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Questions about multi-fork societies

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Sun, 2014-07-27 20:19

Blue Screen of Death Blue Screen of Death's picture

Questions about multi-fork societies

I'm curious about multi-fork societies, like Pax Familiae. Maybe I can frame my questions as a scenario. Scenario: Chip is the very epitome of a stereotypical computer programmer. They are introverted, logical, and unsentimental. Had Chip any friends, they would tell you that Chip prefers their own company. Other egos have no idea how right they are. Very good at programming, Chip has amassed a great deal of wealth and/or I-rep and has purchased or made an infohab in the Kuiper Belt. The infohab is largely self-sufficient, harvesting what little it needs from one of the countless plutinos in the belt. The infohab has enough defenses that any would-be plunderer would lose far more than they would gain in attacking it. In short, Chip now has sustainable privacy and autonomy; time to set their plan in motion. Egocasting to their new home, Chip immediately alpha forks themself many times (let's say, at [i]least[/i] a thousand times), the first-rate infohab can easily house this many infomorphs. And then, by design, all of the forks (original and copies) boot at the same time. Chip's original plan was to call the collective the Chipset, and the infohab either the Old Block, Bag of Chips, the Chipped Bowl, etc. But the original Chip (and thus all the forks) didn't [i]quite[/i] think things through. Some immediate concerns: 1. What do the Chips call each other? There has got to be a better way to say, “Hey, fourth fork of third fork of second fork of original. Numbering is soulless and if the Chips get to choose their names (being so similar), almost all of the Chips will want to call themselves Mr. Black (and no one wants to be Mr. Pink). 2. How are common decisions made? The original Chip had thought of a simple democratic vote but in the great Kirk vs. Picard debating sessions, the losing side would like to fork themselves until they have a majority. What's the solution? 3. Chip and Dale were very much in love before the Fall. After Chips forking, Dale discovered the existence of the infohab and has been invited to egocast over. Dale is all for dating the entire Chipset but is adamant about remaining a single ego. So how do all of the Chips and a single Dale date? Does each Chip enter a daily lotto. Is there a single Chip puppet run as a kind of 'kinetic democracy' when actually romancing Dale? There is likely no canon answers or even a single 'best' answers for these questions. But I would welcome your thoughts. Thanks in advance! :-)

Sun, 2014-07-27 23:01

prototyper prototyper's picture

In your scenario .....

1) The generic honorific is likely to be "Chip". Like "Dude", with the original being "The Dude", er, "Chip". Personal Identifiers are likely to be created "organically" as the forks diverge from the prime ego. 2) I would point to the Titanian Commonwealth as methodology for decision making. 3) A daily lottery whereby a number of "winning" forks re-integrate with an original Chip Alpha Fork to maintain a zeitgeist of the cultural anthropology of the ongoing Chip-ocracy.

Mon, 2014-07-28 01:36

Smokeskin

You could number them by the

You could number them by the time stamp and memory reference of their creation.

Mon, 2014-07-28 04:45

Lorsa

Every answer is likely to be

Every answer is likely to be different depending on the personality of the Chip in question. 1. How about a random name generator? If Chip collects all names they could possibly live with and then constructs a program that will randomise them amongst all the forks, it would prevent the "everyone is Mr. Black scenario". 2. Again programming can be useful. For every decision, there could be a fixed number of votes. A program is then randomising which of the forks gets to have a vote this time around. That way, increasing the number of forks doesn't help and all Chips gets to have a say (eventually). 3. Ideally, all the Chips would take turns in dating. If Chip is into merging, they could always do that after every date so everyone gets the experience, otherwise XP distribution is a clear possibility too. I imagine the presence of Dale to be a limiting factor of the number of forks Chip would want to have.

—

Lorsa is a Forum moderator [color=red]Red text is for moderator stuff[/color]

Mon, 2014-07-28 05:26

Smokeskin

The free market solution! The

The free market solution! The Chips use a currency called Cycles. All Chips generate 1 Cycle per second, and they buy processing power to run their own infomorph or other software with it - 1 Cycle gets you (total processing power/number of Chips) for 1 second. Names, date time with Dale etc. is auctioned or traded and paid for with Cycles. Mr. black gets a cool name, but he'll have live less because of it. If you want a date with Dale, you'll have to go in dead storage for a week to save up for it.

Mon, 2014-07-28 09:15

Leng Plateau Leng Plateau's picture

I hope

I hope that Chip gets along with himself well or the bag of Chips is going to get ugly fast.

—

At least with Lovecraft, nobody pretends the gods are nice. And wherever you end up, there is guaranteed to be tentacles.

Mon, 2014-07-28 13:53

Erulastant Erulastant's picture

Lorsa wrote:

Lorsa wrote:
2. Again programming can be useful. For every decision, there could be a fixed number of votes. A program is then randomising which of the forks gets to have a vote this time around. That way, increasing the number of forks doesn't help and all Chips gets to have a say (eventually).

Well, no. Consider that there are 1000 chips, say equally divided between the Kirks and the Picards. There are 100 votes. As is, each side is then expected to be distributed 1 vote per 10 supporters. Dissatisfied with this deadlock, the Kirks decide to each fork twice, and triple their numbers. There are now 2000 chips, 1500 Kirks and 500 Picards. Expected value is 1 vote per 20 chips, so the Kirks get ~75 votes and the Picards get ~25. It's like a raffle that you can repeatedly enter for free--You want to put in as many tickets as possible to maximize your chances of winning, even if no individual ticket guarantees you anything.

—

You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.

Mon, 2014-07-28 14:02

Smokeskin

My market solution - you

My market solution - you could modify that so you had to give your fork an allowance from your own Cycle regeneration. That way, you couldn't increase your influence by forking.

Mon, 2014-07-28 14:57

branford

Leng Plateau wrote:I hope

Leng Plateau wrote:
I hope that Chip gets along with himself well or the bag of Chips is going to get ugly fast.

We might have to rename the habitat Barbecue Chips and Salsa. :)

Mon, 2014-07-28 17:26

#10

Lorsa

Erulastant wrote:Well, no.

Erulastant wrote:
Well, no. Consider that there are 1000 chips, say equally divided between the Kirks and the Picards. There are 100 votes. As is, each side is then expected to be distributed 1 vote per 10 supporters. Dissatisfied with this deadlock, the Kirks decide to each fork twice, and triple their numbers. There are now 2000 chips, 1500 Kirks and 500 Picards. Expected value is 1 vote per 20 chips, so the Kirks get ~75 votes and the Picards get ~25. It's like a raffle that you can repeatedly enter for free--You want to put in as many tickets as possible to maximize your chances of winning, even if no individual ticket guarantees you anything.

You are right, that didn't quite work out as intended. The obvious answer would of course be to use a consensus system. Or perhaps every fork can only vote for 1 out of 10 proposals, so if you vote on one issue, you're out for the next 9 to come. There's nothing that says new forks will vote the same as you in the future, so even if you could fork NOW to win an election, you'll make it harder for yourself in the future.

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Lorsa is a Forum moderator [color=red]Red text is for moderator stuff[/color]

Wed, 2014-07-30 04:28

#11

Myrmidont

Re: naming - they probably

Re: naming - they probably start off as Chip 1.25 (25th copy of Chip 1 ie:the original Chip), but they probably use nicknames for their various specialities/differences among themselves. Re: Picard vs. Kirk voting - only forks instanced at the time the vote was announced are legible to vote. After all, we don't allow votes from people that turn 18 after voting day but before the result is announced.

—

Mon, 2014-08-04 00:01

#12

Blue Screen of Death Blue Screen of Death's picture

Forkin' Yeah!

Thank you all for your replies. I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to y'all. As the Chipset is really a thought experiment, feel free to make any assumptions about them as you wish. For myself, I imagine the first Chip didn't plan very well so as to emphasize the oddness of suddenly becoming an Army of One. Chip would likely not have forked as much (or at all) had they known that Dale was alive after the Fall. If the disagreements go nuclear, the BBQ Chips & Salsa could also be know as the Plate of Fission Chips. :-) I like all of your suggestions. As you probably have guessed, the silly Kirk vs. Picard debate is more of an example of how challenging it is to have a democracy when voters can be spawned almost instantly. There are probably much more serious debates going on after the Fall. What happens when Pax Familiae disagrees is probably measured in megatons. In any case, the Kirk vs. Picard debate is a trick question; the only answer is Kirk because....[i]Hair, Green Space Babes, Hammy acting, etc.[/i]

Wed, 2014-08-06 05:17

#13

ThatWhichNeverWas ThatWhichNeverWas's picture

2. Seeing as both sides can

2. Seeing as both sides can fork themselves with impunity, it becomes at best a 0-sum game, where for each additional vote on one side being balanced by an additional on the other. More likely, however, is that each side would grow exponentially, with each side doubling their population at the same rate, but the initial majority starts further up the curve, so their advantage only increases with time. In any case, neither possibility would alter the outcome of the vote, so the option is moot. 3. One randomly chosen Chip gets groinal with Dale, and feeds a realtime XP to the rest. Possibly, they all get to provide feedback, with majority voted actions occuring. Ever seen Twitch Plays Pokemon? :P

—

In the past we've had to compensate for weaknesses, finding quick solutions that only benefit a few. But what if we never need to feel weak or morally conflicted again?

Fri, 2014-08-08 00:21

#14

Blue Screen of Death Blue Screen of Death's picture

Hmmm, I can see how that might play out.

Romance by committee (NSFW) :-)

Sun, 2014-12-28 23:23

#15

scraigon

Kirk Vs Picard

Wouldn't the voting be entirely one-sided? Since Chip prefers Kirk, wouldn't the other Chips agree? With unchanged Alpha forks, I imagine everything being agreeable. "Raise your hand if strawberry is the best ice cream" means all the unchanged Alpha forks would raise their hand, being just like the original Chip It would be the divergence of different experiences that would allow for changes over time. 1000 chips all choosing a different book to read would result in 1000 slightly different-than-original Chips. Perhaps not enough to spot, at first. Multiply this branching out over time and then a difference of opinions could come about. Pruning and psychosurgery remove these random branching parallelisms, resulting in an intentionally different Chip. Chip the comedian. Chip the Actor. Chip the violinist. Chip the King. If Chip were prepared before hand, then all the forks could be copy protected, unable to fork themselves. Likely prepared from a pruned alpha fork, with traits added and removed so the army of Chips serve Chip Prime faithfully, lovingly, and happily.

Thu, 2015-01-01 22:40

#16

Blue Screen of Death Blue Screen of Death's picture

You bring up some great

You bring up some great points. The Chips would start out similar but then (unedited) eventually diverge over time. While the initial differences would be minor, they might be terribly important to the Chipset. Familiarity breeds contempt. Think of the tiny details any obsessive hobbyists can bicker about for generations. In my mind, I see some of the Chips choosing psychosurgery to make themselves distinctive. But i doubt this would forced. If Chip was authoritarian, we wouldn't have had these questions about forking democracies to begin with.

Mon, 2015-01-19 23:52

#17

FrankManic FrankManic's picture

Well that's the thing about

Well that's the thing about Chip. They like to play the Devil's Advocate (yeah, they're one of those guys). So while a bunch of Chips were remixing "Kirk's Greatest Hits" another group of Chips, out of boredom more than anything, said "Whatever, we all know that Piccard was better". The Kirkist Chips immediately protested because all the Chips were Chip at one point and know that Chip knew that Kirk is clearly superior. They point this out. An argument ensues and accusations of memory corruption and bad dubbing fly. A passing Chip, annoyed by the clamor, shouts out "Janeway rules!' Several days later a mild mannered spysat registers a flash in the Kuiper belt corresponding to a low-megaton yield nuclear weapon. This is the only evidence of what Chip historians, during the brief period that the Chips were writing histories about themselves, refer to as "The Trek War".

—

What is boils down to is that "Killer Robots exterminate humanity and escape to the stars" is one of the *good futures*.

Fri, 2015-01-23 01:17

#18

Blue Screen of Death Blue Screen of Death's picture

FrankManic,

I like it! :-) Perhaps there was one transmission received before the Big Bang that started with [i]"To the last, I will grapple with thee..."[/i]

Tue, 2015-01-27 05:38

#19

NimbleJack3 NimbleJack3's picture

As far as naming and

As far as naming and identifying all the various Chips goes, if I were chip I'd go for an ID/name combo. Every chip gets a boring hardcoded ID number based on time of fork and distance to The Chip which is used to definitively identify them in the teeming, branching mass of Chips. They also get to pick a name for themselves which they use as their main name, after it has been checked against all the other names in use. Chester and Chipperton meet, introduce themselves as such, but if an issue over who's which fork arises, they present IDs and the whole issue is solved.

Thu, 2015-01-29 00:27

#20

Blue Screen of Death Blue Screen of Death's picture

NimbleJack3,

An excellent solution and very similar to how we name ourselves in the Western World. So 'Adam' Chip would be Mr. Chip to strangers, but Adam to his friends. I like it. :-)

Thu, 2015-01-29 02:34

#21

NimbleJack3 NimbleJack3's picture

I've done some reading in

I've done some reading in Transhuman and the section on forking (p.157-158) presented a very neat solution - Chip doesn't create permanent branches of forks, but he rapidly forks AND re-merges on a small timescale. This is what Pax Familliae does to maintain unity between all the forks, and if he keeps the fork separation time below 4 hours then the reunified whole only incurs 5 SV at most per merge. If Chip educates himself on psychosurgery and has a muse equipped with therapy routines, there's very little risk of SV building up quickly and traumatizing chip before he has a chance to take a break from being many people at once. The chips don't argue much, because they were all chip a few hours ago and if they start to argue it's solved anyway by the auto-merging program that any sane Chip would use to automatically combine the forks every 4 hours. This also neatly solves the problem of who dates Dale - Chip does, during one of his merged downcycles.

Fri, 2015-02-06 00:21

#22

Blue Screen of Death Blue Screen of Death's picture

NimbleJack3,

A very foresighted ego (and thus that ego's forks) would use short-term forking and merging as a way to maintain sanity and cohesiveness between their divided selves. But I pictured Chip as deliberately creating a multi-fork society (so as to be able to ask this thought experiment in the first place). This is why the Chipset is way out in the Kuiper Belt as they are really stretching the laws of the Solar System in general. All of this may mean that Chip (all of them) is cultivating deliberate insanity or a new form of moving beyond human. Maybe the original Chip is such a narcissist, they can't imagine the Universe just have to be content with just one permanent version of them.