[SPOILERS] Maybe the Ark is not a bad place to live

[Omnitool]

Maybe the Ark is not such a bad option for humanity's survival.

Some things to think about:
1. It is thought that all scans stored inside the Ark are immortal, but there is no clear evidence towards that in-game. What would happen if a person inside the Ark would commit suicide or die in an accident?
A. Maybe the laws of physics inside the Ark are different, if you fall from a cliff nothing happens.
B. After you die your scan gets reinitialised and you wake up prior to the event that caused your death (like loading a save in a game).
C. The simulated person simply dies and the scan is deleted.

2. There is also the possibility that people inside the Ark get older and die just like normal people, and they can actually have children.
Think about it like in real life:
- In real life, our physical appearance information is stored in our DNA. A child's physical appearance is the result of combined DNA from both parents, and the child's counciousness is a result of the social envirnoment, education and life experience (the child also imitates the parent's personality on an involuntary, subcouncious level).
- In the ARK, people's counciousness also contains their projected physical appearance, and all this is stored in code, as digital information. When a child is born in the Ark, both his/her appearance and personality traits are a perfect result of a 50/50 combination of the parent's traits, the child's gender is random (also a 50/50 chance). Given that all people in the Ark are the world's most brilliant minds (scientists, scholars) this is not a bad thing at all!

3. The Ark is governed by a simple AI system of its own, that manages the simulated envirnoment, weather, physics and all other factors. However, the original team that developed the Ark could have total control over the system. They could expand the envirnoment as much as the storage space permits and even control the trajectory of the space probe containing the Ark, and probably even fix and maintain it in some manner!
Proof in this direction is found within the game:
- During a conversation between Simon and Catherine, he asks her what will be the first thing she will do after they launch the Ark. She replies something like: "I will deploy the solar panels, stabilise the trajectory, etc" this proves that she has total control over the space probe containing the Ark.
- During the game Simon finds numerous diagrams detailing how the Ark is built, and its specs. They show that it is equipped with a remotely controllable robotic arm. It could be used for maintanance and repairs while the Ark is floating through space, controlled from within the ark via a simulated computer terminal or even a Pilot Seat.

[Kein]

Maybe the Ark is not a bad place to live

You mean, in comparison to the WAU-madness of Pathos-II or "hot spring" of earth's surface?

Yeah, sure, you don't say

[cantremember]

That is quite interesting, I never realised the probe had a robotic arm, but that would only be able to buy them some time, eventually the probe will have some form of unrepairable breakdown without any spare parts available. And they are probably unable to ever transfer themselves elsewhere, or ever regain a physicial/organic form.

[Filizitas]

Mh. i would tend to stay at pathos. Rig up a boat and swim to the surface. I cant be everything broken... There must be a nice little place where one person can rebuild.

[THX1138]

That is quite interesting, I never realised the probe had a robotic arm, but that would only be able to buy them some time, eventually the probe will have some form of unrepairable breakdown without any spare parts available. And they are probably unable to ever transfer themselves elsewhere, or ever regain a physicial/organic form.

Maybe they can. Maybe they have enough processing power to run the simulation at higher than normal speed and maybe they figure out a way to transcend the ark's design. Maybe they find a way to use the available materials to construct a smaller quantum computer with enough deltaV to return to the earth's surface. Then again, there are only like 50 of them in the simulation and it's not clear what information resources they have available to build upon.

[Mudbill]

There are some things that make little sense to me about the Ark. IIRC they say that those inside the Ark will never be aware of the outside world, they'll simply drift through space without any awareness of it. They also say that once on the Ark, there's no return. I question this.

1. The digital copies inside the Ark are the same (theorietically) as the digital copies inside, for example, Carl's construct body, or even Simon himself. Since digital data is easily transfered through computer systems, that should make it easy to transfer a copy from one digital location to another. For example Simon's original scan directly to the Ark, although arguably it was a "legacy scan" so it might not be compatible.
Regardless, since you can copy scans to the Ark, you should be able to copy from the Ark back to another entity. Of course the only challenge would be acquiring such an entity, since they'll be drifting in space, but let's imagine the Ark is sitting in the lab. You should be able to extract a scan from it and place it in a physical construct body, similar to Carl. That would make it possible to leave the Ark into the real world, if of course such a construct is available.
With that in mind, why not equip the Ark with mini constructs which can be used via digital pilot seats inside the Ark to move around outside the Ark, for maintenance purposes?

2. Yes, the people inside the Ark are physically all just located within some processors and storage units, not themselves physically anywhere but electrical circuits. That wouldn't make it possible for them to have a window to the outside world, but hey, aren't they forgetting something? A digital window perhaps? Like, a camera?
Place a camera at the front of the Ark and channel that into a big digital "screen" (bytes) inside the Ark. That would be the same theoretical setup as Carl's construct's cameras which he uses as his eyes. Carl is a digital electrical circuit who can pick up digital signals from other devices installed onto his physical body, like cameras. Other useful devices could include thermometers, pressure calculators, solar panels etc. So all these devices should easily be possible to channel into the digital world of the Ark, which should make it possible to have a control room inside there for controlling the Ark's physical entity. Isn't this quite obvious?
Now, it is true that those on the Ark will never regain a human body. Perhaps that's what they meant by no return.

[Kein]

Black Mirror s03ep04 revisited the idea of mind transfer amd ARK.

Good watch.

[cantremember]

There are some things that make little sense to me about the Ark. IIRC they say that those inside the Ark will never be aware of the outside world, they'll simply drift through space without any awareness of it. They also say that once on the Ark, there's no return. I question this.

1. The digital copies inside the Ark are the same (theorietically) as the digital copies inside, for example, Carl's construct body, or even Simon himself. Since digital data is easily transfered through computer systems, that should make it easy to transfer a copy from one digital location to another. For example Simon's original scan directly to the Ark, although arguably it was a "legacy scan" so it might not be compatible.
Regardless, since you can copy scans to the Ark, you should be able to copy from the Ark back to another entity. Of course the only challenge would be acquiring such an entity, since they'll be drifting in space, but let's imagine the Ark is sitting in the lab. You should be able to extract a scan from it and place it in a physical construct body, similar to Carl. That would make it possible to leave the Ark into the real world, if of course such a construct is available.
With that in mind, why not equip the Ark with mini constructs which can be used via digital pilot seats inside the Ark to move around outside the Ark, for maintenance purposes?

2. Yes, the people inside the Ark are physically all just located within some processors and storage units, not themselves physically anywhere but electrical circuits. That wouldn't make it possible for them to have a window to the outside world, but hey, aren't they forgetting something? A digital window perhaps? Like, a camera?
Place a camera at the front of the Ark and channel that into a big digital "screen" (bytes) inside the Ark. That would be the same theoretical setup as Carl's construct's cameras which he uses as his eyes. Carl is a digital electrical circuit who can pick up digital signals from other devices installed onto his physical body, like cameras. Other useful devices could include thermometers, pressure calculators, solar panels etc. So all these devices should easily be possible to channel into the digital world of the Ark, which should make it possible to have a control room inside there for controlling the Ark's physical entity. Isn't this quite obvious?
Now, it is true that those on the Ark will never regain a human body. Perhaps that's what they meant by no return.

Those are some interesting points, for 1 I presume that they figured the likelihood of ever finding technology in outer space that they would be able to transfer to would be almost zero. Also, the entities in the Ark can't "move", even if they could copy themselves back out, the entities living in the Ark are there to stay until the Ark dies.... I suppose maintenance was a non-issue to them since they mention it can live for thousands of years roaming in space, perhaps their electronics and space probes are more durable in the future.... But to me they only lengthened life a bit, as the Ark's lifetime isn't infinite even in space, someday, thousands of years later, it will stop working, and along with it end the last remnants of "humanity".

[Prophet5]

...the Ark's lifetime isn't infinite even in space, someday, thousands of years later, it will stop working...

Yes... or it is destroyed the next day in a collision with the floating space corpse of George Clooney.

[Macgyverthehero]

I'd be worried about how much memory is on the ark to hold the data of so many people if they can actually procreate inside the Ark or if the simulation can be expanded within it's programming. Wouldn't it get to a point where there can not be any more digital memory available to hold information that it would become a problem in the programming of the Ark and that maybe the people have to start deleting certain data in order to try to save memory?