[Spoiler] Brain scan question.

[Abion47]

It comes back to the creative writing adage. At any given point, ask yourself, as the writer, whether the story you are writing is about the most exiting time in your character's life. And if the answer is no, then the next question to ask yourself is why aren't you writing about that?

Personally, I found the logs that Mark Sarang did to be fascinating. It illuminates the question that the game as a whole asks, which is what exactly is the "individual"? If there were an exact copy of you, then which one is the real "you"? How could anyone, including you, possibly know? The logic behind Sarang's argument that there can only be one "you", so even if a copy was made of you, as long as no instances of you co-exist at the same time, there can be no doubt which one is you. You, you, you, you... Broken record warning. Eh.

It all branches into a realm of philosophy that might be interesting and thought-provoking to discuss, but actually trying to find serious answers will only lead to headaches.

The game makes the assumption that computer hardware actually has the capacity to experience sentience to any degree at all while there is no evidence for that idea. I know its a central part of the game story at this point, but it broke a good deal of the immersion for me TBH.

First, keep in mind that this story takes place a hundred years in the future. A hundred years ago today the general consensus in the scientific community was that the only things left to learn about nature were minor things, that we had pretty much figured it all out, and then Einstein came along with general relativity which made everyone realize just how little they actually knew. A hundred years ago people didn't even think things were possible that today we take completely for granted.

Second, how do you define "sentience" when discussing artificial intelligences? The major test for intelligence indistinguishable from humans is the Turing Test, but there have been a couple computers in recent history that have passed it with flying colors. Would you consider those computers "sentient"? If and when a new test for intelligence is devised, would you consider computers that pass that test to be sentient? At what point does the argument that states a computer isn't sentient get reduced to "because it's just not"? At some point in the future, we as a species are going to have to address and accept the fact that being human is not a requisite for being sentient.