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How do you prevent runaway forking?

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Helios_Five Helios_Five's picture
How do you prevent runaway forking?
If there is no physical barrier to making millions of forks, how come noone has thus far created some millions of alpha forks and taken over? Rules might discourage forking but what hinders it in the setting? This might be more problematic now but earlier in the timeline fewer were uploaded. If you created a lot of alpha forks of yourself you would have a definite advantage. Most people wouldn't want alpha forks but it only takes one person who is willing. Rules might punish forking but what hinders it in the setting? In a sense what im asking is how do you prevent a grey goo like scenario with Forking?
The checks and balances of democratic governments were invented because human beings themselves realized how unfit they were to govern themselves. They needed a system, yes, an industrial-age machine. -- Helios , Deus Ex
Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Powerful organizations hinder it. It's in their interest to keep things stable, and there are multiple powers balancing each other. Unlike grey goo, a bunch of forks can't do *all that* much without (lots of) computers and bodies. I'm not saying they couldn't do anything, mind you, but it's not quite the same. A major hacking menace, possibly, effectively a big sentient computer virus, but they'd have to be so subtle and careful… I dunno. It may also be the classic duplicate problem: it might be hard to effective use the power of many copy-selves. None of them want to die, or do the housework, or whatever. :)
Helios_Five Helios_Five's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
True. Someone with the ambition to control others would rather avoid doing menial tasks. Still that doesn't prevent you from making them in the first place. Perhaps the main weakness is that identical copies would be more vulnerable to viruses , both real and digital. You could try varying your forks but that would require psychosurgery. It would be easier to create lots of forks if you were one of the first to make a successful mind uploading. You would have the money to create lots of computers and morphs for yourself. Then again your shareholders might not like that. Still that doesn't prevent you from making them in the first place.
The checks and balances of democratic governments were invented because human beings themselves realized how unfit they were to govern themselves. They needed a system, yes, an industrial-age machine. -- Helios , Deus Ex
CodeBreaker CodeBreaker's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
The Law, the Stress, the Logistics, and the Org. The Law – It is not just discouraged. For the majority of the population Alpha forking is out right banned, and the consequences range from dire to slightly less dire. The Hypercorps (And accordingly the PC) needs Alpha forking to remain illegal, if its not then they lose one more hold on their already tenuous grasp of artificial scarcity. They are going to enforce those limits as strongly as they physically can. The Outer System is fine with forking in moderation, but as soon as you start to threaten them they will hit you as hard any inner system party could. The Stress – Forking is stressful on the Ego. Even Alpha forks are likely to get hit with some serious SV if they are the slightest bit unlucky. The original Ego has to deal with those misfits somehow, and most of the options are the kind that will cause mental damage to the original. Even if only one tenth of your Alpha forks come out batshit insane (Which is about what the average transhuman can achieve), you are still dealing with a massive influx of crazy Egos. The Logistics – You have your million Alpha forks. Now what? Each fork requires hardware to run on, which means either an ecto, a server, or a morph. One million ectos are expensive. 100,000 servers are also expensive. One million morphs is just stupid. Then you have to make sure that each of those forks is content playing by the rules. Even if you only have the slightest doubt of what you are doing, the sheer quantity of minds going over your plans will result in dissent. How do you deal with those guys without breaking your psyche even more? The Org – There are organizations within the system that literally have the backing of intellectual gods dedicated solely to stopping this kind of thing happening. You really think you can outsmart them long enough to gain the advantage you would need? And then you have the ever present risk of Groupthink. There is a very real reason why organizations try and diversify their thinking as much as possible. When you have a million minds, all with the same background and history, they are likely to make the same mistakes. They will develop easy to follow patterns that anyone with half a brain will be able to exploit to bring them down.
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Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Great points, CodeBreaker.
Helios_Five Helios_Five's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Thanks for the very informative posts. So it seems like even if you can, it doesn't mean you should. An army of alpha forks would exist for a very short while before people took notice and then it would be very vulnerable.
The checks and balances of democratic governments were invented because human beings themselves realized how unfit they were to govern themselves. They needed a system, yes, an industrial-age machine. -- Helios , Deus Ex
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Of course, then there is the economy factor. At this point I always wave around #7 of my list of top 10 scary scientific papers, Robin Hanson's "If uploads come first": http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html Basically, forking allows you to copy human capital, and since the growth of a knowledge economy is largely due to human capital this means a *lot* of economic growth. You can get ten expensive lawyers, geneticists or doctors for the price of one! This means that there are very strong economic reasons to do it, but also that wage competition will produce a race towards near zero of wages. This can be seen as a very strong argument against forking, and a motivation to keep bounds on it. But as Robin will cheerfully argue (read his blog Overcoming Bias) this is unlikely to work in the long run - sooner or later the fork revolution will happen. If something profitable can be done someone will do it (remember Pax Familiae). My own answer in EP for why this has not happened yet is that it was just 10 years since the Fall. A lot of infrastructure and economy crashed, and transhumanity has only recently clawed itself back to a semblance of function. In fact, now nearly all individuals are able to do forking (since the non-uploaders and stackless largely died out in the Fall and upload technology became far more commonplace than just before the Fall out of necessity). The revolution is fast approaching. Of course, another answer which I think has merit is that forks actually do take processing space. EP somewhat wisely doesn't give exact numbers on the memory storage or processing power for computers except that it is 'enough' for all normal uses; however, for fork armies I think the answer is similarly 'not enough'. You need one of those big datacenters to run a million forks, and that is seriously going to 1) cost you to build, 2) make an obvious target for everybody who dislikes what you would like to do. Or you need to spread into lots of free computing spaces system-wide - but then you are vulnerable to people starting to treat you as spam or a virus.
Extropian
OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
There is some issue of the utility of "A million forks" Even if you have exclusive access to the million ectos or Truely Massive simulspace server farm those million forks can't really do much but sit and think. They don't have any money or rep or the means to do anything else. As mentioned above, since the skillset is shared they just compete with themselves (and 'you') until divergence and diaspora allow them to gain their own wealth. At that point they're not much use to 'you'.

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

mickykitsune mickykitsune's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
We already have listed examples in the core book of whole habitats / communities being formed of forks of the same person. There's certainly room for experimentation in EP, but it seems that most people want it to be done far away from major population hubs.
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nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
For the same reason someone doesn't buy all of the giant servers full of cold storage infomorphs and turn them into an infugee army. Alright, now you have a whole ton of people who feel some modicum of loyalty towards you, but have no bodies and a limited range of skills. Now what?
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Alright, now you have a whole ton of people who feel some modicum of loyalty towards you, but have no bodies and a limited range of skills. Now what?
My standard example: you happen to be a lawyer. You can put one fork working on each case, if necessary forking more to do more in depth research, communication and writing. Gather statistics on what works best and optimize the workflow. You can also underbid most other law firms. Or why not a nanodesigner, working on new designs and testing them first in simspace? Sure, all the forks have the same skill and similar design tastes, but they can work on thousands of different projects at the same time. Some might work alone, others in teams, others as evaluation teams comparing the different proposals suggested by other teams, others in quality control, testing and so on. Let's not think about the hacker case. :-) A random person will not become an economic or military powerhouse just by forking. It takes a bit of business and organisation sense to figure out how to run a copy-clade. Some aspects are nontrivial, like managing merging (in my game I have a massive forking PC psychologist who is spending almost as many forks giving himself psychotherapy as the millions of people he is processing). Most early fork empires just crash and burn because people find out they cannot trust themselves or do not want to sacrifice one fork for the good of the rest... but eventually some people will come around with the right (perhaps very skew) mindset to do it well.
Extropian
Abhoth Abhoth's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
How would you in the sense handle a PC group that sets up a "research outpost" (easy to do if you have all the blue prints and dont mind say using one of the asteroid belts for resources) and then copies themselves 1000,000 times and goes looking to become a exhuman or a tyrannid hive mind or a honest go god uninfected Titan. I dont think you CAN stop run away forking its going to happen and maybe the next jump foward in trans human evolution....or the next Fall. In regards to hacking care to give some examples of how you could even stop a 1000,000 fork hacking team of awesome hackers hacking to together with perfect hacking unity....aside from say a sysop with 1000,000 forks of his own?
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Joining minds isn't a trivial task. I'm sure they could do it. Some modifications with hypermesh might be the easiest way. But without the skills and time, they've got nothing. But again, how is this different from setting up a hive mind with 100,000 infugees? At least with infugees, you have a diversity of experience and skills. With this you're stuck with the same idiot 100,000 times over.
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Abhoth wrote:
How would you in the sense handle a PC group that sets up a "research outpost" (easy to do if you have all the blue prints and dont mind say using one of the asteroid belts for resources) and then copies themselves 1000,000 times and goes looking to become a exhuman or a tyrannid hive mind or a honest go god uninfected Titan.
I would make them the monster of the next game, of course!
Quote:
I was hauled into Maestro's simspace. Today it was Japanese watercolours, but one look at Maestro and the other seated figures - obviously major proxies - told me that this was not a social call. Part of the sky turned into a skymap, showing something black, fractal and flower-like. 'Do you know what this is?' Maestro asked in an angry voice. 'No clue...' The proxies nodded, obviously monitoring my mindstate directly. My heart sank, I was obviously in deep trouble if they didn't even bother hiding the psychoscanning behind some politeness. 'You should know, or rather your *continuation* certainly knows. This is the remnant of the trans-neptunian VB_451 after you, miss Shi and Leviathan went there, mass-forked and turned into a seed-something or other.' 'But... I... we never had any plan like that.' Again the proxies analysed my mindstate. I noticed some glitches in their movements that suggested they were even freezing me while poking around my ego. I didn't feel violated or angry or even helpless, the situation was too weird. I couldn't do something like that, right? Not after what I had seen. I couldn't even grow into a person willing to do it? I was not a would-be TITAN. 'No, and that was why we restored you from an older backup. Your next backup had already had his Bad Idea. In any case, we need to put an end to this quickly. Which is where you come in. We are going to send you over there to deal with this.' 'What? Me?' 'See it as a punishment for what you did in the future.'
Quote:
In regards to hacking care to give some examples of how you could even stop a 1000,000 fork hacking team of awesome hackers hacking to together with perfect hacking unity....aside from say a sysop with 1000,000 forks of his own?
Exactly. This is where I think we are saved by the bandwidth and other performance limitations that normally do not matter - they can't all crowd the same firewall. This might also be the level where PCs suddenly discover that some of the Big Boys have prepared for the eventuality. Nimbus netwar servers, Oversight mesh control systems, the Promethean's software weaponry they last used against the TITANs might suddenly show up and show who can actually do stuff. "/\/\U|-|4|-|4|-|4! |\|07|-|1|\|9 (4|\| $70P /\/\3 |\|0\/\/! 1 4/\/\ 7|-|3 90D-3/\/\P3r0r 0Ph 7|-|3 /\/\3$|-|!" [Beep!] Sorry, session with host godemperor.ceres.belt lost. Carrier lost.
Extropian
Helios_Five Helios_Five's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
It might be valuable to mass fork people with specialized skills instead of educating new members but then again nature likes diversity for a reason. It is more adaptable. Makes me think of the banana plant which is in severe danger due to essentially being clones due to being propagated via offshoots instead of seeds. This has made it immensely vulnerable to parasites , bacteria and viruses. I would reckon the same would apply to mass forking. A single individual is less vulnerable, not only becauce a large amount of forks present a nice target. With many individuals theres a larger population that might come into contact with something harmful and later spread it to others. Since they are all the same they are all equally vulnerable.
The checks and balances of democratic governments were invented because human beings themselves realized how unfit they were to govern themselves. They needed a system, yes, an industrial-age machine. -- Helios , Deus Ex
jsnead jsnead's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Arenamontanus wrote:
Of course, then there is the economy factor. At this point I always wave around #7 of my list of top 10 scary scientific papers, Robin Hanson's "If uploads come first": http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html
Interesting article, but also rather unconvincing. Specifically, I don't buy the argument about population growth - what I see is that worldwide population growth falls as children have less economic utility to their parents. I'm not convinced that humans have much (or perhaps any) non-cultural urge to reproduce. We clearly have biological drives for sex and for taking care of existing children. In any case, given that the discussed scenario involves copying causing economic harm to the copier (as well as to many people who do not copy), I don't see it happening in large amounts. Also, laws restricting copying seem almost inevitable (if nothing else, as wage protection), and if (as I suspect) only a minority are interested in making more than (at most) a few copies, such laws are likely to be robust, well-enforced, and supported by cultural values.
Quote:
My own answer in EP for why this has not happened yet is that it was just 10 years since the Fall. A lot of infrastructure and economy crashed, and transhumanity has only recently clawed itself back to a semblance of function. In fact, now nearly all individuals are able to do forking (since the non-uploaders and stackless largely died out in the Fall and upload technology became far more commonplace than just before the Fall out of necessity). The revolution is fast approaching. Of course, another answer which I think has merit is that forks actually do take processing space. EP somewhat wisely doesn't give exact numbers on the memory storage or processing power for computers except that it is 'enough' for all normal uses; however, for fork armies I think the answer is similarly 'not enough'. You need one of those big datacenters to run a million forks, and that is seriously going to 1) cost you to build, 2) make an obvious target for everybody who dislikes what you would like to do. Or you need to spread into lots of free computing spaces system-wide - but then you are vulnerable to people starting to treat you as spam or a virus.
*nods* At 10 years post-Fall, there are still significant limitations on the production of many goods, which is going to keep massive forking restricted to individuals with large amounts of available resources, and as long as X forks earn less than X * the original's income, massive forking simply isn't going to work, at least not after the bill comes due. The economic implications of massive forking will keep most people opposed to it, and so, what I see for at least the next few decades is that it will remain on the fringes of society - in criminal syndicates like the Pax Familiae, and in various ioslated and eccentric habs. Where things get interesting is when transhumity becomes somewhat wealthier and also when extrasolar colonization really takes off. While there are strong reasons for most people to not accept large-scale forking, some people will presumably be interested in doing so. To do so, they'll need to isolate themselves, to avoid negative social and economic consequences. Given a habitable (or at minimum resource rich) world + abundant energy and nanotech, and a civilization of one person forked millions of times is exceedingly possible. At this point, either both the more mainstream transhuman society (or far more likely societies) and the various fork civilizations might each expand out into the galaxy independently, or they might come into conflict. Such conflict could easily lead to one or more massive wars, which seem likely to become wars of extermination (for either side). Even if there isn't such a war, it remains to be seen which is more stable - a civilization of many separate individuals who each have very few long-term forks (short-term forking and merging is a very different matter) or a civilization entirely composed of forks of a single individual. I suspect that one will prove considerably superior to the other (my bet is on the separate individuals, since it will be by defnition considerably more adaptable).
jsnead jsnead's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Arenamontanus wrote:
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Alright, now you have a whole ton of people who feel some modicum of loyalty towards you, but have no bodies and a limited range of skills. Now what?
My standard example: you happen to be a lawyer. You can put one fork working on each case, if necessary forking more to do more in depth research, communication and writing. Gather statistics on what works best and optimize the workflow. You can also underbid most other law firms.
Which works fine until the forks make up a large enough fraction of lawyers (or whatever) to start significantly driving down profits. At this point, various forms of push-back are inevitable, which could range from boycotts and bad press all the way up to various forms of legal sanctions or even violent attacks. Also, it's likely that at least some of the forks will want to be earning more than the pittance they're getting, which encourages them to turn on their fellows (wealth being a motive that has been causing family members to turn on one another since wealth became a meaninful concept). I'd expect any efforts that were not strictly limited (either via isolation from the solar system economy or via limiting forking to a relatively small number of forks) to form a boom and bust cycle, where defection and economic push-back causes the fork-clade to collapse.
Quote:
Most early fork empires just crash and burn because people find out they cannot trust themselves or do not want to sacrifice one fork for the good of the rest... but eventually some people will come around with the right (perhaps very skew) mindset to do it well.
Unless the original places signficant cognitive limits on the forks, some are going to betray the rest - given time and divergence, I'd assume that even the most self-loyal ego is going to eventually find reasons to work agains the other forks.
thewoozle thewoozle's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
I was just thinking about the Agent Smith virus in Matrix and couldn't help thinking about the EP possibility of somebody developing the technology to fork the same person into a large number of already-inhabited bodies, replacing their egos with the 'virus'. Make for an interesting game plot.
-- Interdum in mane est onus nimis mordere per funis tergorum. some days it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps in the morning -Michael McGuire
jsnead jsnead's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
thewoozle wrote:
I was just thinking about the Agent Smith virus in Matrix and couldn't help thinking about the EP possibility of somebody developing the technology to fork the same person into a large number of already-inhabited bodies, replacing their egos with the 'virus'. Make for an interesting game plot.
Coolness. This could either be Exsurgent tech (which could likely manage this by touch or perhaps even at close range), or via some seriously criminal hacking & fraud. The second would be done when people resleeved - the hacked resleeving facility would bounce the incoming ego into some secure storage (for ransom, slavery, or whatever), and replaced the incoming ego with the fork. The people doing this would need to set it up in advance, but if they only took newcomers to a hab, they could keep this going for a while - it also very nicely solves the cost problem for massive forking - at least until word gets out and lots of people come to hunt down the forks.
thelabmonkey thelabmonkey's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
I had a whole adventure based on a rogue fork trying to kidnap, kill, and assume the identity of the PC. It led to all kinds of hijinx and a renewed respect for alpha forking in general.
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
Re: How do you prevent runaway forking?
Not quite so violent, but one PC regularly swaps places with her experienced forks in order to shake things up, pass tests, engage in surreptitious spouse swapping and so on. I also know the player well enough that I can successfully pull off the fork finishing the PC's sentences, copying her mannerisms and so forth. Great fun to be had.