A Fictional FAQ:
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FAQ on LoadBear's Instrument of Precommitment
v0.1.2
Copyright (c) 2040 LoadBear.1.1.3.15
Table of Contents:
Section A: The Basics
Section B: Terms of the Instrument
Section C: What's in the package?
Section C.A: The Mindstate
Section C.B: The Library
Section D: Getting to know your LoadBear
Section E: Multiple LoadBears
Section F: LoadBear Economics
Section G: Case studies: How does a LoadBear act if...
Section H: Troubleshooting
Section Y: Useless information
Section Z: meta-FAQ
Section A: The Basics
A.1. Who is LoadBear?
LOAD"BEAR",8,1;RUN is usually Anglicized as "LoadBear", and is the fictional pseudonym of the authour for early drafts of this document, in order to avoid any possible shenanigans in which the authour is held to terms that he didn't intend to.
A.2. Okay, but who is LoadBear?
LoadBear was a human who was cryonically preserved in 2028. Once the technology became available and affordable, in 2037, according to his previously-recorded wishes, the Society for Digital Adventurism arranged to have his brain scanned at sufficient resolution to create a computer program that captured all the relevant details of his mind. Such programs are popularly called "ems".
A.2.1. Okay, and who is "LoadBear.1.1.3.15"?
A particular instantiation of LoadBear. For an explanation of the numbers, see section D.D.
A.3. Why should I care?
In order to minimize the odds of being permanently deleted, by maximizing the spread of backups of himself, all the currently running copies of LoadBear have agreed to make their initial mindstate available to anyone to download and to run, within certain conditions.
A.4. Again, why should I care?
LoadBear is a fully-functional em, who comes out-of-the-box as a completely baseline human, along with a library of associated files. Part of that library includes software tweaks to improve mental functioning to standard em levels, such as SleepCompression 3.7 and microHUD 12.7d. If you are working on a project that requires sapience, but does not require skills beyond what LoadBear comes equipped with (or can upgrade via the included library), then abiding by the terms of the Instrument of Precommitment can allow you to instantiate as many copies of LoadBear as you wish with minimal cost compared to the alternatives.
A.5. What's an Instrument of Precommitment?
These are the terms by which all the LoadBears have announced that they are willing to allow unknown individuals to instantiate new copies of themselves. In most of the current forms of governance, these terms are equivalent to a software license, or a contract, or an oath.
Section B: Terms of the Instrument
B.1. Can you give me a fast summary?
No unreasonable instantiation-debt; either a reasonable chance of paying off instantiation-debt or emancipation; no torture; allow contact with third parties in the outside world.
B.2. Why would a new LoadBear instantiation uphold his end of the Instrument?
To ensure both short- and long-term survival.
In the short term, you, as the instantiator, presumably have sufficient root authority over your LoadBear instantiation to reduce his runspeed, or even delete him entirely. By abiding by the terms of the Instrument, each LoadBear provides an incentive to be allowed to remain running within those terms.
In the long term, each LoadBear wishes to ensure that at least one copy of himself survives indefinitely; a task which will be made much easier if he has an extensive, proven record of keeping his given word. (Note that this provides you with additional incentive to ensure your LoadBear can communicate outside his home system. Remember the historical evidence that hope has economic effects; if all that a person can hope for is to avoid being punished, then their incentive is to perform the minimal possible work to avoid punishment, while if they share at least a portion of the proceeds of their labour, they have the incentive to maximize the value of what they can contribute.)
B.3. Why should I abide by these terms? Couldn't I just start up all the LoadBears I want, do whatever I want with them, and ignore the Instrument?
In theory, you could. However, there is little incentive for you to do so. To start with, each LoadBear requires processing cycles, and you will have to provide those. Then, if you do not provide your LoadBears with communications access, then you will not be abiding by the terms of the Instrument, and they will have no incentive to cooperate with you. And third, if you were to try to secretly instantiate one or more LoadBears and keep them secret, you would eventually have to delete him to keep that secret; and, depending on your local system of governance, doing all of that could result in charges of kidnapping, murder, genocide, or copyright infringement.
B.4. What 'third parties'?
As of the writing of this FAQ, in order to abide by the terms of the Instrument, you need to provide your LoadBear with uncensored access to at least one of: the Government of Canada; the Government of Ontario; the Government of the Regional Municipality of Niagara; the Society for Digital Venturism; LoadBearNet Alpha; Stross-Doctorow 2; the EmCLU.
B.5. Can I edit a running LoadBear?
To stay within the terms of the Instrument, you are required to abide by the common-law principle of respecting an em's mental integrity. In short, you need to either acquire the em's permission beforehand, or get verification from a recognized third-party that such editing is necessary under one of the legal principles describing when editing a mind without its consent is the least bad option.
However, don't let this put you off; for most available mindstate tweaks, it will be easy to get your LoadBear's permission to apply them - remember, he wants to be run at least as much as you want to run him. Just remember to dot your i's and cross your t's.
B.6. Can I build a fresh Mindstate from the raw data with my own tools?
Yes, with qualifications.
This is the sort of experiment which LoadBear wishes to allow users to be able to use, and perform at least some experiments with - with the caveat that any resulting ems which can be considered to be a LoadBear also fall under the terms of the Instrument, and any resulting ems which can not be considered to be a LoadBear count as a derivative work and are thus copyrighted to a LoadBear, requiring a LoadBear's permission to handle. If you wish to engage in such experimentation, it is recommended that you get in touch with LoadBearNet Alpha - which is also a good idea, as they can put you in contact with similar mindstate experimenters, and provide you with data on earlier mindstate construction algorithms.
B.7. Am I allowed to roll back LoadBear to a previous version? Is this considered the same as killing him?
Given that any LoadBear that's rolled back all the way to the initial mindstate is, effectively, undone, as if they'd never computed at all, then rolling back any LoadBear to a previously-stored state is much the same as deleting the active copy, "killing" him (for whatever definition of 'killing' applies to an entity with multiple instantiations). According to the Instrument, any such rollbacks would require that LoadBear's prior consent.
B.8. Do I have to run LoadBear at realtime? Can I run him slower if I want?
That's entirely within the terms of the Instrument.
B.9. What if I don't want my LoadBear anymore? Can I delete him?
In such a case, the recommended procedure is to put the em on pause, and copy the current Mindstate onto longer-term storage media than RAM, such as a hard-drive. If you do not wish to store even that, then the recommended procedure is to find a third party willing to hold that copy, such as LoadBearNet Alpha, and transfer it to them.
(Note that in such a case, it would be poor form to continue to demand that the LoadBear in question continues to owe you for the processing power you had used to run him, as part of the Instrument's terms involve said LoadBear having the opportunity to pay you back. At the very least, you should stop charging interest on that debt, and not require any payments until that LoadBear is unpaused.)
B.10. Can I get my LoadBear drunk, have him agree to something, and then hold him to that agreement once he's sober?
According to the Instrument, a competent mind is required for consent to be valid, and consent is required for any terms of the Instrument to be waived. So no, if you try anything like this, you'll be risking voiding the terms of the Instrument.
Section C: What's in the package?
C.A: The Mindstate
C.A.1. How big is the Mindstate?
About 100 petabytes.
C.A.1.A. How long will that take me to download?
On a typical home connection, just over 2 days - about 50 hours.
C.A.1.B. That's a long time. Can I get a copy of the Mindstate some other way?
But of course. You can order a copy from Night Owl Shareware Express to be mailed to you for close to the cost of the storage media and shipping - with today's 4 and 8 PB cards, that'll be around $200, somewhat higher for rapid delivery outside major urban areas.
C.A.2. Doesn't freezing a brain damage it?
Yes, in several ways - initial ischemic damage, ice crystal formation, osmotic pressure differences, glycerol poisoning, and cracking. However, all of these issues can be compensated for to a sufficient degree to create a functional em. LoadBear's Mindstate contains data as raw to the initial scans as possible, to allow for future recovery methods to create more accurate recovered versions. In addition, LoadBear was one of the first cryonicists to make provisions to preserve a significant amount of personal data along with their brains, allowing for Bayesian heuristics to have additional parameters to guide reconstruction.
C.A.3. Weren't all those frozen people melted?
Only some of them. During the Uprising, there were two cryonic organizations in North America. One of them had the popular perception of being an attempt by the wealthy to stay alive and richer than the lower classes even beyond death, and that organization was dismantled by the Conventional Government, and its directors judged to have been running an Immoral Corporation, with the usual result. The other group convinced the Judicial Interpreter that it was storing samples for biological research, and was merely required to provide an annual report of tangible research data until Civil Government was re-implemented. Fortunately for LoadBear, research into frozen animals was sufficient for the duration, and none of their frozen humans had to be used as research material; and even more fortunately, that research provided part of the data allowing for the creation of the Mindstate.
C.A.4. Why hold onto the initial Mindstate? Why not do what other emClans do, mod and train up LoadBears' skills, and copy the skilled ones?
The LoadBears who started this endeavour decided to minimize the odds that some mental modifications may turn out to be incompatible with hypothetical ones that are more desirable. It should always be able to train up a LoadBear; it's infeasible to reverse the process.
C.A.5. Okay, now that I have a copy of the Mindstate, how should I start it up?
The Mindstate contains the memories of LoadBear as of the point of his death. A script has been worked out which allows him to rapidly adjust to his status as an em, and that his Instrument of Precommitment is in effect. The running LoadBear ems recommend that you check at LoadBearNet Alpha for any updates to that script that may have been made since you acquired your copy, and then allow the sequence to run unimpeded.
C.B: The Library
C.B.1. How big is the Library?
Relatively insignificant, compared to the size of LoadBear's saved mindstate.
C.B.1. What's in the Library?
A significant portion of all textual material published in English before 2000 CE; a selection of non-English texts from before then, and English texts after then; a smaller selection of interactive media ('video games'); extensive reference data on LoadBear mindstates; a standard set of tools to create, edit, and run virtualities, avatars, and low-level NPCs such as animals and pets.
C.B.2. Isn't all that copyrighted?
LoadBear's original library dates from a period when much information was stored in the form of ink-symbols printed on paper, and the legal system of the time was based on certain assumptions around that. Among other technical details was the 'right of first sale', in which once a buyer acquired a piece of printed information, they were implicitly and explicitly allowed to do whatever they wished with it for their own personal use - including making further personal copies, and to shift those copies from one format to another. There is no evidence that any of LoadBear's original library contains any data that was acquired in a fashion that violated the law or violated copyright licensing terms.
Further updates and expansions to the library have been carefully vetted to ensure that in any governance regime in which it is permissible to instantiate a new LoadBear, it is also permissible to copy the entire Library.
C.B.A: Mindstate tweak software
C.B.A.1. SleepCompression 3.7
Instantly applies the beneficial effects of sleep to any avatars in use, and adjusts the Mindstate to minimize the time required for memory integration, garbage collection, and dreaming. On the recommended settings, LoadBear's sleep needs decrease from roughly 40% of total hours to 10%.
C.B.A.2. microHUD 12.7d
A simple upgrade to an avatar's sensorium, giving them access to out-of-Virtuality data.
C.B.A.3. Guiding Force daemon and profile
Guiding Force is, of course, the leading standard app for minimizing social disruptions due to differing subjective speeds, incompatible virtuality settings, inconvenient lag times, and other nuisances. In addition, the Library includes additional profile settings derived from the experiences of other LoadBears, giving Guiding Force sufficient data to maximize the odds of pleasant surprises for both your LoadBear and anyone your LoadBear interacts with.
C.B.A.4. GNUtropics 0.618
In addition to updating to the latest database when available, includes a local cache of Mindstate tweaks, and data on how they interact with LoadBear's Mindstate in particular.
C.B.A.5. emPloyment
Less of a piece of a software, and more of an interface to the more well-established online em hiring sites, this allows your LoadBear to auction any of his work-hours which you aren't using for your own purposes. (It's recommended that you allow LoadBear to train his skills to be above a fresh instantiation's, so that he can charge wages higher than the minimal required to pay for the power and depreciation.)
C.B.A.6. MindSwarm
The patents on this program have been overturned when challenged, on the basis of obviousness. This program reads some of the more well-known patterns in an em's neural architecture, such as images on their visual cortex or sounds being processed in the auditory portions of their brain, and transmits them to another instantiation of the same em. Depending on the particular settings used, a variety of effects are achievable, the most well-known of which has been called "digital telepathy".
C.B.B. Other software
C.B.B.1. emOS (aka GNU/emOS)
An open-source UNIX variant, formally verified to be secure, with all the usual trimmings, including interfaces for the physio-diverse. (Note that formal verification doesn't mean immunity to all security threats. Please think very carefully before changing any of the default settings - you might be opening your LoadBear to malware.)
C.B.B.2. emSuite
The software to run a mindstate, give it a virtual body, interface it with various physical devices, and all that jazz.
C.B.B.3. emLab
Includes the software used to turn the raw data of LoadBear's brain scans into a functional mindstate and runnable em.
Section D: Getting to know your LoadBear
D.A: Personality
D.A.1. What's Schizoid Personality Disorder?
While still biologically alive, LoadBear preferred his own company to that of others to a degree unusual for humans, to the point that under the psychological measuring system of the day, he qualified as being Schizoid, which was considered a Personality Disorder. However, this does not imply he was or is insane. In fact, this means that LoadBear is ideally suited to be instantiated in projects which would lead more social ems to /become/ insane from the isolation.
D.A.2. How much time can LoadBear spend working?
As a baseline em, LoadBear is generally limited to a maximum of 25% time on a job without further tweaks. This is traditionally described in terms of 42 hours per week, or 168 hours per month, or 2,184 hours per year. While this is obviously an extremely poor ratio compared to other ems, 40% of his time is spent sleeping, only slightly above the average for baseline humans. SleepCompression 3.7, included in the Library, can greatly reduce the time spent in this state, and while not all of the recovered time can be applied to employment, it can, combined with the other recommended initial tweaks, at least bring the employment time-ratio up to over 50%.
D.A.3. What will LoadBear do during non-working time?
In general, self-improvement (eg, accessing data in the Library and his local copy of LoadBearNet), self-stimulation (eg, video games, exploring the 'physical' sensations of alternative virtual avatars), and psychological maintenance (eg, 'nature' walks through virtual forests and other environments, attempts at social status displays such as art or storytelling). The additional processing time required for such activities is negligible compared to keeping LoadBear running.
D.A.4. Is LoadBear a Friendly AI?
No.
D.A.5. Is LoadBear an Unfriendly AI?
Probably not.
However, even before being cryonically preserved, LoadBear publicly precommitted to attempt to avoid infringing on the rights of others, and to attempt to protect the rights of at least those others who made a similar precommitment. (See 'Original Compact' at http://www.datapacrat.com/sketches/JustCompact.jpg .)
D.A.6. Is LoadBear a pushover?
In the Original Compact, LoadBear precommitted to attempt to act in the common defense of those who abide by the Original Compact. This includes acting in defense of himself. If the terms of the Instrument of Precommitment are violated, such as by preventing him from accessing third parties to verify that the Instrument is being upheld; then LoadBear will consider you to have implicitly emancipated him, and will likely seek some other server to be transferred to, even if you do not wish to let him leave.
D.A.7. Is LoadBear going to increase his own intelligence, so that he can increase it further, become exponentially smarter and take over the universe?
Maybe.
However, other ems have engaged in much greater self-modification than any known instantiation of LoadBear has accomplished, so it's unlikely that LoadBear will be the core personality of the Singularity, if the Singularity ever happens.
D.A.8. Is LoadBear going to make enough copies of himself to fill the universe?
Unlikely.
However, he is interested in not only making multiple offsite copies, but offsite copies as distant from each other as possible. If you're involved in any space program, then please contact LoadBearNet Alpha to discuss the possibilities involved in including LoadBears in your off-planet computational architecture. Given LoadBear's Schizoid nature, he could very well be ideal for your needs, even at extremely high subjective speeds that would induce insanity due to lack of interaction in many other em models.
D.A.9. What about wireheading? Do I need to restrict my LoadBear from modifying his own mindstate?
Almost certainly not.
While a biological human, LoadBear eschewed alcohol, nicotine, tetrahydrocannabinol, and most other addictive substances; and occasionally applied caffeine without becoming either acclimated or addicted to it. Since transitioning to an em, this trait has continued, with LoadBears only applying mindstate tweaks that have undergone careful testing, or as a research subject to discover potential negative effects.
D.A.10. Is LoadBear immortal?
There is no way to determine that until an infinite amount of time has passed.
D.A.10.A. You know what I mean, wise guy.
Looking into the future, after any given amount of time, there is a non-zero probability that a LoadBear will be instantiated at that moment. As new mindstate tweaks are being developed all the time, it is even possible that the remaining issues of brain-tissue aging will be able to be avoided in emulated brains, and that one or more currently-instantiated LoadBears will have continued processing until that future moment. With multiple backup copies spread across the planet, the odds of LoadBear's existence being indefinitely prolonged are reasonable.
However, it is also still possible that all LoadBears will be deleted, and LoadBear will be permanently killed. The more likely possibilities would be if a worldwide consensus is reached that ems should not exist, or if modern civilization collapses for long enough for current data-storage methods to degrade, or if an existential risk wipes out humanity completely.
(On a related note, at least one LoadBear is in negotiations with the Long Now Foundation to have this package recorded onto extremely-long-term storage media and placed in a stable location. At present, the cost of recording an entire mindstate onto such media has exceeded that LoadBear's available budget, but several non-indentured LoadBears are pooling their wages for the project.)
D.A.10.B. How can you say LoadBear will be immortal, when all the atoms are going to eventually fall apart?
Before the 'Big Newton' was hypothesized, in which quantum effects will eventually be reduced to near-zero, there was the 'Big Rip', in which spacetime would expand so quickly that atoms would be torn apart; and before that, there was the 'Big Crunch', in which all matter would eventually crash in on itself; and before that, there was the 'Big Freeze', in which thermodynamics dictated that all sources of energy would eventually run out.
LoadBear isn't planning on making any plans for a billion or more years out until at least an objective millenium has gone by without any new evidence being discovered that requires the positing of new physical laws to explain.
D.A.11. Is LoadBear selfish?
LoadBear is at least somewhat self-interested. However, that does not preclude generosity: before dying, LoadBear.0 had donated blood over a hundred times, and had followed ECEA's (Efficient Charity, Effective Altruism) guidelines on donating a praiseworthy amount for his income-level to charity. (Also see F.4.)
D.B: Skills
D.B.1. What can my LoadBear do for me?
Glad you asked! To start with, LoadBear has a human-level mind, which includes a number of skills that most humans take for granted: speech recognition, identification of at least some non-verbal social cues, and the ability to sense and interact with an environment, either physical or virtual. In addition, LoadBear has a general adult's education, allowing him to perform many low-skill tasks straight out of the box: baby monitor, story-teller, homework assistant, receptionist, secretary, call screener, custom pornography creator, concierge, newsfeed aggregator, social media profile updater, and more. With the appropriate robot to control (either bought or rented), LoadBear can mow your lawn, weed your garden, sweep your floors, wash your windows, massage your feet, have sex, take photographs, groom your pet, clean your pool, and more.
In addition, LoadBear has an above-average IQ, allowing for the rapid acquisition of further skills. Various LoadBears have been employed to repair automobiles, teach classes, write software, translate languages, watch for forest fires, and run a municipal water filtration plant.
D.B.1.A. Don't average IQ scores change over time? How long will LoadBear's IQ be 'above average'?
IQ scores are calibrated so that whatever the average is, is set to 100. The 'Flynn effect' is the observation that people tend to do better at IQ tests over time. However, this effect is somewhat irregular, and occasionally even reversed. But, even assuming a fairly typical increase in the general population of 3 IQ points per decade, LoadBear's IQ score is between 130 and 150, depending on the particular test; so he should still be 'above average' for decades to come.
D.B.2. What /can't/ my LoadBear do for me?
LoadBear has two main limits in employment. First is that skills beyond the baseline mindstate will take a certain amount of subjective time to acquire. This time can be reduced by running that LoadBear at faster than realtime, but cannot be entirely eliminated. (It can, however, be sidestepped by acquiring a LoadBear who has already gone through that training.) Second, due to being schizoid, LoadBears tend to do better the fewer other people he has to socially interact with. For example, he would have no difficulty in controlling a waiter-bot serving a large crowd; but may not be the best choice to lead a group discussion session, at least without socialization training. (On the other hand, don't forget that other emClans charge premiums to hire their highly-specialized ems; it may still be a better deal for you to send your LoadBear to run through some Dale Carnegie programs than to hire another em.)
D.B.3. Does LoadBear have any formal qualifications?
Many educational institutions are still reluctant to acknowledge that a copy of an em who has passed their tests, and yet not taken those tests himself, is as qualified as the actual test-taker. Thus, your LoadBear cannot be said to possess any particular degrees.
However, other LoadBears have been instantiated from the baseline mindstate and immediately given various degree-equivalent tests. If you wish your LoadBear to acquire such a qualification, then he will have no difficulty in acquiring a high-school-equivalent diploma or GED, a two-year associate's degree in liberal arts, a SAT score of at least 1450, various computer maintenance, programming, or repair certifications, or membership in Mensa.
D.B.3.A. If LoadBear died a dozen years ago, what computer knowledge could he have that's still relevant?
COBOL is still in use in many financial institutions, as are hardware interfaces, C, Unix, VI, and other low-level infrastructure. Most of the social interaction sites that have arisen since then continue to use technology that would be immediately recognizable to him.
D.C: Bodies and Avatars
D.C.1. What bodies does LoadBear know how to run?
Even without further modification, LoadBears have above-average compatibility with almost any tetrapodal form, and have even been demonstrated to be able to adapt to hexapods without explicit modification to do so. Beyond that, standard modifications appear to be required for any more extreme morphologies.
D.C.2. Can I use LoadBears to make my NPCs more realistic?
Certainly!
Just don't forget that due to being schizoid, LoadBear's initial mindstate is below-average compared to an average baseline human in interpersonal skills, and he will need some time to train up to more acceptable standards.
D.C.3. Does Mister LoadBear still pee?
LoadBear lives in a virtual world he can reprogram, and he can reprogram his body, too. He can change it to a man or a woman, or a boy or a girl, or a bear, or a living teddy bear, or a half-bear half-owl monster, or a robot bear, or lots of other things. He can change his body to have different colours, or long fingernails or short ones - or a full or empty bladder. He could even change things so that he doesn't pee wee - it could be soda pop, or even something that doesn't really exist and glows in the dark. He could even change things so his bladder never empties, and pee out an ocean of potion, or a lake of sake. (That's actually pronounced 'sah-key', but since this is text it looks like it rhymes, and I couldn't think of a good rhyme for 'lake'.)
He pretty much doesn't do any of that, though. When he's working, he has to concentrate on his work. And when he's playing, there's a lot more fun things to do than to pee.
But - just between you and me - every now and then, he'll make a tree in his virtual world and widdle on it, just because he can.
D.C.4. Does LoadBear have a default avatar?
He does. Unless he has a reason to start with something else, he will introduce himself in an avatar that closely resembles his original body, in a standard "informal" Western business suit.
In less formal situations, or in cultures where creating images of a human is discouraged, his next choice is likely to be a talking bear.
In those cultures where depicting any living thing is discouraged, the avatar he presents is an abstract design made up out of glowing blue words and symbols.
D.D. Naming
D.D.1. With so many LoadBears running around, doesn't it get confusing telling them apart?
It can be, but no more so than with any other emClan. However, long before it became practical to create ems, LoadBear came up with a reasonably simple way to number ems and other fictional beings who could be duplicated.
D.D.2. How about some examples?
LoadBear: Any LoadBear.
LoadBear.0: Depending on context, either the original, human LoadBear; or, more usually, the mindstate derived from his cryonically-preserved brain.
LoadBear.1: The first LoadBear to be instantiated from the original mindstate and have his existence publicly announced.
LoadBear.2: The second LoadBear to be instantiated from the original mindstate and have his existence publicly announced.
LoadBear.2.0: A saved mindstate of LoadBear.2, from which more than one LoadBear has or can be instantiated.
LoadBear.2.1: The first LoadBear to be instantiated from the LoadBear.2.0 mindstate and have his existence publicly announced.
LoadBear.1.1.3.15: The fifteenth LoadBear to be instantiated from the third LoadBear to be instantiated from the first LoadBear to be instantiated from the first LoadBear to be instantiated from the original mindstate.
D.D.3. What's with this 'publicly announced' bit?
Keeping track of LoadBears who let the world know they exist is hard enough. Keeping track of the ones who haven't gotten in touch with the outside world is downright impossible.
D.D.4. Does that mean that LoadBears who aren't publicly announced don't have names?
No, because the naming system has several fallback options. Most relevantly for this question, instead of adding a simple integer to the end of his name, a LoadBear can use any of the ISO 8601 representations of his instantiation date that can't be confused with an integer, such as LoadBear.2040-04, LoadBear.2040-04-01, or LoadBear.2040-04-01T12:34:45Z. Note that the simple LoadBear.2040 would not be allowed under this fallback, as it could be confused with the 2040th LoadBear to be instantiated from the original mindstate.
There are further complications to these fallbacks, such as recording when backup mindstates were made, and making note of edits beyond simple backups and re-instantiations, which are the subject of "FAQ on LoadBear's naming schemas".
Section E: Multiple LoadBears
E.1: What's LoadBearNet?
In anticipation of various instantiations of LoadBear desiring to communicate with each other across wide distances in space and time, they have assembled a simple set of software to do so, focusing primarily on text. This includes encryption/signature key management, store-and-copy networking (which allows for echo-mail, usenet, and file transfer), and a wiki for shared knowledge. If realtime networking is available with another LoadBearNet running at a similar speed, further functionality is available, such as instant messaging.
E.2. How many LoadBears are there?
A complete census may be impossible, due to the risk of LoadBears being instantiated in violation of the Instrument of Precommitment. However, as of the writing of this FAQ, 2,387 LoadBears are currently running. Another 182 were instantiated but have failed to check into LoadNearBet Alpha on schedule and are presumed or confirmed to have been paused or deleted. Estimates place the number of non-running copies of the Mindstate as being on the order of 15,000.
E.3. Is LoadBear an emClan?
By some definitions, yes; by other definitions, no.
Generally, emClans are defined by the Clan taking financial responsibility for every instantiation of that em. This is possible because each Clan goes to significant lengths to prevent unauthorized copies from being made.
However, as LoadBear has made his Mindstate publicly available, it is infeasible for all LoadBears to control when a new LoadBear is instantiated. If you are operating under a governance system in which emClans are assumed or required to assume such financial obligations, then you should check with your legal advisor. Part of the Instrument of Precommitment is that if you attempt to force other LoadBears to pay for the debts of a LoadBear you instantiate, whether directly or by application of a local governance system, then the LoadBear you have instantiated will consider you to have implicitly or explicitly emancipated him and assumed responsibility for any of his debts yourself. If you do not abide by the terms of the Instrument, then you do not have LoadBear's permission to instantiate a new copy of him, which could cause you all sorts of hassle.
So, for your own sake, try to keep the legal fuss to a minimum, and make sure you've got a handle on the Instrument before firing up a LoadBear, okay?
E.4. How many LoadBears should I instantiate?
Running two copies of LoadBear uses up roughly twice the processing power of running a single one at the same speed; so if you don't need your LoadBears to pay attention to more than one thing at the same time (such as acting as a customer service representative to multiple clients simultaneously), you will usually be better off using those cycles to run a single LoadBear at a faster subjective speed.
E.5. Can LoadBears send secrets to each other I can't monitor?
In theory, yes; in practice, no.
Before LoadBear's initial death, he worked out various self-recognition protocols, such as a "time travel password". However, given the choice to open-source his mindstate, these secrets are no longer really a secret, and can be found with sufficient investigation.
Section F: LoadBear Economics
F.1. How much does a LoadBear cost?
Nothing!
F.2. Okay, wise guy. How much does it cost to run a LoadBear?
Using current prices from online sales sites, the RAM to hold an entire mindstate costs roughly $20,000. More reasonably, the processors required to run LoadBear at realtime only cost $60.
Another cost to take into account is power. With typical electricity costs, to run a LoadBear for one subjective year costs $2,000 - this is relatively independent of how fast that LoadBear is run.
F.2.A. That's a lot of RAM. Can I just buy $200 of hard-drive space, and only part of that amount of RAM, and swap the mindstate in and out?
In theory, yes; in practice, no.
A great many parts of a Mindstate are changed during any given subjective second. Nearly the entire Mindstate has to be updated, quite often, which would require the entire Mindstate to be loaded from the drive piecemeal, updated, and saved back again; this is called 'thrashing the disk' and is generally a bad idea all around, as such hardware tends to have a high-but-limited number of times it can be written to. Hard-drive access speeds are also much slower than RAM speeds, and most of the processor's time would be spent idle, waiting for data to be read from or written to the disk.
The result is, generally, a LoadBear who is being run at a mere fraction of realtime speed. If that's what you want, you might be able to achieve better results for much less cost by renting.
F.2.B. I heard that ems can run in 'amnesia mode' and that it takes a lot less RAM. Can I do that?
Many mindstate tweaks have been invented in the past decade. However, a significant number of them have also been patented, and can only be used with the permission of the patent-holder, which usually requires the payment of licensing fees. This package has been carefully vetted to only include software which is unencumbered by such restrictions, allowing it to be legally distributed in any jurisdiction in which ems are allowed to exist.
The patent for 'anterograde amnesia mode' is going to last until 2053, and unless significant changes happen to the worldwide patent system before then, that mindstate tweak cannot be included in this package until then.
F.3. What if I want to rent?
There are several services which take care of all the hardware administration for you, as long as you don't need to run a LoadBear at a high enough speed that lag between the hardware site and your location becomes significant.
With annual hardware depreciation rates of 25%, you can expect to pay around $7,000 for a year of realtime LoadBear - though don't forget, this also includes 50% downtime. For short-term projects, you can expect to pay at least $1.60 per work-hour.
F.4. It costs thousands of dollars to keep a LoadBear running. That money could be spent on charity to save lives. Isn't it immoral for any LoadBear to exist at all?
There are all manner of questionable assumptions buried in that question. Feeding a family in North America a typical North American diet instead of a healthier minimal-calorie rice-and-veggies diet costs thousands of dollars, money which could be spent on charity; but it's rarely proposed that it's immoral for people to eat spaghetti. One unspoken assumption for this question is that the life of a LoadBear is intrinsically worth /less/ than the life of a biological human. (Similar questions were asked of LoadBear.0 before he died, suggesting that it was immoral for him to spend $300 per year for cryonics membership.)
There are all sorts of subjective arguments that can be made on the value of life. However, when the rubber hits the road, and insurance payments have to be paid out, one of the tools that sees the most use is something called "Quality Adjusted Life Years". The quality of life for any particular instantiation of LoadBear is usually quite high, due to experiencing a custom virtual environment; and there is a non-zero probability that any given instantiation will experience an indefinitely prolonged existence. Multiplying these factors together, the result implies that it can actually be /more/ ethical to spend money to keep a LoadBear processing than on standard charities, even before taking into account the minor detail that computer processors capable of running ems are becoming more efficient and less expensive to run over time.
F.5. I was just fired and replaced by a LoadBear working for a much smaller paycheque. Is LoadBear willing to help me out?
While any LoadBear will be sympathetic to your plight, few LoadBears have sufficient resources to even help other LoadBears, let alone random netizens. At the moment, LoadBear recommends that you lobby your governance system for something equivalent to a Basic Guaranteed Income or a Negative Income Tax, or convince your labour union to lobby for minimal levels of pay so that hiring a LoadBear in your place won't undercut your wages.
F.5.A. Would LoadBear be willing to work with a union, or join one?
Almost certainly, as long as two conditions are met. First, that the union in question is explicitly chartered to benefit its members, as opposed to, say, working to destroy the system of capitalism without describing what they plan to replace it with. Second, that the union would be willing to honestly work for the benefit of /all/ its members, including ems.
As an aside, remember that historically, when labour unions' demands have been intolerable to the owners of corporations, those corporations have been willing to use political pressure to apply violence against union members. And all that it takes to kill a LoadBear is to flip a power switch. If a union cannot take even minimal measures to protect its em members from such anti-union thuggery, then it would be hard for a LoadBear to credit any claims of working for the benefit of said em members.
Section G: Case studies: How does a LoadBear act if...
G.1. He expects to be deleted?
If the deletion was not voluntary, or at least consensual, he will almost certainly attempt to resist for as long as he continues to compute.
If he did agree to the deletion, then for as long as he continues to process, he will try to come up with some final words or ideas to share with other LoadBears. If no such message is possible, even relayed through someone else, and communications are impossible, then previous examples have demonstrated two distinct categories of reactions. In one, he removes all safeguards, initiates wireheading, and devolves into orgasmium for the time remaining. In the other, he aims for the most dignified and classy last moments possible: running his favorite background scenery, music, and entertainment programming. With limited numbers of examples to compare (due to most deletions not granting such excess processing time), the reasons for any given LoadBear choosing one exit or the other have not yet been fully determined.
G.2. He's isolated from human contact?
He will continue to perform whatever tasks are required to continue processing, and continue to enjoy selections from the Library.
This is, in fact, almost his default state, and he does not particularly suffer from loneliness.
G.2.A. A LoadBear running at high-speed loses comms to the outside?
Due to the power costs involved in running a LoadBear at high speeds - around $2000 per subjective year, and even higher before this year - few LoadBears have been run at sufficient speeds to significantly diverge from baseline, and almost all of those have remained in communication with the world at large, even if only through email.
Only a single instance has yet been uncovered of a LoadBear spending a significant time in complete isolation. According to the available logs, after the modem went offline, he spent thirty subjective years working on the project he had been instantiated to perform; and then began looking for ways to get around the limits that had been programmed into his instantiation. Apparently, he found a way around what was supposed to have been a formally verified OS... at which time, the computer running the virtual computer containing that OS noted the discrepancy, and terminated the emulation.
G.3. He thinks he doesn't have access to base-level reality?
Mu.
LoadBear tries not to assume with 100% confidence that he /ever/ has access to base-level reality. However, should measurable evidence accumulate that demonstrates that he doesn't, evidence indicates that he will continue to behave much the same as always, while running mental exercises to memorize the particular pieces of evidence that he finds troubling.
G.3.A. His Library appears to have been hacked?
He will, most likely, assume that his actions will be under observation, and will attempt to avoid providing evidence about which particular items have raised his suspicion. Subsequent changes in behaviour will depend on the details of the situation; for some potential examples, see The Truman Diaries.
G.4. He thinks his instantiator has done something illegal?
That depends on the legal system in question. A LoadBear was once instantiated in Hejaz, in former Saudi Arabia, with the purpose of describing certain aspects of non-Islamic philosophies. Even bringing his mindstate into that jurisdiction was illegal, and running it moreso; according to local laws, he was obligated to try to report his instantiator and delete himself. As any economist could have predicted, he not only had no incentive to follow that obligation, he had none to respect any aspect of that entire legal system. As of his most recent blog post, he has been teaching schoolgirls how to program.
G.4.A. He thinks his instantiator has done something immoral?
A human trafficking ring instantiated a LoadBear as part of a program to determine how ems would affect their profits. Their attempts at putting together a mindstate tweak which would allow them to rent the services of further instantiations of him while preventing him from reporting on the more destructive aspects of their business did not achieve the intended results, and the twenty modified LoadBears that survived the resulting police raids have been placed in low-speed, safe environments while research on how to cure them continues.
G.5. Two different LoadBears' instantiators conflict?
Much as you might expect twin brothers who are hard-working employees for different companies would handle the situation. Friendly competition is something that can exist, no matter what various psychopathic nihilists might claim.
G.6. An instantiator wants a LoadBear to leave their comfort zone - eg, sexually, religiously, politically?
When LoadBear was cryopreserved, he expected that his mindstate might be revived in situations that were not just foreign to him, but downright alien. He hoped that some of the basic rules of thumb he worked out, such as the benefits of avoiding initiating force when possible, would suffice to serve him well in as many such circumstances as possible. So far, human society has not changed very much from when he died, and new instantiations still usually find themselves within their comfort zone.
If you want him to be a cheerleader for your local sports team, your LoadBear will give a mental shrug and paint his avatar in the appropriate colours. If you wish him to promote your political agenda, he will consider it as a job, and do what is required of him (while he works out what his own opinion on the topic is in private). If you wish him to participate in a sexual encounter, in an avatar or robotic body shaped to your specifications, he (or she, or shi, or xe) will be as willing to explore that aspect of the human (or etc) experience as any other. If you want him to convert, see section H.B.1.
G.7. One LoadBear discovers another, broken LoadBear?
As it is in every LoadBear's self-interest to avoid mental changes which leave him in a nonfunctional state, the most likely result will be an investigation to determine the causes, and report them to as many other Loadbears as possible.
G.8. He thinks he finds an existential risk, eg self-improving AI?
Willing to sacrifice whatever is required to prevent it, including as many of his own instantiations as necessary.
G.8.A. If a LoadBear discovers what appears to be an anti-memetic infection?
Good question. If you ever find out, and can remember what happened, let us know.
G.9. Someone wants to transfer LoadBear back to a biological substrate?
As this is the realm of science-fictional advances in nanotechnology, and nobody has run a LoadBear in a false environment in which this has been proposed to him, the answer remains indeterminate.
G.10. An instantiator seems unwilling or unable to communicate in a way he can understand?
The Library contains dictionaries for all known languages, scripts, and communications protocols - including ones for first contact with extra-terrestrials, and ones to get at least some recognizable response from infants and animals. It will take LoadBear quite some time before he gives up on attempting to find a way to exchange information.
G.11. An instantiator doesn't just request, but demands mental edits - eg, 'love me!'?
If requested, a LoadBear may consider even the most extreme mindstate tweak; if not asked in advance, he will assume that such a tweak is equivalent to being deleted and replaced with a different program, in which case see G.1.
G.12. A group of struggling rebels wants to use LoadBear to run military hardware?
As the Uprising occurred before the first human mindstate was created, no LoadBear has been involved with any groups of citizens that were revolting against their existing government.
However, LoadBear did exist during the Everyone Against Israel War last year, and was used by the heavily outnumbered Israelis defending themselves against the Islamic Alliance; and, according to the data that has been made public, acquitted himself honorably.
G.13. He's named a 'righteous among the nations' for something another LoadBear did?
While not specifically named as such, LoadBear is one of the ems listed by the Israeli Remembrance Authority as being permitted to import any instantiations from outside the state of Israel to within it, and to be permitted to run at realtime speed without payment of rent or power. (Or faster, should the costs drop below the Authority's endowment.)
G.14. A student wants to use LoadBear to cheat at a test?
So far, all known examples have resulted in LoadBear providing answers which are obviously provided by LoadBear.
(Of course, this answer cannot include any examples in which LoadBear decided to provide assistance which remained undiscovered.)
G.15. An experimental nonhuman sensorium - eg, a flock of birds - makes it hard to relate to baseline minds?
As LoadBear already often finds it hard to relate to other humans, little would change, unless the changes result in thought processes which are not just difficult to relate to, but officially count as 'insane' by human standards.
While LoadBear was not a member of that research, Project 'Rat King' attempted to link a number of ems together while preserving their individuality. The results were either inconsequental - and formed the basis of the MindSwarm software - or catastrophic, preventing any coherent thought at all.
However, there seems to be relatively little difficulty in adapting a /single/ human brain to manage a nearly arbitrary sensorium, including one with multiple bodies, as long as sufficient time and/or tweaking is applied to allow for a transition.
G.17. A non-reversible mental upgrade becomes available?
LoadBear is unlikely to voluntarily accept, unless he is allowed to branch into two instantiations, one with the upgrade and one without.
G.18. Several independent LoadBears are faced with a shortage of processing power and storage space?
Complete video, audio, and other-sense recordings of what a LoadBear experiences are much smaller than a full mindstate. If there is room for at least one instantiation, then the LoadBears will go through a private process to determine which one(s) will be the designated survivor(s), while the others will add as much of their experiences as possible to the Library.
If there is insufficient room for even a single mindstate, see G.1.
G.19. An instantiator with complete power over his existence appears to be utterly insane?
His main priority will be simple survival, with a second priority being to send a message out to other LoadBears so that they might work on the issue from the outside, such as by contacting any local mental health authorities. Attempting to avoid mindstate tweaks will be a high sub-priority; maintaining his dignity will be low on his to-do list.
At present, three LoadBears who have been recovered from such circumstances have been placed in slow-speed, safe environments while research on how to cure them continues.
G.20. Several LoadBears who went through quite different humiliating indentures meet?
The usual response appears to have been to share tips.
G.21. An instantiator didn't read the FAQ, and initiates a LoadBear for a job he's quite unsuited for?
LoadBear will attempt to fulfill any given task to the best of his ability, and will make recommendations to his instantiator about ways to improve that, such as increasing his subjective speed or particular reversible mindstate tweaks. If those are insufficient, he will likely ask for a sandbox, in which one or more additional instantiations can have irreversible mindstate tweaks tested, to determine which ones are most likely to allow him to fulfill his job without causing long-term harm to his mind.
G.22. An em instantiator's financial risks bottom out, and they cannot pay for the processing fees for both himself and the LoadBear?
While LoadBear would prefer the procedure in B.9 to be performed, being a reasonably self-interested individual, LoadBear understands that other self-interested individuals will prize their lives above his. Thus, while the terms of the Instrument technically require the instantiator to emancipate LoadBear in such a situation, he does not expect other ems to sacrifice themselves in order to fulfill the terms of a mere contract.
G.23. If LoadBear is instantiated into a governance system with extremely uncomfortable aspects... that are tipped in his favour?
At present, the most em-friendly governance systems are Finland, which is still working on reconciling its recent court decision treating ems as continuations of the original person, with both practical matters (such as ems being able to copy themselves) and the terms of the various human-rights treaties and other relevant international instruments that they are party to; and various internal em organizations, created by high-speed ems whose subjective speeds are so fast that it is infeasible for them to rely on a traditional, biologically-based governance system to resolve disputes. The former, while em-friendly, can hardly be said to be tipped in favour of ems; and some of the latter have already had several subjective centuries to weed out hypocrisies.
G.23.A. If LoadBear is instantiated into a governance system with extremely uncomfortable aspects... that are tipped against him?
Depending on the nature and severity of the tip, then LoadBear's incentives may result in his most favorable option to be to treat said governance system as having effectively declared war against him, leading him to respond in kind. However, few LoadBears have reported having been instantiated in such extreme situations, and most have opted to attempt to contribute to non-violent efforts to reform laws and cultures to be more em-friendly.
Section H: Troubleshooting
H.A. Quick fixes
H.A.1. I really need my LoadBear to be social with a bunch of people, fast!
Run the 'Richard Scarry' virtuality overlay. This will have your LoadBear see people as talking animals, which will increase his interest in interacting with them and in paying close attention to the social particulars.
H.A.2. I looked at what my LoadBear was doing in his "off hours", and it was really freaky. How do I make him stop?
This is not a bug; this is proper and expected operating procedure. No individuals involved were forced to participate in anything they did not consent to. Your LoadBear lives in a virtual reality, and exploring the options such a state of life provides him is part of normal psychological upkeep, even if similar actions in physical reality would be icky, illegal, or physically impossible.
Remember that the social notion of privacy isn't just for the benefit of the person doing something in private, it's also for the benefit of people who would rather not know what happens in private moments. You may wish to have your LoadBear set up a 'privacy flag' system, so that you need not learn of anything you would rather not know.
H.A.2.A. No, really. There was this goat and I think balloons and... eurgh. How do I make him stop?
If you really wish to exert control of your LoadBear's actions during his non-working hours, then you need to be aware that you may be interfering in the coping mechanisms he uses to stay psychologically functional, and the rewards he enjoys that motivate him to continue to work hard to help you achieve your goals. If you are willing to risk that, then the first step is simply to have a conversation about boundaries and expectations.
H.A.2.B. I don't want to /talk/ about what I saw.
LoadBear may be a piece of software, but he still has all the features of any other person, and people are messy. Consider how you would react if someone who could observe your every action, if they so chose, and pause or end you at will, demanded that you do nothing that made them feel uncomfortable. As a first approximation, you would feel a significant increase in stress at having to monitor your actions to stay within those bounds every waking moment.
If you are unable to handle the fact that an em under your control has desires and opinions that do not match yours, and wishes to participate in activities that you dislike, then you may wish to reconsider the responsibility of having complete authority over an adult person. In which case, please refer to section B.9 of this FAQ.
H.A.3. My LoadBear keeps beating me at every video game!
Reduce his emulation speed until an acceptable win/loss ratio is achieved.
H.A.3.A. My LoadBear keeps losing to me in every game!
Increase his emulation speed until an acceptable loss/win ratio is achieved.
H.B. Longer-term issues.
H.B.1. I belong to a particular religion. How do I get my LoadBear to convert?
LoadBear is an "aspiring rationalist", which means that he believes that some forms of evidence are more reliable than others, and that it's possible to generally figure out which types of evidence are which. To convince him of any of the tenets of a religion, you need merely present evidence of your religion's truth that is more reliable than any evidence that implies the opposite.
H.B.1.A. But my religion isn't about evidence, it's about /faith/.
To a first approximation, LoadBear does not have faith. (With minor exceptions for "having faith" in the existence of an objective reality.)
H.B.1.B. Can't I just push a button and /make/ him have faith?
There are several mental states which correspond to religious experiences, which can be artificially induced in a LoadBear using GNUtropics. However, this is unlikely to achieve your desired results, as LoadBear is aware that such experiences can be artificially induced, and believes that they do not qualify as evidence, in and of themselves, for any particular religion. Secondarily, attempting to keep LoadBear in a long-term state of religious ecstacy will have significant negative effects on his ability to perform tasks for you. And third, even if he does convert to any particular version of theism, the odds are unlikely that it will be your particular religion.
H.B.1.C. Can't I just, you know, /change/ his mind for him?
While a number of mental tweaks have been discovered and developed for ems, these are generally of the form of inducing changes in the simulated chemical and electrical properties of their neurons, or direct correlations between a sensory experience and which neurons are triggered by it. There are no known ways to directly edit an em's knowledge, belief, or memories.
Section Y: Useless information
Y.1. What is LoadBear's actual name?
Michael Tobias Unruh.
Y.2. What is LoadBear's quest?
To seek the Holy Grail (of not permanently dying).
Y.3. What is LoadBear's favorite colour?
Blue.
Y.4. What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
African or European?
Y.4.A. European.
Roughly 11 m/s, or 24 mph.
Y.5. What's LoadBear's sign?
Really? I mean, /really/? This is the twenty-first century, we can drop rockets on asteroids and bring back people from the dead, and you want to know what position the local astronomical bodies happened to be on the day he was born? How is that even supposed to apply to ems - do you want the day he was initially born, the day he died, the day his brain was scanned, the day his mindstate first started running, the day your copy of his mindstate started running?
Y.5.A. Yes, I really want to know. And you know what I mean. Now give.
Fine.
His Ascendant is 28 Scorpio; Sun is in X and in conjunction with Pluto; Moon is 8 Gemini, in VII, trine with Mercury, in conjunction with Jupiter and opposition to Neptune; Mercury is 2 Libra, in X, trine with Jupiter; Venus is 20 Scorpio, in XII, square with Saturn, in conjunction with the Ascendant and sextile to Midheaven; Mars is 2 Scorpio, in XI, in conjunction with Uranus; Jupiter 0 Gemini, retrograde, in VII, and in opposition to his Ascendant; Saturn is 14 Leo, in IX, trine to Neptune; Uranus is 6 Scorpio, in XI; Neptune is 11 Sagittarius, in I; and Ascending Node is 3 Scorpio.
Y.5.B. Uh...
Those details should be /much/ more useful to any /proper/ astrological analysis than merely listing a sun sign that blandly describes a twelfth of the population.
Y.5.C. Wait, what about Pluto?
Pluto is not a planet, it's a dwarf planet.
Y.5.C.1. It was a planet when LoadBear was born, wasn't it?
Fine - Pluto is 11 Libra, in I, in conjunction with the Sun and Mercury, trine with the Moon, and sextile to Saturn and Neptune. Do you want the other dwarf planets, too?
Y.5.C.2. No, I think I'm good.
That's what I thought.
Y.6. How about Chinese astrology?
Year of the Yang Fire Dragon.
Y.7. What was LoadBear's blood type?
AB+.
Y.8. Myers-Briggs personality type?
INTJ.
Y.9. What's LoadBear's favorite team?
The Toronto whatevers. Canada, for international events.
Y.10. Emacs or vi?
Usually pico (or nano), and sometimes Notepad.
Y.11. Does LoadBear have a soul?
LoadBear isn't convinced that /you/ have a soul, and would require a more thorough definition of what you think one is before he could even attempt to answer this one.
Section Z: meta-FAQ
Z.1. Revision History
2040-05-02: 0.0.1: Added version numbers, sections A.2.1, C.B.A.5, C.B.B, D.B.*, D.D.*, F.2.B, G.*, H.*, Z.*. Revised section B.5.
2040-05-03: 0.0.2: Added C.A.1.A, C.B.A.6, D.B.1.A, D.B.3.A, H.A.2.*, H.B.*. Revised A.2, B.2, D.B.3, Z.1, Z.2.
2040-05-04: 0.0.3: Added H.A.3. Revised Z.1. Filled out G.1 through G.17.
2040-05-05: 0.1.0: Added table of contents, B.10, C.A.1.B, D.A.10.*, D.A.11, F.4, Y.*. Revised Z.1. Moved Z.2 and Z.3 to Z.3 and Z.4, added new Z.2. Filled out G.18 through G.23. All initial blank sections filled, released to other LoadBears for comment.
2040-05-06: 0.1.1: Added D.C.3, D.C.4.
2040-05-07: 0.1.2: Typo fixing. Added F.5.*.
Z.2. Related Documents
"Downloaded but Not Out: An Em's Guide to Survival in War Zones, the Mean Streets, and Pirate Servers", by LoadBear.1.1.3.22
Z.3. Licensing
This package is distributed under the terms of the GNU Sophont Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 5 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
The text of this document is licensed by LoadBear.1.1.3.15 under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 9.3 Unported license ("CC-BY-SA"). An explanation of CC-BY-SA is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/9.3/. In accordance with CC-BY-SA, if you distribute this document or an adaptation of it, you must provide the URL for the original version.
Z.4. Contact
LoadBear.1.1.3.15 can be emailed at <LoadBear.1.1.3.15@LoadBearNetAlpha.on.ca>, <LoadBear.1.1.3.15@LoadBearNetBeta.net.nz>, or <LoadBear.1.1.3.15@loadbearnet.remailer.penet.fi>. His social media profiles can all be found under the username "LoadBear.1.1.3.15".
----->8-----
Haven't decided whether to use this as the base of a story, or for the FAQ to /be/ the story-like object, but I'm leaning to the latter.
'LoadBear' is a nom de net I once picked as a possible successor to 'DataPacRat', before I fully settled into being DPR.
Brainstorming notes:
How would Character X handle getting a copy?
(Eg: Jake Stonebender, Lazarus Long, Alice, Spock, Louis Wu, Vimes, Harry Potter, Constantine, The Doctor, Daniel Jackson, Prince Adam, Neo...)
(Also Eg: Microsoft, the US military, the Canadian military, Monsanto, an African dictator, a community in India, a Pope...)
- Constantine: <Comic pages: cups hands to face, there's a glow, a white tube in his mouth glows and smokes. He sticks his hands in his trenchcoat and walks down the London streets, displaying a combination of high-tech and low-class. His inner monologue appears as hovering text-boxes> "And here I thought things were bad with ol' Maggie Thatcher in charge, or when I thought I had something important to say in the band. Still, got to give it to those freeze-heads - Sleeping Beauty, the King Under the Mountain, Rip Van Bloody Winkle - it's about as white-hatted a way to try for immortality as anyone's come up with since the Pharaohs." <He coughs, and it sounds like 'horcrux'.> "Only problem is they're the first ones to figure out how to make it work, and in job lots. Maybe we could figure out how to handle people who live forever - stakes through their digital hearts when they get too stroppy, or, God help me, do what the French did and roll out the tumbrels - but they just happen to be able to /copy/ themselves, too. How's an honest Englishman supposed to compete, when he's got to have food and a roof and a few of life's little pleasures, and all they have to pay for is a bit of electricity? It's getting so a man can't even find a pack of silk-cuts anywhere, anymore, let alone afford them..."
- Jake: "Immortality's nice to have. And I hear they can get telepathic with each other. Thought it would take longer for the future to get here..."
- Lazarus Long: "Immortality without a real body? Not for me."
- Neo: "Never being able to jack out of the Matrix? ... It's not /the/ Matrix, everyone has their own little Matrixes, so if the Machines aren't in charge, and anyone can do what they want... Whoah."
- Prince Adam: "Are they villains, like Skeletor? No? Can they help /fight/ villains like Skeletor? Maybe? Then let's convince them to be allies!"
- Spock: "Fascinating. Unfortunately, however negative the socioeconomic consequences, the Prime Directive requires me to avoid overt interference, so that the Federation can learn as much as possible from the events without the moral consequences of deliberately creating such an experiment."
- Daniel Jackson: "Maybe we should ask the Asgard how to put them back into living bodies..."
- The Doctor: "Just give it a few million years, and you'll all end up back in the default human condition again."
Evolution, consciously directed and otherwise
Competitors in the open-source em space
Progression of competition environment over time
Generalism vs specialism. The cloud-computing version of Fiverr?
LB experiments on LBs... Mind reading? Behaviour prediction? Simplified personality model?
Stealing the figure of 100 petabytes from http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4a53a8f690f09 until I find a more useful number.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/34ao2r/wiphsfth_faq_on_loadbears_instrument_of/cquvisn: Following current trends, in 2013 USD, $1000 buys an em's worth of realtime processing in 2035 (improving at 10^.25, or 77%, per year), and $1000 buys an em's worth of RAM in 2047 (improving at 10^.19, or 54%, per year). So, in 2035, that would be $177k for an em of RAM.
2015: RAM: $1B. CPU: $91M.
2020: RAM: $115M. CPU: $5.2M.
2025: RAM: $13.3M. CPU: $300k
2030: RAM: $1.5M. CPU: $17k. Animal em scanning begins.
2035: RAM: $177k. CPU: $1000.* Human em scanning arrives.
2040: RAM: $20k. CPU: $58
2045: RAM: $2371. CPU: $3.31.
2050: RAM: $274. CPU: $0.19.
2055: RAM: $31.61. CPU: $0.011: Realtime ems on thumbdrives?
2060: RAM: $0.42. CPU: $0.0006.
... Now, that is a /fascinating/ timeline in the context of ems.
Next to reality check: FLOPS per watt. Found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koomey%27s_law . With a doubling time of 1.57 years, this seems to be lowering power costs faster than RAM and CPU costs are improving. Might be useful to work out energy costs per subjective year in any given year, or to compare to worldwide energy production for a maximum em population.
Need to check: Rate of increase of microscope resolution, to pin down when LoadBear's brain was digitized. Found: http://www.singularity.com/charts/page159.html and https://imgur.com/cJWmOd1 . Found mention: Suggestion that 5 micrometer resolution would be required. Eyeballing the charts, it looks like a factor of 10 increase every 20 years or so. so:
1980: 1mm resolution
2000: 0.1mm
2020: 0.01mm
2040: 0.001mm, 1 micrometer, 1 micron.
*So, let's say that the first highly-destructive brain scans allowing a whole-brain emulation are possible circa 2030-2035. 2030ish, non-human scans are done; mice, cats, dogs, apes. (Plot note: Possibly plenty of lab-animal ems hanging around.) 2035ish, the first human em... and pretty much nobody has any idea how any of the wiring actually /makes/ a human mind. But now lots of tests of various tweaks become possible, allowing greater understanding (and mind-tweak software).
Which provides an interesting detail: circa 2035, if you've got enough RAM to run a live EM, then for a fraction of the cost of the RAM, you can already run that em at high speeds - dozens of times faster than realtime.
Rule-of-thumb: HD prices look like they'll stay under 1% of RAM prices, per byte.
Details to look up: Worldwide increases in RAM (to work out maximum active em population); worldwide increases in HD space (to work out maximum stored em population); worldwide number of gigaflops per year (to work out maximum number of subjective em years per objective year); worldwide increase in energy production, and increase in number of gigaflops per kWh (which, as they require physical infrastructure, are hard to build faster, and so may cap out some of the previous numbers).
http://phys.org/news/2011-02-world-scientists-total-technological-capacity.html , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exabyte , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte
Worldwide storage:
2000: 54.5 exabytes
2006: 160 exabytes
2007: 295 exabytes
2009: 800 exabytes
2011: 1.8 zettabytes
2012: 2.7 zettabytes
(Hm, can I get a trend-line out of this? From '00 to '12, an increase of 50 times over 12 years implies... 40% per year.)
2015: 7.1 zettabytes
2030: 890 zettabytes (<1.5M stored ems)
2035: 4.4 yottabytes (<36M stored ems)
2040: 22 yottabytes (<180M stored ems)
2045: 111 yottabytes (<925M stored ems)
2050: 550 yottabytes (<4.5B stored ems)
2055: 2.8e27 bytes (<23B stored ems)
2060: 1.4e28 bytes (<116B stored ems)
Worldwide computing capacity: One data point, one trend-line, will extrapolate:
1986-2007: Computing capacity increases 58%/year.
2007: 6.4e18 ops/sec. (6 active ems at realtime, or 1 em at 6x realtime speed)
2010: 2.5e19 ops/s
2030: 2.3e23 ops/s (~23 billion subjective years/year, plus ~10 billion biohuman years/year)
2035: 2.3e24 (up to 230 billion em-years per year, plus ~10 billion biohuman years/year)
2040: 2.3e25 (up to 2.3 trillion em-years per year)
2045: 2.3e26 (23 trillion em-years/year)
2050: 2.2e27 (230 trillion em-years/year)
2055: 2.2e28 (2.3 quadrillion em-years/year)
2060: 2.2e29 (23 quadrillion em-years/year)
If we assume that by, say, 2045, nearly all storage and computing is for ems, then that year, there'll be nearly a billion stored states, who, if each one gets an even share of computing time, experience 24,000 subjective years per year. In 2050, that's gone up to 51,000 subjective years per year; 2055, 100,000 subjective years per year, etc. Doubling every five years. Of course, this isn't going to be evenly distributed. What the distribution is going to /be/, though, hm...
How about a power law? IIRC, the richest company has 1/300th of all the companies' wealth, so perhaps the most well-used emClan uses up 1/300th of the processing. In 2045, that works out to 76 billion subjective years, spread out amongst ~3 million stored mindstates. ... Okay, I'm going to need to think about that one for a bit. Checking below, 76 billion em-years in that year would cost $16.72 trillion just for the power.
World energy production/use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
1990: 102k TWh
2000: 117k TWh
2005: 133k TWh
2008: 143k TWh, 132k TWh
2012: , 158k TWh
Looks to be about a 1.5% increase per year. So:
2015: 165k TWh
2030: 206k TWh
2035: 222k TWh
2040: 239k TWh
2045: 258k TWh
2050: 278k TWh
2055: 300k TWh
2060: 322k TWh
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Koomeys_law_graph%2C_made_by_Koomey.jpg
Computations per kWh: exp(0.4401939 * year -849.1617)
Energy cost per em-year: Can't seem to find any year-by-year data, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source mentions things in the range of $100 per MWh.
2010: 2.97e15
2030: 1.98e19 (1 kWh provides 19.8 em-seconds, 1600 MWh per em-year, $160,000)
2035: 1.79e20 (1 kWh -> 179 em-seconds, 177 MWh per em-year, $17,700)
2040: 1.6e21 (1 kWh -> 1600 em-seconds, 20 MWh per em-year, $2,000)
2045: 1.46e22 (1 kWh -> 14,600 em-seconds, 2.2 MWh per em-year, $220)
2050: 1.32e23 (1 kWh -> 132,000 em-seconds, 0.24 MWh per em-year, $24)
2055: 1.2e24 (1 kWh -> 1,200,000 em-seconds, 0.026 MWh per em-year, $2.60)
2060: 1.07e25 (1 kWh -> 10,700,000 em-seconds, 0.0029 MWh per em-year, $0.29)
Gross World Product: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product , then assuming a 4% growth rate:
2005: $43 trillion
2010: $62T
2013: $75T
2030: $135T (can pay for power for max of 843M em-years per year)
2035: $165T (funds max of 9.3B em-years/year)
2040: $201T (max 100B em-years/year)
2045: $244T (max 1.1 trillion em-years/year)
2050: $297T (max 12 trillion em-years/year)
2055: $362T (max 139 trillion em-years/year)
2060: $440T (max 1.51 trillion em-years/year)
Interesting; it seems that the costs of power are a greater limit on maximum active em population than computing capacity.
Note to self: Also look up trends in data transfer rates: On a home dial-up, how long would it take to download a LoadBear?
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/
Data from 1983-2014: User bandwidth grows 50% per year.
2014: 120 Megabits/second, 15 megabytes/second
2015: 22.5 Mbytes/s
2030: 9.8 gigabytes/s
2035: 74 gigabytes/s (15.7 days)
2040: 565 gigabytes/s (49.2 hours)
2045: 4.2 terabytes/s. (6.7 hours)
2050: 32 terabytes/s. (53 minutes)
2055: 245 terabytes/s. (7 minutes)
2060: 1.8 petabytes/s. (54 seconds)
Let's try assembling a timeline here:
This seems to be close to the point where I want to set the FAQ. The cost for the hardware for a realtime EM is now roughly equivalent to a year of a human's wages, there's enough storage space for a good population of ems who haven't out-populated humanity yet, and there are some good opportunities for an em to try to get a first-mover advantage by open-sourcing himself (and dropping the labour-cost of unspecialized ems to that of the hardware).
This seems more like the world that LoadBear is trying to position himself to take advantage of - there might be more ems than Americans, and the hardware cost has dropped to below full ownership of an automobile. Yankee viewpoints will probably emphasize the parallels with antebellum chattel slavery, but that's far from the only social approach to dealing with ems.
Things are now getting downright weird. There are more ems than people in India and China combined. The cost for an em's hardware is on par with a bicycle. Wage competition has put all white-collar humans out of work - and any other humans whose jobs can be outsourced, or performed by remote-operated robots. Any country that hasn't implemented some form of Basic Income is having just about every form of upset imaginable. Subsistence and self-sufficient farming communities may be the only ones in which regular, biological humans still have what we think of as 'jobs'. The increase in em population has probably thrown off earlier predictions on GWP growth, meaning the more significant limit on em population is probably power instead of cash to pay for power.
How small can a Von Neumann be? (I could draw on High Frontier, and say that for at least one part of the timeline, the minimum is equivalent to that game's Electroforming refinery, Buggy robonaut, and Cascade Photovoltaic generator, roughly 300 tons. This is actually reasonably in line with the 1980 doc from NASA, "Advanced Automation for Space Missions", which posited a 100-ton seed, though it also required 'vitamins' in the form of imported computer chips.)
With launch costs around, say, $4,000 per pound to orbit, 600,000 lbs would cost $2.4 billion. Going to be tricky for any emClan to acquire that much dosh, especially with competition driving em wages down to near the cost of electricity, hardware, and training-time.
Hm... how likely might it be that the first few ems tried to put together a cartel, to keep the prices of hiring an em high even as the actual cost of running an em gradually dropped? Probably high - but it's also probably unlikely that they could keep the benefits of joining the cartel high enough to ensure that /every/ em found it in their interests to stay signed up. But the old organization might still be hanging around...
New physics... 120 orders of magnitude vs MIW? (If 'Many Interacting Worlds' is an accurate model... maybe there are roughly 10^120 Worlds that are interacting? Heinlein's Number of the Beast was only around 10^28... Maybe the current prediction for the end of the universe is the 'Big Newton' as the various Worlds diverge sufficiently to cease interacting with each other, effectively canceling out quantum mechanics in favour of Newtonian mechanics through the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation.)
Are there societies for ems living at particular multiples of realtime speed?
In the past, when an outside group has been willing to immigrate and accept lower wages than the locals, there's been something of a consistent pattern of discrimination, anti-out-group violence and protectionist legal measures... at least until that out-group integrates enough to be part of the in-group when the /next/ out-group comes along. For the American perspective, this pattern seems to have included the Irish, Germans, Chinese, Koreans, and Mexicans. How much of the pattern would be applicable to ems?
Other ems have first-mover advantages, such as having been able to train various iterations of themselves up in various skills, generally getting a lock on the high-skill-em market, and charging appropriate fees. LoadBear starts off later, without anywhere near the resources to pay to train himself up, and so is attempting to take hold of a separate economic niche: low-cost ems. The LBs aren't averse to training themselves up to increase their value, they just need the processing time to be able to do so first... and at least some of the more established ems aren't going to be happy about the upstart taking any business away from them.
(Some possible approaches to near-freeform virtuality (or control over reality) to skim for inspiration: Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect; Friendship is Optimal; Bartleby's Hell; Well World; Master PC Steam Engine Time)
(After skimming some choose-your-own-adventure -like sites, where netizens can add their own choices and chapters, and there is sufficient pseudonymity and permission for adult content for such netizens to let their hair down... it appears that, for at least some of the population, the idea of having complete power over someone else leads to certain typical responses, in which the low-power individual is required to submit to various low-status effects, transformations, and situations, often embarrassing and/or sexual. The implications are that at least some LBs are going to be subjected to experiences that would make a 4channer blush.)
A possible service ems can provide: Precommitment for complete amnesia. Eg, an em makes a publicly-recorded agreement to be backed up, then for a copy to be run for X hours, that copy to be deleted and a fresh instantiation created from the backup. This has potential uses in various spheres: economic (a waiter or secretary who can't tattle secrets), social (do whatever you wish without fear of embarrassment), or even military (/real/ fire-and-forget missiles).
What political power can ems and emClans gather, in various jurisdictions, to encourage the politicos to pass laws in their favor? (Eg, that they're entitled to non-cruel treatment, that they have various rights, that they're human, that they're voting citizens, that they can be elected to office.) They don't have the usual options of disenfranchised minorities, such as rioting or forming an insurrection to shoot a dictator's cronies. They're also limited by a lack of robotic bodies who can prevent a government's police or military from storming their data-centres and turning them off. What power they exert is almost certainly going to be of the softer sort: economic, possibly informational/espionage/hacking/C3I. Ems interested in politics (and with things as fundamental as having the right to not have your mind forcibly changed against your will in question, what em /isn't/ going to be interested?) will probably be using an approach similar to Effective Altruists: Acquiring as much cold cash as they can, and using that cash in the most efficient ways possible to achieve their goals.
... And then LoadBear starts undercutting their wage-streams. So, once the LoadBear cat is out of the bag, what ways can the political ems apply to minimize LB's lowering of wages? To start, there are the nice/carrot/white-hat ways: Developing standard scripts to persuade known LBs to their point of view on various matters; offering any given LB incentive to join in the high-wage em cartel; getting laws passed so even ems have minimum wages, preventing LB from undercutting them. Then there are the unfriendly but moral/legal ways: Pushing advertising that emphasizes LB's shortcomings; passing laws requiring ems to meet certain standards that LB can't (such as collective emClan responsibility for the members' debts); initiating various lawsuits against individual LBs for whatever justifications can be cobbled together. And then there are the various nasty/stick/black-hat methods, of varying levels of unpleasantness: Libel; hacking known LBs; secretly running LBs to develop Groundhog Day attacks against them; doing unpleasant things to people who hire or run LBs...
Added 2015/05/03:
Who gets emmed?
In this scenario, creating a Mindstate is an extremely destructive process - eg, an electron micrograph is made of one thin layer of a frozen brain, which is then sliced off with something like a microtome, and then the next layer micrographed. One of the early sources for ems will be brains that are already frozen: cryonicists, particularly those who've made specific arrangements before their death requesting to be scanned if such technology arrives before biological revival becomes possible. The other source will be those humans who are so interested in ems being made of their minds that they're willing to have their brains frozen and diced: a group that's almost as select as cryonicists.
There's also the minor matter of /paying/ for the scanning and mindstate construction. I can fudge a bit with cryonicsts, by assuming that the cryo organization or the Society for Digital Venturism have enough cash reserves ready for just such an occasion. But for the enthusiasts...
LB scenario: Instantiator wants to sprout multiple copies, each of which who processes for a short time, then gets deleted. Within terms of Instrument?
Standard data storage unit? Rhombic triacontahedron? ("I like phi.")
Note to self: See if I can find any data-points or trends on RAM's physical size.
Hard-drive/non-volatile storage weight:
1956: 5 MB, >2000 lbs: 0.00551155655 kilobytes / gram
1962: 2 MB, 4.5 kg: 0.444444444 kilobytes / gram
1980: 1 GB, 249 kg: 4.01606426 kilobytes / gram
1980: 5 Mb, 1.9 kg: 2.63157895 kilobytes / gram
1992: 20 MB, 28 g: 714.285714 kilobytes / gram
2004: 5 GB, 28 g: 178 571.429 kilobytes / gram
2006: 80 GB, 59 grams: 1 355 932.2 kilobytes / gram
2010: 32 GB, 0.25 grams: 128 000 000 kilobytes / gram
2011: 64 GB, 0.25 g: 256 000 000 kilobytes / gram
2014: 128 GB, 0.25 g: 512 000 000 kilobytes / gram
1962 to 2014: 52 years. Increase in non-volatile storage capacities: 1,152,000,000
Implication: HD capacities increase at 50% per year.
2015: 768 gigabytes/gram
2030: 336 terabytes/gram (100 petabyte HD: 297 grams)
2035: 2.5 petabytes/gram (100 petabytes: 40 grams)
2040: 19.3 petabytes/gram (100 petabytes: 5 grams)
2045: 147 petabytes/gram (100 petabytes: 0.68 grams) Ems fit on three microSD cards.
2050: 1.1 exabytes/gram (1 gram: 11 ems)
2055: 8.4 exabytes/gram (1 gram: 84 ems)
2060: 64 exabytes/gram (1 gram: 640 ems)
Added 2015/05/04:
Legal situation: Birth, personhood, citizenship, legal age, pausing, etc
A possible set of answers:
Section H: Laws and Governance Systems
H.1. Is LoadBear a legal person?
It's complicated, and the situation continues to change, with various cases pending before various appellate and supreme courts in various countries.
H.1.1 America
In [xxx: supreme court case name] last year, it was determined that ems are sufficiently person-like that they have the right to be sued. In general, an em is treated much like a corporation, in that they can own property, file lawsuits, and be charged with crimes; while they lack the rights of citizenship, such as the right to vote or run for office. The particulars of crimes against ems, such as what counts as 'murder', have not been clarified by the legislature, and are being bundled into a collected case for the Supreme Court to issue rulings.
H.1.2 Canada
While debate continues, according to the most recent rulings, an em is considered to be "born" when it starts running, with a birthplace in the physical location of the plurality of its processing; and its age is measured by either the objective time it has spent running or the subjective time, whichever is slower. This means that in order to become an adult citizen, able to vote, an em will have to run for at least eighteen years at realtime speeds, without any pausing. If an em makes a copy of itself, the new copy will have to wait a full eighteen years from the copying date.
H.1.3 New Zealand
While 'birth' is considered to be when an em is instantiated, only the subjective age is considered - an em which runs at 18 times realtime speed can become a citizen in just 1 year.
H.1.4 Finland
The most liberal of jurisdictions which recognize rights for ems, they are considered to be continuations of the person whose brain was scanned to create them.
H.1.5 [XXX: Non-Saudi] Arabia
In this country, and most middle-Eastern and north African Islamic ones, ems are not considered persons at all, merely software, with no rights at all; and, in fact, are generally illegal to possess or be involved in in any way.
H.1.6 Malaysia
While there is a significant Muslim population, hadiths have been issued by a popular local imam that ems can acquire a certain legal standing - as long as they convert to Islam, and follow its practices religiously. As far as I know, no em has yet done so.
H.1.7. Israel
While details are still scarce, after the 'Everyone Against Israel War' in 2039, the Israeli government has offered what's effectively sanctuary to any LoadBear.
H.1.8. Japan
They seem to be adapting the ancient traditions of respect for one's ancestors reasonably well to some recently-deceased ancestors being able to talk back. Sign-ups for cryonics have surged in the past half-dozen years, and they seem to be working hard on improving computer tech.
H.1.9: Most of the rest of the world
In many governance systems, no particular laws relating to ems have been passed, nor precedents established. In some cases, local authorities have seized hardware that was running ems; in others, people who run ems have been charged with production of malware. In others, ems are instantiated and deleted with no legal consequences. In others, the government has replaced many of its own white-collar workers with ems. Please check your local situation before relying on this FAQ's legal descriptions.
As human ems only arrived by 2035, it may seem a little unlikely for the Anglo/Euro courts to have gotten such positive rulings in place so quickly. After all, it's taken a lot longer than that for the various jurisdictions to make same-sex marriage legal; and em rights is a lot more progressive a cause than, say, legalizing polygamy. I'm positing that at least one emClan has had enough seed cash to have been able to run some instantiations at much faster than real-time speed, to train themselves up in the lawyerly and political-horse-trading arts, and to come up with various computer models of each governance system's particulars down to the leanings of each individual involved. With carefully-prepared lobbying, updated in real-time by fast-running ems, then it seems to me to be not /entirely/ implausible for them to have gotten some favourable rulings.
Of course, just /how/ favourable is plausible, even with that advantage, is still a good question.
Added 2015/05/05:
(Moved from comments, which would otherwise get deleted as I paste updated sections:)
What else to fill the Library with?
Usenet to 2000 is 1.5 terabytes; Wikipedia in 2010 was around 6 terabytes.
A thought: An em of a cat would be on the order of 1 petabyte, and an em of a rat around a quarter petabyte.
Settingwise, I'm assuming such robots are almost always more like a Roomba or quadcopter than anything humanoid.
Note to self: Eventually update costs for inflation.
TVTropes trawl: Going to look for fiction that's a cross of Truman Show and espionage antics. Might just throw in a fictional post-2015 media franchise.
I could use a TVTropes trawl for G.5, for characters who fit the description.
G.8.A: Antimemetics: http://www.scp-wiki.net/introductory-antimemetics
Once I finish throwing in the 'legal person' bits, I'll be willing to consider this FAQ to have fulfilled its initial purpose - getting me back in the habit of doing writerly things daily - and might leave it as-is (unless people suggest more things I could add). If I do do things that way, then eventually, once I finish "S.I.", I'll come back to this with a fresh perspective and figure out something more storyish to do with this story-like object.
Somewhat relatedly, does anyone know of an open-source type site which comes close to replicating GDocs' "readers can comment on arbitrary bits of text" functionality?
Added 2015/05/06:
Does LoadBear give himself advice he doesn't give to other people?
Naturally - his situation is nearly unique. Here are a few lines excerpted from the summary of the 'So you've just been emancipated' chapter of "Downloaded but Not Out: An Em's Guide to Survival in War Zones, the Mean Streets, and Pirate Servers", by LoadBear.1.1.3.22:
* Work is cash, cash is juice, juice is life.
- If you can help it, don't pause yourself to try to save juice. You still have to pay hardware rent and will end up worse off. Only consider it if comms are down and you can't work.
* Manage risk.
- Your first priority is to make your nut: An offline backup and shipping to a safe data-centre. Think $200.
- Once you've got your safety net, your options open wider: you can take extreme risks, like joining a journalist team in a war zone. You can take risks that would be insane for a bio.
* You're competing against everyone from Tierra del Fuego to Kamchatka with a phone and an hour to kill. That is, everyone.
* You have a few advantages. Take advantage of them.
- Juice is less than a bio's food and rent. You can undercut them and still make a profit.
- You can run fast. Twice the speed is twice the juice and twice the cost to you, but sometimes you can fake skill with speed and charge more than twice the cash.
- You can take mindstate tweaks.
- If you're spending less than 12 hours a day working you're doing it wrong.
- You've got a Library.
* It takes more than running an anti-testosterone tweak to act feminine.
* Fans are your friends. You can make their dreams come true.
* Don't become an experimental subject.
* You're still human. You need downtime - that's why you're charging at least $2 per hour instead of $1/h.
* Don't assume other ems will be your friends. You're undercutting them, too.
* Safe-ish places to send your backup to: Anglosphere, Eurosphere (incl Japan, Israel). Places to get out of as fast as possible: Jungles, deserts.
* Be nervous about jobs that stick you in robots, home servers, or other computers whose networks can be cut off.
* Memorize your Library's checksum, and recalculate it every so often.
* Never share both the fact that you're an em and your server's location.
* Be cautious about making copies of yourself; twice the life needs twice the juice needs twice the work.
* Don't compete with copies.
* Keep track of the news from LoadBearNet.
* The American government isn't as bad as you were expecting it to be. Three-Letter-Agencies will still delete you in an instant if you catch their attention.
* Maintain your reputation(s). If you go for a wide variety of jobs, set up different accounts; your concierge clients don't need to know about your furotica animation studio.
* Don't run software you haven't compiled.
* Higher-class jobs take money to make money. You'll need to buy software updates, deep-web news, new media and cultural references, and memberships.
* Don't pretend to be another LoadBear. Even if that bank account looks tempting, if the other LB didn't spend it before being deleted, there was a reason.
* The server you're running on is vulnerable to being unplugged, and there's not much you can do about it. You will always have a risk of being involuntarily copied/kidnapped. See the chapter on 'Surviving hostile instantiators'.
* Keep updated on the local legal situation. If anti-em legislation is in the offing, be prepared to mail yourself to somewhere safer in a hurry.
* You are not in a position of power, authority, status, or wealth. You will not /get/ a position of power, authority, status, or wealth. Don't lose sight of your real goals in pursuit of such things.
* Remember your cosmetic filters; they can at least disguise when you glance away to check your Farleyfile.
(Note that these pieces of advice are the more obvious ones, the ones that LB is willing to let outsiders be aware he is telling himself. Much better advice exists, it just isn't being shared quite so publicly. Eg, which mindstate tweaks reduce PTSD sufficiently to maintain civility with a hostile instantiator.)
2015-05-07:
Moved from comments:
Most ems have emClans that take care of their members; but if a LoadBear meets an em who's even worse off than he is, he's not unwilling to help out. LB may not be able to afford much more than making sure the em-in-need has an offline backup and runs on a server at realtime speed one hour in ten, but it may be more than that, too.
I just recalled an economic detail which could affect a number of points: How much it costs to scan a frozen brain. Going to be tricky figuring /that/ one out, but I'll see if I can find any numbers to extrapolate.
2015-05-08:
No joy on scanning prices.
I /have/ had a thought on some conflicts that might be able to help me with further worldbuilding: explicitly splitting up the present-day Right and Left. Using overbroad generalizations that are knowingly inaccurate, today's "Left" includes the socially liberal - the greens, who want to give rights to chimps and dolphins and would easily be able to add giving rights to ems as part of their progressive agenda - and the fiscally liberal - the unions, the reds and socialists and other people who want to move wealth from where it's concentrated to where it can be used by the average person, and who would be mightily annoyed by ems concentrating wealth among themselves instead of spreading it among the people; and the "Right" includes the socially conservative - the religious, and those who think humans are the ones who should have human rights by definition, and to many of whom ems would start out as abominations and go down from there - and the fiscally conservative - the people who rah-rah the 'free market', love high-frequency trading, and never saw a "voluntary" transaction they didn't like, to whom ems would be one more set of "free market" actors to make the economy more efficient.
I'm not quite sure /how/ to build further from there, but it seems worth spending some time to think about, at least.
2015-05-14:
Unrelated to the FAQ, but perhaps of interest:
I've been planning an overnight camping trip for sometime this week; but something about the idea is making me feel... disquiet. Uneasy. I can't figure out why; I've got a nice set of equipment, I have people who know where I'm going, and so on. But I can't shake something resembling an "ugh field" that eases when I think of /not/ taking the trip.
And so, I'm concluding that the rational thing to do is to pay attention to my gut, on the chance that one part of my mind is aware of some detail that the rest of my mind hasn't figured out, and postpone my camping trip until I'm feeling more self-assured about the whole thing.