Thanks for the link. I do appreciate it. I hate it when someone starts talking about some obscure topic without providing background information about it (and force the readers to do their own research before joining in). On topic now. So this Exocortex is a machine that is supposed to add to the neocortex (or possibly replace it), right? Its objective it make a person think better, right? Off hand, I'll list a few Eclipse Phase technologies that could enhance thinking: -Forking - Forking allows one to do multiple things at once. It may not improve how well you can think, but if your goal is to get as much work done as possible, then this might be the better choice. -Basic Mesh inserts - This device implanted in your head can display images (like text files) into your visual cortex. This means you can get information with needing to look at your tablet computer or smart phone. It can also run programs (like muses) that can gather information for you and index it before you even consider looking it up. -Multiple Personalities - See (Core rulebook, p. 301). This augmentation allows another ego to be sleeved in the same morph as you. You know what the other ego is thinking and doing, and can easily switch who is in control. Ideally, you sleeve with someone with a different skill set than you. You switch out (voluntarily) as needed. The only bonus mentioned is another mental complex action per turn. -Skillware - See (Core rulebook, p. 309). This nanoware augmentation literally adds new (temporary) skills to your character. There are some problems with it (like the limits to software quality and how much you can run at once), but it can certainly make it so you can do a job *now* without needing several months of training or years of post secondary. -Mental Speed - See (Core rulebook, p. 308). This nanoware makes you think faster. It will let you to do mental stuff in much less time than before. Not enough time is often the thing that leads to things not being done. -Oracles - See (Core rulebook, p. 309). This nanoware augmentation noticeably improves memory (though many augmentations do better) and greatly improves perception. Such an equipped character is never considered distracted when something important happens and gets a small bonuses to investigation. -The hypermesh link - See (Sunward, p. 173). First mentioned in the Sunward book (I think), this device is like mesh inserts but it also can transfer information regarding thoughts and emotions form other people who also have hypermesh links. The ability for the group to access each member's collective knowledge provides a +5 mod to COG, and better teamworking rules. -Parallel Processor - See (Rimward, p. 189). An augmentation derived from the hypermesh link augmentation. It is more specialized for the purposes of doing scientific or technical work. -Neural Enhancers - See (Rimward, p. 189). These augmentations are supposed to provide a bonus to a morph's COG score, but it suffer limits (doesn't work on morphs with good COG bonuses). ---- Err... I may have just listed most of the gear in the books that relate to cognitive enhancements... Anyways, I have something in mind for a piece of gear or augmentation, but I'm busy right now. I'll try to get back to this asap.

Erenthia wrote:

So I was thinking of working out an adventure that revolves around one of the hypercorp's creating a prototype exocortex based on existing cyberbrain technology, but I want to attach some stats because I'd like to let the players get their hands on them at some point during the adventure (and potentially keep them if they are smart enough to do so). So how would you stat one if you felt the need to do so?

It can't be represented with mere stats imo. Systems like the Leverage RPG (based on the tv show about a team pulling off ingenious heists) use a flashback system to a) let the players have the experience of being masterminds and b) skip the boring planning parts. Basically what you do is change the narrative to what you see in Ocean's 11 - you leave the planning and preparation phase vague and undescribed, and also many of the team member's current location. Whenever someone faces an obstacle you think "oh no", but then there's a flashback where you see how the team planned for that exact thing to happen. That problematic guard? We bribed him yesterday, or someone is in position to distract him. Such as system would let players emulate the intellectual prowess of an exocortex in a way that mere stats can't. I have an (untested) write-up of a house rule for EP. It works off Moxie because I mostly wanted it to enable skipping planning and recon, but if you used "Exocortex Points" instead it should do the job. You could also let players do simulations. If they can build a psych profile of someone, let them run a simulation of, say, trying to bribe them. If it fails, they can try something else. If it succeeds, a successful "Exocortex roll" means they did it for real and everything went as planned, if the roll fails there's a twist. Or maybe even let them undo the past by letting them declare that what just happened was merely the exocortex running a simulation - obviously it didn't work, so they'll try something else.

I wouldn't call planning ahead, predicting behavior and modelling complex interactions narrow, but I only mentioned those because they are areas that can't be easily captured with stat increases. +30 COG isn't going to convincingly convey what an exocortex should be able to do. I also consider them to be the defining characteristics of "superintelligence". Being able to do the same things as transhumans just faster isn't really that different. Being able to take your chess move in half the time isn't a game changer but being 10 steps ahead is. The ability to quickly hit small targets in large search spaces (understood in the most general sense so it encompasses all problem solving) An accurate mental model of the world and the actors in it. The ability to both search broadly and deeply in decision trees. One game theory principle is to look forward and reason backwards. Often dominant strategies are found deep in the extensive form and you need to look at all future branches and then prune them backwards. It is like chess - you need a good function to evaluate a position, but it will never be good enough that you can just look one step forward and then use the function to decide what the best move is. You have to calculate many steps ahead, and even then you use functions to prune the possible moves down to a feasible size along the way, potentially cutting away surprisingly effective moves because they initially looked bad. Say you have a mark trying to avoid the hit man. The mark has to choose between 3 paths - one is safe, the others have hazards one with a 20% risk of death the other with 40% risk. The hit man has to choose which path he'll set up his ambush at. There are optimal ways for both of them for choosing a path (or rather what weight to assign each path because the choice has to be randomized), and it depends on for example if the target knows whether or not the hit man gets paid for the mark dying to a hazard rather than by his hand. I can calculate the Nash equilibrium, but not in my head. If a posthuman could translate every situation to such scenarios, and work out optimal strategies many steps into the future, and take into account the cognitive biases and limited ability to see into the future that mere transhumans have and even use that knowledge to manipulate them, that would give them a huge advantage.

I agree that there is not much about an exocortex that is in any way unique per se, except if you go beyond standard transhuman minds, like egos that cannot sleeve into a flat anymore. So the point is: What about intelligence above the transhuman maximum and how to (role)play them? Not that it is easy to play a COG 40 character anyway, I guess the transition is fluid.

That is quiet right, think of Sherlock Holmes! But you need to have the cognitive ability to process all of this information.

Well some of the stuff I've come up with is designed to be low powered, but it would be pretty easy to make them more powerful (for posthuman like creatures). All of them try to address things in a unique manner (not yet handled by any gear to the best of my knowledge). This is not everything I can think of at the moment; I just want to mention some of them before I risk forgetting or losing interest in this thread. *Note that these are the first or second drafts and are not the final versions. ---- Auto mesh search implant - People need to do research from time to time, some more than others. This implant automatically searches the mesh for indexes and other information that might aid in quick and accurate searches. It also takes snap shots of the mesh and makes copies of files that are deemed important enough to be kept on one's mesh inserts. It will also attempt to predict what kinds of information the user will want to look for so it can it ready before the user asks. When the user attempts to make a research check for information that could be found on the mesh, they may do so as a quick action for any piece of information that can be easily found (can be found with a research mod of 0 or greater). Any information that is difficult to find (a research mod of -10 or less) requires the user to search the mesh the traditional way. However, any "manual" research tests may benefit from a +10 mod (read teamwork bonus) as the this implant helps to optimize search queries and helps to sort the good finds from the bad. As part of its auto mesh search purpose, it can (and usually does) make its own research attempts independently of the owner of this implant. Generalist Ware - Some people are called "Jack of all trades" because they can do a lot of different kinds of work. This nanoware is an evolution of the skillware augmentation (core rulebook, p. 309). Where the skillware augmentation allowed the user to use skills kept in the form of software, this device is packed full of information of special training and obscure information. It is able to distribute it in such a manner that user can default any skill. In addition it can boost the skill ranks of any 2 skills by 10, but this modified number may not exceed 40. Knowledgeware - Much like how the skillware augmentation (core rulebook, p. 309) can improve active skills, this augmentation seeks to do the same for knowledge skills. The typical knowledgesofts (individual knowledge skill software packages) can be rated as high as 80 (not better than limited AIs). It can load up to 200 total skill points of knowledge skills through these means.

Erenthia wrote:

Before coming across Eclipse Phase, I had long been of the opinion that the Exocortex was the killer app of transhumanist technologies. I thought that everything that came before the exocortex would be astonishingly primitive by comparison and that afterwards we get into real transhuman technology. ... Obviously you could wrap a bunch of existing technologies. A bonus to an aptitude or two, some skillsofts, mnemonic augmentation, etc. What I'm really interested in is, what happens to an ego when it's given enough room to expand to the point where a single brain/cyberbrain isn't big enough to hold the whole thing.

I had thought that exocortices were the killer app in Eclipse Phase, which gave the characters their extended abilities. Mesh inserts were the interface to the vast array of technologies, intelligent agents, and services available on the Mesh, which allow them to be controlled instinctively. AR is a dominant user interface technology in EP, but it is also possible for EP's computers to be manipulated as if they were parts of the psyche or body (or at least, they are in my game - my players and I seem to love "Do what I will" interfaces). I would also carefully speculate that muses were created, in part to manage interactions with the exocortex due to the fact that the interfaces became too complex yet again, and needed an even more intuitive user interface (one that the user could have a conversation with, as opposed to issuing commands).