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It's either this or another Greg Egan book that has simulated people reprogramming their own consciousness. Changing their thought processes, personal motivatio
by farnsworth 6y ago
It's either this or another Greg Egan book that has simulated people reprogramming their own consciousness. Changing their thought processes, personal motivations, and memories. I think he goes into some depth on how they can do that safely and what the implications are. One character programs himself to be obsessed with carpentry and spends lifetimes of subjective simulated time trying to craft the perfect table, but has a timer to turn off that motivation after some period of time. It's a fascinating idea that has stayed with me, and I think of it every time I see another depiction of a "brain in a computer". I'm disappointed that nobody else has tackled that idea, I think people are still getting used to the concept and it will be a few years before we see something like that in some more pop-culture sci-fi.
- andrewflnr 6y agoI believe that's Permutation City. I don't remember the exact details from the book but there's definitely some similar things in it.
- teekert 6y agoThat idea also comes back in Diaspora. That book contains some nice things, like mind-grafts, procreation/creation in a non-biological society etc. Loved that book. I also like Ted Chiangs books. I.e. the idea from story of your life (a language that treats time flow differently), also "Understand" [0] is nice: What happens we we actually increase our thinking capacity. I mean that is hard to comprehend without a nice story, for a puny brain like mine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understand_(story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understand_(story)
- andrewflnr 6y ago"Understand" is one of my favorite stories of all time.
- teekert 6y agoYeah, mine too! Stories are really the best way to imagine the unimaginable. Ted Chiang is a master in of this type of story (as is Greg Egan!).
- NoodleIncident 6y agoDiaspora includes a few examples of this as well. Mathematical discoveries can only be made in the "mines", and people install these mods to make them better at mining, after working through some of the beginner steps unaltered to see if they'd like it. There's also a mod that explicitly prevents you from ever uninstalling it; I don't remember what else it even did, it seemed to spread like a slow virus through the artistic communities in the simulation.
- whtrbt 6y agoWas it forgetting - memories fading?
- whtrbt 6y agoIf it's Permutation City, the character also becomes an entomologist and a skyscraper abseiler for similarly extended periods.
- farnsworth 6y agoAlso I shouldn't have said "nobody else has tackled that idea", I am sure it has come up somewhere else. I am just thinking of recent examples like Black Mirror or the new Upload show on Amazon, that IMO miss opportunities to fully explore the implications of simulated minds. Stuff like that would be very difficult to film though...
- garfieldnate 6y agoSounds like either Permutation City or Schild's Ladder. Greg tackles a lot of these mind-body ideas that are really intriguing.