How to model posthuman godlike entities?

[FredH]

Hi there. I've recently begun converting to HERO, and I've been mulling about the following: How might one handle PCs who are entirely informorphs--not characters in a simulated environment, but utterly nonphysical AIs?

[Fox1]

Re: How to model posthuman godlike entities?

 

One option is to do them as normal standard characters- that exist in their own plane which may or may not be able to see into ours.

 

Abilities they have that affect this world could be made with the extra-dimensional advantage.

 

 

Desolidification is another more complex option.

 

Depending upon their role in the game and expected interaction- you may not have to write them up at all. The could just be a plot device.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: How to model posthuman godlike entities?

 

Depending upon their role in the game and expected interaction- you may not have to write them up at all. The could just be a plot device.

He did say PCs; somehow I doubt they'd just be plot devices.

[Fox1]

Re: How to model posthuman godlike entities?

 

He did say PCs; somehow I doubt they'd just be plot devices.

 

One never knows...

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: How to model posthuman godlike entities?

 

Hi there. I've recently begun converting to HERO' date=' and I've been mulling about the following: How might one handle PCs who are [i']entirely[/i] informorphs--not characters in a simulated environment, but utterly nonphysical AIs?

If they are incapable of manipulating phsyical obects or moving around in the real world (in other words, they exist primarily as data), i wonder if buying down their Phsycial Characteristics to 0 would be reasonable?

 

You could take a Physical Limitation that they cannot exist outside of a computer or computer network, and that they are destoryed when their machine is.

 

An NPC is one of my on-line campaigns has gone from being a biolgoical entity to a data entity while retaining her formidable psionic abiltities. I'll have to write her up sometime and show you in case it gives you any ideas.

[Dauntless]

Re: How to model posthuman godlike entities?

 

Unfortunately, I think some cyberpunk and transhuman series have clouded the issue of what infomorphs are or could be.

 

The idea that infomorphs can be disembodied entities that roam around some huge networked web is akin to saying that consciousness in humans can be detached and seperated from the body as long as it has some "ether" in which to travel. To put it simply, infomorphs as they are defined by science fiction, don't make a whole lot of sense. If what they mean is that AI's can download or transmit the sum of their memories, that's one thing. But ultimately, there needs to be some form of hardware on which the consciousness (whether it be human or AI) acts on.

 

Unless of course you take the subjectivist philosophical route and say that there is only consciousness, and that instead of the brain creating the mind, it's the other way around. But if you do that, then you're truly going down the Matrix route (the "brain in a jar" metaphysical question). Not to say that's a bad thing at all, but it's so alien a concept to non-eastern thinkers, that I believe you'd have great trouble pulling off a game with this ontological viewpoint with your average gamers.

 

But let's assume you stick with the regular objectivist viewpoint, and you want to create some posthuman or AI entity. It will therefore need some physical construct in which the qualia (a neurological term which basically means any form of subjective experience like emotions, sensory data or thoughts) is acted on and by. An infomoph without a "body" is essentially as scientifically feasible as a ghost is today. When you see stories that talk about intelligent entities floating around in some sort of cyberspace, these entities still need physical hardware to be useful. Take even for example viruses that exist today. In some ways they act intelligently by morphing themselves into different forms and they float about from computer to computer. But in and of themselves, they have absolutely no power until they have a machine to use.

 

Moreover, I don't like the idea of these Intelligent Entities (I'll call them IE's from now on) being able to run on any old hardware. For example, let's say you create an AI infomorph that is essentially a program (I'll ignore for now my own hypothesis that true conscious intelligence requires hardware that operates on quantum principles). Just like you have programs that will only run on x86 PC's, and some that will only run on IBM PowerPC's or IBM OS390 mainframes, so too does it seem more likely that these IE's will require specific hardware in order for them to operate correctly. Otherwise, it'd be like assuming that we could jack our brains into another animal like a dolphin, and assume everything will work correctly. One may argue that we have things like Java that work on all platforms, but actually this is a fallacy, as Java requires a virtual machine (an interpreter) installed on the machine to translate all the calls (which is why Java is both a memory hog and slower than natively compiled apps).

 

Unfortunately, doing post-bac work in computer science has made me very picky about my cyberpunk/transhuman genre.

 

So how do you create an IE? First off, in my own humble opinion, it does need a physical body. Now that doesn't mean it needs a permanent physical body. Consciousness and memory are two different things, and they are not even mutually necessary for each other. If you are an objectivist, then you'll believe that consciousness is a state caused by an arrangment of electrons, neural states and chemical reactions in the brain (be it human or artificial). In this case, if you can exactly duplicate this state, then you can download it to another "brain" which will copy that state. Then blammo....you've just downloaded your consciousness into a new body. If you are a subjectivist, then consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality. Consciousness collapses wave functions which in turn creates reality and makes physical objects real. If the brain is a quantum measuring device through which consciousness is made aware of itself, then you can use quantum teleportation to exactly duplicate the quantum states of the brain...allowing the consciousness to be attached to a new physical body.

 

Because an IE should be designed for a specific kind of physical body, I'd suggest a form a Duplication. Remember, the physical abilities of the body have to change, but the physical makeup of the "brain" has to be compatible with the consciousness of the IE. For example, an IE could download/teleport itself into an android body, or a tank, as long as both had compatible "brains". The tricky part here is that the special effect requires a specific kind of "brain". As for the info/cyber world, that too would be a form of Duplication...an avatar. The abilities of the Avatar would have to be limited by the design constructs of the mainframe (which also must be of a compatible "brain" type) as well as the inherent capabilities of the IE. I'd definitely recommend some form of a Virtual Point Pool to be able to duplicate hacking on the fly, although tightly controlled mainframes may make this difficult (hence the GM should give it appropriate limitations...mostly time or activation/skill requirements).