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Narrative
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Ununnilium: I disagree that it's *totally* impossible. There's been various cases of real, physical damage from psychosomatic sources. As well, the experience of death could be shocking enough to trigger a heart attack.
Red Shoe: One of the reasons It's so persistant as an urban legend is that it seems plausible. Sure. You might suffer a heart attack if you died in a dream, but there's be no way to prove it — even if you monitored brain activity, you wouldn't be able to tell about the content of the dream, or, indeed, whether the dream had caused the heart attack, or the other precursors of the heart attack had disturbed the dream. As someone who has dreamt his own death, I can tell you with some assurance that it's absolutely not an obvious or automatic thing.
Tzintzuntzan: Regarding the holodeck, the
"official" reason they're designed with a lethal
setting is because people do dangerous things for fun; why not sky-dive without having to leave the house? Of course, this begs another question: why are fully lethal holograms the default unless special "safeties" are installed? It makes it seem like it's easier to create a life-threatening illusion than a purely fake one.
Red Shoe: Well, it is, isn't it? I mean, for a hologram to be life-threatening, it just has to be solid. For it to be both solid and non-threatening, it has to have a very complicated sense of what the difference is between interacting with someone and hurting them.
RedBeardSean I have to say, I've died in dreams a lot. I always have to scoff at the "die in a dream, die for real" trope when it shows up on t.v. Usually, it's just gas.
Pepinson It's also worth noting that the "dreams" experienced in The Matrix are in fact potentially lethal, since the user's entire consciousness is uploaded into a computer, and can be deleted like any other data. While it might not actually cause convulsions and internal bleeding, the total cessation of the brain's electrical processes would certainly be dangerous—depending on just how much of your mind is in the Matrix when it's deleted, the consequences could range from partial amnesia and radical personality changes at best, to total brain-death at worst. Come to think of it, if the brain stem was also affected, the body would just die outright...
Red Shoe: I don't think it's completely clear whether brains were "uploaded" in The Matrix. If they were, there seems to be a problem with the fact that pulling the plug on the user's body kills them (rather than just stranding them in the Matrix). It seems more like your mind stays where it belongs, and your sensory input is just redirected to the Matrix. I can certainly accept that a system like that might cause some psychosomatic damage — even cause your brain to shut down and kill you if you died, but there are some strange implications that "Your Mind Makes It Real" is meant literally, like when Neo spits up blood after whacking his face on the pavement in the construct. Given that the whole point of the matrix is to keep the people in it alive, this seems like a design flaw. The Thirteenth Floor, on the other hand, makes it very explicit that your mind is "uploaded" (In fact, they make it so explicit that they telegraph the ending about five minutes into the film).
Ununnilium: Well, psychosomatic damage can extend to spitting up blood. Actually, it's surprising how much the mind can affect the body - there have been examples, for instance, of psychosomatic stigmata, where self-inflicted woulds were completely ruled out.
Tonkarz: Well, there have been no confirmed cases. At best, this would be the Loch Ness Monster of medical theory.
Ununnilium: There's more evidence than that, but you're right, no confirmed cases. However, there is a condition called "psychogenic purpuras", where patients with emotional disorders experience unexplained painful bruising, swelling, and occasionally even bleeding through apparently intact skin.
Freemage: On the 'downloading' debate, it makes more sense in some cases, such as anime, where the genre conventions draw simultaneously from sci-fi and spiritualism; the notion is that the 'mind' being downloaded actually encompasses whatever is refered to as the soul (indeed, this is a major point of Ghost In The Shell and its sequel). So if you kill them off in cyberspace, you end up with a soulless body. It's less common in Western fiction, where sci-fi and fantasy are at least usually inclined to be an either/or proposition (although this is fading over time, partially due to Japanese influence on American pop culture, and of course Space Opera never really cared which it was). I suspect the Matrix was an example of this sort of bleed-over.
Score_Under: You can still feel pain in dreams, since all senses are controlled (including touch) by the imagination and receive little outside input.
Robert: Removed ', a mind isn't the same thing as a computer program, there's no reason anyone would actually do that even if it were possible — you get the idea.' A mind might akin to a computer program (that's the artificial intelligence debate, which has not been resolved), and there are plenty of people who would do it if it were possible. Ununnilium: Took out... However, this isn't quite the same as the trick hinges on Gordon suffering a stress-induced heart attack out of fear, and doesn't actually harm him itself. ...because that's one of the popular reasons, in a lot of these examples, for why Your Mind would Make It Real. Crapface: I think the captan N exmpale sode be in FinalDeath Ununnilium: Yeah, it's not quite the same thing — it's not his mind making it real, he's physically in the video game world. Seth:It's a little late in the discussion but i just did a study on the phenomenon of Voodoo death and death by shell shock, both cases of a psychological stressor causing death. It does lend some support to this idea, but it would have to be shocking enough - like if it happened in a Lucid Dream and there was a stressful method. Lale: Death by stress sounds like a result of the physical effects of stress, never mind what's stressing you out, real or not, IMO. Seth: Well the shell shock example is the brain is so overloaded that it just says "I'm screwed" and shuts down. Making it purely psychological. Lale: Took out the HP quote only because it's simply not a case of his mind making the experience and any effects feel real. The Kakapo: This entry was so messy it made me brains ache. I categorized the examples, and cut one out (There were two different entries for that X-Files episode! Did someone not even read the page before adding it?) I was totally tempted to add a Star Trek section because of all the examples from that show. Due to a couple of broken/non-existent hyper links and show descriptions that DIDN'T MENTION whether the show in question was animated or not, I had to guess on a couple, and I included an Etc for the ones I really couldn't catigorize. Please fix my errors where they occur. This page could REALLY use a ruthless editing. Luthen: I want to add the virtual reality in Otherland but I can't work out how to describe the cause of it being that Alexander's Mind Makes It Real (unless I do that I guess?). |
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