Emancipated PICAs?

Aethor wrote:

ChaChaCharms wrote:Side note: Why didn't the TF just build thousands of PICAs with ultra-super human strength and speed, and launch them at the Gbaba... it'd be like creating Cybermen (and we all know how that turned out) but just image a few of those going off inside the Gbaba line of battle..

I believe that RFC explained earlier (not in these exact words) that the Gbaba had the advantage in the number of spaceships; building them, in sizes and quantities that would be enough to fight Gbaba, was the issue, not the number of available crews or ground troops.

Additionally, according to textev from the first couple books, Gbaba initially had technological advantage. By the end of the war, humans managed to get to the same tech level (since Gbaba did not improve) but by then, humans lost most of the planets/systems except Sol, so even at the same tech level, the Gbaba advantage in sheer numbers of ships was insurmountable.

It comes to the old truth from the HH universe... if the enemy has the high orbitals, what you have on the ground doesn't matter that much, since they can simply bomb you into submission (or extinction).

"And at some point, quantity assumes a quality of its own"

Since Merlin remembers a time when Nimue (the original) had met and conversed with "herself" in her PICA, it is safe to assume that once a PICA was in autonomous mode the "original" would be free to do other things while the PICA went out and vacationed.

Later, the PICA's memories of the vacation would be downloaded to the original person.

Randomiser wrote:I suggest a PICA in autonomous mode is a PICA like Nimue's designed to allow someone to have 'out of body experiences' for a limited time with a personality uploaded, instead of being operated through a neural link, say. None of those were ever operated like that for more than 10 days. It was illegal to do so. Possibly because of problems involved in reintegrating the personalities after more than that, but who knows. (RFC has actually been very quiet about how that all worked. Did the owner keep awake and active in her own body too so that she eventually had two sets of memories from that period, or was she sedated in her organic body?) Emancipated PICAs, on the other hand, were a rather different version of the device, designed to be an enduring 'body' for a personality previously recorded. Thus RFCs statements are both true because they refer to two different types of PICA.

Note: I believe that Merlin thought about a Federation law that forbid close contact (including sexual contact) between a PICA and the original.

DrakBibliophile wrote:Since Merlin remembers a time when Nimue (the original) had met and conversed with "herself" in her PICA, it is safe to assume that once a PICA was in autonomous mode the "original" would be free to do other things while the PICA went out and vacationed.

Later, the PICA's memories of the vacation would be downloaded to the original person.

Randomiser wrote:I suggest a PICA in autonomous mode is a PICA like Nimue's designed to allow someone to have 'out of body experiences' for a limited time with a personality uploaded, instead of being operated through a neural link, say. None of those were ever operated like that for more than 10 days. It was illegal to do so. Possibly because of problems involved in reintegrating the personalities after more than that, but who knows. (RFC has actually been very quiet about how that all worked. Did the owner keep awake and active in her own body too so that she eventually had two sets of memories from that period, or was she sedated in her organic body?) Emancipated PICAs, on the other hand, were a rather different version of the device, designed to be an enduring 'body' for a personality previously recorded. Thus RFCs statements are both true because they refer to two different types of PICA.

Aethor wrote:In a number of posts, such as in the Langhorne's big mistake thread, RFC said that in the original TF, there were some PICAs that were "emancipated", personalities legally on their own, without the ten-day limit. A small number of them, but there were some. Some in VRs, others in special PICAs hardwired to that personality.

Words of the author should be the final authority on that.

But in OAR, it's said "After all, no one had ever contemplated maintaining a PICA in autonomous mode indefinitely, which meant no one had any experience in doing that for more than ten days at a time."

This seems to me to be rather conclusive... as in, shows that there weren't any such PICAs. It says that no one even >>contemplated<< that.

So, how can both of these facts be true at the same time?

My impression was the 'standard model' PICA's that could have a human mind uploaded to it (and have its memories off-loaded into the human owner later) had never been run longer than ten days due to the 'ten day law' and associated programming.

The emancipated personality's got their own 'hardwired' model which they were permanently uploaded into as being a separate person under TF law they couldn't operate the 'parents' PICA anymore.

Ed130 The Vanguard wrote:

Aethor wrote:In a number of posts, such as in the Langhorne's big mistake thread, RFC said that in the original TF, there were some PICAs that were "emancipated", personalities legally on their own, without the ten-day limit. A small number of them, but there were some. Some in VRs, others in special PICAs hardwired to that personality.

Words of the author should be the final authority on that.

But in OAR, it's said "After all, no one had ever contemplated maintaining a PICA in autonomous mode indefinitely, which meant no one had any experience in doing that for more than ten days at a time."

This seems to me to be rather conclusive... as in, shows that there weren't any such PICAs. It says that no one even >>contemplated<< that.

So, how can both of these facts be true at the same time?

My impression was the 'standard model' PICA's that could have a human mind uploaded to it (and have its memories off-loaded into the human owner later) had never been run longer than ten days due to the 'ten day law' and associated programming.

The emancipated personality's got their own 'hardwired' model which they were permanently uploaded into as being a separate person under TF law they couldn't operate the 'parents' PICA anymore.

IIRC, there really was no standard model PICA, or if there was, it was more the commercial models used for hostile environments such as doing tasks in deep space that would have placed a biological human under serious risk. There were also those who served the physically handicapped who who were unable to get around and do things for themselves.

Nimue's PICA, on the other hand, was designed as a very expensive toy and was given to her by her outlandishly wealthy father who could afford the most updated and top of the line PICA money could buy and give it to his daughter as a gift. It could mimic almost anything a human could do and then transfer the experience back to the biological original. Nimue was interested in extreme sports, for example. Her PICA could go out and experience it for her and then transfer the memory back to Nimue and it became her memory.

Emancipation occured when the owner of the PICA renounced any rights or control over it and the PICA became legally a person in its own right. Such emancipated PICAs assumed responsibility for themselves and were no longer beholden to the original owner. One of the consequences of this was that the PICA no longer was subject to the 10 day limit.

I would suspect that PICAs like Nimue's were very rare, if for no other reason than most people couldn't afford one. The corrolary to that would be that emancipated PICAs would be even more rare sunce they would only be a smaller percentage of the total group.

For those of you who might have come to the forums more recently, I hope this thumbnail sketch helps. Old hands like SWM, Drak, PeterZ, and Lyonheart might be able to correct and fill this out a bit more. But I think I've got the essence of the thing...

Don

DrakBibliophile wrote:Note: I believe that Merlin thought about a Federation law that forbid close contact (including sexual contact) between a PICA and the original ....... Since Merlin remembers a time when Nimue (the original) had met and conversed with "herself" in her PICA, it is safe to assume that once a PICA was in autonomous mode the "original" would be free to do other things while the PICA went out and vacationed.

Later, the PICA's memories of the vacation would be downloaded to the original person.

Where in the textev does it talk about this I must have missed it

From Like A Mighty Army

It was Merlin’s turn to chuckle, although there was undeniably something … weird about this conversation. Custom and regulation alike had discouraged PICA owners from having discussions between their molycirc selves and their flesh-and-blood selves. Personalities could get into nasty narcissistic feedback loops that way … especially personalities already pushed to the brink by the despair of the long, losing battle against the Gbaba.

Like most PICA users, Nimue Alban had skated the edge of that ban once or twice, just to see what it felt like, but odd as that had seemed, it hadn’t been like this. Nimue Alban’s biological and electronic selves had been effectively identical when they sat down face-to-face, but there were enormous differences between Merlin and the woman he’d decided deserved the name Nimue far more than he did after so long as Merlin Athrawes.


End Quote

ChaChaCharms wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:Note: I believe that Merlin thought about a Federation law that forbid close contact (including sexual contact) between a PICA and the original ....... Since Merlin remembers a time when Nimue (the original) had met and conversed with "herself" in her PICA, it is safe to assume that once a PICA was in autonomous mode the "original" would be free to do other things while the PICA went out and vacationed.

Later, the PICA's memories of the vacation would be downloaded to the original person.

Where in the textev does it talk about this I must have missed it