Shockwaves of Regeneration | Star Citizen Lore

Today we discuss the complex realities of life with Regeneration technology in the UEE. The simple addition of Regen into the game will cause irrevocable shockwaves through society that we will examine including moral, religious and political ramifications which are starting to emerge in the lore of Star Citizen.

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#StarCitizen #PaulShelley #regen

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[SteelWalrus]

Given that Hurston is basically the Empire's Raytheon, I think we know how the laws are going to turn out.

[KickstandOptional]

"Hurston would be ruined by that decision."

Oh no. Not that.

[jbirdmax]

WOW! This is immensely fascinating!
I would have to say this:
If you were to get a terminal illness, and transfer your mind into a synthetic body, YOU are still the same person. Just inside a new or different body no?

[cryonim]

I think I have a solution to the identity problem, they can say that a person's identity is defined by his imprint just like product manufacturing IDs. Then they can put a new restriction in place, Memory Wiping, loremakers can introduce this as a bug with the central Ibrahim sphere or just say that to avoid PTSD this is how the new imprint machines would work. Then as a counter to this issue, a person's memory will be given to them externally and not internally after they have woken up.
This means, the person that gets up is brand new and considered a 'newborn' with his new manufacturing ID and then the memory given to him may or may not affect him, just like watching real life criminals don't make us criminals, the same follows for him. This way an 'easy way out' turns into a gamble, better than death but maybe not.

[RaysGuide]

I did a similarly themed video when the lore post was first made and I included another angle. The sole definitive proof of Jesus being divine for millennium was returning from the dead. And now anybody can do it because of the Vanduul? Wouldn't some zealots arise claiming that the Vanduul

[IonicGecko]

I definitely want to see regen tie into more of the lore in SC. It should be a major plot point in so many missions and questlines. They could really come up some great narratives that make you question your own existence. Haha! 😄Or just come up with interesting ways to end someone else's. Near-endless possibilities. 😎🦎

[pvalpha]

As a game element I do not see any issue with Regen and the lore around it will be very interesting. That said, the reason this becomes so interesting to us as players of the game is that many of us can see the path modern IRL technology is taking. It is very, very important to remember that age reversing, body alteration, etc., is going to be a thing in our lifetimes. Even though it will be a thing, it will not be immortality. People will still die, and mostly at the same rate they do now. Illness, injury, those will still be things that happen with increasing frequency the longer your body has been around. However, you will see that even though the average lifespan won't increase by much, what will increase is the capacity and quality of life for those people - right up to the end. If you think its bad aging and becoming an old person, just imagine climbing a mountain at 80 with the body of a 22 year old and dying from a random heart attack because you were too far away from medical services and your body chose that moment to prove even young people have heart attacks. I am in no way worried that such technology would be overly expensive or exclusive or cause overpopulation or even a birthrate decline - its going to be given to everyone because what employer doesn't want someone who can work an extra 20-30 years in their shop being exposed to all sorts of crud and just playing the odds out until something happens and they die? Not having to worry about medical insurance for age-related issues would save *trillions* and produce vast profits. Mind uploads? That's a more distant future than modern computer tech would have most believe (easy explanation: the hardware required to support a human mind has physical size restraints due to immutable physical laws, and those size restraints are basically the same volume as a whale brain as a max - with such a brain being far, far less... fast than ours. The shorter the distance between nodes/neurons, the faster the mind, and speed falls off with inverse square just like light intensity, with increase in discontinuity/incoherence increasing exponentially with distance. Also... we're literally not building for it.)

As such an early tech, I fully see the in-universe lore of regen tech being quite rich and not really reflective of the kinds of things that would happen with such tech in the real world. This isn't immortality as you point out - and a few dozen or hundred years, I suspect a bunch of bugs will be worked out making it closer to that - but people will be out of range or off grid or there will be malfunctions... its never going to always bring someone back. Of course, what will likely end up happening is that regen will cost $$$ and be artifically limited for non military people before you'll have to "inherit" your previous life. With maybe a 99% fee of your personal holdings (forcing you to sell off all your ships) or maybe a 100, 000, 000 UEC debt that has to be paid off before you can access your inherited assets. Having to re-earn most of your rep.

[introvertish]

I never even thought about the criminal not being afraid of dying at least a few times. Or even Marriage. Til death do we part?

[UncleFester]

I wouldn't be surprised if they make regeneration very expensive or in some other ways limited, so that only players and very specific npcs can have access to it

[ColMortimer]

Nice work Paul, you raise some interesting points. I'll be interested to see how this is further fleshed out given that death will be a big part of everyone's in-game experience, even long after elevators have stopped being the most dangerous creatures in the verse.

[kudos]

AH is great, glad it is being rewarded with new subs

[emessar]

I'm excited by the narrative possibilities of the regen lore. While other games and stories have featured similar technology, I don't know that I've seen this spin on it. It might be the first in-lore tech for the game that really feels unique. That's not a dig, btw. Sci-fi has been around a long time and It's really hard to come up with something that feels new.

[KoreyMacGill]

Fascinating discussion. Hoping to see npcs protesting outside regen areas.
And cool body stealing criminal missions.

[mwalker]

Sorta reminds me of a book by Joe Haldeman. "All My Sins Remembered"

[fredashay]

So, basically, this is a science fiction space game where, if you die, you respawn in a hospital somewhere and you don't have to just throw up your arms and say, "magic."
But it can only work a few times so players can't just abuse it to suicide to ram their enemies.

[MidnightShamalan]

most of the "different person" on the new life arguments would be quashed with one singular fact: the person had to willingly get their imprint in order to be regenerated. this means that even if it isn't the same "soul" (an argument for more philosophical people than i) it's still someone who remembers deciding to do all the same things as the original, because a person IS their memories. as long as they have those memories, they're responsible for the decisions made prior to death. the only way they could argue that they're not liable or the same person, is if they somehow lost all memories upon regeneration. and that would kind of defeat the purpose of regeneration, wouldn't it? that would just be cloning.

[rogueace]

The Heizenberg uncertainty principal states, there is a fundemental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of properties of subatomic particles can be known (eg. Position and momentum) this posits in this case, a problem...

The copy, would in essence, be inaccurately reproduced... and if we assume that what makes you... well... you, the person looking through those eyes right now, is simply the arrangement and pattern of electronic impulses in the brain, then well... electrons are subatomic particles, and therefor cannot be coppied perfectly: meaning that transfering that copy, would likely not, in fact, make your conciousness "move" to a new body... it would rather make a new, seperately concious entity that has your body, memories, and all of the details of your life as you remember them.

So, legally speaking... in this case, the new person has comitted identity theft, from a dead person, in the most perfect way possible. But only a milisecond after that person has died... so... whats the legal prescident for that?

[phblades]

I like the concept, reminds me of the undying mercenaries series!

[morinc]

can't see the UEE going against the Hurston's wishes

[Alinafe]

I mean they could have just say that regeneration is banned on humans and now only works on synthetic humans and there are <9% in the verse. Players would always be synthetic and maybe some other npcs in game.

The current lore is nice tho I'm glad they didnt go the immortality route other wise it would taken the immersion out of the game