CodeBreaker wrote:

Erm. Que? Where are you getting that from? The only mentions of Alpha Fork legality within hypercorp jurisdiction (The primarily place it really matters) within the Eclipse Phase Core rules and Sunward is fairly clear that all forms of Alpha Forking is illegal. In fact even Beta Forks cannot be run for more than 4 hours at a time in many places. So... source? Or are we talking Titan? Because I am fairly sure that the legality of forking on Titan hasn't been made clear yet, and probably wont be until Rimward.

In the section on alpha forks from the core book, it says that in many jurisdictions it is illegal, but in some it is just viewed with distaste; a small minority encourage it (page 273). A good portion of what I said was also inferred from the box on page 275. Perhaps I should have specified "the parts of society that are comfortable with forking" rather than just "society". I revised that statement to clarify.

A key problem with multiple alphas is contract law - and that includes marriage, property ownership and voting in a sense. If I can become two persons, who has the right to my shuttle or husband? Who is responsible for living up to what I promised in that contract? Worse, legal culpability becomes messy: if I commit a crime and fork, are both forks now equally culpable, or is it enough to punish one of them? These are problems law people can solve (and they love coming up with principles for handling things like this), but the solution used in the inner system is to not update the laws surrounding personal identity too profoundly and instead have people keep to one constant identity. Very much a transitional economy thing. Note that having backups is legal, and I think there was a mention that if a really old version of you comes online it is not regarded as an alpha in the eyes of the law (I assume it is now regarded as a possession, which it might not like). Allowing full alpha-forking opens amazing cans of worms. Which means some people are very busy promoting it, of course. An economic singularity is just what the doctor ordered, right? What could possibly go wrong with banyans, copyrations and clades of heavily interlinked forks?

What would compel the Alpha fork to do your work for you? At least with Beta forks you can argue that the pruning they go through is also producing some form of conditioning that makes them more receptive to orders. An Alpha literally has no reason to work for you without some form of reward. Plus, what would stop the Alpha fork from just forking itself over? With Betas, all that would do is slowly degrade the Ego to the point of uselessness. With an Alpha he can just keep going and going.

If you can merge, then there is actually an incentive. Imagine wanting to go to the rock concert but also wanting to do your job (so you can afford the rep to go to the concert). You fork, you gain rep and experience live music, then you merge. Result: a future self that has had the experience and has the economy. Hmm, I wonder if merging with alphas shouldn't be made much harder than merging with betas and gammas? Betas and gammas are deliberately pruned and simplified versions of the original, which means that it is easier to calculate how they have changed from the original state and how that maps onto the original ego, while full alphas (especially if sleeved in biomorphs) might diverge in a lot more directions.

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Hmm, I wonder if merging with alphas shouldn't be made much harder than merging with betas and gammas? Betas and gammas are deliberately pruned and simplified versions of the original, which means that it is easier to calculate how they have changed from the original state and how that maps onto the original ego, while full alphas (especially if sleeved in biomorphs) might diverge in a lot more directions.

That's an interesting question. Can you merge with your alpha? Maybe there are some sticky problems in doing so - it just takes a long time to do, and/or there's risk of mental problems ranging from temporary schizophrenia to a permanently fubar'd ego. (Even if these risks are remote to non-existent, the social stigma around alpha forking might generate popular myths and scare-stories: 'Know Your Fork-Fiend!')

Arenamontanus wrote:

Hmm, I wonder if merging with alphas shouldn't be made much harder than merging with betas and gammas? Betas and gammas are deliberately pruned and simplified versions of the original, which means that it is easier to calculate how they have changed from the original state and how that maps onto the original ego, while full alphas (especially if sleeved in biomorphs) might diverge in a lot more directions.

I think it would be the other way. An alpha is a perfect copy of the original ego, so the changes that affect said ego perfectly reflect how the original person would have reacted to those events of their life. A beta and delta is a limited version, and reacts differently from how the complete version of the person might have reacted. Once merged with the original ego and the memories of that ego's life flood into the original's brain, they will feel like they have lived life in two places, but in one place they were a different, inferior person. This could potentially be unsettling. In a more code-based analogy (as I am a programmer), if you thought of yourself as code (Arenamontanus.exe), and your alpha forks as copies of that code (the file would be called "Copy of Arenamontanus.exe" in Windows), then beta and delta forks are essentially stripped down versions of you (Arenamontanus_Demo.exe). If both get altered separately, and later on someone decides to put those differences together into one program, the alterations to two different versions of "Arenamontanus.exe" are easier to work with than trying to compare the differences between "Arenamontanus.exe" and "Arenamontanus_Demo.exe", because in the latter scenario you have to take into account the fact that certain elements of the code are different prior to any changes that might have occurred.

Yerameyahu wrote:

On the subject of merging, does anything know what the entries under 'Success' even mean? "Seamless ego with memories intact from both" makes sense, but how is "solid bond" different, or the lower entries of just "Memories intact, X Stress"?

Here's my take on it. Upon merging, an ego essentially has all memories of basically being in two places at once. This has the expected effect of disorienting that character's sense of time and location (both of which are things that your mind kinda keep track of on its own). A seamless ego feels like it has been in two places at once, but feels normal after merging as if they were one person again. Someone with a solid bond feels some after-effects post-merge. It might just be a minor feeling like they are two identical people overlapping the same location in space. For most cases, this effect is minor and disappears over time. As the separation is longer, this effect worsens and causes stress to the mind, but again is reparable. Only during bad merges and ones that occur after far too long do minds truly not merge well, and essentially fight over real estate; summing to memory loss. It's like your mind is playing Highlander with itself... it senses multiple egos, and they know that there can be only one.

Yerameyahu wrote:

So, it's just meaningless fluff? :)

Perhaps, but it depends on how the character reacts to this sensation. Imagine a kid that spins until they are dizzy. Some kids will feel that, realize they don't like it, and tell themselves they won't spin like that again. Other kids might like the sensation and do it more. That unsettled feeling that occurs after a good merge might leave them with a positive experience about the sensations of merging. It might even result in a person who wants to fork more often. This might also be a good thing on the other end, as alpha forks might have more incentive to merge with the original ego if they, just like the original ego, enjoy the sensation of merging.