Banyan Lifestyle
Tue, 2010-08-31 14:35
root@Banyan Lifestyle
How does a writer approach a character who is larger in every way than the writer can possibly comprehend? I've been humbled by trying to write the Banyan Manifesto and develop the Entelechy Network. Getting inside the head of a psychosurgeon multiplicity thousands strong is more than I can manage alone.
Any suggestions on writing a banyan character who is spread across the outer system and managed from that notorious barge of scum and villainy known as the Carnival of the Goat? I imagine the Entelechy Network to be a criminal with a penchant for uncanny valley art. They see themself as a transhuman Prometheus, stealing the pyros of multiplicity from the gods and gifting transhumanity with it.
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Tue, 2010-08-31 16:15
#2
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
Right now the best cognition enhancer I know of is using multiple brains. I actually have a few "villain consultants", friends outside my gaming group who doesn't even know its members who I explain the situation to and suggest suitably ruthless and smart things for the villains to do. This both frees me of my wimpiness towards hitting the PCs hard (a villain will not hesitate) and provides alternative points of view that gets around my mental biases. For a supersmart, multiple mind I would try having several people suggest plans and ideas, and then select the best. Possibly iteratively, having others improve on previous ideas.
So to think about the Entelechy Network, let's consider its ideas from a number of perspectives. One is economical: the revolution ought to pay for itself. If copyrations and other forms of multiplicity-enhanced business become more competitive than singular mind businesses, then they will win. Similarly one can consider criminality as a (black market, unregulated) business. Pax Familiae is so stuck in the mud and just thinking in terms of old-fashioned crime; maybe Nine Lives could be enticed to help the banyan project?
Another is philosophical/memetic: if the view that singular individuality is the natural, best way of existing is undermined, people will turn towards the light. So undermine the concept of an indivisible self, the concept of the need for an unique copy, and the fear of becoming many. This can be done through art, computer games, subliminals, philosophical articles, political essays, bootleg XPs and memetic sabotage of the forces of unity. Make it cool to be many. If the PC bans having extra alpha forks, get rebellious youths to embrace it as a protest.
A third perspective is technological: Can forking be made easier? Can merging be made easier, so that there is less risk of going nuts from multiple merges? Can one construct institutions, companies and servers that allow people to sneak off forks efficiently, making banyan or Entelechy easier? Can one infiltrate egobanks to make them fork off multiple forks of people, showing them the light?
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Tue, 2010-08-31 20:05
#3
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
What ethical rules still apply to a banyan? If one member of the banyan was curious as to the effects of psychotorture, and fork themselves off to have a copy to torture, is this as bad as doing it to another transhuman? Does the answer change if the two forks drew straws to see which one got to be tortured to madness?
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Tue, 2010-08-31 21:41
#4
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
If a banyan wanted to share itself with singletons, and they were clever with psychosurgery, they might be a petal dealer. A simple petal to get people used to the idea of being a group would be the "Malkovich" petal. The Malkovich would wait until the tripper was communicating with someone else, and when the two started to synch in their conversation (I'm thinking of the point in a conversation where the intuitive leaps of the speakers keep heading to the same places at about the same speed), their companion's face would begin to warp to reflect their own. So the more in-tune the tripper is with the speaker the more they would look like a mirror reflection. If it tasps the tripper at the same time, things will probably start to get awkward.
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Wed, 2010-09-01 01:55
#5
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
What ethical rules still apply to a banyan? If one member of the banyan was curious as to the effects of psychotorture, and fork themselves off to have a copy to torture, is this as bad as doing it to another transhuman? Does the answer change if the two forks drew straws to see which one got to be tortured to madness?
Ah, this is a job for a practical ethicist! 
We can tackle this from virtue ethics, consequentialism or deontology.
A virtue ethicist would consider whether this kind of activity makes the banyan a better, more virtuous (meta)being. Torturing people for no (or a weak) reason would just make it cruel, which is not virtuous. But done in the right way this might actually teach it both endurance and severity, enriching it.
Consequentialism would ask "what leads to the best outcome?" If the torture is done there will be a suffering mind as well as some insights, if it is not done there will just be a bit of lingering curiosity. The consequentialist would try to estimate whether the suffering outweighs the insights. Most ethicists would likely tend to think it does that, but if the torture is not so severe that it would be better for the suffering mind not to have existed, then it would actually be a good thing to do it.
Deontology gives different answers depending on what model you use. Classical Kantian deontology would consider whether it would be a good and consistent thing if the act of investigational torture was made a general rule, and would likely conclude that it is wrong because it treats a rational being as a means to an end. Modern medical ethics would try to balance autonomy (the right of beings to determine what they do, even if this includes forking with the knowledge that one fork will suffer) and beneficence (you are supposed to do things that benefit the patient - but here the patient would possibly be the entire banyan).
As you can see, there are plenty of different ways of arguing this. And a banyan could quite likely entertain several different moral views at the same time. Nick Bostrom has an intriguing idea for how we individuals could handle our moral uncertainties: try to emulate a parliament in your head with party sizes corresponding to how much you believe in different moral theories. A banyan could actually do this for real.
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Wed, 2010-09-01 23:01
#6
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
I am seeing the Entelechy Network's Parliament in action:
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"By the immortal words of Immanuel Kant, I declaire your opinion both NULL and VOID! Good day sir and/or madam!"
"Whaaat? You dare throw the poisoned self-righteousness of Mr. "I-Kant-tell-a-lie?" in my face? In my face? Oh, my good sir, it's on now. In fact, it is now so on, that it can't get any more on-ner. Hrm. PUNCH-CHESS!"
"Punch-Chess it is, then. Tomorrow at dawn. Name your second."
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Thu, 2010-09-02 16:42
#7
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
We can tackle this from virtue ethics, consequentialism or deontology.
A virtue ethicist would consider whether this kind of activity makes the banyan a better, more virtuous (meta)being. Torturing people for no (or a weak) reason would just make it cruel, which is not virtuous. But done in the right way this might actually teach it both endurance and severity, enriching it.
Consequentialism would ask "what leads to the best outcome?" If the torture is done there will be a suffering mind as well as some insights, if it is not done there will just be a bit of lingering curiosity. The consequentialist would try to estimate whether the suffering outweighs the insights. Most ethicists would likely tend to think it does that, but if the torture is not so severe that it would be better for the suffering mind not to have existed, then it would actually be a good thing to do it.
Deontology gives different answers depending on what model you use. Classical Kantian deontology would consider whether it would be a good and consistent thing if the act of investigational torture was made a general rule, and would likely conclude that it is wrong because it treats a rational being as a means to an end. Modern medical ethics would try to balance autonomy (the right of beings to determine what they do, even if this includes forking with the knowledge that one fork will suffer) and beneficence (you are supposed to do things that benefit the patient - but here the patient would possibly be the entire banyan).
If value ethics is concerned with the character of the moral actor, how does that apply to a banyan? Would each individual actor be responsible for maintaining their good character, or would it average out over the actions of everyone that identified as that individual?
Consequentialism works best when the actor can see through time, since there is no way to be certain about the consequences of any action. "Best" is a fuzzy word here, as it is unclear how to judge utility for a group of the same individual, and it seems that consequentialism would very quickly allow for an "ends justify the means" mentality. That might not be a bad thing, but it is something to keep in mind.
Deontology argues that causing suffering cannot be extended into a general moral imperative, so it must be wrong. While that may be the case, I would like to see Immanuel Kant in a Punch-Chess match against Adam Smith. We could then ask if the act of punching Immanuel Kant in the face is extended to a moral imperative, is society better off? I think that the answer would have to be yes.
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Fri, 2010-09-03 01:27
#8
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
Consequentialism works best when the actor can see through time, since there is no way to be certain about the consequences of any action. "Best" is a fuzzy word here, as it is unclear how to judge utility for a group of the same individual, and it seems that consequentialism would very quickly allow for an "ends justify the means" mentality. That might not be a bad thing, but it is something to keep in mind.
Considering you are already using a kind of democratic process when dealing with the Banyan mindset I would go with a majority win this these kinds of situations. It's either that or the Banyan gets caught in a loop of "grey area" socio/moral/ethical relativism and basically sits there having fights with himself all day long. 
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Fri, 2010-09-03 03:14
#9
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
If value ethics is concerned with the character of the moral actor, how does that apply to a banyan? Would each individual actor be responsible for maintaining their good character, or would it average out over the actions of everyone that identified as that individual?
Virtue ethics is all about "what kind of person do I want to be?" In the case of Banyan this might be extended to a kind of collective virtue: "what kind of metaperson do I/we want to be?" It is not too different from people doing things because they think their community will benefit from being a particular way. So a democratically minded ego might actually have local or global votes about what it/they should do. A more anarchic individual might allow each individual ego to whatever it thinks is best, and would likely think it would be bad to try to force everybody to agree - "Oh, we know we are metaforking into several different banyans. It would be just wrong for us to try to prevent that. Any local banyan that thinks it needs to exert force on itself to be good will definitely be forked away from us."
Consequentialism works best when the actor can see through time, since there is no way to be certain about the consequences of any action. "Best" is a fuzzy word here, as it is unclear how to judge utility for a group of the same individual, and it seems that consequentialism would very quickly allow for an "ends justify the means" mentality. That might not be a bad thing, but it is something to keep in mind.
These are standard "problems" or arguments against it. A consequentialist singularity seeker would argue that if we can become smarter we will be able to foresee consequences better, so hence we have a moral imperative to become smarter.
Deontology argues that causing suffering cannot be extended into a general moral imperative, so it must be wrong. While that may be the case, I would like to see Immanuel Kant in a Punch-Chess match against Adam Smith. We could then ask if the act of punching Immanuel Kant in the face is extended to a moral imperative, is society better off? I think that the answer would have to be yes.
Adam Smith did have a more psychological view of morality, being a reality-oriented guy (by academic standards, at least) than Kant, who viewed it as a purely logical issue. However, Kant would not go so far as to say that suffering is bad in itself. He would likely argue that most acts that deliberately cause suffering are bad, but there might be some you have a moral obligation to do (like punishing a criminal).
I think many banyans would have a stronger sense of internal altruism than normal people, since the forks are "genetically" very close to each other. Sacrificing oneself for the banyan might be rather acceptable since near-versions of oneself still go on and benefit.
We had a fine discussion about this in the game this week, where the swarmbot AGI thought nothing about spinning of an alpha fork to be used in a roach motel protocol while the human (who had recently done a fork split between his "official self" and his "anarchist explorer self") balked at the idea of making a copy intending it to be erased. By the way, they met someone called the Entelechy Network at a party on Extropia. Creepy guy, but very good at arguing for the benefits of massive forking.
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Fri, 2010-09-03 14:49
#10
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
By the way, they met someone called the Entelechy Network at a party on Extropia. Creepy guy, but very good at arguing for the benefits of massive forking.
While I process the rest of your and Rhyx's responses, what made the Entelechy Network creepy? Or more specifically, was there anything in particular that made them creepy, or were people just bugged out about someone who would live like that?
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Tue, 2010-09-07 16:03
#11
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
I think many banyans would have a stronger sense of internal altruism than normal people, since the forks are "genetically" very close to each other. Sacrificing oneself for the banyan might be rather acceptable since near-versions of oneself still go on and benefit.
That's fine in an idealistic model assuming normal human psychological model. But what about sociopaths and psychopaths, people with masochism and sadomasochism features.
Their networks and forks would probably prove very...interesting.
Also-such people probably would desire to create such networks due to obsession with power and control. __________________
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Fri, 2010-09-03 18:52
#12
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
While I process the rest of your and Rhyx's responses, what made the Entelechy Network creepy? Or more specifically, was there anything in particular that made them creepy, or were people just bugged out about someone who would live like that?
The characters are pretty OK with banyans - after all, they are good friends with Terry Ramirez, and were actually forks of the "main" characters of the campaign going off on a separate mission.
The thing that creeped out at least the inner system sociologist was that the Network was promoting a radical economic shift that would destabilize transhumanity enormously. Lots of debate followed, where he accused the Network of just naively following Hansonian economics and ignoring the more recent findings in macroeconomics, and the Network calmly argued that this was the best possible strategy.
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Tue, 2010-09-07 11:47
#13
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
I think many banyans would have a stronger sense of internal altruism than normal people, since the forks are "genetically" very close to each other. Sacrificing oneself for the banyan might be rather acceptable since near-versions of oneself still go on and benefit.
That's fine in an idealistic model assuming normal human psychological model. But what about sociopaths and psychopaths, people with masochism and sadomasochism features.
There networks and forks would probably prove very...interesting.
Also-such people probably would desire to create such networks due to obsession with power and control.I've been thinking about this, and it goes some places that are very...interesting. As far as mental disorders go, there is the question of which disorders are based in the ego, and which ones are based in the neurology of any morphs the fork might be in. There is a list of disorders in the main book, but many of them have a primary, or at least very strong, neurological component. I think they were intended to be ego-based, but lets just say that abnormal psychology is not something that I've ever seen done correctly in any movie or book, ever. So I'm just going to think of the psychology here in very broad terms.
Someone with a great deal of self-loathing would not be a good candidate for being a banyan. If they hate themselves, they are not likely to play nice with other copies of themselves, so they gain nothing from a banyan but the ability to mope around in groups. I can see there being a tendency for the future equivalent of emo kids to play at being a banyan for awhile so they can sing old songs about how misery loves company.
Someone with a tendency to score very high on the Ultimatum Game is likely to try and best their other forks, which would lead to divergent behaviors and instability of the banyan, so they are a crappy candidate as well. Someone who scores very high on the Ultimatum Game that can work nicely with itself would be a powerhouse in the hypercorp world, and probably couldn't survive in a reputation economy. Since the laws surrounding alpha forks in hypercorp territory don't allow for banyans, they are not likely to exist.
Sociopaths and psychopaths both fall under antisocial personality disorders, with the primary difference between them being that psychopaths appear outwardly normal. People with antisocial personality disorders might actually benefit from being a banyan, as they would then have entities external to themselves that they could empathize with to at least a small degree. With some psychotherapy, they might even be able to develop on that empathy and generalize it to the rest of transhumanity.
Sadists and masochists had better be sadomasochists or masochists, because a banyan of sadists would be cleansed with fire in short order if they couldn't keep a lid on it. On the other hand, a banyan of sadists hanging out with a banyan of masochists turns into a leather and chains in space party pretty quickly, and all of the respective banyans more normal friends will worry that the relationship is unhealthy. I can see there being clubs where people make a banyan temporarily, but they are just dilettantes.
There are likely a large number of personality flaws that a banyan can handle, and likely most of them can be moderated by having a parliament of selves around to tell individual members to take their bloody meds. Even though flaws can be handled, there are other personality types that would thrive as a banyan without reservation. Narcissistic people would do quite well, but would likely be insular. Egalitarian or socialist transhumans would handle the group structure fairly well and would thrive. People that are comfortable and happy with themselves would do well, and would likely have the walls of their hab filled with construction paper art because Dr Phil in Space told them that art was good for development.
Good point, thanks for bringing it up.
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Wed, 2010-09-08 23:25
#14
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
they met someone called the Entelechy Network at a party on Extropia. Creepy guy, but very good at arguing for the benefits of massive forking.
Their muses didn't start to sound like him after a few days, by any chance? It seems likely there might have been a slow muse-hacking attempt due to a nanite infection over the next week or so. I'm sure he didn't mean to dust them with the nanites like that, but habits are just so hard to break!
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Wed, 2010-09-08 23:32
#15
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
The ego-stealing thread got me thinking about how tasty of a target a banyan would be for an ego collector. The Nine Lives criminal group is big into that, and they would definitely hang out on the Carnival of the Goat, especially when it was docked at a habitat. A fork from a banyan would likely be more resistant to damage from psychosurgery, have interesting skills and experiences, and be easy to miss among the whole group of egos, particularly if that banyan had a propensity for members to delete themselves when they were having a crappy day. The other good thing about stealing from banyans is that you don't deplete them, so they can be treated as a sort of fruiting body, with "updates" that can be sold to customers who are particularly fond of that ego.
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Thu, 2010-09-09 05:06
#16
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
Their muses didn't start to sound like him after a few days, by any chance? It seems likely there might have been a slow muse-hacking attempt due to a nanite infection over the next week or so. I'm sure he didn't mean to dust them with the nanites like that, but habits are just so hard to break!
Actually, there *was* nanite hacking that evening... but Entelechy wasn't involved. Maybe. See http://www.eclipsephase.com/villains#comment-10147
The "teenage" AGI generally misbehaved on Club Apurvata, doing dirty utility fog dancing and swiping a drink from a synthmorph gentleman. Which of course contained some of his nanites. And when she tried to show her l33t hax0r skills against him she found herself outclassed a few orders of magnitude. Especially since she totally failed at the social hacking and spilled the beans about everything important during dinner and ended up "in bed" with the gentleman ("Oh, what a big mainframe you got...")
I'm pretty certain Entelechy and Neophyte know each other. Maybe they were acting wingbeings for each other's plots that evening.
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Thu, 2010-09-09 11:46
#17
Re: Banyan Lifestyle
root@Banyan Lifestyle
I'm pretty certain Entelechy and Neophyte know each other. Maybe they were acting wingbeings for each other's plots that evening.
I imagine they would at the very least play Go, and maybe have some tea as well. There just aren't very many beings around that can keep up in conversation with either of them, so they likely value each others company.
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Figure out his history
Figure out his current interests and activities
Figure out how he deals with all of this stuff getting crammed in his head at once (how much is conscious, current memory, how much is 'long-term' memory, how much is personalty-changing, how much is lost altogether)
Figure out how this character will change through the future
Amumumamudune gave you a start, but didn't set many limitations or requirements on it, so I'd say run with it. I can only tell you what I've done with that same character, but it's probably not as exciting as what you'll come up with.