a low-spoiler warning for: PANTHEON
my whole life I’ve been obsessed with shows, series and movies that contained the topic of mind upload. from indie shows like Meta Runner, to series like rick and morty (never said i was proud of all of them) to even video games like SOMA. but recently a different show caught my attention: a show called “PANTHEON”.
PANTHEON
is seriously something else. it’s a piece of american animation in a mixed anime-ish style (think invincible) plus 3d elements. however, the animation isn’t what makes it unique, it’s its premise and execution of its main ideas. on the surface, the idea of mind uploading isn’t anything new in shows, but “uploaded intelligence” (“UI”, as opposed to AI) as the show calls it plays in a terrifyingly real fashion with all the scary ideas of forced labour, cyclical entrapment and economical collapse as people move on.
some context.
to upload a person in Pantheon, one needs to scan their brain in a process called a “Deep Scan”, and then run their upload on very powerful, very expensive servers. the upload can also be run at lower-capacity intelligence on more modest hardware, although at least one unnamed server rack is required to run a UI at the level where one can interact with it as if it were in its original human form (think VR, for example)
from the pantheon fanwiki:
Deep Scan is a method of converting (“uploading”) the human brain into a digital format, creating an identical clone in the Cloud while killing the original. It is a laser-based form of serial sectioning, in which the brain is peeled away layer by layer, scanned at high resolution while simultaneously being destroyed.
(they’re usually in the form of chairs, but can also be more forceful-looking devices.)
yes, this is the star trek transporter problem.
and this is already the point that is pissing me off.
all over the internet,
whenever I see this show and its ideas discussed in a context not directly inside of the fandom, this idea of the UI being “just a clone” of the “original” person perpetuates completely. in youtube comment sections, on reddit, on fucking tiktok, everywhere not deep inside the depths of the fandom (and even there a significant portion) seems to perpetuate this idea. i would like to vehemently disagree.
you are not you. we are you.
the thing about stream of consciousness is that it’s not actually continuous anyway. you’re not aware during sleep, during anesthesia, during gaps in attention. yet you don’t feel like a “new person” when you wake up. why? because identity isn’t about an unbroken thread of awareness; it’s about continuity of memory, personality, values, and the narrative you construct around your experiences.
a person is the sum of what they’ve lived through, the patterns they’ve developed, the relationships they maintain. a person is the way they think, not the particular carbon atoms that happen to be arranged in their skull right now. (your body replaces most of its cells every seven to ten years, and we don’t call you a clone of yourself, do we?)
so when a UI is “created” via a Deep Scan, what’s being copied? everything that makes you you. not atoms. not even the particular biological substrate. the information. the pattern. the pattern is the person.
which means - and this is the part that breaks people’s brains - both versions are equally real. both are equally you. at the moment of creation, they share an identity. sure, gradually over time, they would diverge. or at least they would, if pantheon didn’t so neatly sidestep that by making the Deep Scan destructive.
basically: the “clone” objection assumes identity is something scarce, something that can only be possessed by one version at a time. but identity isn’t a trophy. it’s not and can’t be a thing you own. it’s a pattern. patterns can exist in multiple places.
what this actually means (at least to meee)
the real question isn’t whether the upload is “real.” the real question is whether it’s you - the you that matters to the people who love you.
because if identity is continuity, if it’s memory and experience and the way you move through the world, then uploading doesn’t create a stranger. it creates another version of someone you know. another branch of the same tree.
and maybe that’s enough. maybe that’s everything. to me, it is.
the people who insist on the “clone” argument are trying to protect something: the idea that some connections can’t be duplicated, can’t be transferred, can’t be moved to another “substrate”*. that the original matters more because it’s yours, specifically.
and i think about the people in that show who have to sit with that question. who have to decide: does this person matter to me? and the answer, always, is yes. regardless of the philosophical mess, regardless of the infrastructure, regardless of what it costs them.
i care because it feels unfair to deny that. to call someone a copy when they’re standing right in front of you, fully themselves, fully real. and i care because pantheon shows me what happens when someone loves hard enough to reject that denial completely. when they say: no. you’re wrong. and they spend a hundred thousand years proving it.
Point is: to me the “Horror” isn’t that uploads are fake. to me it’s that they’re real enough to matter.. and therefore are the ones that matter :3
tldrrr; uploads r real and not copies (derogatory) and if u say so ur wrong and missing the point of the show :<
* istfg if i read this in 24h and feel like some tech bro wrote it im actually going to explode :sob: