Cylon Life

Boomer: You know, Scar has probably died and been reborn a dozen times. You may have faced him before.

Starbuck: So what, Raiders reincarnate, just like you?

Boomer: Yeah. Just like me.

Starbuck: Great. What a frakking world.

Boomer: A Raider’s much like a trained animal, with basic consciousness and survival instinct. You know, but with the destruction of the Resurrection ship, when they die, they’re really dead. So, they’re not gonna mount mass attacks where they could have major casualties.

Starbuck:Raiders reincarnate.

Boomer: Makes sense, doesn’t it? It takes months for you to train a nugget into an effective Viper pilot. And then they get killed and then you lose your experience, their knowledge, their skill sets, it’s gone forever. So, so if you could bring them back and put them in a brand new body, wouldn’t you do it?

‘Cause death then becomes a learning experience.

Battlestar Galactica (2006) Season2 "Scar" Episode

I was talking with a friend about MMORPGs and most games in general when the reality that currently most games are 'Cylon' based. Think about it - you die and your skills and abilities are 'downloaded' into a new body. There is usually some penalty extracted, as death is not meant to be a comfortable experience, but it can be a learning one.


Unlike this temporal world in which we rest this reality in simulations and the virtual world has provided the ability to learn and a near exponential rate - barring that we learn from our mistaken death and bring those lessons to help us through the challenge at hand.


This does however raise a difficult question of how do we maintain some value to a life that cannot be destroyed? Does it even have value? Is it worth being saved?

Or is it something to be devalued because of its unique nature and survivability?

As our reality begins to become more mechanized and technically advanced how will you answer your new cylon overlord? And even more interesting how do you think the overlord will answer you?

So as we play and learn what lessons will be bring to our reality from our journeys to other lands?