scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/4lcwqw.md

[HF][BST] The Amulet of Kerrar

• Author: u/cthulhuraejepsen Fruit flies like a banana*

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4lcwqw/hfbst_the_amulet_of_kerrar/

• Score: 2

• Created: 2016-05-27T21:24:41

Post:

• There exists an amulet with seven gems upon it.
• When first put on, the topmost gem becomes lit and active.
• When an unlit gem is pressed, a copy of the wearer's mind and body is stored in the current active gem. Then the unlit gem becomes lit and becomes the new active gem.
• When a lit gem is pressed, a copy of the wearer's mind and body is stored in the current active gem. Then the pressed gem becomes the active gem. Then the wearer's current mind and body are replaced with the copy from the active gem's storage.
• Copies in storage are static. They are not conscious or aware of the world around them. They do not dream. They do not share thoughts or feelings with other copies or with the active body.
• Copies do not include physical items worn or held.
• A gem can only hold one copy at a time. Newer copies replace older copies.
• Removing the amulet destoys all copies and makes all gems unlit.

I'm looking for some help with how you use and/or abuse this amulet. It's extremely limited, since all versions of you still need to sleep, eat, etc. However, it does seem like there are some great uses for it, like packing seven different types of knowledge into a single body so that your (presumably cooperative) clones can lend their expertise in times of need. You can also time-shift versions around, so your construction worker self can be active during construction season and your accountant self can be active during tax season. What else can you (or would you) do with it?

(I hope I have published enough to be exempt from the "no brainstorming" rule.)

Comments:

u/Chronophilia [+5] sci-fi ≠ futurology (2 hours later)

Useful if there's other mind-altering magic you need to be protected from. Create throwaway instances of yourself to absorb memetic weapons or mind-wipes, then remove the amulet to destroy them.

Protect yourself against boredom, as done in The Cookie Monster (posted a few days ago on this subreddit). Keep that first-day enthusiasm going all week!

Since other people can see the amulet and watch you use it, you can commit to mind-wipe yourself as part of a negotiation. For example, a freelance spy offers to sell you blackmail material on your enemies, but you're not sure if the information will be worth the price he's asking. Put the amulet on and press SAVE STATE 1, he tells you the secret. If you think the secret is worth remembering, pay him the price he asked for. If not, press LOAD STATE 1 and remove the amulet so he knows you've forgotten it.

Otherwise, it doesn't seem that powerful. It doesn't affect your body or your carried items, and the amulet needs to be on your person at all times to work, so it's mostly useful as a sort of self-mindwipe. In most situations, forgetting some things will be strictly worse than just remembering everything. I think its main application is that you can forget something in a way that's provable and visible to other people.

u/TheAtomicOption [+2] (5 days later)

Seems like you can only commit to mind wipe yourself IFF you're willing to erase all you other saved selves at the same time since removing the gauntlet seems to be the only method of deleting a save.

u/Lugnut1206 [+3] (2 hours later)

Can other people activate the gems?

If so, what happens when you die? Can other people bring you back to life?

The biggest problem I can see is the complete discontinuity of self when swapping an old copy back in... You swap your accountant back in and he has to take in the scene and understand exactly what's going on, and not immediately continue thinking about making a backup, which is presumably what he was thinking about when he made the backup... I feel like this would be disorienting at a minimum every time.

u/ulyssessword [+3] (10 hours later)

At the cost of a small amount of amnesia and a messed up circadian rhythm, you can negate most physical risks/harms (other than very quick death).

Examples:

• Rest and eat well, then make seven copies of yourself. Run flat-out for an hour, switch to copy two, run for another hour, switch to copy three, etc. When you switch to copy seven, remove the amulet, make seven new copies, and repeat.

• Do the same thing before a battle, so you don't get tired or (non-fatally) injured in the middle of a fight.

• Also, before something risky but planned, like surgery or disarming a bomb.

u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (18 hours later)

It's interesting to me that so many people are suggesting short-term uses for the amulet, rather than long-term uses like life extension. Sure, it's a form of life extension with a lot of downsides, but ...

Let's say that you were 90 years old and in failing health. A genie comes to you and says that he can make you thirty years old again, but he's also going to remove all of your memories from the past sixty years. You will have ample time to write out instructions to yourself, to set your affairs in order, to warn your friends and family that you're taking this step, etc.

That seems like a great deal to me. But it's even better than that, because at 30 you can prepare for the moment that you're 90. On top of that, you're not actually losing your self, you're being stored. Your new 30-year-old self can bring you out for visits with friends and family, or to take part in celebrations, or to see some new events.

I mean, obviously I post to see what other people think, but the difference in mindset is intriguing.

u/ulyssessword [+2] (20 hours later)

I did consider the fantasy-cryonics angle, but it doesn't seem safe enough IMO, with simply removing the amulet killing all of the copies. Also, there is the massive issue of being able to trust long-term clones to both share your values and to bring you back out again.

u/TheAtomicOption [+1] (5 days later)

It's not life extension when you can't transfer any experiences between copies. At best it's a shitty form of forward-only time travel like going into a cryogen tank.

If I were 90 and ill, I probably woundn't take the genie's deal because me at age 30 isn't me-now and me-now essentially has to choose to die to bring me-at-age-30 back to life. Fuck that.

The reason people don't feel like they die when they go to sleep every night is that memory provides continuity. If you take that away, it no longer feels like the same self.

u/creatureofthewood [+3] (21 hours later)

So basically, if any span of time since your last backup didn't meaningfully improve your mental or physical status, you can trade it in for getting that bit of life expectancy back...

Revive: Create a backup before doing anything dangerous. If you die, you can be rebooted from the last backup as long as the corpse still wears the amulet.

Loop mode: Prepare to do a repetitive task. Copy yourself. Do the task. Boot the copy. Do the task again. Boot the copy. Do the task again. You can now do any repetitive task without aging or running out of willpower. Subjectively it will feel as if you have only done the task once. No fatigue or need to sleep or anything, so you can get tremendous amounts of work done this way. You can also fast forward boring moments. Of course this requires you being comfortable with amnesia.

Phoenix: There's always a younger version of you around to "rise from the ashes" when the old version dies "die". So you're kind of an immortal amnesiac.

Break conservation laws: For example, create a fat version. You now have infinite fuel and food that you can repeatedly generate from your own body. Plus if you're ever trapped in an enclosed space you can escape by going to fat mode. And if you've got some engineers handy to take advantage of the moment of change it's a short hop skip and jump to extreme amounts of energy gained with each transformation.

Travel sized: Chop off all but your most vital organs to make an extremely lightweight version of yourself. Depending on how the amulet works you could use just your head, neck, and shoulders, if you don't necessarily need to be alive to be reboot.

Perfect Recall: You can use a backup to "memorize" things, in the short run.

Sex God: The stamina of 7 people, regarding anything physical.

Instant sobriety: If you get to drunk to walk or drive home, you make a sober version of yourself do it. I suppose also this is nice in combat and stuff.

u/gabbalis [+3] (a day later)

Copy of the wearer's mind and body eh? And when it's removed it's gone. Which means you can't copy over someone else.

...But that restriction is clearly arbitrary rather than fundamental.

Imagine for a moment, that the society in which this amulet existed also had brain transplants. You could save, swap brains, load, and have two of you. I suppose it depends, to a degree, how the amulet defines being 'taken off'. Best case scenario, maybe you can copy yourself with only some minor flaying. Worst case, it recognizes 'being worn' by whether or not it's indirectly connected to your brain, (and therefore can't be used to duplicate you after all... well you could do a brain transplant piece by piece maybe...)

Speaking of which, copies don't include items worn or held? What about items sewn into my flesh? Surely, there has to be some exploitable definition of 'body' here that can somehow be added to. And besides, even if we can't add anything to me... we can still dupe anything I already have. Spare livers, kidneys, and hearts for everyone!

This amulet also becomes exponentially more useful the more medical tech your society has. With advanced enough medical infrastructure, you can make yourself into Ben 10.. er 7. (a few extra arms for one clone... a stinger for the next...). Or with our lousy tech you could still make one of your copies an inhumanly strong steroid abuser I guess.

u/None [+2] (5 hours later)

What happens if two people are wearing the same amulet (e.g. around their wrists)?

u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (2 hours later)

Seems rather useless except for dealing with info-hazards or doing things and not remembering that you have done. As written all the jewels contain the wearer, so all you get is a chance to divide your timeline, but no extension of your capabilities. It's reversible amnesia with the opportunity cost of forgetting another segment.

u/UltraRedSpectrum [+1] (5 hours later)

It seems like it would be much more useful if it didn't delete all saved copies when it was removed.

u/Dwood15 [+1] (a day later)

If you're worried about the brainstorming rule, try the monday and Wednesday threads!

My thought would be on the whole constant access to myself when I'm at my top motivational levels, to identify when I'm working hard and save myself in that state and then keep bringimg that version of me back.

The only thing i would worry about with the amulet is, do i lose all the expertise of my copies or is there a way to merge then all into myself?

u/TheAtomicOption [+1] (5 days later)

IMO this seems pretty useless. The copies can sorta communicate by writing something and then switching but it's really inefficient and lossy. Since time is only ever passing for one copy you're not gaining parallel learning speed increases--you don't even gain the ability to work 24/7 because copies don't sleep in the gems.

As you mentioned, to a small extent you could break up short term learning tasks into domains and then switch when you need a skill, but you might as well just learn normally. If you had a bunch of clones all rested up and ready ahead of time, you could cram for a test by bringing out a clone to spend several hours learning each section of material then switch during the test. But if you're planning ahead this far, it'd be easier to just have the one 'you' learn all the things the old fashioned way--especially considering that you'll likely need to know the material anyway eventually for a test down the road.

Worse there are a lot of downsides. Any human interaction would need to be done by a 'primary' copy to remember and develop relationships properly. Spend 20 years mastering say painting, and then store painter-you in a gem? No. The problem is that it's still 20 years later and when young-copy wakes up he has lost his connection to his generation and culture while gaining no skills. This gets worse for each successive copy.

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