{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3191", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3191, "subject": "Human JPEGs", "messages": 6, "voices": 5, "first": "2002-04-23T00:39:27+00:00", "last": "2002-04-24T18:15:38+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nigel Price", "address": "nigel.a.price at virgin.net" }, "date": "2002-04-23T00:39:27+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Human JPEGs", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Dan Meliza wrote:\nBut then, there must be some way\nto vastly compress an intelligence\nif you're going to send it through\nthe optic nerves in a few seconds." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "All I wanted to do originally with this thread was point out the possibility\nof Lupine wordplay around the idea of \"two byte word\"/\"two word bites\"/\"two\nword bird\", but then I was foolish enough to put down that idle bit of\nnonsense about the 48K Spectrum.\n\nHaving failed to learn my lesson, I have to confess that I too, like Dan,\nhave been whimsically speculating to myself whether, in the Whorl, the\ncopies of personalities which are transferred between windows and people and\nwindows and night choughs might not in fact be radically compressed in some\nway, or use some sort of wonderfully super-advanced lossy algorithm which\ngives such an accurate approximation of a personality that you really don't\nmiss the bits that aren't there. In other words, Scylla didn't unload a\n\"bitmap\" of herself into Oreb, it was more a sort of \"human JPEG\".\n\nOnly speaking metaphorically of course.\n\nNigel" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-04-23T05:35:27+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Human JPEGs", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Nigel Price\" \nHaving failed to learn my lesson, I have to confess that I too, like Dan,\nhave been whimsically speculating to myself whether, in the Whorl, the\ncopies of personalities which are transferred between windows and people\nand\nwindows and night choughs might not in fact be radically compressed in\nsome\nway, or use some sort of wonderfully super-advanced lossy algorithm" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Human beings seem to understand themselves best by using the machines the\nbuild as parables of their nature. Strange fact, because our machines are\nprobably nothing at all like us: yet our imagination insists they are.\n\n hartshorn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jason Ingram", "address": "j_ingram at mac.com" }, "date": "2002-04-23T08:09:18+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Human JPEGs", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "One question that has perplexed me is why multiple copies couldn't have \nbeen 'downloaded' at the same time, and why all the 'data' seems to have \nleft mainframe whenever downloading occurs. I can think of reasons why \nthe narrative might demand this, but I'm not sure what the logic is.\n\nOne possibility: there is a 'one copy per person' limit because of a \nrough analogy to a soul (not identity, since Typhon and others seem to \nretain their personality even after uploading; and Silk remains 'in' \nSilk, presumably, even as Pig contains a downloaded Silk. The timing of \nthe last part might warrant some scrutiny, however).\n\nIf it's just data, why not have three or four or four hundred versions \nat the same time? Perhaps Typhon wouldn't have trusted himself; maybe \nit's hypothetically possible, and an innate desire to think ourselves \nunique prevented duplication; but I seem to remember hints that the data \nwere irreplacable . . . no backups possible.\n\nStrange, considering Severian--or perhaps a purposeful contrast. Serial \nversions of the new sun, single duplicates in the long sun, bilocation \nand identity sharing in the short sun.\n\nOf course, maybe I've gotten my facts wrong again.\n\nPS I hope this is now in plain text format.\n\nSepia" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "----- Original Message -----\nFrom: \"Nigel Price\" \nHaving failed to learn my lesson, I have to confess that I too, like \nDan,\nhave been whimsically speculating to myself whether, in the Whorl, the\ncopies of personalities which are transferred between windows and \npeople\nand\nwindows and night choughs might not in fact be radically compressed in\nsome\nway, or use some sort of wonderfully super-advanced lossy algorithm" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andy Robertson", "address": "andywrobertson at clara.co.uk" }, "date": "2002-04-23T06:41:26+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Human JPEGs", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message -----" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Jason Ingram\" \nTo: \nSent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 9:09 AM\nSubject: Re: (urth) Human JPEGs\nOne question that has perplexed me is why multiple copies couldn't have\nbeen 'downloaded' at the same time, and why all the 'data' seems to have\nleft mainframe whenever downloading occurs." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe it's a quantum computer? Maybe the brain is a quantum computer?\n\nQubits can be entangled and projected elsewhere, but not \"copied\" in the\nsense bitts can be.\n\n hartshorn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan Meliza", "address": "meliza at ocf.berkeley.edu" }, "date": "2002-04-23T17:26:22+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Human JPEGs", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The other possibility, I suppose, is that the gods upload (download,\nwhatever) fragments of themselves into people and animals which can later be\nrecombined into a full personality. In fact, fragments of holograms display\nthe same image as the full hologram but at a lower fidelity. So any\nintelligence can serve as a substrate for personality transfer but in\nproportion to the size of the brain. What we see in Oreb is actually the\ninterference pattern between Scylla and Oreb proper expressed in the limited\nvocabulary of a two-bite bird. As Nutria points out this is a fine metaphor\nfor human interaction, a tidy attack on modernism's atomic individual; and\nit goes a long ways toward explaining why Scylla's personality is more or\nless admirable depending on who she's occupying.\n\nnever one to capitalize after a colon,\ndan\n\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom: Nigel Price [mailto:nigel.a.price at virgin.net]\nSent: Monday, April 22, 2002 5:39 PM\nTo: urth at urth.net\nSubject: (urth) Human JPEGs\n\nHaving failed to learn my lesson, I have to confess that I too, like Dan,\nhave been whimsically speculating to myself whether, in the Whorl, the\ncopies of personalities which are transferred between windows and people and\nwindows and night choughs might not in fact be radically compressed in some\nway, or use some sort of wonderfully super-advanced lossy algorithm which\ngives such an accurate approximation of a personality that you really don't\nmiss the bits that aren't there. In other words, Scylla didn't unload a\n\"bitmap\" of herself into Oreb, it was more a sort of \"human JPEG\".\n\nOnly speaking metaphorically of course.\n\nNigel" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2002-04-24T18:15:38+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Human JPEGs", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, 23 Apr 2002, Andy Robertson wrote:\nHuman beings seem to understand themselves best by using the machines the\nbuild as parables of their nature. Strange fact, because our machines are\nprobably nothing at all like us: yet our imagination insists they are." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't know of any natural phenomena we understand as well as the things\nwe make ourselves. Naturally, we try to explain what we don't understand\nin terms of what we do.\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }