Fishin' in the stream of consciousness (all-purpose, no topic chat thread)

It's not like the door being open typically counts as an invitation, so it can be inferred that in most cases the rules are more about "did you actively consent to their presence" than "did you try hard enough to keep them out." (Heck, "turn into mist and go through keyholes" is a pretty common vampire power, so an actual door isn't going to present much more obstacle than a baby gate.) Barring special cases like The Dresden Files (where vampires can't enter uninvited because the doorstep of an inhabited building is a barrier to magic), my bet would be that your average vampire 1) would not be able to come in the front door uninvited if there was a baby gate, 2) would be able to pass a baby gate within the house once invited inside because vampires are bad houseguests and will assume that any indication that they're allowed to come in, ever is a blanket invitation to waltz in whenever they like, but 3) might not be able to pass an indoor baby gate if you made it a condition of their entrance, depending on the vampire and the hospitality rules in play.

 

Vampire: "You have a choice, mortal. Will you die, or will you become immortal like me?"
Victim: "I dunno, do you still have to poop? What's it like to have to poop every day for a thousand years?"

 

My immediate thoughts about anxiety regarding like, solar system events happening in the far, far distant future, most of them millions of years or further (which I think came up in this thread originally) was, “Well good thing I’m not a vampire.”

 

man, my first response is always to wish that I was a vampire. that Andromeda Galaxy thing is gonna look so cool...

 

Yeah I’m not entirely convinced either. But it was a pretty funny reason for not being anxious.

 

Funny thing, in most vampire fiction that I've seen, vampires have a shorter life expectancy than humans. Usually weeks to months for the newly turned cannon fodder.

But assuming you could survive for a few decades or centuries, what would it be like for a vampire going through the transhuminist period? Eventually the upgraded humans will surpass the vampire's speed, strength, and intellect. Cybernetic necks are hard to drink from. And they'll never be able to upload.

 

I mean, who's to say that you couldn't upload as a vampire. It's fiction, there's no reason transhumanism as to stop at actual mortal humans.

 

You wouldn’t download a vampire...

During a very interesting critical thinking class in college, which actually worked quite well and covered a lot of philosophy, I started to doubt the viability of completely giving up one’s body. Replacing parts, absolutely, but the brain is an integrated organ in a body and that’s so fundamental to... everything about who we think we are and even how we think. We don’t even understand it yet. I began to suspect that the person you might be without a more or less human body would be unrecognizable, the product of an unimaginable physical and mental trauma, and a human mind with no body at all might just disintegrate completely in sanity and cognitive function. I’m not sure it’s going to be nearly as easy to stop being human as one might sometimes wish.

Which was a real bummer let me tell you.

 

honestly, as much as i often joke about bodies being fake and lame and robot bodies when, the idea of actually going full transhumanist gives me the willies.
it'd be nice to get rid of a few things but i'd. i dunno. i don't actually wanna be a robot. it's like... i have a bike that is, objectively, kind of a rickety piece of shit. but i know how it works and i know how to roll with it and i love that bike to bits and pieces and when it finally falls apart irrevocably i will be heartbroken, even though i will probably replace it with something objectively better working.
my body's a bit like that i guess. and i acknowledge my privilege in saying that, given that my body is not nearly as rickety as some people's i know, but... i have thyroid issues, and gently deteriorating knees, and body image issues and a few gender issues sprinkled into the mix, so i'm not exactly living in my ideal penthouse flesh prison here either.

 

Beating back entropy is always farther away than we feel, it seems. People thought they might live to see the end of diseases entirely when antibacterials and vaccines were being discovered. Still, that strive found lives improving immeasurably, despite not ending all disease. I'm down for the transhumanist striving whether or not we ever actually make it. I have the deep deep death fear and appreciate the people tryna find ways for me to avoid it longer.

 

tbh when i wrote my robot pov fic, the fact that a robot body, BY DESIGN has none of the hings we recognize as markers of emotions was a real problem. Because the thing is, how humans categorize their own emotions has a lot to do with how something makes you *feel* on a physical basis. Goosebumps, heart skips, flushed skin, all those things aren't just things your body does, they create a feedback in your brain. That's how coffee can give the anxieties. Not because it makes you anxious per se, but because it sets of physiological responses that your brain looks at and goes 'hey. hey our heartrate and blood pressure are up, we're suddenly paying attention to details. Are we afraid? I believe we're afraid!'

The brain recieves A LOT of feedback from the body, and it needs that feedback. I agree with @Verily that completely removing it would be something that our brains are absolutely NOT equipped to handle at all.

 

On the other, other hand, I super want cool knife legs and sword arms and one of those spines that breaks into segmented pieces so I can recreate the Pink Spinel fight scenes. Philosophical, ethical, and mental considerations aside, I think my humanity is a low price to pay for Very Cool Sword Arms.

 

may i have a cool sword pancreas

 

I’m of two minds about the whole thing.

On the one hand, I have nasty chronic illness bullshit. It would be nice to not be in pain all the time, to not be constantly fatigued, to not have persistent gut issues and a shitty immune system. I often say I’d kill for a robot body, just because then I wouldn’t be sick.

On the other hand...what y’all are saying.

 

I figure I have enough dysphoria as it is, a little more in exchange for No More Pain is decent. The human mind is extremely adaptable. I figure we'll work it out one way or another.

 

I don't care about much but if eating could be fun again I'd like that

 

Honestly eating/drinking is the one biological necessity I really wouldn’t want to give up ever. I like tasty food!

 

I think the devil is in the details. All those bio-signals would be included in a refined and complete design; those senses are no less important than sight, hearing, touch, smell, etc. That said, it also depends on the mind that gets uploaded. Some people freak out over implants like titanium bone plates or artificial hips, others take it in stride.

 

My mysophonia gets triggered by my own bodynoises so I think i'm good with a robot body that doesnt mimic those too closely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯