than simply mounting them on a gimbal, as the machinery becomes drastically more complicated, and the simpler it is the less likely the reader is to go "Why aren't they just using horses?".

That's a crew of nine on a mech with two weapons and three people manning each. Seems a bit crowded, but I guess it depends how you mean 'large crews'.

[Egan_BW]

Wouldn't it be more entertaining if they had reverse-engineered the railguns, not the mechs?
Then you could have ye olde sea battles with gauss weapons.

[Mel_Vixen]

Well back then in the 1600 you had already some very skilled clockwork-people and mechanical algorithms werent that complicated. Music-boxes and clockworks could inspire and help the control mechanisms in the mechs.

More problematic is the powersupply, i guess electric power would need some more time to develop and steam engines would need huge amounts of coal.   

The advantages of a huge armored machine (especialy if you can get the hightech materials from the original mechs) is that it would be impervious to small arms fire.
One of the major disadvantages would be the lack of modern communications and weapons-guidance. The mech being a huge tower (say with treads!) could counteract that a little bit giving the crew overview over the battlefield and a extended horizonline.

It could also work as mobile fortress/comnmandstand for nobility with the realtive scraceness making them Knightly (siege)weapons. Some smaller mechs (squires) could carry spare parts, ammonitions and fuel.