The same conundrum actually applies to us in our daily lives. They could just be perfectly rendered simulations of Kelly and Yorkie: “ philosophical zombies” to any outside observer, who would be none the wiser. It’s analogous to swapping out the hard drive from an old, malfunctioning computer and sticking it into a new, state-of-the art model: its programs, data and AI are all just as they were before, just running in a different host.Īll fine and good, but here’s the thing: we have no way of knowing that the versions of Kelly and Yorkie in San Junipero are actually conscious, in the sense that they possess self-awareness. The idea is that consciousness is the product of an individual’s neural activity, and if all of the “data” in a brain (memories, thought patterns, etc.) could be “copied” into a digital realm, then consciousness could persist indefinitely. Now that this earworm is in your head, let’s interrogate the ending of this episode: do newlyweds Yorkie and Kelly really live happily ever after in San Junipero? Or is something else entirely going on here? Are They Conscious?Ĭan a consciousness be transferred from its biological host into a digital one? Obviously, nothing like this has been tried yet, but that hasn’t stopped plenty of people from speculating that this is possible. “San Junipero,” the excellent fourth episode of Black Mirror‘s third season, is part touching love story, part fun nostalgia romp, but mostly an audacious and thought-provoking statement on life after death. What if, before we die, we could upload our consciousness into “the cloud” and live forever in a virtual world? What if heaven were a place–more specifically, a data center–on earth? (Spoilers for the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” episode.
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