(Computational neuroscientist here, with a PhD in memory models - so I am really opinionated) I think the in-game answer would be that it is harder than it looks to make a skillsoft (hence the limit of 40). Psychosurgery has the same problem. First, it involves finding the associative networks responsible for the skill in transhuman or AGI brains that have learned the skill. Where does my mathematics skills end and my physics skills start? There is no doubt a great overlap - including with unrelated skills, memories and just random neural patterns. This is why skillsofts likely need neural scans of many bearers of the skills, presumably made while they are making serious use of the skill so the networks can be found. These associative networks must now be translated into a "common language" that can be linked to the right neurons in the recipient brain. This is not at all an obvious step and IMHO part of the great handwaving surrounding how merging is done. If I had written the rules I would have made merging much harder and stressful. It is likely that much subtle information gets lost here. In any case, there is likely going to be irrelevant gunk in the network - some just random links, others carry over memories, shared skills and who knows what else. This then gets linked into the association cortex, basal ganglia and other parts of the brain to supplement skillful activity. By assumption this works well enough to be usable. But I also think there are enough glitches and subtle incompatibilities that you don't want to incorporate this into your basic neural net. Sure, getting a bit more racist when running the Gunnery soft might be worth it, but always being a bit racist? I think that this is not the end of the issue. Some people are going to accept having dozens of slightly off skills (Neurodes, anyone?) - who cares if eccentricity is the price of becoming a polymath? Copy protections are not going to hold people back from integrating skillsoft skills into their egofiles for long. And why not run genetic algorithms on forks and randomly altered skillsofts to find the way of integrating them better? As I see it, even with these limitations skillsofts (and even more so, forks) are part of the big singularity that is imminent in the EP world: once you get copyable human capital hyperexponential growth becomes almost inevitable (see Robin Hanson's scary upload economics paper or {advert}my forthcoming review of singularity models {/advert}). Yes, those shared skill clades are going to be major players in a few years. And Firewall is already seriously worried that there is a first-mover advantage for this making certain groups charge ahead, potentially into economic and cultural arms-races, without taking appropriate precautions against insanity or Exsurgent infection. Imagine a superorganism of millions of polymath geniuses with enormous resources that get infected with the Haunting virus. But maybe it is going to be overlooked since the turbulence of growth rates of thousands of percent per day makes that virus quaint and irrelevant compared to the *new* problems...

Essentially the idea is thusly: the mind has not been very well mapped yet, even in the world of Eclipse Phase. Psychosurgery has made leaps and bounds from the knowledge of how the mind works in comparison to what we know now, but is still a very flimsy and unpredictable art. That's why psychosurgery is so often a temporary alteration. It also explains why other ego modifications are often such a bitch... merging forks often causes memory loss, skillsofts have a limit to how much skill they can grant, and granting psi without the use of the ever-risky Exsurgent Virus eludes us. It doesn't necessarily have to do with game balance as it does with the progress of our technology at the time period of Eclipse Phase's setting. We know how to build computers that can emulate brains, upload the data of the ego into digital form, and to even transmit such information over long distances... but the complex encryption of that information that evolution has created over the eons (read: jumbled mess caused by random mutation) has yet to be fully broken. That said, if you want a way to pay back your players who are missing out on some Rez points, we have an alternate rule that we use at our tables, and it might help you out. Essentially, just as you can use Rez to gain 1,000 credits, you can do the same in reverse (spend 1,000 credits to earn 1 Rez point). I would even allow them to expend other things which can be created from Rez in the same retroactive manner (burn 10 reputation from any source to gain 1 Rez, for instance). It might give them the means to catch up to everyone else at the table. Just some food for thought.

Abhoth wrote:

Also it sounds like your suggesting that even if you stick with the tech as it currently is, it sounds like you are suggesting that the kind of technology I am suggesting that should exist now is imminent in the setting and would result in massive chaos.

Yep. I think we should remember that EP is set in a time of rapid change. It got slowed quite a lot by the Fall - the loss of 95% of the population and probably even more of the economy tends to do that - but it is still very fast by current standards. I would guess that growth rates are very high by current standards (perhaps 20% per year?) and likely accelerating. There should be new technologies emerging during any campaign, ideally unfolding in the background to give the players future shock. "I just went away on holiday! What have you done with the place?!" "Ah... citizen Remboeck, was it? This is our new artilife jungle. We planted it to replace those old-fashioned solar collectors you tended on the asteroid surface. It runs the colony mesh too. And the armiphlange... you do know about armiphlanges, do you?"

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Actually if you remember from the main rules on one of the ex-solar colonies one of the groups of colonists have formed a hive mind (ala Borg I guess) and everyone knows what eveyone else knows, would you think that is already the situation you and I are discussing just approached and achieved in a different way?

I think they are different, and have different advantages. The skill colony shares skills and carefully crafted memories - better filtering, only the high-quality stuff gets incorporated into the population. The members are however not aware of what the others know, and cannot act as a distributed mind (but, wow, when a team running the same teamworkware gets going on the right task!) The hive mind is more vulnerable (what to do if one member goes mad, or gets infected with something?) but could do amazing compound tasks. I think hive minds also have some scaling and communications issues - over long distances they become hard to maintain (and FTL is too expensive as yet). In one of my settings I allowed hive minds to "borrow" skills from any member, and they could of course multitask enormously well. At least once it got into good sync (which was as much a matter of training and familiarity). "OK, everybody, we need to build a vehicle to escape." "This node envisions a task allocation schedule." "These nodes begin to search for scavengeable parts." "This node inventories stored blueprints and engineering data." "These nodes go into separate mode to make independent plans." {Finished. Here is our blueprint. Returning to task pool.} {Finished. Here is my blueprint. Returning to task pool.} {Finished. Here is our blueprints. Returning to task pool.} {Finished. Here is our blueprint, and some risk assessment. Returning to task pool.} "This node inventories the found parts. And makes a bad joke." "This node evaluates plans." "Ouch. This node hurt herself." "This node makes emergency reallocation as medic." "This node makes updated task allocations." ... In fact, I think I will have a few hive minds in my campaign. They can be so fun!

I am also of the opinion that its harder than it looks & that the science is in its early stages. In world reasons could be that there is only a finite "neural structures implementations" currently known. Thus when adding something new, something old would need alterations (or removal) to reduce conflicts and data collisions. For example the neural pathways "needed" would already be in use, other skills/software/memories had conflicting viewpoints, etc. (Not ignoring game balance) Arenamontanus suggestion of rules for technological complexity could/should be implemented in all forms of technology add ons. Like here; in Mind re-programming & Complex skill learning. http://www.eclipsephase.com/technological-complexity

Abhoth wrote:

At any rate I dont discount the technological complexity but I feel that the technological capacity of the game world inhabitatnts is much greater then some think and certainly sufficient to solve this issue wiitiin a few years at most.

And this makes for great adventure/plot detail possibilities. If you think that super-skillsofts are around the corner, then 1) learning skills the hard way in school or university right now might be a waste of time. Can the PC convince their nephew to spend time in schoolsim with the other kids, or is he actually right? 2) Investors are flocking to the new growth frontiers, with all the usual shenaningans. 3) Hypercorps really want to get hold of mindstates with rare skills. Headhunting, egohunting and soulmining are becoming very profitable. 4) Firewall and others are trying to figure out if this could be an existential risk - and maybe getting the idea that yes, this technology has some really bad implications and ought to be stopped. But how do you stop something like Moore's law? 5) People who are currently doing well thanks to their skills realize that in a few years anybody will be able to buy them, and they need to develop new competitive advantages. Or escape. 6) Autonomists would like to see the new technologies free (after all, this is potentially the key to cognitive equality!) but that means out-researching or stealing them. 7) New skill/psychosurgery technologies may also allow human-made equivalents of basilisk hacks, YGBM and plain thought control. What about the risks of cognitive dictatorships? Or millions of mind hackers, altering the beliefs of everyone? Even if the technology is not here, it can still cast a shadow over the world. In EP, people are much more open to the possibilities of future radical technology than right now (for obvious reasons) and will take them into account.

I'll point out that there are already rules for hiveminds in the Factor section, and they're not really all that impressive. It just has the highest value for each attribute that one of its members has, and +2 per additional member. Thanks to the maximum limitation of 40 on each attribute, though, you're probably only getting minor bonuses. Maybe +10-20 on each skill. A hivemind with more than about a dozen individual members is a waste.

Arenamontanus wrote:

And why should there be a COG 40 limit for a mind distributed across many bodies? Its architecture is fundamentally different from the component minds and their brains.

Because it's still an Ego sleeved into a Morph. Or, perhaps more accurately, one Ego sleeved into lots of Morphs.

nick012000 wrote:

I'll point out that there are already rules for hiveminds in the Factor section, and they're not really all that impressive. It just has the highest value for each attribute that one of its members has, and +2 per additional member. Thanks to the maximum limitation of 40 on each attribute, though, you're probably only getting minor bonuses. Maybe +10-20 on each skill. A hivemind with more than about a dozen individual members is a waste.

Factor melding already has an internal limitation of +10, meaning that the bonus stops after 6 factors meld. However, note that every other factor also adds to durability, wound thresholds, and you always use the highest stats (not aptitudes... so that also includes skills). This means that if you have one factor in the meld for every skill in the game, and they have that single skill at 99, the melded factor has every skill in the game at 99 (along with a +10 bonus). More importantly, this is NOT the same as a hive mind. They simply meld together and form one larger body with which they work in unison. Every factor is an individual, even if their society brings them up with little individuality.

nick012000 wrote:

Because it's still an Ego sleeved into a Morph. Or, perhaps more accurately, one Ego sleeved into lots of Morphs.

Wrong way. A melded group of factors is actually lots of egos sleeved into a single big morph. Stop thinking Zerg and start thinking Voltron. It's a better representation of how the factors work.

Wow I can't believe I had never seen this thread, so full of juicy ideas that challenge the very idea of the human experience.

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PS-Another reason I am looking things like this is one of the "concepts" of the game is Your mind is Software Reprogram it...there doesnt appear to be a lot of re-programing you can do, or would want done. So that's why we are looking at more ways you can "program" your mind.

Actually that little phase: "Your Mind is a software. Program it." changed my life in a very profound way. I'm going to delve into the personal for a sec but it prompted me to go and get Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT for short). I looked at it's precepts and decided based on that little phrase that I wanted to take command of my psyche and not the other way around. As a side effect since I was willing to change and take responsibility for the change the change was easier and I came to the therapist with very clearly defined goals. So maybe it's not neural ganglia and hippocampus overclocking but to me reprogramming my mind through CBT was instrumental into changing me from a cynical person who saw the world as sliding into darkness into someone more positive that genuinely wants to help and has hope for the future. That's just to say that I'll attest that it is very possible to reprogram one's mind as I have done it first hand. Sure sometimes I have to tune it up a bit and it demands patches and defragging but, what system doesn't. Coming back to the topic at hand, since the actually learning process is so linked with experiences I would say that everyone learning the same skills would indeed become a shared experience, quite literally but it also opens them up to the same memetic reprogramming dangers and also perhaps even more dangerously a more standardized path of problem solving. In a society where you pick out the "best" at a task and replicate his knowledge to be part of a pool you automatically bias the "thinking pool" to that person's brand of problem solving, in short it would become harder to think out of the box because everyone would be programmed into the box. Remember that being competent doesn't mean being infallible, and that in standardizing skills you are also standardizing weaknesses and failures. I believe that on a memetic level the diversity in how we solve our problems is every bit as important to human evolution than solving that problem correctly.

Seems odd to me that there hasn't been much discussion of what a skill IS. I think once that's defined it will allow people to consider what is probably impossible instead of what could be possible. Which is, if I understand scientific endeavor, the more useful line of thought. From a skeptic layman's point of view; I don't think that creating a single great mind out of many great minds is all that useful. I doubt it would be an additive process. If you put all the smart people in one head and they stop disagreeing with each other that's a bad thing. There is the benefit of saving time by distributing tasks with no need for communication but I can't see how that helps in bringing breakthroughs like; cooking meat, calculus, quantum physics, relativity. So I think it's not a hardware issue. The 40 Aptitude cap still holds in a hive mind situation until someone invents a different paradigm for both thought and philosophy. I'm pretty sure that's what the singularity is/will be. I also suspect that possessing a skill is more complex than acquiring a body of knowledge. I believe that there is an intuitive leap between knowledge and technique. I'm not talking about some ineffable quality of consciousness but I can't define what that intuitive leap might be. I just know from my own successes and, especially my failures, at learning that the instant I own a skill I have changed and that skill will always modify the way I see the world and respond. I suspect everyone has had this 'eureka' moment. It's that feeling that makes me believe that possessing a skill at a very high level of competence involves comprehension of when, how and why or why not any particular technique may be applied to any situation a person encounters and that understanding is integral to their personality. Maybe a shorter way to say this is that training provides the context of a lifetime's experience from which to develop and apply techniques based on a body of knowledge, in a way that psychosurgery and skillware fail to provide. Mastery of a skill must require that context. On the point of AGI with skills of 80; I think it's debatable wether one can code an AGI with a skill of 80. Regardless, it's unnecessary and beside the point. An AGI is distinguished by it's ability to improve that skill rank by its own means and volition, wether that skill starts at 80 or 10. I suspect that they don't come with skill ranks of 80 right out of the box. [edit] the way I read it, improving the skill is a function of the AGI programming, not the skill itself.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

I seem to recollect it being 20x, but I could be wrong.

60x on the very best hardware.