Forces and the self

[Flyndaran]

What if A.I.s don't have souls at all? They are sad abominations; no matter how convincing, they are never the less, merely mimicking true life and spirit.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What if A.I.s don't have souls at all? They are sad abominations; no matter how convincing, they are never the less, merely mimicking true life and spirit.

Which actually makes them very close to a Remnant who has dived into a Role it once possessed. Whatever memory, ability and awareness it may seem to have, there's no true soul at the heart of it all.

(Or, as cited elsewhere, a dream-figment that has yet to awaken.)

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

I would also break out the Liber Umbrarum, which has some stuff about ghostly manifestations created by someone's left-behind-but-still-connected Forces. It might be interesting to play with a copy of an AI as having the same Forces/soul as the original -- even when running simultaneously!

The presumption, of course, would be that actual memories would be resident in the corporeal manifestation (i.e., the hardware running the software), which wouldn't be that different from assuming that living humans can really only access memories that their current hardware, er, brains have stored. (See also reincarnation.) Thus, unless the AI instantiations were sharing memories with themself frequently, they would have different memories that would shape their responses. (And perhaps if they got different enough, such that the basic personality wasn't really recognizable, then they start splitting off via developing their own, unshared Forces? Oooo, fun fiddly bits...)

...

All AIs sharing a soul would make it a bit less headachey in the regards of, assuming they have fate/destiny potential... you don't have to deal with fifty instantiations of the "same" AI showing up at once, or staggered, or whatever.

An amusing thought: Each separate instantiation develops new and separate Ethereal Forces (and possibly Corporeal Forces; alternately, maybe they can only have as many concurrent instantiations as they have Corp Forces), but not Celestial Forces. Like a Kyrio, each instantiation is treated as sharing the CelForces, so they act as beings with that many Forces, but if something happens to cause Force loss, they'd all lose any Celestial Forces. When such an entity dies a true death, all of the Ethereal Forces merge, and if they become a Blessed or Damned soul, ghost(in the IN sense, not THS), or dreamshade, that entity can access all of the memories of all the instantiations. If they reincarnated, the result would be a singular human with a huge number of EthForces, and definite Soldier potential, but wouldn't be able to access any memories of their previous existence.

Isn't there a "divided Forces" Discord for Kyriotates, where they stop being able to communicate within themselves? Or was that only in playtest at one point?

Yes, it's in the APG.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What if A.I.s don't have souls at all? They are sad abominations; no matter how convincing, they are never the less, merely mimicking true life and spirit.

This is also definitely a possibility, in which case an uploaded human mind would be a form of undead, and Heaven would not approve of the procedure.

[Matthias Wasser]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What if A.I.s don't have souls at all? They are sad abominations; no matter how convincing, they are never the less, merely mimicking true life and spirit.

I'm inclined to see "soul" to just mean "a being-shaped collection of Forces." I'm also inclined to suspect that functionally intelligent and goal-directed behavior can't happen without Ethereal and Celestial Forces. So AI are souls, although they could easily be like Undead in that they disperse when their Vessels do. Alternatively anything wired in the right way will partake of the same soul-economy, and Homo sapiens were just the first animals to be made up in that way.

[Dalillama]

I would rea 'doesnt have a soul' in this context as 'lacks Celestial Forces'. The mind requires Ethereal Forces, and the machine has Corporeal forces, but without being cemented by Celestial Forces, they disperse back into the Symphony when the machine is destroyed.

[Irioth]

Originally Posted by Matthias Wasser

I'm inclined to see "soul" to just mean "a being-shaped collection of Forces." I'm also inclined to suspect that functionally intelligent and goal-directed behavior can't happen without Ethereal and Celestial Forces. So AI are souls, although they could easily be like Undead in that they disperse when their Vessels do. Alternatively anything wired in the right way will partake of the same soul-economy, and Homo sapiens were just the first animals to be made up in that way.

I share this view, too.

[Irioth]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

I would rea 'doesnt have a soul' in this context as 'lacks Celestial Forces'. The mind requires Ethereal Forces, and the machine has Corporeal forces, but without being cemented by Celestial Forces, they disperse back into the Symphony when the machine is destroyed.

Without Celestial Forces, you don't have real will/personality/self-direction. It is quite possible that A.I. may resemble Undead, as in they aren't wired the right way to survive the destruction of the machine (body) they run into. But Undead do have Celestial Forces.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What if A.I.s don't have souls at all? They are sad abominations; no matter how convincing, they are never the less, merely mimicking true life and spirit.

That would be awkward... so one has to ask: How does somebody gain a soul in the first place?

It can't be "has a Celestial Force" - angels, demons, and Ethereals have Celestial Forces but don't have souls, and one- or two-Force infants have souls but don't (usually) have Celestial Forces.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by robkelk

That would be awkward... so one has to ask: How does somebody gain a soul in the first place?

It can't be "has a Celestial Force" - angels, demons, and Ethereals have Celestial Forces but don't have souls, and one- or two-Force infants have souls but don't (usually) have Celestial Forces.

That is indeed an awkward question. In a different gaming context (variant D&D) I have seen the houserule that anything which has the potential to be sapient automatically acquires a soul. That included all AIs with any degree of sapience (really variant D&D) and would certainly apply to xoxes.

One could readily use that rule for IN, although it tends to imply an at least slightly Bright campaign.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by robkelk

That would be awkward... so one has to ask: How does somebody gain a soul in the first place?

It can't be "has a Celestial Force" - angels, demons, and Ethereals have Celestial Forces but don't have souls, and one- or two-Force infants have souls but don't (usually) have Celestial Forces.

Actually, I'd rule that "has a Celestial Force" is valid -- for an angel or demon, the soul is what coalesces around the Heart when the physical body has been destroyed; for an Ethereal, it's what grants it true awareness ("I'm a real boy!") and allows it to regenerate slowly in the Marches when destroyed.

As for infants, I think the Celestial Force would be the first such Force the child possessed ... an infant has such limited interaction with the physical world in its first weeks and months and such a frail body that it effectively has no Corporeal Forces. Ethereal would be the last to come, making the pattern:

* Able to (at least vaguely) perceive those around it. (Celestial)
* Able to direct physical action, culminating in walking (Corporeal)
* Able to remember and concentrate, culminating in talking (Ethereal)

Of course, this is something that would probably need to be addressed in Superiors: Christopher, now that I think about it ...