Re: Medtech 2180, III

At 02:56 AM 12/21/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Why not use bots or programmed human automata? Well, for grunties like
I
>was when I was in the reserves... sure. Section attacks they could do.
>For SF? Nope. You need (and I'm not just being nice) a high level of
>motivation and of creativity and invention. I don't think the
>creativity, initiative and ability to adapt are easy to engineer into
>either human or mechanical automata. In order to have these, we live
>with some of the other flaws of the human. For normal infantry tasks,
>such Automata might be okay. The problem is, once you dehumanize your
>force, you might remove some of the barriers to the enemy treating them

But wait a minute, you (or others in this thread?) are already proposing
that a soldier can be killed, have his brain saved, plopped back into a
new
body (or the his brain patterns copied and remaped into a new body) and
then off he goes on his way either in a day or a year. (For the record I
do
not beleive that this can be even remotely accomplished by 2180s,
beliefs
about what humanity can accomplish when they put their mind to it not
withstanding, but I'm playing along since it is interesting.) In fact
you
have even suggested that the memory of the traumatic experience can be
wiped from his mind. (And what about all his squad mates that saw him
die?)
So I'm not making this stuff up just reacting to what I'm reading.
(meaning, you opened this can of worms;-)) In that case If I'm killed,
or
before I even go on the operation, you just make a copy of my brain and
you
can toss that copy into any host (preferably a clone of me) and instead
of
one guy with 20 years of specops experience you have two. More
importantly,
would be the ability to take my experience and incorporate it,
programmatically, with others so you  can improve on it. In this case
there
is no differnce between ability /experience etc of a original copy or
the
dupe, unless there are imperfections unnoticed in either the cloning
process or the remapping process, so whether the guy is SF, infantry, or
whatever is immaterial.

BTW this entire idea is so fraught with moral/ethical dillemas that will
arise from what at first glance is a purely medical capability to help
wounded or killed solders, that I could see whole wars being fought just
to
prevent this level of capability from ever happening.

>Note that only fools (sorry, my word for them) want to take man
>completely out of the combat decision loop. I think most more sane folk
>have it in their heads to take man out of the needlessly risky parts.
>Decision loops should still have humans in them, maybe advised by
expert
>systems. And some types of ops will (if you are the ESU) be cheaper to
>do with humans or (if you are the NAC) be delicate enough you can't
just
>use a bot.

Agreed but if you have teh level of sophistication need to remap a brain
from one person to the other, go in an edit out selected memories or
even
put one brain in another, then...boom...you are more or less already
there
since the implied sophistication transfers to many other endevours
surrounding the whole process. Sort of like if we can build a space ship
that can fly to the moon, then we can make Tang too.(stupid anaolgy but
I
used to like Tang!) 

>What the battlefield in 2185 will be is a place where humans play a
more
>selective and specialized role. And the average soldier of the day will
>probably (for a regular) be stronger, faster, bigger, tougher, etc.
than
>one of today. Better armed, protected, and less likely to get
>pointlessly killed doing something technology could do cheaper. But
he'd
>be there... on the field....doing his job because it can't quite be
done
>by a computer as well. That will come one day I imagine, but way past
>2185 (I hope).

I'm sure anyone that cared to postulate about warfare's future in the
1600s
may have had the same conclusion as you but the fact is, that really
isn't
so even today except in a very few western countries/societies, who by
the
way, when they undertake military action are not fighting for their
survival or even cultural ethical issues but to make various political
points. All the other countries in the world centuries later and with
tech
advanced way beyond anyones wildest imagination are still have manpower
as
their cheapest commodity and have demonstarted their willingness to
throw
away humnas in large quantities. Sure it's a little better, though the
nineties has been a pretty damn ghoulish decade, IMO.

Cheers...

Los