hey I’ve just read the demo and what you’ve got is great, especially the end bit that was funny.
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Interesting perspective… Interesting…
Would that knowledge were enough. It’s not like you can slap together a new epidermis out of an old housecoat and some fireflies and expect it to be as beguiling as genuine ‘Mimic’ skin.
Just like the scene where he/she calculated a person’s atomic components based on a few seconds of curious glances?
Always nice to meet a new fan of the story, bienvenue and whatnot…
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I’m sure the Thinker would have no issue finding a way to acquire the necessary components. And even if the parts are not very common, the Thinker can always track down and outsmart another Myrmidon of a different class in order to deactivate and disassemble it, therefore acquiring the parts.
“Hey buddy, can I borrow you for like… ten minutes? Over here by this bag of assorted tools? No? You’re tearing my face off? Okay buddy, good talk…”
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That sounds more like the approach the Lover would take. The Thinker wouldn’t even have to reveal itself to lure another Myrmidon into a trap.
It would have no trouble beating any other Myrmidon.
(Except maybe another Thinker, but why would it be going after another Thinker? It already has the Thinker’s abilities and isn’t the entire purpose of going after other Myrmidons to gain the abilities it doesn’t already possess?)
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What bothers me most about that particular model is how dependent and vulnerable it is to an outside source. What happens if that outside source has to go down for maintenance or something interferes with the signal? Worse, the outside source’s ability to tamper with the MC’s memories bothers me, especially if there’s a way for a third party to take control of it.
[quote=“Moreau, post:845, topic:15992, full:true”][quote=“P_Tigras, post:843, topic:15992, full:true”]
It seems to me that the Thinker MC could act as a physics, chemistry, biology, medical and/or engineering text book to another character enabling lost sciences to be rediscovered, but wouldn’t be permitted to remember any of it themselves.
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Just like the scene where he/she calculated a person’s atomic components based on a few seconds of curious glances?[/quote]
Yup. Exactly!
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Quick question, @Moreau. Does the second brain have it’s own blueprints stored in it’s memory? And if so, does the Thinker have access to these blueprints, or does the second brain not allow the Thinker access to them?
Interesting counterpoint, but remember that the Upper Brain is not sapient, it cannot scheme, connive or plan. You want to take down another Myrmidon, you have to use your own smarts. The Upper Brain can only respond to what the Lower Brain asks of it.
If your Myrmidon lacks the ability to out think its opponents without the Upper Brain, then that opponent has all the advantages.
Not to mention that it’s not really as simple as slapping after-market parts onto your PC. Your brain and body aren’t designed to interface with these technologies, and their semi-biological nature means that things like tissue rejection and rot are a factor, leaving aside the small question of how you plan to actual perforn several invasive surgeries on yourself only to realize that your brain lacks the wet-ware interface to actually use this macabre gift you’ve given yourself.
You could tell yourself that you could go back to the middle ages and assemble an AK-47 to give yourself an advantage over the natives, but you’d have to mine the appropriate ores, smelt them to the correct consistency, gather rare and expensive metals and chemicals from a variety of sources that don’t exist yet, and put them all together before somebody clubs your head in and drinks the gooey bits that run out.
Being technically able to do something and actually being able to do it are two separate things.
Interesting Quantum Entanglement communication works in such a way that there is no transmission between the two locations, ergo nothing to tap, interfere with or block the signal because there is no signal. If someone wishes to interfere with the signal, they need to physically be next to either you or the Upper Brain, and if they’re there you have bigger things to worry about.
Interesting philosophical question there already…
I am inclined to say that yes it would, but seeing as the Upper Brain is more of a subconscious feature of the Thinker’s mind, the Thinker would be unable to conceive of it, and therefore would not know how to ask questions about it.
We spend a great deal of our lives taking the way our brain works for granted, and there is nothing to suggest to the Thinker that he/she should have an abnormal brain, much less a second brain sitting in a bunker somewhere.
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[quote=Moreau][quote=“P_Tigras, post:849, topic:15992”]
What bothers me most about that particular model is how dependent and vulnerable it is to an outside source. What happens if that outside source has to go down for maintenance or something interferes with the signal? Worse, the outside source’s ability to tamper with the MC’s memories bothers me, especially if there’s a way for a third party to take control of it.
[/quote]
Interesting Quantum Entanglement communication works in such a way that there is no transmission between the two locations, ergo nothing to tap, interfere with or block the signal because there is no signal. If someone wishes to interfere with the signal, they need to physically be next to either you or the Upper Brain, and if they’re there you have bigger things to worry about.[/quote]
Ok, so interference isn’t a possibility. That doesn’t address the other issues I raised however. 
[quote=Moreau][quote=“SiROSTRiKE, post:850, topic:15992, full:true”]
Quick question, @Moreau. Does the second brain have it’s own blueprints stored in it’s memory? And if so, does the Thinker have access to these blueprints, or does the second brain not allow the Thinker access to them?
[/quote]
Interesting philosophical question there already…
I am inclined to say that yes it would, but seeing as the Upper Brain is more of a subconscious feature of the Thinker’s mind, the Thinker would be unable to conceive of it, and therefore would not know how to ask questions about it.
We spend a great deal of our lives taking the way our brain works for granted, and there is nothing to suggest to the Thinker that he/she should have an abnormal brain, much less a second brain sitting in a bunker somewhere.
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Except it’s fairly abnormal not to remember what you just said which seems to occur often when going into thinker mode. At some point the MC may start wondering why they have a memory issue that nobody else seems to have, and have their words repeated back to them until they figure out that the memory loss only occurs when they’re accessing specialized knowledge that nobody else seems to have.
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I don’t think that they would have memory loss, so much as whenever they try to think of what that were doing, it is immediately sent to them by the AlphaBrain. That way, the subject never believed themselves to have memory loss. They will never get confused about memory loss, as whatever data that need would get sent to them immediately, so if they try to remember what that said, that data would be remembered immediately.
Edit: I feel like the entire above message is just me repeating the same thing over and over again.
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Thus the Upper Brain’s isolation.
You build it, seal it, and then throw it into a very deep, very dark hole. Preferably a hole so well-protected that nobody could possibly retrieve it for tampering. Toss it into a star, or build it into a Neutron Star’s inner ecology, or just fire it straight out of the galaxy into dark space.
If you can get close enough to the Upper Brain to tamper with it, you’re probably powerful enough that there’s nothing you would need it for.
You’d make Superman look like an anemic toddler beside your Universe-distorting powers. You’d be Galactus without the silly hat.
You’d be thinking of bigger things, is my point…
Except we do it all the time. Short-term memory. We remember pertinent information for a matter of seconds, erasing it when done. We don’t consciously do it, it would be awesome if we could. Ever forget where you put your keys and not realise for a few hours? Days even? The information wasn’t needed at that point, and your brain doesn’t send you a warning email every time it’s about to delete something.
And it wouldn’t feel like forgetting for the Thinker, because as soon as they needed to ‘remember’ the information, it would be returned to them via the Upper Brain. Instantaneous recall.
Basically this.
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Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but I thought that there was a statement the thinker myrmidon made that he couldn’t remember immediately afterward. That is uncharacteristic of humans. I may have difficulty remembering what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I certainly wouldn’t forget something I said immediately after saying it, and if I wanted to hold onto that information indefinitely I could. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I was under the impression that the myrmidon didn’t have that ability regarding info fed from the higher brain.
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So, basically, to other people it would seem that, combined with the Thinker’s already vastly superior intellect, the Thinker would also have a perfect memory?
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As long as the Myrmidon is actively using the information, it is entirely accessible to him/her. The issue is that it cannot store all the information of the Upper Brain in the Lower Brain, as you’d be left a drooling imbecile at best. It’s more like a backup hard drive that is always plugged in. When you need the information, its there, and when you don’t, it’s gone.
The recall happens so instantaneously that there is no appreciable difference between the two brains, it’s as if the Upper Brain is literally plugged into the back of your head.
As long as they know what to mentally ask for, yes.
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I think you misunderstood. A copy of any Info gets sent to the AlphaBrain, then deleted from the Original Brain. Then, if the Original Brain tries to remember what the Thinker had done, the Alpha would send it the saved memories. Then, after the Original was done trying to use that memory, it would be copied and sent to the Alpha, and the Original’s memory of it would be deleted again.
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Ahh…so a myrmidon who wants to actively remember something can, it’s only the stuff considered “unimportant” by the myrmidon that gets moved to the higher brain for more permanent storage. Thus it’s very possible for the myrmidon to become a physicist and/or chemist themselves if they keep asking the right questions to the higher brain.
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Exactly! The Upper Brain and Lower Brain work in harmony, with an algorithm to stop the Lower Brain from being overwhelmed by surplus knowledge. This way you still get to be ‘you’ while still being an insufferable know-it-all.
…Narratively speaking…
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Fun! 
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This discussion is way above my brain.
@Moreau - does the brains in the story get peroxide poisoning? I think mine is shutting down now… eep
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Idk why but I always wonder about how Radjack and Flash met. Even though this is Mc x Radjack time.
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