Harry’s treatment of the different (agents?) in his head make me wonder about the MOR Horcrux mechanics and the possibility of making copies of a being. If the horcrux copying process is repetatively damaging, like analog copies of a wax cyinder recording, there would be a degradation in each stage, and the last horcrux, Harry would be the poorest copy. Or if each horcux was same-quality, there might have been only something like limitations on the first analog-digital conversion, and successive generations of copies might be exact, like digital-to-digital. The ability to copy consciousness is interesting. One can, a la Star Trek transporters, destroy the original to keep from having duplicates, you could let either the scanning process not destroy things, or you could make the construction process repeatable. High-fidelity digital reproduction make software and IP copies have constant marginal cost, and I wonder what that might mean for copies of consciousness.
If Voldemort can have a number of horcruxes, each of which can regenerate a new Voldy, why can’t he generate multiple selves from them? Would a being with the ability to copy itself do so, or not? A team of Voldemorts, or post-horcrux-Voldemorts would be more powerful and resilient than a single one. Or is Voldemort too selfish to work with himself?
Copying mind state differs from sexual or asexual reproduction. I was wondering how the MOR soul-splitting, copying, backup, imprinting, and possession mechanism works and how it might be exploited.
Could, for instance, Harry split his soul into its separate agents without the act of murder? Or is the important part of the Horcrux magic stealing someone’s soul to use as media to make a copy your own soul? How close are Harry’s suppositions in Ch20 to the MOR-reality?
Could, for instance, Harry split his soul into its separate agents without the act of murder? Or is the important part of the Horcrux magic stealing someone’s soul to use as media to make a copy your own soul? How close are Harry’s suppositions in Ch20 to the MOR-reality?
Evidence for a ‘soul’ and the need to eliminate another in order to do horcrux like magic gives some credence to theories that MoR is in a simulated world. You need to wipe out an existing virtual machine in order to put an extra instance of yours there, splitting your own may require dividing your ‘soul/computational resources’ between multiple instances, etc.
How do we know that one needs to eliminate another soul in order to do horcrux-like magic?
If copies require wiping out of existing virtual machines, population growth should be impossible. Since, at least in the muggle world, population growth happens, would this be evidence against a theory of a simulated world?
Also, if the Bacon Diary is a “very recent” Horcrux, wouldn’t that imply the cost to the original is not a strict division?
Perhaps I’m dense, but the obvious bits seem interesting. If resources are limited, each copy would end up sharing a smaller fraction of the same pool. If there is some fidelity loss in the copying, copies may have conflicting objectives. The risk of a duplicate becoming a rival seems non-trivial. If there a significant cost/damage to the original in the copying process, perhaps most would not.
MOR’s horcruxing process seems different than canon, and the differences between what is required by the author’s narrative, by what actually happens in biology, or by what would hypothetically happen in really-real reality given some future copying process seem non-obvious.
ETA: It seems like Toby’s comment uses “is” to prove “ought”, and extending that to cover future mind copying does the same.
Perhaps I’m dense, but the obvious bits seem interesting.
You’re not dense; they are interesting. It was Darwin’s great discovery! And you’re right to suggest that under certain conditions (such as limited resources and poor fidelity) they would not.
It seems like Toby’s comment uses “is” to prove “ought”
I certainly didn’t intend to say anything about ‘ought’. Maybe it’s bad that most beings with the ability to copy themselves do so; then how can we stop it? (Perhaps we should limit resources and interfere with the fidelity!)
My posts was fuzzily asking a couple things: one about what Voldemort in MOR would/should/did do, where I read your answer as that we should look to the natural world, and a more general one about beings in general, where it is obvious that they do indeed copy themselves.
In the biological world, resources are limited, and we’re in competition with fairly evenly matched competitors. AI-wise, I don’t see how we could effectively limit the resources or interfere with the fidelity for a sufficiently advanced AI.
Back to the particular example of horcruxes in MOR, It seems like the costs and perhaps fidelity are significantly different than canon (Bacon’s diary?), and I wonder if that will have interesting implications.
Chap 65:
Harry’s treatment of the different (agents?) in his head make me wonder about the MOR Horcrux mechanics and the possibility of making copies of a being. If the horcrux copying process is repetatively damaging, like analog copies of a wax cyinder recording, there would be a degradation in each stage, and the last horcrux, Harry would be the poorest copy. Or if each horcux was same-quality, there might have been only something like limitations on the first analog-digital conversion, and successive generations of copies might be exact, like digital-to-digital. The ability to copy consciousness is interesting. One can, a la Star Trek transporters, destroy the original to keep from having duplicates, you could let either the scanning process not destroy things, or you could make the construction process repeatable. High-fidelity digital reproduction make software and IP copies have constant marginal cost, and I wonder what that might mean for copies of consciousness.
If Voldemort can have a number of horcruxes, each of which can regenerate a new Voldy, why can’t he generate multiple selves from them? Would a being with the ability to copy itself do so, or not? A team of Voldemorts, or post-horcrux-Voldemorts would be more powerful and resilient than a single one. Or is Voldemort too selfish to work with himself?
Most of them do, for reasons that should be obvious.
Copying mind state differs from sexual or asexual reproduction. I was wondering how the MOR soul-splitting, copying, backup, imprinting, and possession mechanism works and how it might be exploited.
Could, for instance, Harry split his soul into its separate agents without the act of murder? Or is the important part of the Horcrux magic stealing someone’s soul to use as media to make a copy your own soul? How close are Harry’s suppositions in Ch20 to the MOR-reality?
Evidence for a ‘soul’ and the need to eliminate another in order to do horcrux like magic gives some credence to theories that MoR is in a simulated world. You need to wipe out an existing virtual machine in order to put an extra instance of yours there, splitting your own may require dividing your ‘soul/computational resources’ between multiple instances, etc.
How do we know that one needs to eliminate another soul in order to do horcrux-like magic?
If copies require wiping out of existing virtual machines, population growth should be impossible. Since, at least in the muggle world, population growth happens, would this be evidence against a theory of a simulated world?
Also, if the Bacon Diary is a “very recent” Horcrux, wouldn’t that imply the cost to the original is not a strict division?
I think that was a reference to canon—creating a horcrux requires murder (Confirmed in MoR by Dumbledore in chapter 28)
In which case change ‘do’ to ‘would’ in Toby’s comment, keeping reasoning the same.
Perhaps I’m dense, but the obvious bits seem interesting. If resources are limited, each copy would end up sharing a smaller fraction of the same pool. If there is some fidelity loss in the copying, copies may have conflicting objectives. The risk of a duplicate becoming a rival seems non-trivial. If there a significant cost/damage to the original in the copying process, perhaps most would not.
MOR’s horcruxing process seems different than canon, and the differences between what is required by the author’s narrative, by what actually happens in biology, or by what would hypothetically happen in really-real reality given some future copying process seem non-obvious.
ETA: It seems like Toby’s comment uses “is” to prove “ought”, and extending that to cover future mind copying does the same.
You’re not dense; they are interesting. It was Darwin’s great discovery! And you’re right to suggest that under certain conditions (such as limited resources and poor fidelity) they would not.
I certainly didn’t intend to say anything about ‘ought’. Maybe it’s bad that most beings with the ability to copy themselves do so; then how can we stop it? (Perhaps we should limit resources and interfere with the fidelity!)
My posts was fuzzily asking a couple things: one about what Voldemort in MOR would/should/did do, where I read your answer as that we should look to the natural world, and a more general one about beings in general, where it is obvious that they do indeed copy themselves.
In the biological world, resources are limited, and we’re in competition with fairly evenly matched competitors. AI-wise, I don’t see how we could effectively limit the resources or interfere with the fidelity for a sufficiently advanced AI.
Back to the particular example of horcruxes in MOR, It seems like the costs and perhaps fidelity are significantly different than canon (Bacon’s diary?), and I wonder if that will have interesting implications.
He does not.