Mad fantasy-fic idea: what if even death is no escape from the law, and contracts signed in life remain binding after shuffling off this mortal coil?
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I think we're just about there IRL.
Someone just needs to pitch it to the VCs and obtainable politicians:
LLM bots that not only mimic your features, voice and writing style, but also can maintain your legal existence, rights, liabilities and specifically copyrights until the heat death of capitalism.
There's money to be made, or rather, kept...
@electropict This is very close to Vernor Vinge's novella "The Cookie Monster" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cookie_Monster_(novella)
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Mad fantasy-fic idea: what if even death is no escape from the law, and contracts signed in life remain binding after shuffling off this mortal coil?
In this setting, all contract lawyers are necromancers. A zombie is what you get when an undischarged bankrupt dies. And so on.
@cstross Iain M. Banks had a novel ("Surface Detail") about a planet that enforced post-life hell by digitalizing a person's memories and personality and then installing it in a computer-generated sim of hell.
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@cstross "The Victorians were onto something with their debtors' prison. So I'd like to introduce you to a little concept we're working on. It's called debtors' Hell …”
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Mad fantasy-fic idea: what if even death is no escape from the law, and contracts signed in life remain binding after shuffling off this mortal coil?
In this setting, all contract lawyers are necromancers. A zombie is what you get when an undischarged bankrupt dies. And so on.
@cstross only a small step from holding your descendants responsible for your debt, which has been and sometimes still is a thing in the Former US, at least.
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@cstross
That feels familiar, but not sure why. Maybe a short story from some anthology, or something Deathy from Terry Pratchett or Piers Anthony or what's his name that did Sandman. -
@cstross Iain M. Banks had a novel ("Surface Detail") about a planet that enforced post-life hell by digitalizing a person's memories and personality and then installing it in a computer-generated sim of hell.
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@cstross Iain M. Banks had a novel ("Surface Detail") about a planet that enforced post-life hell by digitalizing a person's memories and personality and then installing it in a computer-generated sim of hell.
@dsurkin Yes, I have a signed first edition copy. (It also has a thinly-disguised Elon Musk style entrepreneur who buys up all the bankrupt hells and runs hells as a software service on behalf of their creators.)
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@cstross
There's something of this in Max Gladstone's Craft sequences. -
@Astronomy_A2Z @cstross That is basically what happens to me at work wheneverI have had a heavy lunch.
A resurrection effort around 1 PM. -
Mad fantasy-fic idea: what if even death is no escape from the law, and contracts signed in life remain binding after shuffling off this mortal coil?
In this setting, all contract lawyers are necromancers. A zombie is what you get when an undischarged bankrupt dies. And so on.
This actually pops up in German folklore, and fits with the old Catholic notion that donations made in the name of the dead, or paid masses held in their name, would shorten their time in purgatory.
