in the shell

[Elmo]

ok so this is a strange one with a bit of backstory so bear with me.

I was proofreading/editing a cyberpunk short story a friend of mine was writing for a competition and it leant on a concept that we came up with together about the interaction between external information and an electronically augmented mind (cyberbrain/e-brain). We refered to this as 'chinese whispering'(like the game) and it goes a little something like this; everyone's sensory perception of the same physical stimulas is different, sometimes our minds even fill in the gaps in our perception. we see not what we see; but what we think we see.

(yes i know, but read that last sentence again a few times and it'll make more sense, promise )

I look in the mirror and having a healthy self image I see a good-looking young man, (//ego reaching critical levels//) muscular farm-boy body, flowing surfer-boy hair(//EVACUATE EGO SHE'S GONNA' BLOW!!//) what I'm wearing looks equally good. When my attractive young underwear-model girlfriend (all lies) looks at me however, she sees that my teeth are yellow, my hair's a mess and my shoes don't match.(also lies)

"a mirror does not reveal the truth. instead it is a tool for concealing it" - confucious

information has no form of it's own so information entering a mind is as water being poured into a glass, it is manipulated by the form of the vessel.

This came up in the story in the form of a electronic virus that when passed from mind to mind would be changed by that mind (like a rumour in a game of chinese whispers) and thus our protaganist would have to find the first incarnation of the virus to form an antidote program, save the world and so on...

this begs the question that i would like to ask you.

Would an e-brain inhabited by a human mind 'read' a file of information without changing it in the same way a computer/pure AI would or would it 'interpret' the information according to it's own form?
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[Elmo]

personally I currently stand on the side of a cyberbrain taking information word-for-word as from a mechanistic view of the brain surely the change of information is a function to fill in the gaps in imperfect information of sensory perseption and thought(unlike a 'perfect' file). acting in much the same way as some debugging software that fills in the gaps between flawed code making it make more sense. As information coming through artificial means would be complete and in no need of such interpretation.
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[base of the pillar]

Yes Elmo, but don't you think that the fact that the cyberbrain is based of a human brain could cause it to do the same thing a human brain does with stimulus and alter it slightly.
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"And if we spirits have offended think but this and all is mended. That you have but slumbered heree while these visions did appear."--A Midsummer Night's Dream

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

[Gillsing]

If the cyberbrain has an internal memory storage it could most likely save files perfectly, but any file that is saved after being processed by the human mind would most likely be distorted to some degree. I know that when I remember stuff I certainly don't put as much emphasis on some things compared to other people. But in order for the virus to remain a virus, it'd have to be able to survive the distortion, and that must be difficult without the cooperation of the human mind, which isn't supposed to know about the virus. Perhaps the virus would have to rely on some basic subconscious aspects of the human mind, something that is reliably similar from human to human?
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Recommended cyberpunk:

[Spica]

The way that I understand cyber brain viruses is that they affect the cyber part of the cyber brain and that cyber part then affects the organic part, thereby altering behavior and though processes. If this is true, then the virus would be able to copy perfectly in the artifical part of the cyber brain and then infect other cyber brains.

Your friend does have it right that perception is a constructive process. We take in raw sensory data and our brain tries to make sense of it, such as by filling in our our eye's blind spot. This is why optic illusions work.
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For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
-Hamlet

[Snowman]

This episode of SAC gig 1 was one of the best, real dark cyberpunk themes:
Advances in science and tecnology dont solve socioeconomic problems they just replace them.

Often I think SAC views humanity and progress with a crude irony. Although the tank voices and Majors dress are stifiling I think this remains one of the cleaversit tv productions

[cybric2686]

But doesn't cyberization make those socioeconomic inequalities more bearable to the masses that are affected by them?

[Jeni Nielsen]

[Epiphany]

[geckochan]

I'm going to go back to the original topic, to which my basic response was "can humans ever stop being subjective, really?"

[Epiphany]

[Aoi]

"Would an e-brain inhabited by a human mind 'read' a file of information without changing it in the same way a computer/pure AI would or would it 'interpret' the information according to it's own form?"

One wonders whether an "e-brain" could even emulate the human mind in the first place. The mass of cells that make up our brains are so variable, dynamic, and incomprehensible that to be programmed into such a linear thing as a computer might be infeasible. Assuming it's possible though, you have to next ask what aspects of the human mind can be changed without changing the fact that it's a human mind. If you could consciously control every single part of your body, or consciously prune your own memories and thoughts during sleep, would you still be human, or would that destroy some sub-processes of your mind that make up your consciousness in the first place?

Suppose we take a look at GitS. Think about Motoko and Saito and their sniper battle. Instead of their unconscious simplifying out details in their vision and muscle feedback, both of them either had programs to direct their actions accurately or they could consciously analyze exactly what they saw and felt, down to every detail, proving that real stimulus information is not loss in the GitS universe. Also, Batou has specialized eyes, which probably means he has acute vision.

Then again, Togusa, when he escapes from (don't remember the group's name) in the first season, his stored memories have emotional content to them and this transfers over to Batou when he reviews them.

I think, given some presumptions about the flexibility of the human mind, we could say that an e-brain human could either record stimuli perfectly or normally, based on whim. When it comes to memories, they have thoughts and feelings within them, so the reader of memories will take on those perceptions as well. It all comes down to what the file contains, but the reader should be able to interpret it perfectly.

"But doesn't cyberization make those socioeconomic inequalities more bearable to the masses that are affected by them?"

... well, if they're unequal, how would they get cyberized in the first place? If you've seen 2nd GIG thoroughly, you should notice that the poor don't get good cyberization setups. The boy who was in drug transfers (Red Data) and many of the refugees on Dejima that Kuze was trying to save didn't have cyberbrains or bodies because of economic status.

[Saito]

The key element to this, at least in the sense of GitS, is the Ghost itself. Without a ghost it is supposed that a machine is simply that, a machine, capable of only machine processing and storage of information. The Ghost that is inherited and carried from the human original is the key to interpretive and perceptual analysis of the information which the cyberbrain is receiving, essentially they are still a person sat at a computer, except the relationship is vastly more intimate and transparent.

The whole purpose of cyberbrain technology in my mind is to fuse what humans are good at - lateral thinking, interpretation, improvisation and perception - with the best elements of what computers do best - facsimile, calculation, storage, retrieval display of information.

Think of it like this - people are forever forgetting stuff, I do all the time. I forget where I put my keys, forget about appointments. I'm forever setting reminders to help me stop doing that and I use computers to do that. Also people struggle to facsimile information efficiently. How many times do you suppose you would have to dead a 400-page book before you could reproduce it word for word without and mistakes? A computer need only read and facsimile the information once. Thirdly, in a tie critical moment how many times have you reached for a calculator to work out something? I do it daily at work and I'm screwed if I can't put my hand on one when I have a person on the phone. Just three potted examples of how humans and computers co-existing at a conscious level advantage the human mind.

In short, my synopsis is that human cyberisation as seen in GitS does not replace the human mind, it merely augments it and gives it a more robust mechanism to contain it, allow it's transfer, etc.

That is until you look at the Tachikoma... did they make their own ghosts? Or have they become so sophisticated in gathering and analyzing information that they become self aware? If my postulation here is true, then computers as they exist are not capable of human-like though. Maybe Shirow intimates that this is only the first step towards making a truly sentient artificial being? But are they artificial then, or just another race? All mysteries for the mind to dwell on I feel...
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