That far in the future and they forget the "Cut" and "Paste" commands

[Lazoriss]

There's also the structure gel, which consists of millions or billions of nano bots running through Simon's body, and are collectively hooked up to his cortex chip. Because of the WAU's focus on preservation, the gel itself could make it impossible or difficult to instantly "delete" Simon's file on the chip. Although we are able to overwrite whatever personality was already in the chip used for Power Suit Simon.. idk

And Simon must have been physically hooked into the seat somehow, because you are able to drain his battery. The seat essentially sucks all electrical impulses out of Simon's body, including the gel he had. The chip, however, is left intact. If Simon were given energy again, he'd probably come back to "life". I guess without power, the gel hardens, though. I'm not sure if reintroducing power to hardened gel will make it operational again. hmmm!

[Striker]

On metaphysical and quantum mechanics levels I believe something better than cut and paste is actually possible, we're just too primitive here on earth to be able to do it.

Think of it like an active-active cluster with shared storage. Both of the nodes in the cluster are reading and writing to the same shared storage, so the data is always consistent, even if they are receiving and transmitting information at different rates or points in time.

You can also bring a new node into the cluster live and it will have access to the same consistent set of data.

The only thing I can think of that comes close to the idea is identical twins, who have reported to just "know" when certain things are happening to the other. Again not even close to my active-active idea but best thing I can come up with.

Hire me as Chief Information Architect of Pathos III and I'll get your AI systems up to speed, no gooey structure gel needed lol.

The Many-Worlds, Many-Minds, and quantum decoherence theories touch on the Star Trek transporter idea (also illustrated in Bioshock Infinite):

http://www.thestargarden.co.uk/ManyMinds.html

[Lazoriss]

omg this link is a gold mine. 8U


So with a hypothetical Pathos II running on dual active servers, you could theoretically have multiple "persons" with a shared experience? For example, when Simon 3 is activated, you have a split-off. But if they were to remain connected to the database the personalities were pulled from, they would have both a singular and separate experience, but also be aware of the duplicate's consciousness. They would essentially be together and apart at the same time.

In game, this could actually be canonically possible, since the WAU seems to store all data within itself. Once a machine or human is plugged in, you share yourself with the entirety of the "hive mind". It could even explain the WAU's chaotic behavior and seemingly throwing ideas at the wall. As it scans people, it's taking in those personalities. The WAU could be, at points, firing off several conflicting commands, all at the same time. The WAU actually lacks a strong mind of its own, reacting only on input. New theory. The WAU isn't forcing anyone into machines. It's the people's scan stored inside doing it themselves, as they collectively "pilot" the WAU. The human mind can only comprehend so much of a "shared" mind, so most or all of your memory of being in the WAU is lost when you separate physically. That or several other variables. Since everything is stored as data, the machine or organism that branches off will only represent the sum of the amount loaded on to its brain/chip/ect.

[Striker]

So with a hypothetical Pathos II running on dual active servers, you could theoretically have multiple "persons" with a shared experience? For example, when Simon 3 is activated, you have a split-off. But if they were to remain connected to the database the personalities were pulled from, they would have both a singular and separate experience, but also be aware of the duplicate's consciousness. They would essentially be together and apart at the same time.

Yep! That's exactly how it would work. You could even still take a the traditional "snapshot" of the storage at a point in time, and break it off on its own (like in the game -- Simon 3) the only caveat being, once you make a snapshot, the snapshot can no longer be merged with the "hive".

But the other copies that are still tied to the WAU are still synching up data, whether live, or even in a "batch mode", (like their data synchronization deltas get uploaded while they "sleep".)

That argument is the crux of Many-Worlds vs. Many-Minds, every time you "die" (or in this case get copied), do you become a distinct offshoot, with no connection back to original, or do you become aware of all copies? I am not so sure the two ideas are mutually exclusive. I tend to favor the hive-mind idea to an extent, that certain copies have more abilities to sync back with the others more than others. (More on that below).

The research on the subject is still very new, only within the last 20-30 years.

So you could have the following scenarios:

1 ---> Backup or snapshot (Copy of master is point in time).
- Changes recorded on the copy cannot be merged back to the master once it is restored to new node
- What we saw in Simon 3
1 <---> Many (Master-slave), reads and writes both ways, but Master is the central controller
1 -----> Many (Master-slave), Master takes changes and replicates to slaves
- Possibly what we saw with the various bodies laying around that were connected into machinery through structure gel, who died once removed from the WAU life support
1 <----> 1 (Active - Active), Reads and writes always in sync
Many <----> Many (Peer to Peer), The hive mind, all nodes can read and write to all other nodes, with no central point of control or failure
- The Borg would fall in this category

You could even replicate subsets of data, like just the version of you at 21, or the version of you at 50, as well. I need to find the recent story that scanned brains and found they all had time stamps based on circadian rhythms, that just came out today, but that is getting a bit too granular.

In game, this could actually be canonically possible, since the WAU seems to store all data within itself. Once a machine or human is plugged in, you share yourself with the entirety of the "hive mind". It could even explain the WAU's chaotic behavior and seemingly throwing ideas at the wall. As it scans people, it's taking in those personalities. The WAU could be, at points, firing off several conflicting commands, all at the same time. The WAU actually lacks a strong mind of its own, reacting only on input. New theory. The WAU isn't forcing anyone into machines. It's the people's scan stored inside doing it themselves, as they collectively "pilot" the WAU. The human mind can only comprehend so much of a "shared" mind, so most or all of your memory of being in the WAU is lost when you separate physically. That or several other variables. Since everything is stored as data, the machine or organism that branches off will only represent the sum of the amount loaded on to its brain/chip/ect.

I love your idea. I've often tossed around the idea that certain copies may have different levels of ability, some greater than others. Like think Neo in the Matrix, or Ross in the game, Jesus or Buddha in religion. They had metaphysical abilities to tie back to the Master (or collective conscious/hive), greater than most people (nodes) do, so they were able to do supernatural things.

I think you are right when you say the WAU wasn't really sure what it was doing, it was still learning, and it wasn't able to handle so much input, from so many different scans (nodes), or even interpret them correctly, its software was probably still evolving, or just too limited.

Either it, or Ross (or a collaboration), finally got Simon 2 as a workable model, with everything before that failing. Perhaps Ross himself (or Cat) were able to find the final piece of the puzzle to get a working Simon going, and got the WAU to carry out their instructions.

I can imagine Ross and Cat hacking each other inside and outside of the WAU, battling for supremacy sort of like God vs. Devil competition lol.

I heard WAU runs on Python so I'm sure some of you guys can script an upgrade and install Hadoop or something for Pathos 3 LOL

[Lazoriss]

I've been thinking about this today. About how there was so much variance in the "enemies" you encounter in the game. I feel like Ross definitely was the one who booted Simon 2. He has a lot of coherence for being a WAU product himself. He was also able to use his link with the WAU to his advantage, showing an extreme awareness of self. Some people just handle being in the WAU better than others, and therefore will cope and have higher influence on its actions. Akers is another example. The name of the proxies leads to the idea that those specific enemies are under heavy influence by Akers. I'm not sure if there is one consciousness somehow piloting all the proxies at once, or if he managed to copy himself several times and overwrite the brains of his victims. Needless to say, when the WAU mutations vary so greatly, it sure is odd that all the proxies look the same except for Akers himself. Like I mentioned in another thread, I really do wish there had been more to his character, especially after all the foreshadowing at Delta.

I don't know if Ross and Catherine would fight directly. They both had their own motives and outlook on the WAU. Ross was able to utilize his WAU connection to his advantage. His manipulation is very direct and overarching. Catherine keeps to herself and distances herself far away from association with the WAU, even showing disgust at Simon briefly linking to the gel flowers. Her manipulation of Simon is very covert and without intention of harming anyone, quite the opposite actually.

I do think there are presences in the game that are more closely synced to the WAU than others. It also depends on the body, as some work better kn their own physically, and others are so reliant on the WAU that they have to continuously consume power/gel from it to stay operational.

[Striker]

All excellent points, I did not consider Akers and his proxies until you mentioned it, but it makes perfect sense and is a brilliant concept illustrated.

He could be this model perhaps:

1 <---> Many (Master-slave), reads and writes both ways, but Master is the central controller

Everyone loves Akers. I think he needs his own DLC or something.

Also yep the physicality would play into it also as well. The more alike each person is, the more easily the scans could be loaded into them. The bodies being the hardware in the solution, some are better at it than others. Massive parallel processing and clustering solutions will typically use identical hardware, so there is little risk of variance in how the software is going to react to it.

Seems the working Simon 2 finally got it right with the robot head and the human body, since putting scans directly into robots wasn't working, and trying to hookup humans to the technology wasn't either. I am guessing that the Black boxes were the attempt to merge the humans with the WAU, but they just weren't suited for the job. However, because of their malfunction, a nice supply of headless bodies did by accident lead to the working solution of simply embedding the robot head into them, I am guessing since the remaining nervous system is less complex and is more about signal carrying than actual processing.

I've seen the idea in the Singularity crowd about embedding cortex chips directly into the skull, but these are mainly for extra memory space or uploading learning data. (I don't have to read War and Peace, I just upload it directly).

I think we already took one step towards merging with technology, with mobile devices. Many people are glued to them as an extension of themselves at this point, even if they aren't physically connected. Social media can be a very primitive version of the hive mind, though currently there is no control involved, just influence of thoughts (advertising) and massive ingestion and analysis of shared data (consumer spending habits and brand awareness).

Great discussions