Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: DinosaurNothlit on March 26, 2012, 05:51:56 PM
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Consider, for a moment, the rationale behind why the Animorphs were so reluctant to morph sentient beings. I'm sure you're all familiar with the basic concept, given that it was something that was touched on several times throughout the series. Cassie compared it to being like a Yeerk, basically you create a 'sentient' creature, and then enslave it.
Try carrying that train of thought to its logical conclusion, though. If every morph is to be treated as approximately equal to the creature that is morphed, then it must be noted that demorphing destroys that creature. The Animorphs seem to start out with a blank slate every time they morph, given the fact that they have to re-conquer the creature's instincts each time. Of course, this particular aspect could be argued either way, since it's also true that it's easier to conquer the instincts with subsequent morphs. But, given that the basis of the morph is a strand of DNA which carries no psychological information on the creature's state of mind, memories, or life, I think it's fairly safe to say that each demorph destroys the individual creature (if it can be called such) that was created by that particular morph.
Ergo, if morphing sentient creatures is actually wrong for the reasons that Cassie states, then demorphing from those same creatures is murder.
Thoughts? Please, feel more than welcome to poke any holes in my logic that you can find. That's why I posted this as a thread, after all, to be discussed. Please note, though, that I'm taking Cassie's original supposition that 'enslaving' a morph is wrong, as the basis for my argument, so, while you're free to poke holes in Cassie's morality if you want, don't think that doing so will damage my subsequent argument.
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You're not creating a sentient being. It has no self awareness. There is no point in the series where the Animorphs morph Humans, Hork-Bajir, or whatever and their morph starts talking to them or tries to control the body outside of basic instincts. It's not murder, and comparing it to Yeerks makes no sense. Yes you control something's instincts. You have to control your own instincts when doing something dangerous, assuming you do have self preservation instincts.
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I agree with Chad. The creature isn't really alive. It's just like a shell that the person controls, so I wouldn't consider demorphing murder
But that is a pretty interesting thought
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We always assumed that Cassie's reason for balking at the prospect of morphing sentients without their permission was because it gave the morpher the ability to impersonate the other being. Her concern proved well-founded when
[spoiler]David morphed Marco and attacked the other Animorphs[/spoiler]. This ability to pass as somebody else is what made the action similar to the Yeerks.
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I wouldn't call demorphing murder anymore than I'd call morphing suicide.
We know that when you morph a creature of lesser mass, the excess mass of your body is stored in Z-space. You still get your body back when you demorph. Cleaned up, but not reborn.
A problem in morphing theory is we don't know where extra matter for larger morphs comes from-however, I suspect that once you do the larger morph, when you demorph that creature's mass would be kept in Z-space, same as human mass is when morphing a small creature.
It's not just matter transformation, it's matter relocation from z-space to normal space.
And though there may not be a lot of logic behind this idea, I do think it applies to small morphs as well, only because otherwise you need to different methods of morphing depending on original vs morph size.
So my problem with your argument depends on undefined-at least non canon defined-aspects of morphing science.
Ethically?
A morph is created when you will it. It is your creation, do what you see fit.
(And god strikes me with lightning in 3,2,1....)
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You're not creating a sentient being. It has no self awareness. There is no point in the series where the Animorphs morph Humans, Hork-Bajir, or whatever and their morph starts talking to them or tries to control the body outside of basic instincts. It's not murder, and comparing it to Yeerks makes no sense. Yes you control something's instincts. You have to control your own instincts when doing something dangerous, assuming you do have self preservation instincts.
Like I said, I'm not even debating the validity of Cassie's claim that a morph is a sentient being. To be perfectly honest, I'm actually with you, it is slightly ridiculous. Heck, part of the reason I brought it up in the first place was to demonstrate how silly it is, by carrying it to its logical (and perhaps preposterous) extreme. But, well, I hadn't wanted to call attention to my own opinions on the matter, because I was trying not to turn this thread into too much of a blatant Cassie-bash.
We always assumed that Cassie's reason for balking at the prospect of morphing sentients without their permission was because it gave the morpher the ability to impersonate the other being. Her concern proved well-founded when
[spoiler]David morphed Marco and attacked the other Animorphs[/spoiler]. This ability to pass as somebody else is what made the action similar to the Yeerks.
Book #4, page 53:
"It will be strange morphing something so intelligent," Rachel said.
"Yes," I agreed. Strange, and . . . wrong, somehow. I felt a twisting in my stomach. "How is doing this any different than what the Yeerks do?"
Rachel looked surprised. "Yeerks take over humans," she said. "Besides, they don't morph, they infest. We don't take over the actual animal, we just copy his DNA pattern, create a totally new animal, and then-"
"And then control the new animal," I said.
"It's not the same," Rachel insisted. But she looked troubled.
It sounds to me that, initially at least, Cassie was much more concerned with the ethics of controlling the morph, rather than the threat of impersonation. Perhaps the impersonation issue factored in later, particularly when they started morphing things like Hork-Bajir and humans.
RYTX, that's a good point, about morphs being stored in Z-space the same way a person's original form is. That would make a lot of sense.
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I agree that, according to passage four, that seemed to be the worry that Cassie had in mind. They were "stealing" the animal's body to do with whatever they wished, and then dismissing it into non-existence whenever they were done with it. (Which is really the same as death, if you are going by this logic.) I think that this is consistent with Cassie's early on beliefs about the spirituality that animals contained.
At that point of time, they had no real idea how morphing worked. Without Ax there to make it somewhat understandable to them what happened (if he ever really could), morphing probably had more of a mystical quality rather than a scientific quality to them, and to Cassie in particular. It is reasonable to assume that she could be worried that they would be stealing the animal's essence more than their DNA, and their temporary inability to control the morph in the beginning would probably reinforce that thought. They are essentially creating animals to just bend them to their will, basically be their slaves.
However, as Rachel said, that is illogical. They merely swapped DNA, didn't create a whole new being. They were still themselves no matter what form they were in. However, in the beginning when they were new to the idea of becoming new creatures, it probably created a strange disassociation in their mind that might have created the belief they were becoming something else. But as the series progressed, they gained a better understanding that they were their morph. But Cassie probably never lost the feeling that they were doing something against nature, humans aren't supposed to be able to 'steal' the bodies of other animals to use it to their aims. Animals were pretty sacred to Cassie, and it probably isn't a large stretch of imagination to imagine her thinking "a wolf would never want this Hork'Bajir dead, what right do I have to use a wolf body to kill it?"
Like Estelore said, I think the more practical worry is using someone's explicit identity to deceive others and use that body for acts that the person who's identity was stolen would not agree with. Most of the other animorphs would agree to that, being humans themselves and understanding the implications, but they didn't extend that courtesy when thinking about animals. To them, animals didn't have identities, but to Cassie they did, and there was no difference between stealing the identity of an animal and the identity of a human.
Still, illogical, (well, perhaps not illogical, but not practical at all when you have the world riding on your shoulders) but I don't think it is so off the mark that she thought that way.
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No. Cassie's argument was ridiculous then and it's ridiculous now. I really need to figure out which of the books where she gets REEEEALLY preachy-moralizy and see how many of them are ghostwritten books vs. how much of this the K.A. team actually wrote.
Anyway, no. They're not creating anything. They're changing THEIR shape to be identical to something else's shape. It's not immoral in any sane universe.
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The thing is, none of them are going to use the morphs to do something illegal or highly immoral. Yes David did what he did, but he was off. There are good and bad ways you can use just about anything.
I don't really know the answer to that, Jet. Cassie didn't really bother me too horribly except a few times. the no morphing Humans rule was insulting, as it implies that any of them would use the Human morphs to commit crimes. Leaving the group because your morals are being questioned was wrong because she was choosing herself above the world. Giving the enemy the morphing cube was just awful. It wasn't too long before that when she said it would be the worst thing in the world if they got their hands on the cube.
I guess we really shouldn't let this devolve into a rant against Cassie.
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Well, in Cassie's defense, I think her leaving if she simply couldn't bring herself to do the job was the right thing to do. It's more responsible to leave if you must, rather than break down during a critical moment when they need you, or drag the rest of the group down.
I think one of her biggest failings was that she DIDN'T stay away.
(Trying not to derail this into a Cassie bashing thread...)
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The thing is, none of them are going to use the morphs to do something illegal or highly immoral. Yes David did what he did, but he was off. There are good and bad ways you can use just about anything.
Thing is, it's not always about illegal or immoral. Sometimes it can just be reputation, and not always on purpose, either.
Take when Marco morphs that one guy at his place of work, while he was trying to spy on Visser One. If the person that found him had bothered coming into the room, she would have seen her co-worker in a too-small skin tight suit that was ripping at the seems, by himself in a dark room. That would set off some alarm bells. He says he's using someone else's computer because his doesn't work. What if this office dealt with client credit card numbers, and had strict privacy laws? If he has the password for someone else's computer that he might not be allowed to have, that could put his co-worker in trouble for "giving him the password". That's two people who could potentially loose their job because Marco morphed a human being, without even doing anything wrong, just by being suspicious.
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Oh she could do the job. She'd just have to change her black and white morality a bit in order to accommodate reality. It's not that she couldn't fight the Yeerks anymore. It's that she wasn't the pure and clean little girl she wanted to be anymore.
Ok I can see the point there with reputation. Obviously Marco didn't mean to endanger people's livelihoods, but their careers could have been screwed if he messed up.
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Consider, for a moment, the rationale behind why the Animorphs were so reluctant to morph sentient beings. I'm sure you're all familiar with the basic concept, given that it was something that was touched on several times throughout the series. Cassie compared it to being like a Yeerk, basically you create a 'sentient' creature, and then enslave it.
I have always considered this matter pretty ridicoulous. When you morph, you simply reproduce a creature that already exists, you don't create nothing. And this creature are YOU, it's not your pet or a cloned animal that you breed. It's just you in another shape. The creature has only basic istincts, no real toughts, no memories. IMHO, there is absolutely no difference between sentient and non-sentient beings in morphing. It doesn't make sense. Morphing in a flea or in a chimpanzee is definitely the same thing : the chimpanzee continues to live as it always did and it doesn't care about your morph.
And it's the same with Hork-Bajir or human morph : you don't "steal" anything, no body, no mind, no memories, it's like a disguise...but much more sophisticated :)
The only problem is that a "morpher" could use a human morph for evil purposes. E.g., you could acquire your rival in love, go to his/her girl/boyfriend and say "I betrayed you with your best friend", or other things that could damage a reputation or deceive people. In this case, obviously, you shouldn't use a human morph. But the question "sentient or non sentient", logically, does not exist at all.
I think that this problem of "sentient beings" is simply a narartive expedient to add an issue, a moral question to argue about and to show different opinions, a way to differentiate psychology of each character.
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I don't think it is, when they demorph they keep the DNA stored somewhere for them morph into again. The DNA is just a copy of a original animal and they become the animal so I don't think it's killing the animal. Plus it's the only weapon the Animorphs had against the Yeerks.
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I think a lot of fans (often those who are more easily impressed by the "magic") just wilfully ignore the mechanics of how these things might actually work. Scientifically speaking (as far as I'm aware) morphing is virtually impossible. The closest scientific approximation would be an energy-matter converter which would actually be less biological and more to do with physics.
The purely biological approach has a number of problems. One of the problems include the rapid creation of fluids that are not inherently biological eg hydrochloric (stomach) acid. Under the biology route, accelerated cell replication (and decay) could arguably be the basis for what is described as "growing" and "shrinking" when morphing. This should leave behind a lot of biological waste such as dead skin or limbs. One way to explain this away would be it all miraculously gets dumped into Z-space (ewww). Then there is also the issue with where the morpher's mind/brain/consciousness is stored especially if you think about insects which don't have certain sections of the brain (cognitive abilities) a human/Andalite would need.
A cleaner explanation for morphing lies in physics as a form of energy to matter conversion. The most obvious example being the replicators from Star Trek. Energy can be used to form matter, in this case the biological bodies that are morphed/demorphed. With this understanding it is not too dissimilar to the popular sci-fi teleportation (note: Not bending space-time to move). Your body is stored as data, gradually destroyed/dematerialised (if you're human you could call it murder) and then reconstructed again from the stored data.
Obviously there's no reason why it can't be a combination of the two since this is just all fictional conjecture. If your entire body were teleported ie your body seemingly vanished completely you could say you were killed until you were rematerialised again. A bit like how someone could be "dead" for several minutes then resuscitated. With morphing however, you are biologically speaking still alive and conscious throughout the transformation so I wouldn't say that it's murder. You'd need a new legal definition for murder if ever there came a day where teleportation became commonplace and "accidents" occurred. I digress...
One very key point with morphing is the idea that you are not creating a new body. It's accepted that it is you yourself that is changing to become something else. You often hear the Animorphs talk about the animal's mind surfacing. In a way, you could argue that it is the animal that is the "Yeerk" and trying to control your shape-shifted body. Chronologically speaking, you owned your body first and the animal mind came in later even though biologically speaking the source of the body is not naturally yours.
Now when you are in morph though you share the brain of the morphed/host body. In a way this is very much like a Yeerk+host situation which I think is a key point. Two potential views:
- You can say that when you demorph you are simply converting all your cells back to form your original body. That is to say the host-mind (the morph's consciousness) is only instinctive behaviour from a temporary body. It never had self-awareness or intelligence.
- On the other hand, if the host body and brain was exponentially intelligent, it would reach self-awareness and argue for control of the body. This is to say that all morphed bodies have the potential for individuality but because of the 2h limit this is never an issue.
The latter would definitely support the idea of killing a creature when you demorph. Really though it is completely arguable either way because it's fiction. It is more convenient for everyone to just think that morphs are yours to do what you want because it suits you but I don't think Cassie is wrong in her observation. It takes a very perceptive mind to notice this.
You could say that Tobias (as a nothlit) never has a problem with the hawk wanting to assert it's own will or he never notices the hawk's individuality. This is probably because he literally becomes the hawk living exactly how his hawk would live. Not to mention every remorph "resets" the morphs' minds. If the host was more intelligent (loosely described) sentient then it could be more significant, making the issue with morphing sentient beings more of an issue.
In the grand scheme of things though, and if you believe this as killing morphs, humans have caused worse suffering to more animals for even less reason. Without morphing Earth would be screwed.
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On the other hand, if the host body and brain was exponentially intelligent, it would reach self-awareness and argue for control of the body. This is to say that all morphed bodies have the potential for individuality but because of the 2h limit this is never an issue.
This is an excellent point. I understood why Cassie had a problem with morphing humans, but I never understood her reluctance of morphing animals. However, if her thinking was meant to be along the lines of what you just said, I have to say, that's extremely perceptive.
Also your post made me think...if human consciousness is centered in the physical brain, and their physical brain is floating somewhere in Z-space with the rest of their bodies, it would give credence to Cassie's argument that they are in fact "controlling" a body and brain which does not belong to them. I guess the question becomes whether or not the instincts/will of the cloned being (sentient or otherwise) can be equated to consciousness...for example, when Cassie morphs Rachel, has a separate consciousness also been created, one which is silenced underneath Cassie's control of the body? Or is it simply a physical body/brain which is being animated by a separate life force (Cassie)?
What would've happened if Ax had been allergic to one of the humans' DNA (Jake, Cassie, Rachel, Marco) he acquired at the beginning of the series? Would the body he expelled be a fully-functioning being with thoughts and emotions of his/her own, or something more akin to a zombie? :huh:
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The body would likely act as if it was a newborn, since that's basically what it would be. Except it has a fully functional body. You know how two year olds get frustrated because their bodies haven't caught up to where their brains are? This would kind of be a reverse of that. It would be zombie-like, I think.
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Except the morphed brain doesn't have a thought process of its own. At all. It is entirely under the control of the Human mind that created it in the first place.
The ONLY thing the Animorphs have to deal with are differences in brain structure, in particular the replacement of their hind and midbrains with that of critters, thus accounting for the inborn instincts they have to fight. Their forebrains maintained all personality and conscious thought. There is no other critter involved in morphing, and the entire argument involving any morality in morphing is fatuous. They're simply reconstructing their structure to be physically identical to that of a different critter than Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
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When someone morphs into an ant or something, its brain can't possibly be supporting their mind, so the mind is probably somewhere else and connected to the brain and controlling movement.
On this premise, if they morph something more intelligent, they'll still be controlling movement and so on. But since their mind isn't in the brain, what's all that brain doing?
Of course, all of the above will be void if morphing is designed to use as much of the brain as available for your thoughts and only put the leftovers somewhere else. Or if the premise is rubbish.
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At that point of time, they had no real idea how morphing worked. Without Ax there to make it somewhat understandable to them what happened (if he ever really could), morphing probably had more of a mystical quality rather than a scientific quality to them, and to Cassie in particular. It is reasonable to assume that she could be worried that they would be stealing the animal's essence more than their DNA, and their temporary inability to control the morph in the beginning would probably reinforce that thought. They are essentially creating animals to just bend them to their will, basically be their slaves.
Yeah, I can definitely see Cassie thinking that way. And it is true that they didn't really 'get' the idea behind morphing at first, given how confused Jake was by Tobias being able to morph a healthy hawk from DNA from an injured one, or how long it took them in book 4 to realize that morphing would heal Marco's dolphin tail. If they had really been thinking about morphing from a purely 'scientific' standpoint, both of those realizations ought to have been instantaneous.
- On the other hand, if the host body and brain was exponentially intelligent, it would reach self-awareness and argue for control of the body. This is to say that all morphed bodies have the potential for individuality but because of the 2h limit this is never an issue.
The latter would definitely support the idea of killing a creature when you demorph. Really though it is completely arguable either way because it's fiction. It is more convenient for everyone to just think that morphs are yours to do what you want because it suits you but I don't think Cassie is wrong in her observation. It takes a very perceptive mind to notice this.
You could say that Tobias (as a nothlit) never has a problem with the hawk wanting to assert it's own will or he never notices the hawk's individuality. This is probably because he literally becomes the hawk living exactly how his hawk would live. Not to mention every remorph "resets" the morphs' minds. If the host was more intelligent (loosely described) sentient then it could be more significant, making the issue with morphing sentient beings more of an issue.
Interesting idea. Actually, it occurs to me that the idea of exponential intelligence of morphs would actually explain a lot about Tobias. As the series progressed, he became more and more hawklike, and less and less human, right? What if that wasn't simply his human brain 'adjusting' to life as a hawk? What if the hawk itself was learning how to be a hawk, and as it gained more awareness of its own condition, it was able to assume more and more control, so subtly that Tobias never even fully noticed what was going on? It would make sense that the morph's developing mind would be pretty intricately linked to the human mind, so much so that even Tobias might not have fully known where one ended and the other began.
When someone morphs into an ant or something, its brain can't possibly be supporting their mind, so the mind is probably somewhere else and connected to the brain and controlling movement.
On this premise, if they morph something more intelligent, they'll still be controlling movement and so on. But since their mind isn't in the brain, what's all that brain doing?
Of course, all of the above will be void if morphing is designed to use as much of the brain as available for your thoughts and only put the leftovers somewhere else. Or if the premise is rubbish.
That is a really good question. Wow, I can't believe that never occurred to me before, but you're right, the biological brain of the creature should in theory be a fully-functional mind of its own. After all, what would be stopping it? Unless whoever developed the morphing technology thought of that and built in some kind of mechanism specifically to repress the morph's intelligence. Possible, but given the number of things they didn't think of (like why not make the technology only work on Andalites?), I'd be inclined to doubt it.
As for the idea of putting certain thoughts in the biological brain and leaving the 'extras' in z-space, I find that unlikely. It seems like it would be much easier to put all of the morpher's mind into one place, since splitting it up could get complicated. How would the morphing technology decide what parts of the mind should go where?
On the other hand, though . . . there was book #32, where Rachel morphs a starfish and gets her mind split in half when her physical brain is split. How would that happen if the entire mind was in z-space? Unless maybe there isn't just one link between the morph-mind and the z-space mind, but rather the entire brain is mapped out and each neuron of the morph is connected to a neuron in z-space. Come to think of it, that would make some amount of sense anyway. For example, when somebody in morph thinks about, say, lifting their arm, the specific region of the morphed brain for arm movement would have to light up, presumably when the same region of the morpher's brain in z-space gave the command. So it makes sense that each region of the brain would have to be linked across z-space.
For another thing, think for a moment about how information in the brain is stored. At least, in earth brains, I don't know if maybe alien brains work differently, but in any case for humans it's the physical links between the neurons that actually store the information. You think about something, and that activates a specific neuron path within the brain, and that path gets reinforced so that it's more likely to be triggered again later. Given this fact, it might almost be impossible to store any of a morpher's mind within the morph's brain at all. An animal's brain would be physically different enough, that those neuron paths would be off, perhaps not by much in the case of great apes, but it still could be impossible to set up those connections exactly the same within the morphed brain as in the morpher's original brain. And those slight changes would be enough to pretty drastically alter the informational content of a mind, with disastrous effects.
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But there isn't a one-one ratio of neurons between brains across species. Or even people. I'm willing to bet a trained painist has more neurons devoted to dexterity than a track star-how would that difference be mapped for morphs. And then there's new body parts. What part of your brain wills a spider to morph 6 of 8 legs. Like with the Dragonfly's dragon fly eye's w.o. it's visual cortex: it's gibberish, but in reality is entirely different than human processors. Plugging your brain into the back of it should still be nonsensical
More importantly I think is this talk of links. We're admitting that the thought process is chemical-how is it that your chemical mind is intangibly linking through real and zero space to control an object in another location. Brainwaves can't radiate through space like radio, they are confined to the physical vessel which is clearly removed. Can't be done.
And considering how Yeerks operate, it seems like there's some strong convergence on brain physio-anatomy
I need a physicist (again). Someone needs to draw out a credible morphing theory in depth
We have 2-3 examples I can think of where someone morphs a more intelligent being.
Tobias-> Ax where the Andalite mind somehow functions like any animal: basal instincts
Buffa-human where it shows capable of learning
Ant-human which does not and mentally overrides the morph.
So only one of those examples shows that the morph brain is active in an intelligent manner, but seems it is interacting with the morphers "mind" which gives credence to the argument that a morph does has some development of it's own
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But there isn't a one-one ratio of neurons between brains across species. Or even people. I'm willing to bet a trained painist has more neurons devoted to dexterity than a track star-how would that difference be mapped for morphs. And then there's new body parts. What part of your brain wills a spider to morph 6 of 8 legs. Like with the Dragonfly's dragon fly eye's w.o. it's visual cortex: it's gibberish, but in reality is entirely different than human processors. Plugging your brain into the back of it should still be nonsensical
Yeah, that is a problem, but it's still a problem no matter how you slice it. How can a human mind accommodate unfamiliar limbs, without any additional mental faculties? The only answer I can come up with, is that the scientists behind the technology thought of that hurdle, and found some way of expanding the morpher's brain so that the morpher can comprehend the differing anatomy of the morph.
See, the thing is, there is no metaphysical 'mind' that exists somehow separately from the brain. That information HAS to be encoded in some kind of physical medium, otherwise it cannot exist. But perhaps you're right, and it doesn't stay biologically encoded via neurons. Perhaps it gets digitized during a morph, or perhaps it's stored as some form of energy. I don't know. But in any case, my original point, that the morpher's mind has to be connected to all parts of the morph's brain, remains valid, since muscles of nearly all creatures have evolved to be moved by signals from neurons, and those signals would have to originate from the morph's brain at some point.
More importantly I think is this talk of links. We're admitting that the thought process is chemical-how is it that your chemical mind is intangibly linking through real and zero space to control an object in another location. Brainwaves can't radiate through space like radio, they are confined to the physical vessel which is clearly removed. Can't be done.
And considering how Yeerks operate, it seems like there's some strong convergence on brain physio-anatomy
I need a physicist (again). Someone needs to draw out a credible morphing theory in depth
Well, I think the confusion there is more because of the way z-space is described in most of the books, rather than implausibility issues. Personally, I really liked the interpretation from book #45. Basically, that z-space is actually 'zero-space,' or space that does not occupy space at all and thus can be connected to everywhere at once (of course, that interpretation conflicts rather sharply with the idea of space-ships having to fly through z-space to get from one place to another, but I'm willing to chalk that up to a KASU if it means that the concept of z-space itself makes more sense).
So, if you interpret z-space as sort of a dimensionless space connected to everywhere, then there would be no faraway, spooky-action-at-a-distance 'link' between the brains of the morpher and the morph at all. Basically, they could in fact be touching, but since the morpher's brain would be removed from our dimension, it wouldn't need to be physically present in order to be touching the morph's brain. Think of it like intersecting lines drawn on separate sheets of paper, as seen by a stick figure on one of the sheets. He'd only see and be able to interact with the one line, even though the unseen line would still be touching the one that he could see.
Hmm, all this talk about morpher's neurons needing to be connected to the morph's neurons is sounding more and more like what Yeerks do. I wonder if it was coincidence that the morphing technology was invented so soon after the Andalites discovered the Yeerks?
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. . . so we might just conclude that one of Cassie's more ridiculous theories could be right and that the Andalites may have invented/made a major breakthrough in morphing by copying Yeerks?
. . . Holy, that last part would have looked bad for the Andalites if it got out, especially in the middle of the war to their allies.
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In a way, I think the whole z-space thing throws a whole wrench into 'lolcredible' morphing theory. To me anyway, nothing about extra mass being extruded into z-space makes sense.
If in a tiny mass morph, you get dragged by a ship and wake up, then you die when your conscious mind is in your extruded z-space mass, then how does your body stay alive when your consciousness is elsewhere? If it is in some sort of stasis/cryogenic state, then what was making them die in 18 when they got snapped to their body? It could be argued that their body was actually not dying, but going back into a stasis, but the symptoms Ax described while being stuck in Z-space described suffocation rather than hypothermia.
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We can't say for sure there's no metaphysical aspect. Mostly because even scientists don't know all the mysteries of the mind There does have to be a physical way of storing memories, but I don't think it's right to just say for sure. That said, in the books it may well be that way, trying to think back over stuff that was indicated, so I'll grant that. And won't go any further with the other, because this isn't the forum for it.