[RFC] Failed Tech - Dopple Bot

[Ace Dreamer]

META
Even though Fenspace is a techno utopian setting (or at least not dystopic) not all technology, even critically important tech, should succeed.  This is a suggestion for some that was both very important, in what it did do, and the sort of failure, that makes people think twice, or even a third time, before risking repeating it.

Dopple Bot - 18/Sep/2012
Generation One
The idea was for fendane on Earth to be able to participate in the building of Kandor.  In consequence, (crude stick-figure humanoid) robots made from mined Lunar minerals and with a brain grown from a small living fragment of Brain Coral in a salt water 'brain case' were waved-up in large numbers.  The idea was these would be teleoperated from Earth, using a standard PC and a USB 'key' with a waved matching fragment of (dead) Brain Coral.  No telecomms bandwidth would be wasted in the process.
These 'dopple bots' became very popular, and there were such things as 'pimp my bot' competitions in 'rest time'.  Strangely, some operators seemed to be able to make their d-bots respond faster than speed of light limits would allow.  Some operators worked themselves to exhaustion, and this was overlooked in the fever to build Kandor.  There were reports of disturbed sleep, waking flash-backs, and body dysmorphism issues.  Finally, one operator killed themselves with dehydration and exhaustion, and 'woke up' in their robot, on Luna.
There was an immediate response from the Kandor engineers, and they shut-down the dopple bot program.  The robots were a problem, but they were shipped to Earth, Australia, and once they left the Moon they ceased to respond to their operators.  Many of them are still in their silica wool nests, in the bonded warehouse, in Australia.  The operators got to keep their 'bot keys' as mementos.
The operator who'd transmigrated to Luna ended up in a much better body (though with the same brain), and still lives in Kandor City.  People who'd had psychological problems fully recovered after a month or so of not being operators.  Some eventually bought their d-bots from the warehouse in Australia, but none of them would work on Earth.
Generation Two
It was argued that the dopple bots had proved so useful that they were needed as part of the Kandor Project.  One researcher had a variant which allowed someone to copy their mind into a bot, which could then work 24/7, and everything was OK as long as the original and bot spent 20mins per day, linked together in a meditative state, 're-synchronising'.  The hardware of these d-bots was identical to G1 variety, except the brains were waved loaves of bread, baked with a drop of blood from the original.  This was all claimed to be thoroughly tested and safe.
The d-bots worked brilliantly, and engineers pointed-out that with a d-bot they could do nearly four times as much work, as the bots needed no rest.  Some took to dressing their bots up as human, and as near to their own appearance, as possible.  Even putting them in pressure suits.  Others made them look like weird monsters.  The majority left them unaltered, except for the standard name tag, front and back.
A few tried to run more than one d-bot at once.  This didn't work for most people,leaving them with problems like blinding headaches, but a small number could run up to seven, and one man, a Carlo Espinoza, could run up to fifty on a good day.  These people became very popular for work requiring precise coordination.  All seemed to be going well.
Problems began to appear when people skipped the odd re-sync session, for things like health reasons, social pressure, or just bad luck.  The following session was particularly intense, and some reported similar symptoms to those that had caused alarm with the G1 d-bots.  Clear advice was given not to skip re-sync sessions, and the researchers realised they had no procedure to follow for when someone stopped using a d-bot.
A set of tragic accidents brought things to a head.  Carlo Espinoza was shot, dead, by a woman who claimed he was using several of his many d-bots to have affairs with other women.  It turned out that the culprit was in fact a cousin of his, who was in fact allergy to d-bot use, and who quietly left Luna to return to Earth.  All of Carlos d-bots, except one, went very strange, and a number had to be violently destroyed.  The one said that it thought it was him, he'd had a near-death experience of looking down on his shot body, and wanted some time off to think about things.
The second accident was a man who was slowly crushed to death, without anyone being able to stop this.  His d-bot went berserk within this time, and ran around grabbing people and other bots, insisting they must help.  All the bots grabbed had some sort of attack, very shortly afterwards, and permanently shut-down, for no apparent reason.  With so many people without d-bots it was possible to do tests.  Quite a few people became deeply depressed, though this cleared-up after a few months.  Those who tried to have a new, replacement, d-bot made found they couldn't re-sync with the new bot, and the bot went not at all pleasantly insane, and had to be destroyed.  This did, however, seem to stop any problem with depression.
Reluctantly, the project team put in a recall-and-shutdown scheme for all the d-bots.  Several people fled Luna, with their d-bots, rather than loose them.  All the other d-bots were shutdown in a sealed Luna cavern, cryogenically preserved, for when the problems might be solved.
Generation Three
Officially, no further work was done on dopple-bots, except research to solve the long-term problems.  Unofficially, there were people who were sure there was a solution, somewhere in there, to the chronic Fen manpower shortage.  Dr. Asmodeus Grey, who was still a respectable inventor and scientist at the time, was rumoured to dabble in this.  Supposedly some of his d-bots went very strange, and did research which was very ethically dubious, though nothing was ever proven.  People wondered later if this work had pushed him over the edge.
By accident a researcher discovered a way for an individual to use up to fifty d-bots at a time, with no risk to their sanity.  This involves making short-lifespan d-bots, which will automatically cease after 48hrs.  No re-sync is ever attempted, though the bots can leave records and notes for their original.  The critical trick is entering a light meditative trance in which you think about your mortality, and understand that you could soon die, then copying your mind to your d-bots.
The only researcher who discovered this told Brains one evening, while drinking at a science fiction convention held in the newly domed Kandor City.  He said he'd told no one else, destroyed all his notes, and was going off to become a nun.  Brains never heard from him again.  He did wonder if Emily was somehow involved in this event.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Star Ranger4]

Monk, not nun. Monks are strictly male, nuns female.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Ace Dreamer]

Monk, not nun. Monks are strictly male, nuns female.

I know that. [grin[
This was not a typing mistake. [grin]
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

I thought transferring a mind into a backup/computer without destroying the old one was something new in Season 2... at least for biological minds... ^^

[Star Ranger4]

This was not a typing mistake. [grin]

Not?  Oho!  Cross gender Guac strikes again!
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Ace Dreamer]

I thought transferring a mind into a backup/computer without destroying the old one was something new in Season 2... at least for biological minds... ^^

Doing it in such a way that you get two independent people out of it, who are (and stay) both more or less sane...  Yes, that is something people only consistently come to grips with in Season 2.  There's been all sorts of one-off stuff from the beginning.  But, worse than just quirky, one of the two minds, almost always the non-biological one, self-destructs pretty quickly unless carefully maintained; stable 'twins' are very rare.  G1 & G2 dopple-bots use an organic matrix, and don't have a 'mental recording' anywhere else, and from a magical viewpoint are using both 'similarity' and 'contagion'.
Taking non-destructive (full) backups of minds is something that was only known to be done by the Professor's Julian Friez Machine, which contained a copy of Julian's mind, a snap-shot, while the apparently unaltered original was still walking around.  However, it appeared to take quite a while for most people to figure-out that was what had happened.
There were partial backups (of minds in human biological brains) earlier than Season 2, but they were all flawed in some way, generally disintegrating after at most a few days of running.  Some wouldn't run for more than a few hours.  Destructive backups, of course, or 'transfers', happened quite early on, in Season 0.
I'm unsure if there were any cases of "backing someone up on tape" so multiple, long-term stable, versions of them could be made, before Season 2.  The more spiritual among the Fen might refer to "spreading one soul too thin", or "transmigration of souls is OK, multiple parallel incarnations, not so much".
In the transmigration accidents for G1 and G2 d-bots, it is unclear whether the original bodies were biomodded, or had significant levels of handwavium in them (you're allowed to be very suspicious about Carlo).  Concern about this might be one reason both projects were terminated so fast.  For G1 you wouldn't want unwise people trying to get to Luna the "cheap" way, in particular if you've no idea if it would work.  For G2 the mental health issues were really worrying, particularly given how the G1 project had ended, and long-term use issues were a major concern.

On a meta level, if you think this risks breaking what you are doing with Season 2 stories, I'll withdraw this.  It was intended as part of the background I'm doing to the Kandor City Police Department, and be a partial explanation as to how a relatively small group of Fen built Kandor City in such a remarkably short period of time.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

I can see that version 1 and 2 were instable and dangerous, thats why they are not there anymore.

But as soon as someone discovers a stable and useful way to use the technology, the researcher decides to end his research, burn all notes and vanish?

(edit) Just a question, you want this as a background for the "workforce multiplier tech" you mentioned in the thread were we talked about Brain building the "battleship" ?

[Ace Dreamer]

I can see that version 1 and 2 were instable and dangerous, thats why they are not there anymore.

But as soon as someone discovers a stable and useful way to use the technology, the researcher decides to end his research, burn all notes and vanish?

If you are a moral and ethical researcher working on this sort of project, who have you got to use as an experimental subject?  Yourself.  The odds are strongly against you getting it right first time.  And, by the time you get something that is safe, are you going to be sure that the research was worth it in the first place?
You should consider yourself lucky you can walk away, with your physical health, and with some hope you might fully recover, mentally, in a few years.  It's also possible the researcher found out things, both about themselves, and the ways that this tech might be abused, that made them really unhappy.  He probably had to 'dispose of' quite a few insane versions of his own mind in the process of 'completing' the research, and still the basic problems haven't been solved.
Brains has every reason to be suspicious as to why he might find out about this, but, he has a habit of talking to some very strange people at science fiction conventions...  (This is, by the way, based on IRL conversations at cons...)

(edit) Just a question, you want this as a background for the "workforce
multiplier tech" you mentioned in the thread were we talked about Brain
building the "battleship" ?

I'd consider it to be part of that background, the other parts being Brains study of the plans for the Julian Friez Machine, and how his design of robot mind (particularly the Gibson Girls) runs multiple bodies at once; no, I'm not claiming that Brains didn't have to do his own research to figure-out what the researcher told him.
Also, something that Arthur might look into, when he talks to 'Student', the collector of the Professor's technology, after he, Arthur, is rescued from captivity by Boskone.
Part of the fictional basis of this is the "Machine Smith" Marvel character (who was 'Mr Fear' before he died and was uploaded by his robots - and was so unhappy about his flawed 'immortality' he tried to commit suicide via super hero), Will McCarthy's "Lost in Transmission", and the golems of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln_People
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

If you are a moral and ethical researcher working on this sort of project, who have you got to use as an experimental subject?  Yourself.  The odds are strongly against you getting it right first time. And, by the time you get something that is safe, are you going to be sure that the research was worth it in the first place?

You should consider yourself lucky you can walk away, with your physical health, and with some hope you might fully recover, mentally, in a few years. It's also possible the researcher found out things, both about themselves, and the ways that this tech might be abused, that made them really unhappy. He probably had to 'dispose of' quite a few insane versions of his own mind in the process of 'completing' the research, and still the basic problems haven't been solved.

Sounds reasonable... maybe you should work a bit more on the "phase 3" part of the document.

Brains has every reason to be suspicious as to why he might find out about this, but, he has a habit of talking to some very strange people at science fiction conventions.

And if I understood the story right, Brain still did not got the notes of the scientists... but he got a confirmation that something like this exists. Might be an useful but still very stressing tech if Brain can replicate the research.

(edit) Just a question, you want this as a background for the "workforce multiplier tech" you mentioned in the thread were we talked about Brain building the "battleship" ?

I'd consider it to be part of that background, the other part being Brains study of the plans for the Julian Friez Machine. And something that Arthur might look into, when he talks to 'Student', the collector of the Professor's technology, after he, Arthur, is rescued from captivity by Boskone. Part of the fictional basis of this is the "Machine Smith" Marvel character (who was 'Mr Fear' before he died and was uploaded by his robots - and was so unhappy about his flawed 'immortality' he tried to commit suicide via super hero), Will McCarthy's "Lost in Transmission", and the golems of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln_People[/quote]
"Suicide via super hero" *LOL*

[Ace Dreamer]

META
Even though Fenspace is a techno utopian setting (or at least not dystopic) not all technology, even critically important tech, should succeed.  This is a suggestion for some that was both very important, in what it did do, and the sort of failure, that makes people think twice, or even a third time, before risking repeating it.
Dopple Bot - 19/Sep/2012
Generation One
The idea was for fendane on Earth to be able to participate in the building of Kandor.  In consequence, (crude stick-figure humanoid) robots made from mined Lunar minerals and with a brain grown from a small living fragment of Brain Coral in a salt water 'brain case' were waved-up in large numbers.  The idea was these would be teleoperated from Earth, using a standard PC and a USB 'key' with a waved matching fragment of (dead) Brain Coral.  No telecomms bandwidth would be wasted in the process.
These 'dopple bots' became very popular, and there were such things as 'pimp my bot' competitions in 'rest time'.  Strangely, some operators seemed to be able to make their d-bots respond faster than speed of light limits would allow.  Some operators worked themselves to exhaustion, and this was overlooked in the fever to build Kandor.  There were reports of disturbed sleep, waking flash-backs, and body dysmorphism issues.  Finally, one operator killed themselves with dehydration and exhaustion, and 'woke up' in their robot, on Luna.
There was an immediate response from the Kandor engineers, and they shut-down the dopple bot program.  The robots were a problem, but they were shipped to Earth, Australia, and once they left the Moon they ceased to respond to their operators.  Many of them are still in their silica wool nests, in the bonded warehouse, in Australia.  The operators got to keep their 'bot keys' as mementos.
The operator who'd transmigrated to Luna ended up in a much better body (though with the same brain), and still lives in Kandor City.  People who'd had psychological problems fully recovered after a month or so of not being operators.  Some eventually bought their d-bots from the warehouse in Australia, but none of them would work on Earth.
Generation Two
It was argued that the dopple bots had proved so useful that they were needed as part of the Kandor Project.  One researcher had a variant which allowed someone to copy their mind into a bot, which could then work 24/7, and everything was OK as long as the original and bot spent 20mins per day, linked together in a meditative state, 're-synchronising'.  The hardware of these d-bots was identical to the G1 variety, except the brains were waved loaves of bread, baked with a drop of blood from the original.  This was all claimed to be thoroughly tested and safe.
The d-bots worked brilliantly, and engineers pointed-out that with a d-bot they could do nearly four times as much work, as the bots needed no rest.  Some took to dressing their bots up as human, and as near to their own appearance, as possible.  Even putting them in pressure suits.  Others made them look like weird monsters.  The majority left them unaltered, except for the standard name tag, front and back.
A few tried to run more than one d-bot at once.  This didn't work for most people,leaving them with problems like blinding headaches, but a small number could run up to seven, and one man, a Carlo Espinoza, could run up to fifty on a good day.  These people became very popular for work requiring precise coordination.  All seemed to be going well.
Problems began to appear when people skipped the odd re-sync session, for things like health reasons, social pressure, or just bad luck.  The following session was particularly intense, and some reported similar symptoms to those that had caused alarm with the G1 d-bots.  Clear advice was given not to skip re-sync sessions, and the researchers realised they had no procedure to follow for when someone stopped using a d-bot.
A set of tragic accidents brought things to a head.  Carlo Espinoza was shot, dead, by a woman who claimed he was using several of his many d-bots to have affairs with other women.  It turned out that the culprit was in fact a cousin of his, who was in fact allergic to d-bot use, and who quietly left Luna to return to Earth.  All of Carlos d-bots, except one, went very strange, and a number had to be violently destroyed.  The one said that it thought it was him, he'd had a near-death experience of looking down on his shot body, and wanted some time off to think about things.
The second accident was a man who was slowly crushed to death, without anyone being able to stop this.  His d-bot went berserk within this time, and ran around grabbing people and other bots, insisting they must help.  All the bots grabbed had some sort of attack, very shortly afterwards, and permanently shut-down, for no apparent reason.  With so many people without d-bots it was possible to do tests.  Quite a few people became deeply depressed, though this cleared-up after a few months.  Those who tried to have a new, replacement, d-bot made found they couldn't re-sync with the new bot, and the bot went not at all pleasantly insane, and had to be destroyed.  This did, however, seem to stop any problem with depression.
Reluctantly, the project team put in a recall-and-shutdown scheme for all the d-bots.  Several people fled Luna, with their d-bots, rather than loose them.  All the other d-bots were shutdown in a sealed Luna cavern, cryogenically preserved, for when the problems might be solved.
Generation Three
Officially, no further work was done on dopple-bots, except research to solve the long-term problems.  Unofficially, there were people who were sure there was a solution, somewhere in there, to the chronic Fen manpower shortage.  Dr. Asmodeus Grey, who was still a respectable inventor and scientist at the time, was rumoured to dabble in this.  Supposedly some of his d-bots went very strange, and did research which was very ethically dubious, though nothing was ever proven.  People wondered later if this work had pushed him over the edge.
By accident a researcher discovered a way for an individual to use up to fifty d-bots at a time, with no risk to their sanity.  This involves making short-lifespan d-bots, which will automatically cease after 48hrs.  No re-sync is ever attempted, though the bots can leave records and notes for their original.  The critical trick is entering a light meditative trance in which you think about your mortality, and understand that you could soon die, then copying your mind to your d-bots.
The only researcher who discovered this told Brains one evening, while drinking at a science fiction convention held in the newly domed Kandor City.  He said he'd told no one else, destroyed all his notes, and was going off to become a nun.  Brains never heard from him again.  He did wonder if Emily was somehow involved in this event.
Why did the researcher decide to end his research, burn all notes and vanish?
If you are a moral and ethical researcher working on this sort of project, who have you got to use as an experimental subject?  Yourself.  The odds are strongly against you getting it right first time.  And, by the time you get something that is safe, are you going to be sure that the research was worth it in the first place?
You should consider yourself lucky you can walk away, with your physical health, and with some hope you might fully recover, mentally, in a few years.  It's also possible the researcher found out things, both about themselves, and the ways that this tech might be abused, that made them really unhappy.  He probably had to 'dispose of' quite a few insane versions of his own mind in the process of 'completing' the research, and still the basic problems haven't been solved.  Spiritual and self-image problems driving someone to go off, change sex, and enter a contemplative religious order...  There are worse fates.
Brains has every reason to be suspicious as to why he might find out about this, but, he has a habit of talking to some very strange people at science fiction conventions...  Brains is almost completely certain that the man who talked to him wasn't Dr. Asmodeius Grey.  And, he doesn't think he was talking to a dopple bot.  Note that the man didn't give Brains anything but a description of a process, but, knowing something is possible is often the critical thing in research.

META: Mind Copying
Copying minds in such a way that you get two independent people out of it, who are (and stay) both more or less sane...  That is something people only consistently came to grips with in Season 2.  There's been all sorts of one-off stuff from the beginning.  But, worse than just quirky, one of the two minds, almost always the non-biological one, self-destructs pretty quickly unless carefully maintained; stable 'twins' are very rare.  It can be noted that G1 & G2 dopple-bots use an organic matrix, and don't have a 'mental recording' anywhere else, and from a magical viewpoint are using both 'similarity' and 'contagion'.
Taking non-destructive (full) backups of minds is something that was only known to be done by the Professor's "Julian Friez Machine", which contained a copy of Julian's mind, a snap-shot, while the apparently unaltered original was still walking around.  However, it appeared to take quite a while for most people to figure-out that was what had happened.
There were partial backups (of minds in human biological brains) earlier than Season 2, but they were all flawed in some way, generally disintegrating after at most a few days of running.  Some wouldn't run for more than a few hours.  Destructive backups, of course, or 'transfers', happened quite early on, in Season 0.
It's uncertain if there were any cases of "backing someone up on tape" so multiple, long-term stable, versions of them could be made, before Season 2.  The more spiritual among the Fen might refer to "spreading one soul too thin", or "transmigration of souls is OK, multiple parallel incarnations, not so much".
In the transmigration accidents for G1 and G2 d-bots, it's unclear whether the original bodies were biomodded, or had significant levels of handwavium in them (you're allowed to be very suspicious about Carlo).  Concern about this might be one reason both projects were terminated so fast.  For G1 you wouldn't want unwise people trying to get to Luna the "cheap" way, in particular if you've no idea if it would work.  For G2 the mental health issues were really worrying, particularly given how the G1 project had ended, and long-term use issues were a major concern.
Note: Part of the fictional basis of this is the "Machine Smith" Marvel character (who was 'Mr Fear' before he died and was uploaded by his robots - and was so unhappy about his flawed 'immortality' he tried to commit suicide via super hero), Will McCarthy's "Lost in Transmission", and the golems of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln_People .
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Dartz]

I'd disagree...

On the grounds that it's rare enough in 2015 that even the technology to make a partial copy is considered a very big deal , the technology is somewhat limited by lack of proper storage for that sort/amount of data, (among other things) and it's something another faction are specifically working on to achieve in Season 3.

It's a big, world changing can of worms to have it even close to readily available.

EDIT: I can't recall where or when, but somebody mentioned they wanted to put a hold on intentional, reliable mind-uploading technology, because it might interfere with a story they're working on.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

EDIT: I can't recall where or when, but somebody mentioned they wanted to put a hold on intentional, reliable mind-uploading technology, because it might interfere with a story they're working on.

That was me.

Quirky, unreliable, loaded-with-quirks mind-uploading? Be my guest. Safe, reliable, dependable mind-uploading? Please wait until the end of Season 2...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Ace Dreamer]

I'd disagree...

On the grounds that it's rare enough in 2015 that even the technology to make a partial copy is considered a very big deal , the technology is somewhat limited by lack of proper storage for that sort/amount of data, (among other things) and it's something another faction are specifically working on to achieve in Season 3.

It's a big, world changing can of worms to have it even close to readily available.

Yes, it is rare, but it gets done.  I'm suggesting some early bad experiences might have made a lot of people, a lot more cautious.
As for storage capacity, looked at from some points of view, an AI of human-level intelligence, and potentially experience, must by their very nature have comparable amounts of storage.  They've been around from the beginning.  They can also back their entire selves up, for safety in some cases.  Without that obviously requiring rooms full of storage racks.
How much?  I've seen estimates of the storage needed to describe a human mind which vary from a few terabytes, to a few petabyes, a range of a thousand times.  We have IRL cheap terabyte drives and cheap USB sticks in the gigabytes - even if you say handwavium improves the capacity by only a factor of a thousand, storing a mind image on a single device looks quite practical.  I think the top blu-ray disc storage I've heard of (still in the lab) was 200G - x1000 and a small stack of those could almost certainly hold a mind image.
No, it isn't readily available.  It is a hideous dangerous process - get it wrong and you may have murdered someone.  Subtle flaws that may take years to appear are something best not thought about.
Given all that, making a copy of a mind is one thing.  Having a handwavium device that you don't understand that can make that copy 'run' in computer hardware, or build a working inorganic brain from it, or even a new biological brain, is another thing.  Being able to take a recorded image of a mind, extract memories to view, understand logic and motivation, construct a new mind from bits from several sources...  Editing existing minds... That is a massive area of new technology.
On a meta level, we don't want people to be able to clone minds too easily, as it wrecks a whole set of story possibilities.  Moving minds from one place to another is one thing, messing with them...  Having a 'mind amplifier', that lets you run several bodies at once - AIs have been doing that with remotes from quite early on.  A handwavium trick that allows biological minds to do something similar, in a limited way, which doesn't actually involve any (usable) copies of minds that people can mess with - that doesn't seem too unreasonable.  Even an unstable, truncated, mind, needing regular re-synchronisation can be quite useful.
Season 3, I could see human bodies being grown from DNA samples, and then having compatible minds (that fit their genetic possibilities) installed in them.  That might be one way for cyborgs to 'go back' to being purely flesh beings - it unlikely to be an easy, or even pleasant, process, but it looks as though it should be workable.  The meta question is, would that fit the stories people want to tell in Fenspace?

EDIT: I can't recall where or when, but somebody mentioned they wanted
to put a hold on intentional, reliable mind-uploading technology,
because it might interfere with a story they're working on.

Rob Kelk:
http://drunkardswalkforum...the-Julian-Friez-Machine
requested not too much digging into the JFM.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

Maybe the idea could still work if it focus on the remote-control aspect instead of memories and personality.

A remote presence system, enhanced with learning software to be able to imitate the reflexes and sometimes even actions of the person that controls them to delay the 'processing/signal delay'. Which leads to quite a few problems when some of the robots start to imitate more and more behavior, speech pattern and similar things. No full mind copy necessary, but the resulting behavior could be similar.

[Ace Dreamer]

META
Even though Fenspace is a techno utopian setting (or at least not dystopic) not all technology, even critically important tech, should succeed.  This is a suggestion for some that was both very important, in what it did do, and the sort of failure, that makes people think twice, or even a third time, before risking repeating it.
Dopple Bot - 20/Sep/2012
Generation One
The idea was for fendane on Earth to be able to participate in the building of Kandor.  In consequence, (crude stick-figure humanoid) robots made from mined Lunar minerals and with a brain grown from a small living fragment of Brain Coral in a salt water 'brain case' were waved-up in large numbers.  The idea was these would be teleoperated from Earth, using a standard PC and a USB 'key' with a waved matching fragment of (dead) Brain Coral.  No telecomms bandwidth would be wasted in the process.
These 'dopple bots' became very popular, and there were such things as 'pimp my bot' competitions in 'rest time'.  Strangely, some operators seemed to be able to make their d-bots respond faster than speed of light limits would allow.  Some operators worked themselves to exhaustion, and this was overlooked in the fever to build Kandor.  There were reports of disturbed sleep, waking flash-backs, and body dysmorphism issues.  Finally, one operator killed themselves with dehydration and exhaustion, and 'woke up' in their robot, on Luna.
There was an immediate response from the Kandor engineers, and they shut-down the dopple bot program.  The robots were a problem, but they were shipped to Earth, Australia, and once they left the Moon they ceased to respond to their operators.  Many of them are still in their silica wool nests, in the bonded warehouse, in Australia.  The operators got to keep their 'bot keys' as mementos.
The operator who'd transmigrated to Luna ended up in a much better body (though with the same brain), and still lives in Kandor City.  People who'd had psychological problems fully recovered after a month or so of not being operators.  Some eventually bought their d-bots from the warehouse in Australia, but none of them would work on Earth.
Note that this was supposed to be purely a telepresence system, and at no point was there any 'mind copying'.  The robot 'brain' was just supposed to learn from the operator, build up a local image of their physical reflexes and immediate reactions, so that the light-speed lag, caused by communicating between Earth and Luna, caused minimum problems.  Somehow transferring your mind to the robot, which the operator had never met or touched, wasn't even theoretically possible.
Generation Two
It was argued that the dopple bots had proved so useful that they were needed as part of the Kandor Project.  One researcher had a variant which allowed someone to copy their mind into a bot, which could then work 24/7, and everything was OK as long as the original and bot spent 20mins per day, linked together in a meditative state, 're-synchronising'.  The hardware of these d-bots was identical to the G1 variety, except the brains were waved loaves of bread, baked with a drop of blood from the original.  This was all claimed to be thoroughly tested and safe.
The d-bots worked brilliantly, and engineers pointed-out that with a d-bot they could do nearly four times as much work, as the bots needed no rest.  Some took to dressing their bots up as human, and as near to their own appearance, as possible.  Even putting them in pressure suits.  Others made them look like weird monsters.  The majority left them unaltered, except for the standard name tag, front and back.
A few tried to run more than one d-bot at once.  This didn't work for most people,leaving them with problems like blinding headaches, but a small number could run up to seven, and one man, a Carlo Espinoza, could run up to fifty on a good day.  These people became very popular for work requiring precise coordination.  All seemed to be going well.
Problems began to appear when people skipped the odd re-sync session, for things like health reasons, social pressure, or just bad luck.  The following session was particularly intense, and some reported similar symptoms to those that had caused alarm with the G1 d-bots.  Clear advice was given not to skip re-sync sessions, and the researchers realised they had no procedure to follow for when someone stopped using a d-bot.
A set of tragic accidents brought things to a head.  Carlo Espinoza was shot, dead, by a woman who claimed he was using several of his many d-bots to have affairs with other women.  It turned out that the culprit was in fact a cousin of his, who was in fact allergic to d-bot use, and who quietly left Luna to return to Earth.  All of Carlos d-bots, except one, went very strange, and a number had to be violently destroyed.  The one said that it thought it was him, he'd had a near-death experience of looking down on his shot body, and wanted some time off to think about things.
The second accident was a man who was slowly crushed to death, without anyone being able to stop this.  His d-bot went berserk within this time, and ran around grabbing people and other bots, insisting they must help.  All the bots grabbed had some sort of attack, very shortly afterwards, and permanently shut-down, for no apparent reason.  With so many people without d-bots it was possible to do tests.  Quite a few people became deeply depressed, though this cleared-up after a few months.  Those who tried to have a new, replacement, d-bot made found they couldn't re-sync with the new bot, and the bot went not at all pleasantly insane, and had to be destroyed.  This did, however, seem to stop any problem with depression.
Reluctantly, the project team put in a recall-and-shutdown scheme for all the d-bots.  Several people fled Luna, with their d-bots, rather than loose them.  All the other d-bots were shutdown in a sealed Luna cavern, cryogenically preserved, for when the problems might be solved.
Note that this was not supposed to 'copy' people's minds, just give them the (temporary) ability to effectively split their attention, do more things at once.  A sort of tool for the mind, as most tools assist what can be done with the body.  The re-sync was supposed to let the bot owner know what the bot had been doing – the bot was a sort of temporary memory, an extra pair of hands.  Unfortunately, some people came to identify too much with their d-bots, just as some people become very attached to tools, or their cars, and in a couple of cases this went so far that their d-bot was all that was left of someone.
Generation Three
Officially, no further work was done on dopple-bots, except research to solve the long-term problems.  Unofficially, there were people who were sure there was a solution, somewhere in there, to the chronic Fen manpower shortage.  Dr. Asmodeus Grey, who was still a respectable inventor and scientist at the time, was rumoured to dabble in this.  Supposedly some of his d-bots went very strange, and did research which was very ethically dubious, though nothing was ever proven.  People wondered later if this work had pushed him over the edge.
By accident a researcher discovered a way for an individual to use up to fifty d-bots at a time, with no risk to their sanity.  This involves making short-lifespan d-bots, which will automatically cease after 48hrs.  No re-sync is ever attempted, though the bots can leave records and notes for their original.  The critical trick is entering a light meditative trance in which you think about your mortality, and understand that you could soon die, then linking to and activating one or more new d-bots.
The only researcher who discovered this told Brains one evening, while drinking at a science fiction convention held in the newly domed Kandor City.  He said he'd told no one else, destroyed all his notes, and was going off to become a nun.  Brains never heard from him again.  He did wonder if Emily was somehow involved in this event.
Why did the researcher decide to end his research, burn all notes and vanish?
If you are a moral and ethical researcher working on this sort of project, who have you got to use as an experimental subject?  Yourself.  The odds are strongly against you getting it right first time.  And, by the time you get something that is safe, are you going to be sure that the research was worth it in the first place?
You should consider yourself lucky you can walk away, with your physical health, and with some hope you might fully recover, mentally, in a few years.  It's also possible the researcher found out things, both about themselves, and the ways that this tech might be abused, that made them really unhappy.  He probably had to 'dispose of' quite a few 'insane' d-bots in the process of 'completing' the research, and still the basic problems haven't been solved.  Spiritual and self-image problems driving someone to go off, change sex, and enter a contemplative religious order...  There are worse fates.
Brains has every reason to be suspicious as to why he might find out about this, but, he has a habit of talking to some very strange people at science fiction conventions...  Brains is almost completely certain that the man who talked to him wasn't Dr. Asmodeius Grey.  And, he doesn't think he was talking to a dopple bot.  It's worth noting that the man didn't give Brains anything but a description of a process, but, knowing something is possible is often the critical thing in research.
Note, on a meta level, that there isn't known to be any large scale trials of what G3 d-bots could do.  They could have some quirks that make people as unwilling to use them as G1 and G2.  Again, these are not copies of minds, they are just ways of doing more things than otherwise would be possible.  Arguably G3 gives less feedback as to what your d-bot has done than G2 did, and hence is less useful, even though it's claimed that it's 'far safer'.

META - Note: Part of the fictional basis of this is the "Machine Smith" Marvel character (who was 'Mr Fear' before he died and was uploaded by his robots - and was so unhappy about his flawed 'immortality' he tried to commit suicide via super hero), Will McCarthy's "Lost in Transmission", and the golems of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln_People .
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[ECSNorway]

We've gotten this far without someone suggesting having Uzumaki Naruto test it?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Ace Dreamer]

I didn't bother to list the quirks...

Finding all your G3 d-bots in orange jumpsuits is the obvious one. Then, there is the Rei effect... I'm sure people can think of less immediately obvious ones, like d-bots that just go 'pop' if they receive a sharp impact... [grin]
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[robkelk]

Then, there is the Rei effect...

Well, that would take some of the pressure off of A.C. Peters...

What? "Wrong Rei?"

Never mind...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012