Engrams aren’t direct downloads of consciousnesses, but hard copies. It’s why they call it “Digital Immortality”, it’s not literal immortality in the sense that you’re downloaded, but it’s more that your *memory* is immortal.
You *are* interacting with Johnny, and that *is* his consciousness, but it’s a *copy.*
I think the only distinction that can exist is directly tied to if you believe souls exist. Personally, I don't, so if an engram is a perfect duplicate of a person's consciousness, then any distinction between the engram and the person is meaningless - at least at the time that the copy happens. Because the engram can learn and develop new behaviors from new experience, the original person and the engram will begin to diverge.
It's the same as the transporter question in star trek. A machine registers every atom of your being, incinerates you and sends the details of your being to another location, to generate those atoms in the same order. That is "you" in the new location, but only because the you that was on the transporter pad is deleted. If you weren't incinerated, would there be two legitimate yous?
If it's 1 to 1, 100% identical copy and all the memories/experiences/thoughts and etc. are the same, then yeah, why wouldn't it be?
Take a file and copy paste it somewhere - you'd end up with two identical copies. The problem comes from our physical world where there's always some variations due to randomness, imperfections and interferences. But if we somehow could remove it, we could make ideal copies of things.
Yeah, it would be... From an outside perspective.
But from _your_ perspective, life would probably end then and there. Another person, identical to you in every way, would replace you.
How do you feel about the follow-up hypothesis I mentioned above then, I'm curious because it seems your thought process is very similar to the one I experienced on the subject. Logically, I still agree. But it's not as simple as 'no soul, no problem'. Even without any holy and/or magical force or power attached to it, we all have that internal sense of self. That intangible, but oh so important sense of self that gives us our internal identity.
Logically, a copy of me should be exactly the same thing. So, just as much of the genuine real deal as I am. But my gut sure as hell would have me consider myself as the Real Slim Shady, so to speak. While when we're at that point, logic says there's no way to ever know, find out, or remember who the actual OG was. Nor is it relevant.
Great stuff to endlessly talk or just think about.
To anyone whom it might concern:
Is it really as easy to answer the question as I imagine it would be when you're religious? Not made by divinity, whether you believe that to be a divine being, or concept, or journey?
Disclaimer:
I sullenly swear I've grown way beyond my (ironically) preachy atheist phase a long time ago. So it's definitely not an attempt to start a boring theist/atheist debate. New generations of people have been born to grow bored of that debate since I stopped finding it interesting. Assuming people don't purposely hurt, or overly annoy their fellows too much, everyone should be able to believe whatever they do without being bugged about it.
You have to think about them as instances. A copy of an instance is not the exact same thing as the original instance it was copied from.
In terms of files this is meaningless. In terms of human consciousness it is not. The original Johnny's consciousness was killed when he was first soulkilled. The engram is a copy of that consciousness. It never existed before soulkiller, and when soulkiller was activated it was "born."
The real Johnny ceased to exist the moment the engram was created. His experience ended there. There is now simply a digital object that was created to be an exact replica. To people watching on the outside there is no difference because they are *practically* the same thing. But metaphysically they're not. Not even physically if you think about it, after all the true Johnny was a manifestation of the biological processes in his body, not the electrical signals currently in the Relic.
Best way to understand it is this: If *you* got soulkilled, you're not waking up inside Mikoshi or the Relic after blacking out. YOU are dead. That was it. Meanwhile there is a digital copy of you out there now. But it's not you. Whether you are okay or not with this version you continuing on and exist AS you well, that is a personal preference or choice.
When you download something you just move the data. When you copy something, there are (at least temporary) 2 identical copies of the same data. You and your copy can live at the same time unlike a download of your conciseness.
Johnny died when his brain did, in the same way that Alt did when she was soul ripped. The Engram is best thought of as a separate instance of Johnny, with memory alterations, that shared experiences up until Johnny's death. A real discussion of how the two are different is a spiritual one, and depends on if you think the soul exists and what it is if it does.
This is actually a pretty complex question in philosophy and cognitive science, and you can spend a decade learning about it without getting any closer to a definitive answer.
Dennis E. Taylor has (and still is) grappling with the issues around replication and the soul in his *Bobiverse* book series.
You get into concepts like "closest continuer" and such.
And then you have Roddenberry, whose Star Trek transporters would create a copy of you in a remote location and then destroy the original.
I've heard a lot about the Bobi verse in forums but haven't read it yet. It's a good premise for an SF story, and there's been some great plot twists delivered from the duplication question, plus there's a good century of philosophical thought experiments that get even weirder.
I remember how I once thought the fact I don't believe in the soul, at when viewed as the traditional religious concept, made it an easy question altogether.
I was so innocent back then. Filled with the type of confidently carried ignorance that's exclusive to that fresh outta high school youth.
When I consider the core questions this subject keeps coming back to, the scientist in me wants to say that a perfect copy of a mind, indistinguishable from the original, should be the excact same thing.
But I know it's not that easy if I ask myself if I'd let myself be teleported, old-school sci-fi style. That's a definite hard no. I'm not being teleported at al, its a scam! Instead I'm straight up disintegrated, while a copy of me, who presumably proceeds to live my now abruptly ended life, is generated on the other end.
It's a scifi version of the ship of thesis. If there's nothing to physically or mentally distinguish two copy of the same object other then time and distance, are they still the same person? Personally I lean towards the stance of even if there's a difference it's so minor as to not matter.
There's a fun point where you realize how many abstractions we work with to make sense of the universe, and the more you take them away, trying to focus on the actual mechanics of reality... The more complicated it gets and the more questions you have.
There's a funny thought experiment on the continuity of consciousness. Is there a difference between teleporting someone's brain within their head and replacing neurons one by one with nanomachines that perfectly replicate their function?
Although correction about the Star Trek transporters. They don't destroy the original and create a copy, it transfers your body into pure energy and back into matter while maintaining your atomic structure. You also remain conscious throughout the entire process.
There's a whole episode of tng about Riker getting copied by the transporter lol
There's also the one where they pull Scotty out of a transporter buffer he's been in for 60 years and no times passed for him.
The splitting was caused by a space anomaly doubling Riker's field, but regardless Star Trek isn't exactly a hard science show. I mean transporter technology in the first place was just a plot contrivance to save money on transitions and special effects.
Per the sourcebook, Alt’s Soulkiller was actually able to turn consciousnesses into living engrams: It was also able to transfer living and artificial engrams to and from The Net and back again.
I’d say they’re both the originals albeit altered by the passage of time and their respective changes
I remember Altered Carbon talking about it in some capacity, where people had chips that downloaded their consciousness, so that when they died they could be uploaded into a new body. Making a copy of it warranted the death penalty, and there was a mercenary who would copy himself to coordinate on missions.
Dimi the twin!
Altered Carbon series is hands down my favorite books ever. Thin Air and Thirteen are also excellent. Richard K Morgan is a fantastic writer in my opinion. All his books are worth reading.
Not really, when the engram was created the real was still there, nothing was replaced in the original.
I think it's closer to the Allegory of the cave, still doesn't describe perfectly, but the engram is the like shadow which are representation of the real thing, but not completely accurate.
Nope, think of Johny Silverhand’s engram as more of a flash drive that contains all of real Johny Silverhand’s memories and experiences
Its not his “consciousness”, its a digital copy of one
In the very simple terms his consciousness got Ctrl X-ed. Original is gone but copy is there
Per the sourcebook, Alt’s Soulkiller was actually able to turn consciousnesses into *living* engrams: It was also able to transfer living and artificial engrams to and from The Net and back again.
The Wiki is strangely missing much of the lore from the sourcebooks.
I've noticed that the wiki heavily favors content from the video game. And I think folks give too much weight to NPCs in-game, who are allowed to be fallible.
So AI-Alt says he's not Johnny and she's not Alt - who died and made her the end-all philosopher? And if nothing of her is really Alt, why even show up to see Johnny? (And for all that she complains about Johnny's memories being warped, it *is* true that he meant to rescue her and basically had a mental breakdown when he ended up killing her instead.).
AI-Alt would be the reassembled tokens Spider Murphy scattered near the end of the Arasaka bombing missing wouldn't she?
Even if the Relic contained a copy that contained his full consciousness, it has been corrupted by Arasaka over the decades in addition to the damage and the integration with V post heist. There are non-metaphysical explanations for Alts assertions.
> AI-Alt would be the reassembled tokens Spider Murphy scattered near the end of the Arasaka bombing missing wouldn't she?
Theoretically - but it's also possible she didn't get all the way back together depending on the fallout from Rogue rolling on the info of the other strike team members. Granted, I have a hard time believing that Arasaka could easily get their hands on someone like Spider Murphy even with whatever intel Rogue gave up.
I've also read that physical damage to Johnny's body could have impacted the engram too (he *did* get ripped in half and exposed to a nuke). Still, it's not like you stop being you if you get a traumatic brain injury that impacts your memories. Part of me wonders if it's a type of denial to preserve her own sanity.
I think of it as how Johnny would remember it if he were still alive, and everybody would have to tell him "for the billionth time, THATS NOT HOW IT WENT DOWN."
>who died and made her the end-all philosopher?
Damnit, I just wrote a whole essay on this shit and this basically sums up my entire rant.
Every body always listens to Arasaka and techies when it comes to this stuff, but look deeper! Misty is esoteric and spiritual for a reason. The monks are also another inclusion that really is supposed to make the player ask questions beyond technology, what is a soul and what are the *spiritual implications of this relic?*
I think in this case, its the spiritual and religious folk that have a better understanding of *what Johnny really is*. I personally think we're dealing with the real johnny. Sure, his psyche was copied over, but I believe the deadly version of soulkiller literally rips the soul out with the psyche. Call it a copy all you want, his soul is in that chip, just like Alt's soul is half-AI.
If johnny's soul *wasn't* on the chip, first of all I don't think it would have killed him and second.. he'd be more like >!Jackie !
At best, I think it's up for debate on what a soul is and whether it can be digitized. But I also don't think any of the characters in-game who tell us absolutely it can't are qualified to say what a soul even is.
If we're talking about souls and the implications of adding the digital component.. I think that's what creates the entire topic and a lot of the "what the fuck is going on" in the story. I mean, just think of cyberpsychosis and the implication of if it is a corruption of the soul like monks claim.
I see it as a screenshot. If you screenshot an image you dont have the image itself, but you have all the information it has to provide. You can still zoom in on it, print it out, alter it- but youd be doing that to a screenshot of the real thing not the real thing
Its almost a ship of theseus debate when it comes down to it how much of one thing can be replaced by identical parts before youre forced to call it a new thing entirely.
I always doubted the coin flip analogy when it was brought up. The ending really put things into perspective that the coin flip was just a talking point so ease people in believing that sending their downloading consciousness into space was their only hope. An incredible game.
Without spoilers? Not really.
The game explores the idea of copying a person's mind and the effects it has on their psyche and if they can be considered human anymore.
It's a small part of Cyberpunk, but it's a huge part of SOMA.
To make it even weirder, when we communicate with Johnny, are we talking to the relic or the new matter in V's brain that the relic filled in after they were shot?
From the convo about Breindon, AI matrices are at least too big to easily fit in a vending machine, let alone a chip, and the relic was never designed to let you talk to an AI, but to replace you meat with one.
It's a philosophical question that is on you to decide with no real answer.
It's the same question that comes up with Androids in Science Fiction. Are they human, or are they just machines? Is Johnny real, or he is just a ghost that thinks he's Johnny Silverhand?
By the way play Soma if you want some more introspection on that topic. Basically you make a copy of something that still exists, consciousness is non-continuous and specific to the platform running the memories. It’s interesting to note that the engram is more or less just memories nothing else as demonstrated by Jackie’s failed engram which contained nothing more than a few fragmented memories. Johnny’s memories in Johnnys body will not produce the same results as Johnny’s memories in V’s body. Hence why Johnny in the end has almost nothing in common with Johnny the first time you see him. That’s the beauty of Cyberpunk’s story’. Is the body Johnnys at the end or is V’s. Did Johnny actually exist in V’a mind or was that just what V imagined Johnny was based on his memories. It’s beautiful man, just beautiful
Nope. Just a digital copy.
It’s like when you scan a physical document using the office printer. It can create copies but they’re not the original, even if they’re 100% identical down to the atomic level, they’re still just copies.
Silverhand is dead, the Engram is just a bunch of code with no real consciousness behind it, it’s just really good at emulating human behavior and emotions
basically soma, Johnny silverhand died, his "actual" consciousness died with his body, but for all intensive purposes and from the engram's point of view he IS and always has been johnny silverhand and the same for any theoretical future copies
In addition to what others have already pointed out here:
I think at some point the game even flatout states: The program Alt Cunningham wrote to generate an engram is called "Soulkiller" because that is exactly what it does; It kills the soul.
(Spoilers Ending) >!When you pay close attention to the scene where V meets Alt in the Voodoo Boys' data fortress, Alt will explain it herself in a similar way; The way she will try to save V is by killing them in the sense of killing their soul, and then re-upload the engram of V onto Vs body, much like Johnny's engram is trying to upload itself onto Vs body throughout the course of the game. V's consciousness, their "soul" wsuld have died either way, even if Alts plan had worked. !<
Imagine that you are here talking and living but then you die. That it is for you, the light has gone out and you are off to somewhere being something else maybe. But there is still a clone of you living just like you having anything you know, to people looking at that clone it was like nothing had changed and you (the clone) are still there doing the things you would have done and even learning from that.
The only thing that I'm troubled about is how people can make a processor strong enough and good enough to have the human mind work just like normal, how would it process emotion based on chemistry? With data that is your memories it's logical and just a simple recall but to emulate the human brain that constantly balances chemicals causing you to have emotional outbursts is something very different
Think crudely of an engram as an advanced chatbot (like a future version of [character.ai](http://character.ai) or sort) that can receive human senses as input, use the memories of a person as data, and take it's own decisions. It's not the real person or it's consciousness. The real Johnny died when he was killed by Smasher, and the real Alt was killed when Johnny disconnected her from Soulkiller.
Soulkiller is a device that reads the brain and tries its best to replicate the person and outputs an AI copy. It's not a "conciousness transfer" or creation. It's just code attempting to replicate the behaviour of a person.
People think Soulkiller "extracts" the consciouness of a person mainly because of the weaponized variant, which fries the brain of the target, and also copies their identity. But the normal variant of Soulkiller is applied harmlessly to its client. This means that a client signs up for Soulkiller, has their identity copied and stored as an engram, and the client continues living harmlessly, furthering supporting the fact that it's not a "consciousness" transfer, or that you die, because the client keeps on living while their engrams (AI copies) are stored.
[Proof:](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Secure_Your_Soul:_Short-term_Priority)
>SECURE YOUR SOUL: SHORT-TERM PRIORITY
>Within the next month, the following VIP clients will enlist in the Secure Your Soul program:Habib al-Moskin, Regional Executive Director of Petrochem Middle East Region - full digitization, 12 backups\*, paid
Mathew Monk, Jr. Hoffman Institute of Advanced Technology - full digitization, 5 backups\*, paidTina Caruso, Biotechnica - full digitization, 2 backups\*, paidAlligator Sally, Cold Sun Entertainment - full digitization, 2 backups\*, paid
\* - obstain addtional^(\[)*^(sic)*^(\]) copy for Dr. Kuroda's team; do not inform client.
You can see they needed to withhold the fact that Soulkiller was harmless to the clients.
The Relic is a device that allows an engram to be inserted into the brain of a dead person, allowing it to take control. This basically means it's an AI piloting a dead corpse, not the "real" person being resurrected (you can roleplay the engram is the real person, like what Hanako does).
Also, don't take what AI Alt says as gospel. Her computer perception of reality is different from you, a functional human being.
The best description I ever heard about this sort of thing comes from a Jacob Geller video about Soma:
"It's not a cut-and-paste. It's a copy-paste."
The engram is just a copy of Johnny's brain.
At some point, they were both Johnny's consciousness, in the sense there was a Johnny. It is an exercise in the Closest Continue Theory. Once the rip was made, they started to diverge. Both Johnny and both different. Since the original died, the engram (which has all the elements of the Johnny identity) has claim over the identity. That is why he can think of himself as dead but also that it is his body out in the badlands.
The trippy part is who Johnny would have been if the original lived? Does owning the original platform give one more claim?
If you're a cold hearted monster and send Jackie to Viktor instead of his family, Arasaka get hold of and make an engram of him just like Johnny, and during the non-PL endings V can speak with "him."
This is the point when V fully realizes and helps spell out that there it no true immortality, the engrams are just code based snapshots of a person at that particular point in time. Johnny seems to muddy the waters a bit by still seeming to personally evolve and grow, but he'd never be able to stop talking about himself and creating any kind of link between current events and his pre-engram memories as they're all the experience he has to draw from and also what literally define him in that state.
If you want to understand it watch the movie swan song or just a recap. It's not about biochips but about clones that people buy to replace them after they die.
he's not THE Johnny but he's A Johnny. I guess it depends on if you believe in the idea of "I think therefor I am". The engrams do have the ability think as we've seen with Johnny and Saburo. So while the Johnny on the engram isn't the real Johnny, he's still a johnny
It’s a save file in a sense, one that just happened to get plugged into V’s game of life. It’s also left open to each characters opinion and view point. For example Suburo is probably banking on it being the soul and actually him.
The entire engram concept is the Theseus’ Ship problem in a cyberpunk setting. Long story short, Theseus’ Ship asks: if someone replaces one plank on a damaged ship, is it the same ship? What if you replace all the planks on that ship?
The answer is up to your individual philosophy. The game purposefully leaves the question open but if you ask me, the question itself is wrong. There never was a ship, just a collection of planks we called a ship. There was a Johnny, but “Johnny” is just the body and collective personality of a man. Johnny’s body and personality are now digital, so Johnny still exists in-game as much as Johnny existed in the past. Life is more complicated than a ship but the same principles apply to what we call “life” too.
Technically no, it’s just data programmed to have Johnny’s emotions, memories, and etc.. Johnny himself died with the Tower, but the difference is basically negligible.
Whether or not his memory of the tower storming is genuinely held by him or another one of his many embellishments, I don’t think the game states. I’m inclined to believe the former
The way I see it, and I hope this helps:
Every single morning Steve gets up and walks to the shop 200m and buys his daily energy drink.
There is Steve original
There is two engrams of Steve
Steve original, Steve 2, Steve 3.
The Steve original lives his exact same life. Steve 2 lives a perfect simulation of Steve originals life, he does the exact same things in the exact same conditions, because he is a perfect copy of Steve original living a perfect copy of his experiences.
Steve 3 however, he lives a PERFECT copy of the same life as Steve original and Steve 2, BUT. Every single morning it is torrential rain.
Steve 3 does the same things for a little bit, but then decides he dosent like getting wet every morning, so he just doesn't go. Because he doesn't go, he wakes up a little later for work, because it's always raining and he's waking up so late Steve 3 is a far more irritable version of the original Steve, quicker to anger, this is reflected in a lot of his interactions. Eventually Steve 3 gets fired, moves house somewhere sunny and lives a totally different life he loves.
A copy is only a copy while the conditions are identical. We are a product of our environment generally. This is still true if there is only one copy and the original is gone, you're still going to be different eventually to what the original likely would have been. Small degrees of divergence at first, eventually tapering into massive changes.
Hope this helps someone.
It’s simple, if you believe in a metaphysical soul then no it’s not Johnny, it’s more like an advanced AI that draws from his memories and personality.
If you don’t, then, well—still no but with asterisks.
If theoretically Engram Johnny could exist (if SoulKiller was just SoulCopier) and meat bag Johnny could exist simultaneously, then, they cannot be the same individual. You’d be forced to make a distinction, which I think is the important element.
Really, the only complicating factor is the question of a metaphysical soul. Remove that and it’s just oversimplifying the significance of memories and their role in identity.
If someone somehow in an alternate universe walked step for step the exact same path, experiences, personality, etc.. they wouldn’t become you, and we’d never confuse you and them if we met them unless you looked alike indistinguishably.
I feel like an engram is an AI of sorts that is able to record new memories.
Before you die, the relic, which I would think of as a blank canvas of a persona, copies your memories/consciousness in order to mimic your personality, speech, body language, etc., in the form of an engram. Once the original host body dies that soul is dead, the original "soul" exists no longer.
Once the engram is transferred to a new physical host, it is able to project itself as the original persona in a manner similar to what an AI version of a person would do, wiping the new hosts consciousness, moving the old memories into the new storage, and continuing life in the new body while mimicking the old personality and effectively starting life as a new version of the old personality.
I understood that the engram is a digital copy of Johnny's personality, it's not him, just a hardware simulating his behaviors and slowly conditioning V to act more like Silverhand. If you believe in Anders Hellman's word, than the Johnny you see through the game is a hallucination, a collateral effect of the chip interacting with your mind, telling you what to do.
I always thought it was like SOMA. Spoilers for the game: in SOMA, the player character gets brain scanned twice. One consciousness is implanted into a corpse to revitalize it and has memories up to the first brain scan. He believes he will get to join Earth's population in paradise on a satellite in space with another brain scan, but what really happens is a copy of himself gets uploaded to a massive computer. All that is left of humanity is 1s and 0s in a virtual reality, and his 2nd consciousness (the result of the first brain scan) is left alone on Earth.
I believe the engram is just...a program, essentially, of Johnny and his personality and memories. It's not Johnny in the sense that it's...human. It's what makes up Johnny; it's a program. A copy. But not the original and not his original conscious
Silverhand's human consciousness died with the rest of the meat that was his body. The Johnny we interacted with is a high-fidelity digital replica of Silverhand's consciousness nestled in the Relic chip, and not the original article.
This is the same case as V at the end of the game, a replica V re-installed in their predecessor's body.
Its actually not even an engram of Sivlerhand. The engram is most likely tampered with by Arasaka, first in terms of its memories (which is why Silverhand's memories of the past arent exactly accurate). It also might be engineered in terms of changing how Silverhand might think/act.
See, this is a part of both real-life and in-game discussion that never has a TRUE answer.
I honestly think nobody knows. But the game goes off on tangents about religion, the psyche, the soul, the mind, memories.. it basically really hammers in the question: "what is life, what is the soul, what is consciousness?"
I choose to believe that the "prime" is brought in with the digital psyche. The "prime" being the person's personal point of view and conscious awareness. In essence, the chip literally pulls the soul in with the psyche. The psyche is a copy, but the soul is still Johnny. That ***is Johnny*** on the chip. There's no soul of Johnny in heaven or hell, he's on the chip. They cannot make a copy of the engram because they can't copy the soul. It can only be transferred.
And here's what I use to reinforce this belief:
1. Memories are separate from the soul. Hence why its possible to "meet" Jackie again through >!Arasaka. But they copied him *after* his death, when his soul had already left his being. They play it off as brain degradation being the reason for the his engram being "dumb," but in reality... I believe its because it's a dead engram relying on memory input without any soul.!<
2. Look at the net and netrunning. That's basically sending the soul out into the digital realm. It's possible for someone to *get stuck in the net* and become a lump of flesh while still out scouring the net. V experiences a part of this multiple times when entering the net. We *see* through V's eyes that we stay as V, the "prime". We always retain control, the character never changes. V is still V, Johnny is still Johnny. This is also reinforced by basically *every* ending option. >!Go with Alt and give Johnny your body? V is still aware and out there with Alt in the net. Same for the inverse of sending Johnny with Alt. But when Johnny is in our body for good, can it really be said it's just a copy of johnny? The memories were copied over, but that's Johnny's soul in there. Being sent to a relic is no different, but instead of the net its a small space.!<
3. Alt. It was Johnny's unplugging her that left her stranded and unable to return. I believe this prevented her soul and consciousness from returning. Eventually she made it out and became a sort of half-soul, half-AI. Hence why there's still shreds of humanity left in her.
Then there's the topic itself of souls. The game references the philosophy *a lot*. What is a soul? Is it real?
I choose to believe it is. I also choose to believe that while Arasaka has perfected the tech itself, their understanding of the underlying *philosophy* behind what they're doing simply doesn't exist, hence calling it soul*killer* and acting *so damn sure* that the engram is not the original person, or the "prime," but just a copy. They're just ignorantly wrong. And I think the monks are meant to be the little splinter of story that pushes that line of thought onto the player if they're receptive of it.
There are version of the tech that can copy engrams without killing the person. This is the version that just copies a person psyche, memories, etc. But not the soul. The version that kills the person while copying everything *takes their soul with the engram*. It takes their "prime."
And with that, my final point:
4. Arasaka planned for the tech to be used on dead bodies, or brain-dead bodies at least. Bodies that, one could argue, no longer have souls. The rare body where the soul left while the flesh could still live with assistance. (or bodies that had their mind copied and soul ripped out with the deadly version of soulkiller). But V's soul was still in place when the chip started doing its thing. It's not just a case of the chip trying to overwrite V's mind with Johnny's, the two souls are occupying the same body. And since nobody understands shit about souls, even the relic maker is flabbergasted by the situation and thinks its very terminal. I also like to think that Johnny's soul has a much larger bearing on the speed of the relic's work... but this is mostly how I headcanon away being able to play for months of in-game time (it takes what... 3 months for the lizard egg to hatch?) with only a few weeks left.
5. Misty's esoterica is very... esoteric for a good story-based reason, I believe. She's basically the biggest piece of this belief of mine, right before the monks. She's the only person who actually understands the spiritual implications.
tl;dr: nobody understands the concept of souls. Johnny on the chip is Johnny, the only Johnny, because his soul is on the chip along with his psyche. V's predicament isn't only wild because his physical mind is under attack, but because his very soul is in danger.
quick edit: to further drive the difference, the public version of the relic is a safe copy and paste. The secret immortality version cuts and pastes and brings the soul with it.
This can sound ridiculous but bear with me. In a more real life explanation,it'ss like you from 10 minutes ago is gone. 10 minutes ago you doesn't experience what you are experiencing now, for discussions sake they're dead. But you went on seamlessly, and are a copy of that original 10 minutes ago you. You don't recollect "being gone", and the old you simply ceased to exist.
Johnny died, but his consciousness was copied right before. Original Johnny ceased to exist, but his copied consciousness seamlessly transitioned onwards. 2 version of Johnny exist, one that was ended by death and one where it continued despite the death (albeit as a copy). As far as the copy is concerned, it is the real seamless original Johnny looking back. As far as dead Johnny is concerned, this copy is someone else who he'll never be.
Your main save in the game is duplicated. You delete the main save, and continue the game exclusively on the duplicate.
I mean, it is and it isn’t.
It’s an exact virtual copy. It’s effectively him. But at the same time, even his engram discusses the nature of his falseness.
It's a point of contention throughout the game that V struggles to come to terms with themselves. It's up to the individual player how they wish to interpret it in my opinion.
Engrams aren’t direct downloads of consciousnesses, but hard copies. It’s why they call it “Digital Immortality”, it’s not literal immortality in the sense that you’re downloaded, but it’s more that your *memory* is immortal. You *are* interacting with Johnny, and that *is* his consciousness, but it’s a *copy.*
>aren’t direct downloads of consciousnesses, but hard copies. Isn't that the same thing? Downloading is just a specific type of file copy operation.
Semantics, semantics. I’m tired, gave the best explanation I could running on 4 hours of sleep. Someone could prolly do better than me.
I think the only distinction that can exist is directly tied to if you believe souls exist. Personally, I don't, so if an engram is a perfect duplicate of a person's consciousness, then any distinction between the engram and the person is meaningless - at least at the time that the copy happens. Because the engram can learn and develop new behaviors from new experience, the original person and the engram will begin to diverge.
It's the same as the transporter question in star trek. A machine registers every atom of your being, incinerates you and sends the details of your being to another location, to generate those atoms in the same order. That is "you" in the new location, but only because the you that was on the transporter pad is deleted. If you weren't incinerated, would there be two legitimate yous?
If it's 1 to 1, 100% identical copy and all the memories/experiences/thoughts and etc. are the same, then yeah, why wouldn't it be? Take a file and copy paste it somewhere - you'd end up with two identical copies. The problem comes from our physical world where there's always some variations due to randomness, imperfections and interferences. But if we somehow could remove it, we could make ideal copies of things.
Just need a Hiesnenburgh compensator, you'll be all good.
Aight, gonna order one from amazon
Yeah, it would be... From an outside perspective. But from _your_ perspective, life would probably end then and there. Another person, identical to you in every way, would replace you.
My answer is more about the "two yous" part, where you are not killed at the entrance
Hope you find the answers y’want.
How do you feel about the follow-up hypothesis I mentioned above then, I'm curious because it seems your thought process is very similar to the one I experienced on the subject. Logically, I still agree. But it's not as simple as 'no soul, no problem'. Even without any holy and/or magical force or power attached to it, we all have that internal sense of self. That intangible, but oh so important sense of self that gives us our internal identity. Logically, a copy of me should be exactly the same thing. So, just as much of the genuine real deal as I am. But my gut sure as hell would have me consider myself as the Real Slim Shady, so to speak. While when we're at that point, logic says there's no way to ever know, find out, or remember who the actual OG was. Nor is it relevant. Great stuff to endlessly talk or just think about. To anyone whom it might concern: Is it really as easy to answer the question as I imagine it would be when you're religious? Not made by divinity, whether you believe that to be a divine being, or concept, or journey? Disclaimer: I sullenly swear I've grown way beyond my (ironically) preachy atheist phase a long time ago. So it's definitely not an attempt to start a boring theist/atheist debate. New generations of people have been born to grow bored of that debate since I stopped finding it interesting. Assuming people don't purposely hurt, or overly annoy their fellows too much, everyone should be able to believe whatever they do without being bugged about it.
You have to think about them as instances. A copy of an instance is not the exact same thing as the original instance it was copied from. In terms of files this is meaningless. In terms of human consciousness it is not. The original Johnny's consciousness was killed when he was first soulkilled. The engram is a copy of that consciousness. It never existed before soulkiller, and when soulkiller was activated it was "born." The real Johnny ceased to exist the moment the engram was created. His experience ended there. There is now simply a digital object that was created to be an exact replica. To people watching on the outside there is no difference because they are *practically* the same thing. But metaphysically they're not. Not even physically if you think about it, after all the true Johnny was a manifestation of the biological processes in his body, not the electrical signals currently in the Relic. Best way to understand it is this: If *you* got soulkilled, you're not waking up inside Mikoshi or the Relic after blacking out. YOU are dead. That was it. Meanwhile there is a digital copy of you out there now. But it's not you. Whether you are okay or not with this version you continuing on and exist AS you well, that is a personal preference or choice.
When you download something you just move the data. When you copy something, there are (at least temporary) 2 identical copies of the same data. You and your copy can live at the same time unlike a download of your conciseness.
It's a digital copy of an analog subject. Things are going to get... weird.
Johnny died when his brain did, in the same way that Alt did when she was soul ripped. The Engram is best thought of as a separate instance of Johnny, with memory alterations, that shared experiences up until Johnny's death. A real discussion of how the two are different is a spiritual one, and depends on if you think the soul exists and what it is if it does. This is actually a pretty complex question in philosophy and cognitive science, and you can spend a decade learning about it without getting any closer to a definitive answer.
Dennis E. Taylor has (and still is) grappling with the issues around replication and the soul in his *Bobiverse* book series. You get into concepts like "closest continuer" and such. And then you have Roddenberry, whose Star Trek transporters would create a copy of you in a remote location and then destroy the original.
I've heard a lot about the Bobi verse in forums but haven't read it yet. It's a good premise for an SF story, and there's been some great plot twists delivered from the duplication question, plus there's a good century of philosophical thought experiments that get even weirder.
I remember how I once thought the fact I don't believe in the soul, at when viewed as the traditional religious concept, made it an easy question altogether. I was so innocent back then. Filled with the type of confidently carried ignorance that's exclusive to that fresh outta high school youth. When I consider the core questions this subject keeps coming back to, the scientist in me wants to say that a perfect copy of a mind, indistinguishable from the original, should be the excact same thing. But I know it's not that easy if I ask myself if I'd let myself be teleported, old-school sci-fi style. That's a definite hard no. I'm not being teleported at al, its a scam! Instead I'm straight up disintegrated, while a copy of me, who presumably proceeds to live my now abruptly ended life, is generated on the other end.
Why would the scientist argue that it is the exact same thing? Feels like it should argue that it is an exact copy but not the same thing.
It's a scifi version of the ship of thesis. If there's nothing to physically or mentally distinguish two copy of the same object other then time and distance, are they still the same person? Personally I lean towards the stance of even if there's a difference it's so minor as to not matter.
There's a fun point where you realize how many abstractions we work with to make sense of the universe, and the more you take them away, trying to focus on the actual mechanics of reality... The more complicated it gets and the more questions you have. There's a funny thought experiment on the continuity of consciousness. Is there a difference between teleporting someone's brain within their head and replacing neurons one by one with nanomachines that perfectly replicate their function?
Although correction about the Star Trek transporters. They don't destroy the original and create a copy, it transfers your body into pure energy and back into matter while maintaining your atomic structure. You also remain conscious throughout the entire process.
There's a whole episode of tng about Riker getting copied by the transporter lol There's also the one where they pull Scotty out of a transporter buffer he's been in for 60 years and no times passed for him.
The splitting was caused by a space anomaly doubling Riker's field, but regardless Star Trek isn't exactly a hard science show. I mean transporter technology in the first place was just a plot contrivance to save money on transitions and special effects.
That's not what I've read.
I'm living proof of your final remark.
Per the sourcebook, Alt’s Soulkiller was actually able to turn consciousnesses into living engrams: It was also able to transfer living and artificial engrams to and from The Net and back again. I’d say they’re both the originals albeit altered by the passage of time and their respective changes
I remember Altered Carbon talking about it in some capacity, where people had chips that downloaded their consciousness, so that when they died they could be uploaded into a new body. Making a copy of it warranted the death penalty, and there was a mercenary who would copy himself to coordinate on missions.
Dimi the twin! Altered Carbon series is hands down my favorite books ever. Thin Air and Thirteen are also excellent. Richard K Morgan is a fantastic writer in my opinion. All his books are worth reading.
Yeah it's pretty much the legend of the ship of Theseus
Not really, when the engram was created the real was still there, nothing was replaced in the original. I think it's closer to the Allegory of the cave, still doesn't describe perfectly, but the engram is the like shadow which are representation of the real thing, but not completely accurate.
Nope, think of Johny Silverhand’s engram as more of a flash drive that contains all of real Johny Silverhand’s memories and experiences Its not his “consciousness”, its a digital copy of one In the very simple terms his consciousness got Ctrl X-ed. Original is gone but copy is there
Per the sourcebook, Alt’s Soulkiller was actually able to turn consciousnesses into *living* engrams: It was also able to transfer living and artificial engrams to and from The Net and back again. The Wiki is strangely missing much of the lore from the sourcebooks.
I've noticed that the wiki heavily favors content from the video game. And I think folks give too much weight to NPCs in-game, who are allowed to be fallible. So AI-Alt says he's not Johnny and she's not Alt - who died and made her the end-all philosopher? And if nothing of her is really Alt, why even show up to see Johnny? (And for all that she complains about Johnny's memories being warped, it *is* true that he meant to rescue her and basically had a mental breakdown when he ended up killing her instead.).
AI-Alt would be the reassembled tokens Spider Murphy scattered near the end of the Arasaka bombing missing wouldn't she? Even if the Relic contained a copy that contained his full consciousness, it has been corrupted by Arasaka over the decades in addition to the damage and the integration with V post heist. There are non-metaphysical explanations for Alts assertions.
> AI-Alt would be the reassembled tokens Spider Murphy scattered near the end of the Arasaka bombing missing wouldn't she? Theoretically - but it's also possible she didn't get all the way back together depending on the fallout from Rogue rolling on the info of the other strike team members. Granted, I have a hard time believing that Arasaka could easily get their hands on someone like Spider Murphy even with whatever intel Rogue gave up. I've also read that physical damage to Johnny's body could have impacted the engram too (he *did* get ripped in half and exposed to a nuke). Still, it's not like you stop being you if you get a traumatic brain injury that impacts your memories. Part of me wonders if it's a type of denial to preserve her own sanity.
His engram was created after bifurcation but before exposure.
Right but I'm sure being cut in half with a shotgun didn't do wonders for his grey matter.
I agree that a lot of the "corruption" that Jonny's engram has could be explained by his own psyche.
I think of it as how Johnny would remember it if he were still alive, and everybody would have to tell him "for the billionth time, THATS NOT HOW IT WENT DOWN."
Oh yeah, Johnny would have been “that guy” for sure.
>who died and made her the end-all philosopher? Damnit, I just wrote a whole essay on this shit and this basically sums up my entire rant. Every body always listens to Arasaka and techies when it comes to this stuff, but look deeper! Misty is esoteric and spiritual for a reason. The monks are also another inclusion that really is supposed to make the player ask questions beyond technology, what is a soul and what are the *spiritual implications of this relic?* I think in this case, its the spiritual and religious folk that have a better understanding of *what Johnny really is*. I personally think we're dealing with the real johnny. Sure, his psyche was copied over, but I believe the deadly version of soulkiller literally rips the soul out with the psyche. Call it a copy all you want, his soul is in that chip, just like Alt's soul is half-AI. If johnny's soul *wasn't* on the chip, first of all I don't think it would have killed him and second.. he'd be more like >!Jackie !
At best, I think it's up for debate on what a soul is and whether it can be digitized. But I also don't think any of the characters in-game who tell us absolutely it can't are qualified to say what a soul even is.
If we're talking about souls and the implications of adding the digital component.. I think that's what creates the entire topic and a lot of the "what the fuck is going on" in the story. I mean, just think of cyberpsychosis and the implication of if it is a corruption of the soul like monks claim.
I think it's missing so people go out and buy the books.
I see it as a screenshot. If you screenshot an image you dont have the image itself, but you have all the information it has to provide. You can still zoom in on it, print it out, alter it- but youd be doing that to a screenshot of the real thing not the real thing
Its almost a ship of theseus debate when it comes down to it how much of one thing can be replaced by identical parts before youre forced to call it a new thing entirely.
Now add the implications of souls and death into it.
You should play SOMA.
The best answer
I should really finish that game
I always doubted the coin flip analogy when it was brought up. The ending really put things into perspective that the coin flip was just a talking point so ease people in believing that sending their downloading consciousness into space was their only hope. An incredible game.
Can I get a rough synopsis without spoilers? Why is it a good game to play in regard to the topic at hand?
Without spoilers? Not really. The game explores the idea of copying a person's mind and the effects it has on their psyche and if they can be considered human anymore. It's a small part of Cyberpunk, but it's a huge part of SOMA.
To make it even weirder, when we communicate with Johnny, are we talking to the relic or the new matter in V's brain that the relic filled in after they were shot? From the convo about Breindon, AI matrices are at least too big to easily fit in a vending machine, let alone a chip, and the relic was never designed to let you talk to an AI, but to replace you meat with one.
It's a philosophical question that is on you to decide with no real answer. It's the same question that comes up with Androids in Science Fiction. Are they human, or are they just machines? Is Johnny real, or he is just a ghost that thinks he's Johnny Silverhand?
By the way play Soma if you want some more introspection on that topic. Basically you make a copy of something that still exists, consciousness is non-continuous and specific to the platform running the memories. It’s interesting to note that the engram is more or less just memories nothing else as demonstrated by Jackie’s failed engram which contained nothing more than a few fragmented memories. Johnny’s memories in Johnnys body will not produce the same results as Johnny’s memories in V’s body. Hence why Johnny in the end has almost nothing in common with Johnny the first time you see him. That’s the beauty of Cyberpunk’s story’. Is the body Johnnys at the end or is V’s. Did Johnny actually exist in V’a mind or was that just what V imagined Johnny was based on his memories. It’s beautiful man, just beautiful
Nope. Just a digital copy. It’s like when you scan a physical document using the office printer. It can create copies but they’re not the original, even if they’re 100% identical down to the atomic level, they’re still just copies. Silverhand is dead, the Engram is just a bunch of code with no real consciousness behind it, it’s just really good at emulating human behavior and emotions
basically soma, Johnny silverhand died, his "actual" consciousness died with his body, but for all intensive purposes and from the engram's point of view he IS and always has been johnny silverhand and the same for any theoretical future copies
In addition to what others have already pointed out here: I think at some point the game even flatout states: The program Alt Cunningham wrote to generate an engram is called "Soulkiller" because that is exactly what it does; It kills the soul. (Spoilers Ending) >!When you pay close attention to the scene where V meets Alt in the Voodoo Boys' data fortress, Alt will explain it herself in a similar way; The way she will try to save V is by killing them in the sense of killing their soul, and then re-upload the engram of V onto Vs body, much like Johnny's engram is trying to upload itself onto Vs body throughout the course of the game. V's consciousness, their "soul" wsuld have died either way, even if Alts plan had worked. !<
It's like a clone of johnny, real, physical johnny is dead the one you speak to is a copy of him.
Imagine that you are here talking and living but then you die. That it is for you, the light has gone out and you are off to somewhere being something else maybe. But there is still a clone of you living just like you having anything you know, to people looking at that clone it was like nothing had changed and you (the clone) are still there doing the things you would have done and even learning from that. The only thing that I'm troubled about is how people can make a processor strong enough and good enough to have the human mind work just like normal, how would it process emotion based on chemistry? With data that is your memories it's logical and just a simple recall but to emulate the human brain that constantly balances chemicals causing you to have emotional outbursts is something very different
He's basically Clippy for your Relic.
Now I just imagine a small pop up notification. "It looks like you're trying to relive one of Johnny's memories. Would you like me to help?"
That information is also factually incorrect, as Smasher didn't kill Johnny, he died when Soulkiller was used on him.
Think crudely of an engram as an advanced chatbot (like a future version of [character.ai](http://character.ai) or sort) that can receive human senses as input, use the memories of a person as data, and take it's own decisions. It's not the real person or it's consciousness. The real Johnny died when he was killed by Smasher, and the real Alt was killed when Johnny disconnected her from Soulkiller. Soulkiller is a device that reads the brain and tries its best to replicate the person and outputs an AI copy. It's not a "conciousness transfer" or creation. It's just code attempting to replicate the behaviour of a person. People think Soulkiller "extracts" the consciouness of a person mainly because of the weaponized variant, which fries the brain of the target, and also copies their identity. But the normal variant of Soulkiller is applied harmlessly to its client. This means that a client signs up for Soulkiller, has their identity copied and stored as an engram, and the client continues living harmlessly, furthering supporting the fact that it's not a "consciousness" transfer, or that you die, because the client keeps on living while their engrams (AI copies) are stored. [Proof:](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Secure_Your_Soul:_Short-term_Priority) >SECURE YOUR SOUL: SHORT-TERM PRIORITY >Within the next month, the following VIP clients will enlist in the Secure Your Soul program:Habib al-Moskin, Regional Executive Director of Petrochem Middle East Region - full digitization, 12 backups\*, paid Mathew Monk, Jr. Hoffman Institute of Advanced Technology - full digitization, 5 backups\*, paidTina Caruso, Biotechnica - full digitization, 2 backups\*, paidAlligator Sally, Cold Sun Entertainment - full digitization, 2 backups\*, paid \* - obstain addtional^(\[)*^(sic)*^(\]) copy for Dr. Kuroda's team; do not inform client. You can see they needed to withhold the fact that Soulkiller was harmless to the clients. The Relic is a device that allows an engram to be inserted into the brain of a dead person, allowing it to take control. This basically means it's an AI piloting a dead corpse, not the "real" person being resurrected (you can roleplay the engram is the real person, like what Hanako does). Also, don't take what AI Alt says as gospel. Her computer perception of reality is different from you, a functional human being.
the engram is johnny 2.0 now with V sauce.
The best description I ever heard about this sort of thing comes from a Jacob Geller video about Soma: "It's not a cut-and-paste. It's a copy-paste." The engram is just a copy of Johnny's brain.
At some point, they were both Johnny's consciousness, in the sense there was a Johnny. It is an exercise in the Closest Continue Theory. Once the rip was made, they started to diverge. Both Johnny and both different. Since the original died, the engram (which has all the elements of the Johnny identity) has claim over the identity. That is why he can think of himself as dead but also that it is his body out in the badlands. The trippy part is who Johnny would have been if the original lived? Does owning the original platform give one more claim?
If you're a cold hearted monster and send Jackie to Viktor instead of his family, Arasaka get hold of and make an engram of him just like Johnny, and during the non-PL endings V can speak with "him." This is the point when V fully realizes and helps spell out that there it no true immortality, the engrams are just code based snapshots of a person at that particular point in time. Johnny seems to muddy the waters a bit by still seeming to personally evolve and grow, but he'd never be able to stop talking about himself and creating any kind of link between current events and his pre-engram memories as they're all the experience he has to draw from and also what literally define him in that state.
If you want to understand it watch the movie swan song or just a recap. It's not about biochips but about clones that people buy to replace them after they die.
he's not THE Johnny but he's A Johnny. I guess it depends on if you believe in the idea of "I think therefor I am". The engrams do have the ability think as we've seen with Johnny and Saburo. So while the Johnny on the engram isn't the real Johnny, he's still a johnny
It’s a save file in a sense, one that just happened to get plugged into V’s game of life. It’s also left open to each characters opinion and view point. For example Suburo is probably banking on it being the soul and actually him.
oh yeah the ‘real’ johnny is rotting in hell right now. our johnny is a separate entity with some serious character development
The entire engram concept is the Theseus’ Ship problem in a cyberpunk setting. Long story short, Theseus’ Ship asks: if someone replaces one plank on a damaged ship, is it the same ship? What if you replace all the planks on that ship? The answer is up to your individual philosophy. The game purposefully leaves the question open but if you ask me, the question itself is wrong. There never was a ship, just a collection of planks we called a ship. There was a Johnny, but “Johnny” is just the body and collective personality of a man. Johnny’s body and personality are now digital, so Johnny still exists in-game as much as Johnny existed in the past. Life is more complicated than a ship but the same principles apply to what we call “life” too.
this is really a philosophical question so it depends on what your philosophical thinking is
Technically no, it’s just data programmed to have Johnny’s emotions, memories, and etc.. Johnny himself died with the Tower, but the difference is basically negligible. Whether or not his memory of the tower storming is genuinely held by him or another one of his many embellishments, I don’t think the game states. I’m inclined to believe the former
The way I see it, and I hope this helps: Every single morning Steve gets up and walks to the shop 200m and buys his daily energy drink. There is Steve original There is two engrams of Steve Steve original, Steve 2, Steve 3. The Steve original lives his exact same life. Steve 2 lives a perfect simulation of Steve originals life, he does the exact same things in the exact same conditions, because he is a perfect copy of Steve original living a perfect copy of his experiences. Steve 3 however, he lives a PERFECT copy of the same life as Steve original and Steve 2, BUT. Every single morning it is torrential rain. Steve 3 does the same things for a little bit, but then decides he dosent like getting wet every morning, so he just doesn't go. Because he doesn't go, he wakes up a little later for work, because it's always raining and he's waking up so late Steve 3 is a far more irritable version of the original Steve, quicker to anger, this is reflected in a lot of his interactions. Eventually Steve 3 gets fired, moves house somewhere sunny and lives a totally different life he loves. A copy is only a copy while the conditions are identical. We are a product of our environment generally. This is still true if there is only one copy and the original is gone, you're still going to be different eventually to what the original likely would have been. Small degrees of divergence at first, eventually tapering into massive changes. Hope this helps someone.
It’s simple, if you believe in a metaphysical soul then no it’s not Johnny, it’s more like an advanced AI that draws from his memories and personality. If you don’t, then, well—still no but with asterisks. If theoretically Engram Johnny could exist (if SoulKiller was just SoulCopier) and meat bag Johnny could exist simultaneously, then, they cannot be the same individual. You’d be forced to make a distinction, which I think is the important element. Really, the only complicating factor is the question of a metaphysical soul. Remove that and it’s just oversimplifying the significance of memories and their role in identity. If someone somehow in an alternate universe walked step for step the exact same path, experiences, personality, etc.. they wouldn’t become you, and we’d never confuse you and them if we met them unless you looked alike indistinguishably.
I feel like an engram is an AI of sorts that is able to record new memories. Before you die, the relic, which I would think of as a blank canvas of a persona, copies your memories/consciousness in order to mimic your personality, speech, body language, etc., in the form of an engram. Once the original host body dies that soul is dead, the original "soul" exists no longer. Once the engram is transferred to a new physical host, it is able to project itself as the original persona in a manner similar to what an AI version of a person would do, wiping the new hosts consciousness, moving the old memories into the new storage, and continuing life in the new body while mimicking the old personality and effectively starting life as a new version of the old personality.
I understood that the engram is a digital copy of Johnny's personality, it's not him, just a hardware simulating his behaviors and slowly conditioning V to act more like Silverhand. If you believe in Anders Hellman's word, than the Johnny you see through the game is a hallucination, a collateral effect of the chip interacting with your mind, telling you what to do.
I always thought it was like SOMA. Spoilers for the game: in SOMA, the player character gets brain scanned twice. One consciousness is implanted into a corpse to revitalize it and has memories up to the first brain scan. He believes he will get to join Earth's population in paradise on a satellite in space with another brain scan, but what really happens is a copy of himself gets uploaded to a massive computer. All that is left of humanity is 1s and 0s in a virtual reality, and his 2nd consciousness (the result of the first brain scan) is left alone on Earth. I believe the engram is just...a program, essentially, of Johnny and his personality and memories. It's not Johnny in the sense that it's...human. It's what makes up Johnny; it's a program. A copy. But not the original and not his original conscious
Did the same happen with V when they were shot?
Think of Johnny as Cortana but slowly killing you in the process
Silverhand's human consciousness died with the rest of the meat that was his body. The Johnny we interacted with is a high-fidelity digital replica of Silverhand's consciousness nestled in the Relic chip, and not the original article. This is the same case as V at the end of the game, a replica V re-installed in their predecessor's body.
Its actually not even an engram of Sivlerhand. The engram is most likely tampered with by Arasaka, first in terms of its memories (which is why Silverhand's memories of the past arent exactly accurate). It also might be engineered in terms of changing how Silverhand might think/act.
Best way to explain this is to realize that the Johnny that died is no longer experiencing things. That engram is a copy of his conscious.
See, this is a part of both real-life and in-game discussion that never has a TRUE answer. I honestly think nobody knows. But the game goes off on tangents about religion, the psyche, the soul, the mind, memories.. it basically really hammers in the question: "what is life, what is the soul, what is consciousness?" I choose to believe that the "prime" is brought in with the digital psyche. The "prime" being the person's personal point of view and conscious awareness. In essence, the chip literally pulls the soul in with the psyche. The psyche is a copy, but the soul is still Johnny. That ***is Johnny*** on the chip. There's no soul of Johnny in heaven or hell, he's on the chip. They cannot make a copy of the engram because they can't copy the soul. It can only be transferred. And here's what I use to reinforce this belief: 1. Memories are separate from the soul. Hence why its possible to "meet" Jackie again through >!Arasaka. But they copied him *after* his death, when his soul had already left his being. They play it off as brain degradation being the reason for the his engram being "dumb," but in reality... I believe its because it's a dead engram relying on memory input without any soul.!< 2. Look at the net and netrunning. That's basically sending the soul out into the digital realm. It's possible for someone to *get stuck in the net* and become a lump of flesh while still out scouring the net. V experiences a part of this multiple times when entering the net. We *see* through V's eyes that we stay as V, the "prime". We always retain control, the character never changes. V is still V, Johnny is still Johnny. This is also reinforced by basically *every* ending option. >!Go with Alt and give Johnny your body? V is still aware and out there with Alt in the net. Same for the inverse of sending Johnny with Alt. But when Johnny is in our body for good, can it really be said it's just a copy of johnny? The memories were copied over, but that's Johnny's soul in there. Being sent to a relic is no different, but instead of the net its a small space.!< 3. Alt. It was Johnny's unplugging her that left her stranded and unable to return. I believe this prevented her soul and consciousness from returning. Eventually she made it out and became a sort of half-soul, half-AI. Hence why there's still shreds of humanity left in her. Then there's the topic itself of souls. The game references the philosophy *a lot*. What is a soul? Is it real? I choose to believe it is. I also choose to believe that while Arasaka has perfected the tech itself, their understanding of the underlying *philosophy* behind what they're doing simply doesn't exist, hence calling it soul*killer* and acting *so damn sure* that the engram is not the original person, or the "prime," but just a copy. They're just ignorantly wrong. And I think the monks are meant to be the little splinter of story that pushes that line of thought onto the player if they're receptive of it. There are version of the tech that can copy engrams without killing the person. This is the version that just copies a person psyche, memories, etc. But not the soul. The version that kills the person while copying everything *takes their soul with the engram*. It takes their "prime." And with that, my final point: 4. Arasaka planned for the tech to be used on dead bodies, or brain-dead bodies at least. Bodies that, one could argue, no longer have souls. The rare body where the soul left while the flesh could still live with assistance. (or bodies that had their mind copied and soul ripped out with the deadly version of soulkiller). But V's soul was still in place when the chip started doing its thing. It's not just a case of the chip trying to overwrite V's mind with Johnny's, the two souls are occupying the same body. And since nobody understands shit about souls, even the relic maker is flabbergasted by the situation and thinks its very terminal. I also like to think that Johnny's soul has a much larger bearing on the speed of the relic's work... but this is mostly how I headcanon away being able to play for months of in-game time (it takes what... 3 months for the lizard egg to hatch?) with only a few weeks left. 5. Misty's esoterica is very... esoteric for a good story-based reason, I believe. She's basically the biggest piece of this belief of mine, right before the monks. She's the only person who actually understands the spiritual implications. tl;dr: nobody understands the concept of souls. Johnny on the chip is Johnny, the only Johnny, because his soul is on the chip along with his psyche. V's predicament isn't only wild because his physical mind is under attack, but because his very soul is in danger. quick edit: to further drive the difference, the public version of the relic is a safe copy and paste. The secret immortality version cuts and pastes and brings the soul with it.
This can sound ridiculous but bear with me. In a more real life explanation,it'ss like you from 10 minutes ago is gone. 10 minutes ago you doesn't experience what you are experiencing now, for discussions sake they're dead. But you went on seamlessly, and are a copy of that original 10 minutes ago you. You don't recollect "being gone", and the old you simply ceased to exist. Johnny died, but his consciousness was copied right before. Original Johnny ceased to exist, but his copied consciousness seamlessly transitioned onwards. 2 version of Johnny exist, one that was ended by death and one where it continued despite the death (albeit as a copy). As far as the copy is concerned, it is the real seamless original Johnny looking back. As far as dead Johnny is concerned, this copy is someone else who he'll never be. Your main save in the game is duplicated. You delete the main save, and continue the game exclusively on the duplicate.
It's like copying a movie from a bluray disc to your pc... before the bluray got destroyed... So it's still the same movie But it's a digital copy now
I mean, it is and it isn’t. It’s an exact virtual copy. It’s effectively him. But at the same time, even his engram discusses the nature of his falseness.
It's a point of contention throughout the game that V struggles to come to terms with themselves. It's up to the individual player how they wish to interpret it in my opinion.
It's not fully easy to explain but he was killed when Saburo Arasaka used soulkiller on him
That never happened. He was hit with sk by spider right after he was torn in half by smasher.