SOMA [6] Finding Yourself
Channel: Pudding Muffin
Date: 2018-10-08

OK. Lots of things from this video. First of all, it seems like it's telegraphing pretty clearly now that Simon is essentially an "agent" of the WAU. With it healing him (which, yes, I understand is its modus operandi), and him popping into existence out of nowhere, it seems like its hands must be in this.

So the fundamental idea of continuity, sure. It's sound. The only way to ensure that the "you" that exists in the simulation is functionally identical to the "you" that died, well, those events need to be as close together as possible. But why does that matter? If you grow beyond the scan that occurred, that's fine. Your legacy that you project into the cosmos is going to be the same whether you live past it or not. That said, I do understand that living under the circumstances here might not be the most desirable. But if you care about it, at least make sure the ARK gets sent out before you off yoursellf.

But the version of "you" in the machine isn't going to be you. Your life will end when you die. Even if there are a thousand clones of you, when you die, that's it. Having some copy of you in a machine won't change that. When you teleport and your body is reconstructed out of atoms n the new area and deconstructed in the previous area—I'm sorry—you died. Sure, someone comes out at the other end thinking it's you, but it's not you. Your life ends when you get in that teleporter. This is the same thing.

With all the talk of the ARK/simulation, the real question is, what's the point? And I understand that this is potentially poking at our own existence, but still. If you live life in a simulation, your scope is limited to that simulation. You can't affect anything outside the simulation (assuming it's self-contained). I can understand being OK with that if you don't know you're in a simulation, but if you're in a simulation and know it, what's the point of creation? It's all fictional, right? You aren't leaving your mark on the world, you're leaving it on a simulation. At any point someone could futz with your existence and render everything you've done or would have done or could have done void. And you KNOW that. Seems problematic.

Also, the drawings that Robin Bass did? Creepily childlike. Matches robot-her that we saw before we entered the facility.

And I just wrote quite a bit about this section of the game that has no enemies I needed to avoid. I understand they put them in so it wouldn't get the "walking sim" kickback, but I think it would have been stronger if there were no enemies in the game. At least not hostile ones.