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Old 07-25-2017, 06:14 PM   #1
Shostak
 
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Default Merged Uploads

My apologies if this has been discussed already, but I've not found an answer through various searches of the THS forum and I don't have all of the THS books.

Does any of the published material discuss merged uploads? This could be either one or more Xoxes going about their business for a while and then collating in their new experiences with the original, or separate ghosts engaged in symbiogenesis by digitally combining to form a new being.
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Old 07-25-2017, 06:59 PM   #2
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Default Re: Merged Uploads

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Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
My apologies if this has been discussed already, but I've not found an answer through various searches of the THS forum and I don't have all of the THS books.

Does any of the published material discuss merged uploads? This could be either one or more Xoxes going about their business for a while and then collating in their new experiences with the original, or separate ghosts engaged in symbiogenesis by digitally combining to form a new being.
I don't recall the exact reference, but I remember a detail that AIs can spawn lower level spinoffs of themselves for that purpose. There's apparently a film that's all the rage of an SAI's LAI agents returning to find their parent dead or missing.
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Old 07-25-2017, 09:09 PM   #3
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Default Re: Merged Uploads

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Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
My apologies if this has been discussed already, but I've not found an answer through various searches of the THS forum and I don't have all of the THS books.

Does any of the published material discuss merged uploads? This could be either one or more Xoxes going about their business for a while and then collating in their new experiences with the original, or separate ghosts engaged in symbiogenesis by digitally combining to form a new being.
SAIs can do this. Ghosts can not.

It requires the ability to read and understand the format for memory storage, and write new ones, which implies all sorts of stuff that can't yet be done on ghosts - most notably probably creating undetectably false memories and building artificial ghosts that never were human in the first place.
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Old 07-25-2017, 09:12 PM   #4
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Default Re: Merged Uploads

Ghosts can still make shadows; meatbrain people can make shadows. I don't see why you can't experience your shadow's experience at the level of a sensie, which maybe isn't as good as merging, it probably is good enough.
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Old 07-25-2017, 11:35 PM   #5
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Default Re: Merged Uploads

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Ghosts can still make shadows; meatbrain people can make shadows. I don't see why you can't experience your shadow's experience at the level of a sensie, which maybe isn't as good as merging, it probably is good enough.
It's still a time-consuming process to sit through the shadow's sensie feed.

*AIs also can audit sensie feeds, so there may be *AI-moderated alternatives like:
1) letting the auditor place the subject into a hypnogogic state and feed the relevant events and perceptions to them at high speed similar to the way humans can confabulate hours or days of events in a few seconds after a suggestive stimulus during sleep.
2) letting the auditor be a "second narrator" who monitors the subject's internal dialogue and inserts flashbacks to as-yet-unmerged events when they seem relevant.


Another, more drastic long-term solution could be isolating the brain hemispheres of each ghost version and reconnecting them to their counterparts so that they can expose their memories and streams of consciousness to one another without interference from trauma or other damage that usually accompany dividing the hemispheres in split-braincases studied so far.
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Old 07-25-2017, 11:40 PM   #6
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Default Re: Merged Uploads

The shadow could just provide a good-parts-version summary, since it already knows which memories are the most vivid.
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Old 07-27-2017, 11:31 AM   #7
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Default Re: Merged Uploads

I think it takes 10 hours to accomplish a brain-peeling to create a digital mind from a human. It should take no more than that to combine two separate digital minds (ghosts). I'm not talking about merely monitoring sensie feeds, but the creation of a new mind that is the sum of its parts. I've not found this explicitly described, but it seems like exactly the sort of thing likely to happen with the technology central to THS.
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Old 07-25-2017, 10:06 PM   #8
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Default Re: Merged Uploads

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SAIs can do this. Ghosts can not.
Thanks. Can you recall which book this is discussed in?
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Old 07-27-2017, 12:33 PM   #9
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It requires the ability to read and understand the format for memory storage, and write new ones, which implies all sorts of stuff that can't yet be done on ghosts - most notably probably creating undetectably false memories and building artificial ghosts that never were human in the first place.
Is this explicitly stated in one of the THS books? It just doesn't make sense to me. Once a mind is uploaded, it is in a digital form that must be wholly understood by the software engineers who built the technology. Merging two files would likely be a lot of work (and might create unstable personalities), but it seems unlikely that it would be impossible.
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Old 07-28-2017, 01:33 AM   #10
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Default Re: Merged Uploads

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Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
Is this explicitly stated in one of the THS books? It just doesn't make sense to me. Once a mind is uploaded, it is in a digital form that must be wholly understood by the software engineers who built the technology. Merging two files would likely be a lot of work (and might create unstable personalities), but it seems unlikely that it would be impossible.
There isn't understanding, it's just an emulation, black box style.
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