So, the body transfer treatment kills you, giving coscience to another body who believes to be you; you are dead and will never see your "new self", all the motivations which leaded you to submit to the treatment are now pointless because YOU'RE DEAD.
I mean, nice movie and all, but the absurdity of the tratment makes my suspension of disbelief crumble dramaticaly down.
What do you think?
There has to be a reason for consciousness to exist in only one place. I felt it was a bit contrived, but there was no way to move the movie onto the next act.
If you frame it in the context of reality. I can copy a file from one hard drive to another hard drive or I can "move it", which deletes the original. Modern PC's do "copy on write" which means that it makes a copy of the data it wishes to move/edit on the destination before removing the original.
So theoretically the treatment in the film is "optimized" in such a way that it damages the brain in "pulling out consciousness, memories, etc" , which stated in the film that the process wasn't perfected.
Paycheck used a similar concept, where "removing memories" damaged the brain, likewise with Total Recall.
Incidentally, sometime last year (2014/2015) scientists discovered how memories are formed, and can suppress them. So imagine that process is how "memories" are transferred to a new body. Some process has to "read it", and that is likely a destructive process much in the same way a scanning electron microscope is a destructive process.
Yeah, I understand the process, it's made really clear in the movie.
Problem is that at the ending they were saying thousands of people were undergoing the treatment. What was the point? Was the firm lying about the real process sending those people to die without their consent? I feel that, apart from some rare situation like that on the movie, nobody sane would let them someone kill themselves only to let a new person be born convinced it was you, like some sort of killing+identity stealing, that's crazy.
The movie lost most of its appeal with this.
I think realistically, people who reached an age where they are not independent (eg wheelchair bound, terminal cancer) would do it.
There's also a few other fringe cases:
a) Mothers who might die in childbirth, the treatment could be done and then the baby be delivered.
b) Transgender types who would otherwise commit suicide.
c) Celebrities who have "burned out" their bodies with substance abuse.
d) Sports "legends" who have permanent injuries.
Basically the same idea behind "RePet" in "The 6th day"
Given the treatment is expensive, it's ultimately would be used by people who want to become young again, and at any price. Someone who is 60 years old wants to be 16 again would likely do it.
Outside the context of the film, there would certainly be a market for such a process, and it would likely happen if fertility keeps dropping. Imagine corporations just paying to have "you" do this treatment every 30 years so they don't have to train new people.
a) Pregnancy wouldn't be countinued as the child is in the dead body
b) Might as well commit suicide, in fact the treatment is a form of suicide
c) Would a celebrity really care to keep on his legacy if he couldn't see it? Well maybe, but that would be like a egomaniac patology
d) Same as celebrity
If you undergo treatment you wouldn't be 16 again, you would die and someone else would take your place and live an entirely different life, I don't know if anybody would be happy to have is identity stolen.
I'm trying not to be pedantic about replies.
a) Women are told that they won't be able to bring the baby to term or they will die, so that means that the treatment is done and then the baby is delivered slightly premature by Cesarean.
b) That doesn't solve anything. If a transgender person has the money for it, they don't care about the old body to begin with.
c) A Celebrity would almost certainly do everything in their power to stay young, even if the "new" body's personality was quirkier.
d) And a sports superstar would do anything to keep playing, even if that "new" them wasn't quite the same as the old them.
The philosophical question asked in the film is "where does 'me' reside?", is that "new me" more like a "child" of you than "you"?
This is often why in SciFi, "transplanting the brain" is moving "me", while "copying the brain" is a form of self-transcendence. The latter is often in the context of technological singularity.
As I said in the first reply, there had to be a reason to move the film to the next act, otherwise the audience would ask "how come there aren't two of her", and it's answered later in the film that the actual copy process is destructive in no specific way.
The film is a lot more philosophical in nature, which is why questions about the nature of the treatment are generally left unanswered.
There is no "one" brain cell that is your conscious being, what makes "you" is a collection of how your brain is wired together, and to unravel that to make a copy wouldn't create exactly the same "you" much in the same way a MRI doesn't create a copy of you in the computer either.
Then again, if you can transfer all of the memories and all of your personality, pretty much your whole mind, into a new body, where is the consciousness "saved"? Why is there no way to carry it over, if you can copy over what is pretty much your entire psyche? Where does the consciousness stay?
And if it's a complete copy of you, did you really die? Did it really kill you? Interesting philosophical question.
I got them impression that the Company KNEW (or at least suspected) that the treatment effectively killed the patient but didn't tell anyone or they would go out of business.
That's why her friend/boss whispered to her on the pier because he knew she would never really see her daughter again and wanted her to know. He knew it was a transfer of memories to a new host, rather than a transfer of consciousness.
Knowing this she still went ahead with the treatment because it would secure her daughter's future.
Karma's only justice without the satisfaction
You are completely correct. The "you" that is undergoing the procedure dies and awareness ends, thus the "donor" doesn't get to enjoy the new body. The new body has all your memories (thinking they are their memories) but is actually a different core person so yes, the procedure has no benefit for the "old" person. It is death.
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