Friday 9 November 2001

Pic of the day: Another screenshot from The Sims. Yes, those guys are meant to look eerily similar.

One is too few

Three days ago, I was dismayed to learn that there would be 3 more weeks until Civ3 is released in Norway. (Though it is launched on the 16th in the European Union, which conveniently includes two of our neighboring countries. It would not be hard to get hold of it before the 27th if I were desperate. In fact, now that I think about it, I suspect some shops may follow EU standards in this case.) Anyway, my point is that three days, ago, I considered hibernating until Civ3 came out. I'd still have to get up and go to work, but I'd sleep 9-10 hours each night instead of 5-6. Yeah, right.

I could have done it too. I don't suffer from insomnia yet. When I have nothing else to do, I can sleep quite a bit. But of course I have almost always something else to do, when I'm at home. Especially when there is a computer nearby.

As I went to sleep early this morning, I watched with fascination as Freeciv units wandered aimlessly around on a Freeciv map. Yes, I've played too much Freeciv. After a while - less than half an hour - I woke up suddenly shocked by something in a dream. This has happened more and more over the last year: I start to dream almost immediately after falling asleep, and sometimes I wake up. The first dream in the night is usually ugly, far worse than real life. During the night this changes. Anyway, when I tried to remember what had scared me in the dream, I could not say. It seemed to be about Freeciv. A barbarian raid or something. Not exactly your typical nightmare.

***

The comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic newsgroup has hundreds of posts about Civ3. I would like to read them all, and have valiantly tried to keep up, but this alone would have taken all my free time. I can't both do that and play Freeciv. Not to mention keep up with online journals, and news, and the rather cryptic Tao Te Ching. I have, in short, way too few bodies.

I'd like to have one body to go to work while a couple others stayed at home. One to play Freeciv on the new machine, one to read newsgroups and debate forums on the old, and one to read philosophy. For starters.

I've thought about this topic before, and more than once. Nor am I the first. According to Hindu tradition, great yogis could manifest a few extra bodies. There are examples in legend (or myth, we unbelievers would say) of up to 4 bodies. But I have read that there is a limit of 10, above which only God can manifest. I guess that makes sense. In fact, I guess having even 2 bodies would be confusing at first.

I have of course not just given this some thought, but written pieces of fiction about it. This was back when I wrote mostly in New Norwegian, so I'm not likely to post any of my half-finished stories here now. Basically there are two ways for multiple bodies to still be one person. Interestingly, these correspond to well known problems with computers.

The most demanding would be to be always online - for each body to share the same consciousness. You would at the same time see two very different pictures, listen to two sets of different sounds, feel two sets of arms and legs and not confuse which of them to move in what direction. At first sight, it seems an insurmountable problem. Anything less than the simplest activities would require you to render one body immobile while you concentrate on another. High-level tasks such as reading or writing would render you practically unaware of the other body unless something dramatic happened.

Then again, we already do some multitasking. Whereas few of us can read one topic while writing another, it is common to drive a car and talk at the same time, or bike while listening to music, or pray while playing Daggerfall. (OK, perhaps that's not common, but sometimes it feels very natural.)

Another solution is to have each body inherit the memories of the original from the moment of the split onward. They then set off with the same attitude, but go on to experience different things. Later they merge, and so do their memories. The combined person would be fully functional again after a short moment of disorientation, but would have a double set of memories from the time that the separation lasted. The great advantage over full connection is that you don't think of your memories all the time. You only draw on them as needed. For instance, if one of the two bodies had learned a new word, the combined body would know it. Only if they remembered contradictory details would there be a serious problem. The brain would probably need some more sleep than usual to integrate all the extra memories, unless one or both of the bodies lead a particularly boring life.

If the bodies were not allowed to merge, or at least exchange all their memories, they would soon develop different identities, just like identical twins do. The one that went to work would be particularly prone to lose its loyalty to the other(s). I suppose one such mind-merge each day would be enough. If the merge was complete, it would not matter whether it was the same body that went to work each day or whether they shared on it.

I can think of a third solution, somewhere in-between the first two. The bodies could be separate, which would avoid the classic "whose leg is broken?" problem. They would have a separate body awareness, but a common goal awareness, shared through a telepathic link. They would share their plans and purposes and long-term memories without sharing the sensory information. Or rather, they might share that information if needed or requested. Each body would know what the others were doing, but not reading their book. They would however in retrospect remember the book, or remember appointments made by the other, and so on. I think this would be the optimal way to run different bodies.

But for the foreseeable future, we have only one body each. At least we can read each other's journals, though.