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Whilst the original Johnny Silverhand died in Cyberpunk 2023 (meaning his body was terminated), the question still looms as to the status of the Johnny engram who possesses V’s body in 2077.
Can engrams be classed as living people? To answer this question, we’ll have to dive deep into both Cyberpunk and real life philosophy surrounding the mind, body, and soul.
However, since this topic is about as deep as the Mariana trench in terms of complexity, this is somewhat of a conservative video when it comes to analysis. If you’d like to see more videos on this topic, then liking this one, commenting and sharing are the best ways to show that you enjoy this kind of content!
#cyberpunk2077 #johnnysilverhand #cyberpunklore
If you’d like something more chill to unwind to after this, then here is the shotguns ranked vid which I mentioned in this video: https://youtu.be/DKwBJI4Y2qA
Alternatively, you may wish for more lore analysis, in which case, this video breaks down several parts of the cyberpunk world: https://youtu.be/j_ijRwM5hLo
Music:
Royalty Free tracks from Cyberpunk 2077
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
01:40 Engrams
03:37 V’s Body
07:01 Chippin’ In Quest
09:11 The Monks
14:17 The Endings
18:17 Verdict/Conclusion
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Cheers to you for creating a more nuanced discussion video regarding 2077. I like the more chill content as well but this is a nice change of pace 🎉
Our soul is the Brownian motion in our cells.
My personal theory, nothing else.
consider if an engram that is in stasis (asleep, stored but not awake) can continue on, or are they completely absorbed when they are merged into Alt? Once absorbed, do they continue on, or do they end their individual existance? What about an awake and aware engram (like Johnny, V or the VoodooBoys) are they simply absorbed into Alt, or can they continue on because they can 'fight back' as it were, maintain some form of independant thought?
oh, and the Johnny Silverhand? its a shot of tequila, topped up with beer and a sprinkle of chili flakes as a garnish.
whats YOUR version of V's drink for the Afterlife then?
Mine is ice, a couple shots of Sake topped up with soda water, and a dash of AbSynth (synthetic absinthe, available in game)
reasoning is…Sake, because Arasaka. Soda water because its the cheapest thing, representing my streetkid V being a 'dirty street rat' and the AbSynth for her eyes, light green. its a middle finger salute to Arasaka (you dont mix Sake lol, like how people get angry with whiskey mixers XD)
How about the Peralez family, etc? Are they Still the Peralez's?
I'd have to say no. So who are they now…?
These questions and dilemmas are what great games are made of. The combat is important of course, but the atmosphere, the moral thoughts, social interactions with difficult choices you must ponder regarding those, and dreams the game bring up within me, are what keep me returning to play something over and over again. Great video, hoping to hear more your thoughts on the matter 🙂
Ok, let's cut out the middleman. What happens when you take an engram of an AI and stick it in a body?
Johnny is legit but s good person, the game tries hard to get you to like him, but when you look at objective facts he’s terrible
Hold on what about V becoming a construct by Arasaka would that be any different?
I've been thinking about this a lot, with the internet being full of AI talk lately. What does it truly mean to be alive? I think we only understand that word in a biological and literal sense. Does something that thinks for itself live? Is a digital clone of a life-form really a life-form? The way we see Jackie in the devil ending, it's very clear that that's not Jack. It's some sort of reconstruction, or a broken engram. If Johnny is alive, is engram Jackie alive?
I don't understand how the engram tech is almost 60 years old by the time of '77 and they still haven't figured out how to use it with competence out side of one person (Arasaka).
So in the Devil-Ending would that mean V repeats the cycle as he will likely get set into a new body belonging to someone else?
It stands to reason, that that is the plan with even going through soulkiller operated by Arasaka would be.
Have a real curly question about Engram chips. Once Johnny has taken over V's body, does the engram chip have to stay within the body, or could it be removed? By extension, let's say V is placed onto an Engram chip with nanites, could V then be reinserted into their old body while Johnny is in control and do the exact same rewrite process to take back control?
Honestly, I’d much rather have him alive then just AI that acts like a person. Over the period of the game, I was connecting to Johnny as a person. if Johnny was just an engram, why would there be a full slot on the menu telling the synergy between Johnny and V? It would make much more sense if Johnny was alive to have how we feels towards V right in front of your face then if he was just an engram.
So Jackie could have lived
Just saying if she made V an engram why didn't she just put him onto the biochip in his head then the bio chip would rewire his brain back to normal. Biochip's damaged? Then why is it working in the first place.
My personal feelings on something being "alive" is basically that our consciousness is an emergent property of our organic brain. It's not some "soul" inhabiting our meat sack, but simply a byproduct of the level of complexity our brain has evolved to. So, by that stance, which is pretty much what is backed up by current scientific understanding, in my opinion, if a technological device, is able to be developed to the point of replicating that of an organic brain, for all practical purposes, it IS alive. Human memories are horrible at best, can be lost or altered via brain damage, or simply just aging. They've done studies, over decades, where they brought the same people in every year or so, and asked them to write down in as great a detail as they can some "flashpoint memory" they have. Some event that was so significant, that they swear they "remember it like it was yesterday" . Stuff like where you were when JFK was shot, or where were you when the Challenger Shuttle exploded, etc. And the reality is, they don't remember it like it was yesterday. They alter details, forget stuff, add new stuff, change significant factors, ALL the time. Like every subject did this. So when people say things like "well he's not alive because his memories are copies/altered by an outside force" (which is a point I've seen brought up in A.I sentience debates), I frankly don't see the difference. Human memories are just as uncertain, and malleable as a program. So that's not a good distinction in my opinion, between living and fake.
You also see a lot of people try and say "well the machine is just replicating the behavior of sentience, without actually being sentient. Or something like, they aren't actually angry, they are just mimicking angry behavior, to achieve a goal. Not sure how anyone could actually verify this, but since there are plenty of actual humans, who also don't experience emotions like the average person does, and actively mimic them in public, I again, fail to see how this is actually a metric of sentient vs not. I mean there are dozens of tv shows about sociopaths and people on the Spectrum, who are literally just pretending to be "normal" because they don't actually understand the emotional world the average human experiences naturally. They mimic actual emotions, but we don't question their sentience.
So, if the entity in question, behaves in a way that seems to replicate average human behavior, is able to make choices that are either selfish in nature, or altruistic in nature, for reasons that can be explained, and understood by a human (like Johnny promising to let himself be killed so that V can keep his body, and swearing on those dog tags, to try and tie it to an actual human sentiment angle, something a living being, familiar with humans would understand would help it carry more weight.), then frankly I feel they are alive. I have no way to scan them on a moment by moment basis to see if they trigger some "real" response metric or whatever, in their algorithm, just like I can't do that with a human, and can only guess if they are being honest, or lying, or just faking it, etc. So, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt, and treat them as if they are alive, and give them as much empathy, and compassion, and courtesy as I give to other living beings (including "lesser" animals that might not actually be sentient, but again, we don't question them being alive)
To behave otherwise seems incredibly callous, cruel, and frankly dangerous in my opinion. To just so arbitrarily say something isn't sentient, and thus you shouldn't give a shit about it, is a slippery slope that can easily be applied to a lot of other forms of life as well.
Kill the body again with the new V engram innit.
The only bollocks move in CP2077.
to think i saw a variant used in a different game, this is possibly how the tech that is used by capsuleers in the mmo eve online started out as
If anyone is interested in a scifi novel series that directly tackles this idea of copies of a human being alive or not, and has it as a central aspect of the story, then I suggest you check out The Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor. First book is called "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" the series is really good, and really funny. And it's 100% built around this entire premise of "if you make a digital copy of a person, are they are person? How do you tell the difference? Does it ultimately matter?" and frames it around a really fun and funny, hard scifi premise. Seriously, check it out.
@7:14
Ever played Soma? The whole game ist exactly about this question in my opinion. The Problem digitalized personas and the question if they are are a continuation of the person they are created from.
Anyways in the end I largely with your final Statement. Most of the confuion hail from the hypothesised existence of a soult, wich hasn´t been proven to exist neither in the real world nor in the games lore. After all this topic is really facinating and i wish there were more conversations than we get in the 3 quests wich relate to that topic. In addition i would have appreciated some more naturalitic ansers in related conversations. To me it seems like V mainly arguments from a more spiritual point of view.
I especially miss a philosophic discussion in the Arasaka-Ending. As I grasp it, this one poses the most philosophical questons, which aren´t adressed at all.
So what about the fellow that we box that was Twins at some point and then decided to become 1 person in 2 bodies…
Great conversation! Would love to hear more theories!
I'm gonna comment my thoughts before watching
I think I've heard the line in this game but I'm not 100% sure, but the line about something being alive if it can suffer. And Johnny does seem to suffer at points
This was pretty good. I don't believe Johnny is alive. Just because a monk said so. Who's to say v actually lost his soul? Because the program is called that. How do we know vs soul didn't linger around until v got out of mikoshi? If v was killed and revived due to the chip was his soul ever there? What was v doing in Atlanta?
It makes sense with him being alive from a narrative standpoint for many reasons surrounding his character
I frickin love this channel dude
I am totally new (not only in cyberpunk but RPG genre in general) and everything from the items to all the quests, was kinda overwhelming for me. But your channel really helps with clearing things and now I love the game, which I'd otherwise hate
Centzon. Only tequila I drink.
Though it’s not the topic at hand, and I’m watching as I go through my ?theory?
So thanks to the Devil ending that I feel most choose to participate in only once in there life, we learn the purpose of the relic. Yorinobu (the real main character) is transformed against his will into Saburo. This is possible because they are related. But unless I’ve glanced over a fact in the narrative, the relic cannot completely overwrite a non related person. V, as Alt says, is a blank partition. The character for us, with no recollection of their parents, like ever. I think there’s a strong possibility in any play through (corpo, nomad, or streetkid) the V could be Johnny’s kin if not child. Johnny slept with A LOT of people. Each life path can be easily explained for v’s mother as well. Anywho, if anyone has information on a specification that states that the biochip as a test model can rewrite ANYONE. I’d appreciate the response.
Also, Sam, you thought of Scrooge first because of one of V’s lines to Johnny in Toms Diner: “You’re the ghost of Christmas Past, a**hole…”😂
You should review the perks from the level up system to see which ones are worth it. I can't tell if Unshakable perk from Street Brawler is better than Deathbolt from Blades.
Johnny Silverhand is dead. Whether by Adam killing him or Arasaka executing him, he died in 2023. However, I do believe Engram Johnny IS sentient or "alive" but I can't call him human. He may sound, act and think like a human being, but as proven by Alt (and to an extent Jackie) that's not set in stone. Engram Johnny is a new being, separate from Silverhand. And by the end of game, so is V. As far as I can tell, there is no good ending for V. Not even riding into the sunset with Panam for 6 months, because by the end of the game, V is killed by Alt with soulkiller. And all that's left is a new Engram being inhabiting V's body.
Cool, now give me the pistol tierlist
This kind of Story reminds me of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, except it's actually well Executed and easy to Understand in Cyberpunk 2077 about the Digital Afterlife Victim living in a Person's Body, rather than a dying Victim going through a Virtual Purgatory Simulation where the whole Campaign is an entire Memory Sequence within a Person's Mind in BO3.