Copying and the Stored

Summary:

A question on how the Stored view themselves.

Copying and the Stored

Anonymous Gamer 22 Mar 2010 20:04

According to my reading of the Stored as written, they are largely a civilization of people who took the Replicator approach to immortality, regretted it, changed their minds and decided that destructive scanning is death after all. They subscribe to the default assumption of the game, that the copy is a totally new being who happens to remember the life of someone else.

I'm wondering, though, how this is squared with the basic facts of existence as pure software. Any time you "move" data on a computer, you're not actually moving anything. You're copying it to a new location, and then erasing it from the old location. Any Stored person who moves his mind from one machine to another is likewise deleting himself and creating a new copy at the destination, as surely as someone stepping into a replicator. The only way to have persistence of self in the way that you get with a biological brain would be if the Stored never move their minds from the original substrate they were first initialized on. The only way for one of the Stored to change location in physical space would be to drag the entire computer he is stored on to a new place — which would be quite a trick since they tend to share that computer with a lot of other people.

Which brings me to the crux of the question. Assuming you adjust the default assumptions of their civilization on the subject of death and copying, how might you expect to see the civilization change from what is represented in the book, and in a larger sense, how would that change the setting as a whole? The two biggest changes I can see right off the bat would be:

• Relations with the Replicants. If the Stored don't view copying as death, they move a lot closer to the Replicants (and away from everyone else?)
• Personal identity becomes much more fluid. They probably still won't be as cavalier about infinitely copying themselves as the Replicants, because of the simple cost issues — running two of yourself means each of them has to run on half of your available processing speed. On the other hand, if you're going on a dangerous mission for the patent office in a drone or ghostriding in someone's mesh, you're probably a lot more likely to also leave a backup copy back home, just in case things go poorly.

I suspect it also has broader implications than I'm seeing off the top of my head, though…

Re: Copying and the Stored

Colin_Fredericks 22 Mar 2010 21:45

This is actually a concern I've had with the Stored from the moment I really thought about it. I'll write more later when my hand isn't threatening tendonitis.

Re: Copying and the Stored

Colin_Fredericks 17 May 2010 18:27

Ok, so after taking way too long to consider this problem:

The problem is not just with the Stored. The problem goes deeper than that, and is rooted in the indistinguishability of elementary particles.

Human beings are, at the bottom level, just fermions and bosons: electrons, neutrons, protons, and lots of virtual photons holding the whole thing together. All of these particles are indistinguishable; that is, you can't paint one electron red and follow it around. There's no way to tell whether the electron you look at now is the electron you saw a second ago, or whether an electron from Mars quantum tunneled to Earth and took its place. (I know, the odds are spectacularly low… but they're not zero.)

There is no sense in which the "you" that exists in this instant is necessarily the "you" that was there a second ago, and even the question is meaningless - you just can't track the particles. They might be different particles and you wouldn't even know. On a fundamental level, it wouldn't matter. You could have been completely copied and not know the difference.

And if you were, did some entity experience death?

"What's the difference between a full-scale working model and the original?" Unfortunately, in the real world, unlike in The Apotheosis Saga, the answer "Identity" is not a meaningful one. Mere primacy ("one was there first") is not enough in my mind.

I know this is heading towards a philosophical debate, but it's one grounded in real-world physics and one that makes a lot of difference to the Stored. One of them would have pointed this out.

I'm still working out the implications. Feel free to help me think out loud.

Re: Copying and the Stored

Colin_Fredericks 18 May 2010 00:26

To continue:

Part of the reason that the Stored have an anti-copying bent is that I never considered this sort of thing back in the day. The definition of "death" that SA uses is a cessation of continuity - being scanned into a replicator, being cloned and braintaped, quantum "teleportation," and so forth all involve the (philosophical) destruction of an entity and its recreation at a later time.

Indistinguishability throws that out the window. Continuity of identity is meaningless on the quantum level, and that's where our consciousness is stored, whether in electrical nerve impulses or computer data.

It's one thing to have a Cargo Cult with beliefs that go against fundamental laws of physics. It's another to have the guys with Cognitech 10 have those beliefs. Maybe it's how they felt back in the early days of the Stored, but it just doesn't hold up.

So, still thinking. This may be another one of those things that get rolled into a revised edition. Opinions wanted.

Re: Copying and the Stored

QHudspeth 18 May 2010 12:58

Okay. So reexamine why the Stored would have an anti-copying bent. I don't recall the reasons given in the text, if any.
Would it be rational to not want identical copies of yourself floating around? Perhaps it's just a question of practicality. If any copy is functionally identical to the "original" at the moment of inception, who gets the keys to the house? Obviously, the Replicants have dealt with these issues. Perhaps the Stored saw the tangled mess it would make and just said no for practical reasons?

Re: Copying and the Stored

Colin_Fredericks 06 Jun 2010 19:26

You know, if the Aia were originally Stored who took the pro-copying route, that would fit nicely.

The Boundary between Science and Philosophy

TauCeti 14 Jun 2010 18:02

In my mind, we’re dealing with two very different things: Science and Philosophy. I’m going to abuse those terms as follows:

Science is the study of physical reality, decomposing it to the bedrock of mathematics. In S.A., the Capabilities are Science. Questions like “what is a thought?” and “what is consciousness?” have been answered.

Philosophy deals with concepts that are fundamentally created by humanity. Ethics and nationality are vitally important to who we are (often much more important than any given scientific discovery), but are not grounded in physical reality. There is no goodness field, or Canadian particle. In S.A., this is the realm of Core Values.

Given your analysis of quantum level objects, by the laws of physics, “self” doesn’t exist. That makes it a creation of humanity, and thus places it firmly in the realm of philosophy.

---

So, let’s change the situation. Let’s say that it’s the mid 1900s and instead of discovering early quantum physics, we discover that the old theories of the clockwork universe are correct. Information and matter are easily decomposable to non-probabilistic mathematics.

In our hypothetical world, it is provable that humanity does not have free will. It is possible to predict a person’s behavior exactly, and even account for the influence of such predictions, letting you walk up to a person, tell them what they will say to you, and have them say it in response.

So, we don’t have free will. But are we still people? Do we still have moral value? Do we still have ethical imperatives (to use Kantianism)? The debates would rage. And I’d argue “yes” vehemently.

---

So, the Stored know that, at a fundamental physical level, “self” is an illusion. Do people still have moral weight? Is apparent continuity of experience relevant? Is it still ethically unacceptable to duplicate yourself freely and obliterate your identity in the process?

The debates would rage. And I’d argue “yes” vehemently. If I were a Stored.

Re: The Boundary between Science and Philosophy

Colin_Fredericks 14 Jun 2010 22:25

But here's the thing: while a replicated person does not have apparent continuity of experience (it's like getting burned alive and then losing your short-term memory), there's no reason why a Stored undergoing copying needs to lose continuity of experience. And, one could argue, a better replicator might be able to do what it does without the sensation of dying or the memory loss. What is the moral imperative then?

I agree that there are plenty of important moral questions that will still drive the Stored; unfortunately, this removes one of them for me, and it was one that I had built a lot of their beliefs on. It's still possible to argue that duplicating yourself a ton is immoral, but one needs reasons other than "it removes my illusion of self," at least in this particular civ. So many people clinging to apparent continuity of experience when there is no actual continuity makes for a bad fit with Cog 10 / Meta 6 in my mind.

Note that the argument between items B and D in this thread, post #2, does not need to be completely resolved in my mind or in the game world. I'm working on mechanics that function regardless of where the answers to such questions land.

I totally want to find something that emits or absorbs Canadions.

I should also point out that the probabilistic nature of quantum physics also has no room for free will. Free will is not opposite determinism on a line, it's one vertex on (at minimum) a triangle formed with determinism and randomness. But that's a different story.

Re: Copying and the Stored

TauCeti 15 Jun 2010 16:43

Something to keep in mind:

The Stored are only 2-3 generations old. They have very long life expectancies, and likely reproduce slower than other civs (due to some definitions of their “Life” CV getting in the way of their desire to produce offspring, for vaguely similar reasons to why they try to prevent other people from joining them). Most of the first generation Stored are almost certainly around. Those Stored were largely from the Replicants, and had /their/ Cognitech. While they may have upgraded themselves over the centuries, the foundation of their society was built by those with lower Cog.

Of course, the next generations are here to stay, and already there are those who rebel against their parents and wonder what it would be like to have a clone walking around. Stored society is in the process of shattering along generational lines, and they know it.

Re: Copying and the Stored

Pneumonica 16 Jun 2010 00:21

If I might blur the lines of science and philosophy for a moment…

Electrons don't blip into and out of existence. They appear to. You, like many Hindu sects, take it on faith that a solid object is actually composed of flecks of light that are flickering into and out of existence, creating a cacophonous chaos that, on the layer of perception to which we have access, appears to be orderly and continuous. (And yes, there are ancient Hindu sects that already decided upon quantum physics long, long ago.) You take it on faith because, as you delve into a scale of reality so completely out of scale to you, the observer, that you have no practical existence within it, the snippets of information that you have gleaned from it make it appear that it is so.

That is not the only interpretation, Dr. Bohr, nor is the future, by definition, agno-athiest.

The Stored take it on faith that their interpretation of the mathematical models is the correct one, just as you take yours on faith. (Dr. Hawking's, however, is of course the Inspired Word of God, but I'll stop complaining about him now.) They believe (WARNING: I am not a scientist, though I'm a reasonably good mathematician - I'm dumbing down a much better version of the idea because the stupid version is the only version I can explain) that the waveform does not exist, that there are no true waveforms. Instead, particles behave in random ways, but remain continuous. The waveforms are statistical projections used by mathematicians to simplify a complex problem, in the same way that the "information" being plotted in the propogation of "information" through a system isn't any real thing, but just a hueristic that simplifies a problem that needn't be complex for the purposes of the task at hand. They point out that we can only view these particles in "snapshots" (it's not as though we can look at them - they're too small to bounce photons), rather than actually continuously "look" at them, so we cannot see their zipping around in randomly-shifting (but quite continuous) vectors. However, to say they aren't continuous makes no more sense than a radar operator saying the incoming airplane exists only briefly every few seconds when the conning tower rotates to face it.

EDIT: Before this discussion derails, I'd like it known that I personally have no opinion on the matter (pardon the pun) of the continuity of subatomic particles. But I can BS into a bluebook with the best of 'em, can't I? ;-)

Last edited on 16 Jun 2010 00:22 by Pneumonica Show more

Re: Copying and the Stored

Colin_Fredericks 16 Jun 2010 03:51

Given the sentence fragment:

"…the continual existence of a particular electron…"

the part modern physics takes issue with is not "continual" (unless you believe in some very solipsistic quantum interpretations), but "a particular." You just can't tell the bastards apart. You can follow an electron if it's the only electron in the universe; once there's more than one of them you have to accept that you're not following that electron, just an electron.

—-

To throw further monkeywrenches into the fire, and because I'm enjoying this particular discussion and hearing everyone's takes on it, what if the fundamental structure of the universe is that of cellular automata a la Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, and particles are just phenomena passing along those cells?

Last edited on 16 Jun 2010 03:52 by Colin_Fredericks Show more

Re: Copying and the Stored

Pneumonica 16 Jun 2010 06:48

Then you get the Nanori? :-P Actually, what you'd probably get would be structurally similar to our world in terms of subatomic behaviors, but the disidentity would, in itself, be rather significant. Among other things, many of our most basic physical principles could be violated (depending on the rules, perhaps quite easily) by using "bugs" in the system, for instance using the physics equivalent of "emergent gameplay" to violate conservation of mass and energy. It could be devised to be basically consistent with modern physics (probably requiring higher orders of complexity than the simple systems used by Wolfram in illustrating his points), but it certainly wouldn't be entirely consistent, and now I have the image of people doing weird dance steps in an effort to gain superpowers.

Although, looking at it, it looks like there would be one hard-coded limit that couldn't possibly be violated in a literal sense (although some characteristics of emergence could make it appear to have been violated on the macroscale) - there are only two speeds at which a thing can move, and that is Moving Speed (one "square" per iteration) and Stopping. Velocity would be a meaningless term. However, I hesitate on that one simply because I may not be fully encompassing the mathematics. And it's late, and I'm an insomniac, and I have classes tomorrow.

Wolfram's work is another example of the same principle I was calling out earlier - where you have lots and lots of math and no direct observation (and only diffuse indirect observation, or in Wolfram's case things unobservable except through mathematical discourse), what you've got is a parking lot where ideas take their idea-friends to make out and occasionally get knocked up.

(It's great to be back. :-) )

Last edited on 16 Jun 2010 06:49 by Pneumonica Show more

Re: Copying and the Stored

AidenWIP 26 Apr 2014 14:49

Poking at this old conversation, which was great to read, I'm curious what of it has gone into the versions of SA2 that have come out so far. I'm noticing the generational split got mentioned, and that's awesome, but what else?

I admit my own perspective on copying and brain uploading is heavily influenced by the source of my original exposure to the concepts: Eclipse Phase, where everyone is essentially a posthuman who has undergone uploading at least once and varying degrees of mind copying is an everyday occurrence.

Re: Copying and the Stored

Colin_Fredericks 26 Apr 2014 16:13

The biggest result from this conversation was the genesis of the Existentialism rules. I didn't bring it to bear on individual civilizations as much, but the "copy yourself and you have to turn in your character sheet" rule is well and truly gone.

Practicality is definitely an issue - the Builders have a much higher population of dataform humans for the resources they have available, and they pay for it in processing power compared to the Stored. The Builders do it because their goal is different, and they're intentionally trying to have more and more people supported in their infosphere. The Stored are a bit more cautious.

I'm going to give this a little more thinking time before SA2 goes out in final version. We'll see.

Eclipse Phase had a fairly big impact on SA2 as well; note that "Body Swapping" is now a core technology. Neat game, though *very* different in feel and crunch factor from SA.

Re: Copying and the Stored

AidenWIP 27 Apr 2014 02:04

I was very happy to see the Existentialism rules in SA2 be so permissive, compared to the… frankly annoying ones that were in the first edition. So I'm glad this went somewhere good, and I hope those rules remain untouched in the final version.

I'd say you can get the feel of Eclipse Phase in SA2 by liberal application of the Terror Theme.

Re: Copying and the Stored

Colin_Fredericks 27 Apr 2014 13:29

The Existentialism rules are in their final form. They're a rarity in the game in that they're something I basically didn't feel the need to revise after I created them.

And yes, Terror fits Eclipse Phase well. Actually, now that I think about it, the material for EP is published under a fairly permissive license, isn't it? SA2 will be as well. If I knew EP's rules better I could probably write a translation guide that would let people play one with the rules for the other.

Re: Copying and the Stored

AidenWIP 27 Apr 2014 14:20

Awesome.

Actually yes; Eclipse Phase is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License, just like Sufficiently Advanced.

Re: Copying and the Stored

Rhebeqah 02 Aug 2020 23:31

It seems to me that complex entities in our universe are Ships of Theseus. The difference between the Stored and Replicants seem to be that the former replace each plank, one at a time whereas the latter burn the whole ship down and build one or more ships according to the original shipbuilder's plans. In other words, the Stored see the finished ship as being more real than the blueprints but the Replicants see the blueprints as being more real than the ship. In Orion's Arm terms the Stored believe in Continuity Identity Theory and the Replicants in Pattern Identity Theory.

Last edited on 02 Aug 2020 23:42 by Rhebeqah Show more

Re: Copying and the Stored

Colin_Fredericks 06 Aug 2020 21:50

The Stored once they are in digital form do just one plank at a time, but getting to digital form is the "burn it all down and build it anew" approach, at least from their point of view. For a group that gets to digital form one plank at a time, check out the Builders of the Great Beyond in SA2.