Vaccine or Silicon Replacement

Scenario #2:   Vaccine or Silicon Replacement

So let’s assume you’ve made it to Krypton.  At first it’s not so bad, but you quickly discover that life on Krypton is not a bed of roses! Shortly after your arrival on Krypton, many of you start exhibiting a marked decrease in powers. Your speed, your strength, and even your mental powers of memory, reasoning, etc. seem to be sapped.  Your group begins to refer to this as the “reverse Superman” effect.  Some of you are starting to be rather forgetful – forgetting other people’s names, even forgetting some basic things about your past.  The scientists among you determine that Krypton’s sun has an extremely detrimental effect on all carbon-based life forms – it causes all carbon molecules to slowly decay.  Left untreated, this condition, over a period of just a couple of years, will lead to the wasting away of your bodies, your minds, and eventually death.  Your science team concludes there are two things that might be done to reverse this condition.

First, scientists have developed a vaccine that they believe might reverse the effects of Krypton’s sun.  If it works, it will immediately stop the decay process and you will gradually be restored to complete health.  However, they are not overly optimistic about the vaccine’s working on each person. Whether the vaccine will work in you depends upon myriad aspects of your genetic make-up; however, the scientists do not have the ability to test your genetic makeup.  So, the general thinking is that the vaccine will work in 50% of those who take it.

Your other option is much more radical, and this is to undergo silicon replacement.  Over a period of one month, you will undergo a series of four surgeries in which different parts of your brain will be replaced by a silicon part.  Then, after your last surgery, your entire brain will be transplanted into an artificial silicon body, which will be functionally equivalent to a human body.  As with transportation, this silicon replacement process has been tried on humans before.  Each time, upon waking from each of the four brain surgeries, the subject reports having all the same beliefs and memories she had before surgery, and interacts the same with family and friends.  And the same is true of the subject whose brain is transplanted into a silicon body.

You can only choose one of the options.  Taking the vaccine and waiting to see whether it will work eliminates the possibility of doing the silicon replacements (you’ll die too soon).

What will you do? The Ship or the Teletransporter?  Why? Here are some questions to consider in writing up your own thoughts: 

1. Think about what silicon replacement actually does. What about the post-replacement person on will be the same as the pre-replacement person.  What will be different?

2. What do you think happens to YOU as a result of the silicon replacements? Is the person that survives the replacement surgeries really YOU?  Why do you think this?

3. Suppose a friend of yours was going to make the opposite decision. You’d have to convince them they are wrong.  How would you do this?