Speculation regarding the return.

Joat42 wrote:I don't think it's possible to store more than one personality on 12 petabytes.

It depend of data compression.

Dilandu wrote:

Joat42 wrote:I don't think it's possible to store more than one personality on 12 petabytes.

It depend of data compression.

Doesn't matter what type of compression algorithm you use if the data is random or if it's already stored efficiently, the compression factor will be extremely low in those instances.

So the question is really how much redundant data is there in a personality download which can be tokenized and cross-references to other downloads to increase the compression factor?

Anyway, it's speculated that the brain has a memory capacity of about 2.5 petabytes if you only consider the neurons and their connections. The problem is that if you are going to dump that data and then download it to another brain it doesn't include the references where to store the data, ie. how to structure it so it makes sense. The brain has about 100 billion neurons which each has about 1000 interconnections to other neurons to help to distribute memories over several neurons (ie. one neuron keeps track of several memories in conjunction with other neurons). So if want to download and store a personality reliable you are going to need a lot of references and redundancies for the memories to make sense. For me that sounds like 12 petabytes is in the right ballpark anyway.

Joat42 wrote:We know from LAMA Ch. 1 that the key contains various executable files and one file that has a size of 12 petabytes which is IMO a personality download (Schuelers perhaps, although we have no textev how big a download should be). Since the key can only be used once it will most likely power up a PICA.

We also know from MTAT - April, Year of God 896 - Ch 21 (Merlins discussion in VR with Narhmahn) that personalities in VR tend to go catatonic or suicide after running for long periods. From the same chapter we also learn of the EMT variant of NEATs that Merlin used on Nahrmahn but also that there exists complete body regen tech which is used in the most severe cases of accidents where the nanos scavenges material from the brain to build improvised receptors for the NEAT to latch on to.

I'm not sure why you quoted me in this post. I haven't argued for against anything you are saying. All I said was that people shouldn't talk about the Key as if it were a firmly established fact that it awakens the Angels. It's not a fact; it is informed speculation, a hypothesis.

SWM wrote:

Joat42 wrote:We know from LAMA Ch. 1 that the key contains various executable files and one file that has a size of 12 petabytes which is IMO a personality download (Schuelers perhaps, although we have no textev how big a download should be). Since the key can only be used once it will most likely power up a PICA.

We also know from MTAT - April, Year of God 896 - Ch 21 (Merlins discussion in VR with Narhmahn) that personalities in VR tend to go catatonic or suicide after running for long periods. From the same chapter we also learn of the EMT variant of NEATs that Merlin used on Nahrmahn but also that there exists complete body regen tech which is used in the most severe cases of accidents where the nanos scavenges material from the brain to build improvised receptors for the NEAT to latch on to.

I'm not sure why you quoted me in this post. I haven't argued for against anything you are saying. All I said was that people shouldn't talk about the Key as if it were a firmly established fact that it awakens the Angels. It's not a fact; it is informed speculation, a hypothesis.

Happy triggerfinger perhaps? I was supposed to quote McGuinnes and I quoted your post instead, but my point was that the key hardly is a recall device for the Archangels - ie. I was agreeing with you.

I previously wrote:

I wonder if the key contains the personality extract from many people on Earth before they left.

Joat42 replied:

I don't think it's possible to store more than one personality on 12 petabytes.

I have no idea how many personalities could be stored in 12 petabytes. I am assuming a lot of compression. A petabyte is a million gigabytes, or a thousand terabytes. You could buy 12 petabytes now from NewEgg for very roughly 3000 x $200, or $600,000.

My first guess if you are right is that it contains Schuler's personality.

Ewww. Suppose it contains 3 personalities: Schuler, Langhorn, and Bedard.

I would think that somewhere in the original expedition would be a personality extract and DNA encoding for as many people as they would have the storage space to carry. Whether Langhorn and company destroyed it or not, or it was on Armageddon Reef, or it is still buried in Nimue's cave, or is somewhere else, is beyond my ken.

If (!) they had that, and could mass-produce clones with neural nets, then they could restore people from Earth. Hmmm. Suppose they had Shan-Wei's DNA and personality extract, and they "restored" her. Now that would set the CoGA off like nothing else. No, I'm not suggesting they do that even if they could, at least not under the present circumstances.

-- Bob G

BobG wrote:If (!) they had that, and could mass-produce clones with neural nets, then they could restore people from Earth. Hmmm. Suppose they had Shan-Wei's DNA and personality extract, and they "restored" her. Now that would set the CoGA off like nothing else. No, I'm not suggesting they do that even if they could, at least not under the present circumstances.

Well, it's a definitely interesting idea.

If (!) they had that, and could mass-produce clones with neural nets, then they could restore people from Earth.

Seems that no; if they really have the proposed ability to evacuate the significant part of human race, the Langhorne wouldn't even began to think about tampering with the mission plan; he was probably the megalomaniac, but even the megalomaniac wouldn't just throw away the possibility of resurrect billions of peoples and foul Gbaba once and for all.

I inclined to think, that there are a copy of Shueller personality on the key (remeber, this is just one big file), saved as the failsafe for the case of unpredicted emergency.

P.S. Just thougth about.

The existence of some sort of control chamber under the Temple, activated manually by the Key and Stone generally indicate that the Archangels haven't got a presence directly on Safehold. If they were presented directly under the Temple, they simply did not need something like Wylsynn-activated controls; they could monitor the situation by themselves, at least for a few days in century or few decades.

So, it seems logical to assume, that Archangels aren't presented on the planet themselves. If they place some sort of "powerfull weapon" under the manual control, then they clearly thought, that they may not be avaliable before the 1000 years passed.

P.P.S. But, there is another possible explanation - fractionalization of the Archangels; and different plans from different factions.

Everyone including Merlin is assuming that if there was anything intermittently active under the Temple, it would have realized that things were going wrong centuries ago. I question that, because it depends on how they're gathering information.

Merlin apparently sent SNARCs out and collected information, probably for months, before he acted. I presume Owl did a lot of the sorting for relevant information which is pretty impressive from so much data. And it got him a really good picture of the current world.

But what if the APs or PICAs or cryo-suspended angels or whatever under the Temple didn't do that? Say they left instructions for the Temple historians to write up a history every, pick some number of years. Say once every fifty years, they write up a few (or a lot) of pages indicating anything major that had happened since the last time, wars and maybe innovations and whatever else they thought relevant. Heck, maybe there are already periodic histories published. And the whatever wakes up, snitches the history, and stays up to date that way. On the surface, that's a much more efficient way of getting the information than what Merlin did.

But it would be subject to severe bias. Aside from the invention of gunpowder (probably called blasting powder or mining powder or something similar, since that's why it was invented) and later guns (which also go by a completely different name), what would be in the official histories that would indicate that things were going off the rails? Even if they're looking at histories written by the Inquisition or other specialized group, would the histories really reveal the internal Church corruption and the loss of faith it caused? I'm sure there would be at least some talk about increasing heresy and uppity islanders, but I doubt anything published by the Temple (which is the main official source on the planet, and I doubt any government would ever call itself corrupted) would indicate the real, serious problems.

To me, relying on some sort of official history seems like an easy, obvious solution for whatever is under the Temple to believe it's keeping up to date with how everything is going, and that would have done a lot to conceal the problems.

As I recall, gunpowder is a century and a half old, but does anyone know how old guns are? Those two things are the only worrisome pre-Merlin details I really think would have made it into such a history.

So it's possible that with those major exceptions (which might be recent enough the whatever won't know yet, especially if it's in cryo for 150 years at a time), there could actually be something or someone that thinks it's checking up on things and yet has no clue how screwed up it's all become.

bkwormlisa wrote:Everyone including Merlin is assuming that if there was anything intermittently active under the Temple, it would have realized that things were going wrong centuries ago. I question that, because it depends on how they're gathering information.

Merlin apparently sent SNARCs out and collected information, probably for months, before he acted. I presume Owl did a lot of the sorting for relevant information which is pretty impressive from so much data. And it got him a really good picture of the current world.

But what if the APs or PICAs or cryo-suspended angels or whatever under the Temple didn't do that? Say they left instructions for the Temple historians to write up a history every, pick some number of years. Say once every fifty years, they write up a few (or a lot) of pages indicating anything major that had happened since the last time, wars and maybe innovations and whatever else they thought relevant. Heck, maybe there are already periodic histories published. And the whatever wakes up, snitches the history, and stays up to date that way. On the surface, that's a much more efficient way of getting the information than what Merlin did.

But it would be subject to severe bias. Aside from the invention of gunpowder (probably called blasting powder or mining powder or something similar, since that's why it was invented) and later guns (which also go by a completely different name), what would be in the official histories that would indicate that things were going off the rails? Even if they're looking at histories written by the Inquisition or other specialized group, would the histories really reveal the internal Church corruption and the loss of faith it caused? I'm sure there would be at least some talk about increasing heresy and uppity islanders, but I doubt anything published by the Temple (which is the main official source on the planet, and I doubt any government would ever call itself corrupted) would indicate the real, serious problems.

To me, relying on some sort of official history seems like an easy, obvious solution for whatever is under the Temple to believe it's keeping up to date with how everything is going, and that would have done a lot to conceal the problems.

As I recall, gunpowder is a century and a half old, but does anyone know how old guns are? Those two things are the only worrisome pre-Merlin details I really think would have made it into such a history.

So it's possible that with those major exceptions (which might be recent enough the whatever won't know yet, especially if it's in cryo for 150 years at a time), there could actually be something or someone that thinks it's checking up on things and yet has no clue how screwed up it's all become.

It is very improbable that cryo is involved here. The longest that a personality had been sustained that way is, iirc, under 50 years and the theorectical span is about 150 years. The notion of rinse and repeat with cryo is completely speculation with no textev at all to support it.

The only thing we know from the text is the Schuler told the Wylsyn family that the archangels would return in 1000 years to see how God's plan is going. We are given no hint at all how that might be accomplished. In my own view, the most likely scenario is an AI set up to awaken on a timer.
But that, also is pure speculation without any textev.

Don

Perhaps the Archangels are personality(ies) stored in a computer and to be activated at the 1000 year mark. They would have control of the OS and a room where the images of them could be projected to interact with the faithful. We'll see.

Poker