Tuesday 3 October 2017

Learning History III

(Alexander the Great.)

See Learning History II.

In an emulated Hellenic milieu with Macedonian hegemony, neither Aristotle nor Alexander was born. Instead, a disciple of Plato called Eumenes taught a conqueror who lived into old age and bequeathed a stable empire. Gaia's purpose was to study a possible ancient scientific-technological revolution.

Laurinda asks to see an epitome scene equivalent to:

King John at Runnymede;
Elizabeth the First knighting Francis Drake;
Einstein and Bohr in conversation.

For a book set in a remote future, Genesis contains a lot of historical references.

Christian and Laurinda stand in a Propylaea. (p. 177) When Flemic soldiers invade Athens, a young woman tries to hide on the Acropolis where no one goes anymore. (p. 180)

Laurinda quotes Alexander Tytler (ibid.)

The amulet informs Christian and Laurinda that this emulation terminates in one more year. Christian is appalled at the ending of millions of lives. Manse Everard wrongly thinks that this will happen when the Carthaginian timeline is deleted in the Time Patrol universe whereas what happens there is not that the temporal dimension of the deleted timeline extends into its equivalent of the twentieth century, then ceases to exist, but that an entire four dimensional universe, complete from its beginning until its end, recedes into the past of a second temporal dimension.

There is yet more history but now my belated lunch break is over.

7 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I understand and agree with your arguments for saying "deleted" time lines in the Time Patrol stories were not snuffed out, but merely became inaccessible for people from the Patrol's timeline. What I find more difficult is thinking the people in Gaia's emulations are REAL persons. After all, the emulations are fictional, the persons Gaia created for them were simply by one of her advanced AI programs. So, no matter how convincing the characters in an emulation were, they still strike me as fictional when you remember their origins.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Gaia, being conscious, can divide her consciousness between the emulated organisms.
Paul.

S.M. Stirling said...

Also, a person is a process, not an event -- a pattern of information interacting in certain ways. It really doesn't matter what the hardware is; a perfect imitation is the thing imitated.

Or as Jaluka, one of my favorite music groups puts it, "You are the journey. Body's just the bus."

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

An interesting idea! Gaia could divide her personality into thousands or even millions of other "characters." Without those characters knowing they were spin offs? Deliberately self induced schizophrenia and multiple personalities? That could lead to question about how SANE Gaia was!

Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

And I believe that "pattern of information interacting in certain ways" also survives the death of the "bus."

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Well, there's no inherent reason why it shouldn't, whether it currently does or not.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

But to think of incarnate rational beings like us as "patterns of information interacting in certain ways" can be one of way of arguing that it's reasonable to believe in the immortality of the soul.

Sean