Transhuman existence in Traveller

Sigtrygg

Emperor Mongoose
So thoughts can't die as long as someone remembers...

I think this nice person has done us a favour in a way. Some of those questions at the start got me thinking (and not about my immortal soul :))...

"1st of all can you tell me every single seconds detail from that time when you born ?? ( i need every seconds detail ?? that what- what you have thought and done on every single second )"
The Dune mentat or a Bene Gesserit reverend mother may well be able to do this, in the case of the reverend mother that would include the memories of past lives and memories transferred from previous reverend mothers.
A living machine would be able to this also, storing every experience.

In Traveller can a human or alien race learn to access memory in this way? Are there drugs, augmentations that can assist in this recall?

"can you tell me every single detail of your `1 cheapest Minute Or your whole hour, day, week, month, year or your whole life ??"
Imagine you land on a planet and the natives of the planet - biological or machine - have this ability so in order to prove you are sentient you have to do the same...

Does a wafer memory/personality have every single detail, or is part of the human condition our brain only stores fragments of memories and then makes up the details...

"if you are not able to tell me about this life then what proof do you have that you didn't forget your past ? and that you will not forget this present life in the future ?"
If you can't remember your past, and you can't remember your future, just how do you experience time asks the AGRA intelligence...

I know this thread will be deleted by the mods, it is spam after all, and then my thoughts will be gone...

thoughts will be gone...

but what about the entity that has the thoughts in the first place...

And the thread was deleted.

The replies gone. Do you remember what you wrote?

How much does a wafer personality know? Does a wafer personality now have a much better version of memory?

What is the wafer personality is active in different locations at the same time?
 
"1st of all can you tell me every single seconds detail from that time when you born ?? ( i need every seconds detail ?? that what- what you have thought and done on every single second )"
The Dune mentat or a Bene Gesserit reverend mother may well be able to do this, in the case of the reverend mother that would include the memories of past lives and memories transferred from previous reverend mothers.
A normal mentat could not, because they must be trained to order their thoughts, and those memories are already gone.
The Nth generation Duncan ghola was no ordinary mentat. Only the unlocking of all of the past lives revealed his decantings, IIRC.
 
A normal mentat could not, because they must be trained to order their thoughts, and those memories are already gone.
The Nth generation Duncan ghola was no ordinary mentat. Only the unlocking of all of the past lives revealed his decantings, IIRC.

I think you are confusing a Mentat and Ghola. They were separate things.
  • A normal Mentat was simply a human with special mental training and might indeed be likely to remember back to his birth through said training. But that is of course debatable for thoughts prior to the inception of training.
  • A normal Ghola was a pseudo-clone created from the necrotic flesh of a dead person and would not remember anything prior to his awakening from the axlotl tank.
The Duncan Idaho case was unique (at least in the beginning). After Duncan Idaho was killed, the Bene Tleilax made a Ghola from him and trained the Ghola as a Mentat, and in the outworking of the Ghola's life were able to discover the process of awakening the memories of the past life of the former pseudo-clone parent (or those of the pseudo-clone parent and the subsequent prior ghola-lives). In this sense the Duncan Idaho ghola was somewhat like a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother in the sense of being able to remember the lives of ancestors. But once the Bene Tleilax had unlocked the process, they did not limit its use merely to Duncan Idaho gholas . . .

Or am I misunderstanding what you were trying to say?
 
There's a mystical element to past memories.

Whereas with mentats, they're human computers with, presumably, a photographic memory.
 
I think you are confusing a Mentat and Ghola. They were separate things.
  • A normal Mentat was simply a human with special mental training and might indeed be likely to remember back to his birth through said training. But that is of course debatable for thoughts prior to the inception of training.
  • A normal Ghola was a pseudo-clone created from the necrotic flesh of a dead person and would not remember anything prior to his awakening from the axlotl tank.
The Duncan Idaho case was unique (at least in the beginning). After Duncan Idaho was killed, the Bene Tleilax made a Ghola from him and trained the Ghola as a Mentat, and in the outworking of the Ghola's life were able to discover the process of awakening the memories of the past life of the former pseudo-clone parent (or those of the pseudo-clone parent and the subsequent prior ghola-lives). In this sense the Duncan Idaho ghola was somewhat like a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother in the sense of being able to remember the lives of ancestors. But once the Bene Tleilax had unlocked the process, they did not limit its use merely to Duncan Idaho gholas . . .

Or am I misunderstanding what you were trying to say?


The Duncan Ghola was a swordmaster and a mentat. Leto's Nth gen ghola became awakened to all of his lives and remembered the Axlotl tanks.
 
The Duncan Ghola was a swordmaster and a mentat. Leto's Nth gen ghola became awakened to all of his lives and remembered the Axlotl tanks.

Yes. The original Duncan was a Ginazi Swordmaster, and thus so were the gholas with past-life memory.

And yes, I believe you are correct about Leto's Nth generation ghola and the full-memory awakening of all of the ghola past-lives.
 
Yes. The original Duncan was a Ginazi Swordmaster, and thus so were the gholas with past-life memory.

And yes, I believe you are correct about Leto's Nth generation ghola and the full-memory awakening of all of the ghola past-lives.
I was contrasting between a normal mentat and what Herbert's son would turn into the Kwisatz Haderach.
 
Going back to the original post, I cannot help myself. Thanks to the Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner bringing this up for me, I would have to also ask, how many of those memories are real and how many hacked in or placed there for you? 😁
 
Ever play the Traveller Adventure Memory Alpha?

"In Startown, the group has found a patron almost immediately. In the dingy Lone Star Bar, the crew huddled across the table from a large, well-dressed gentleman. Alter suitable introductions he said,
"This mission I have for you is a delicate and sensitive one. I pay extremely well for services, and I demand absolute confidentiality. That is why you must all undergo a memory wipe of the period of the mission."
There is a momentary pause as the group reflects on this condition of employment, and then the patron continues,
"I thank you for your services."
He slides a thick envelope across the table, abruptly stands up, and leaves the bar.

The adventure begins after you have done the mission and received payment...
 
Ever play the Traveller Adventure Memory Alpha?

"In Startown, the group has found a patron almost immediately. In the dingy Lone Star Bar, the crew huddled across the table from a large, well-dressed gentleman. Alter suitable introductions he said,
"This mission I have for you is a delicate and sensitive one. I pay extremely well for services, and I demand absolute confidentiality. That is why you must all undergo a memory wipe of the period of the mission."
There is a momentary pause as the group reflects on this condition of employment, and then the patron continues,
"I thank you for your services."
He slides a thick envelope across the table, abruptly stands up, and leaves the bar.

The adventure begins after you have done the mission and received payment...
How cool. :)
 
"1st of all can you tell me every single seconds detail from that time when you born ?? ( i need every seconds detail ?? that what- what you have thought and done on every single second )"
The Dune mentat or a Bene Gesserit reverend mother may well be able to do this, in the case of the reverend mother that would include the memories of past lives and memories transferred from previous reverend mothers.

It is possible. There was a case a long time ago of someone who could do something like that. He ended his own life because everything, every word, every phrase, every everything brought up a tidal wave of memories and associations. The only job he could do was being the "memory man" at a theater. Only 100 people have been documented with this condition in all of known medical history.

The condition is called hyperthymesia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia

Consider bad cases of PTSD. In a severe episode, people can remember and experience the full sensory experience. All that data is somehow stored in the brain.

The issue is we have no idea how accurate the memories are.

In Traveller can a human or alien race learn to access memory in this way? Are there drugs, augmentations that can assist in this recall?

I think there would have to be a years long training regimen for this to be possible. Then someone would have to use this training to set all experiences in memory so that they can be recalled according to the training techniques.

Does a wafer memory/personality have every single detail, or is part of the human condition our brain only stores fragments of memories and then makes up the details...

The wafer would have to receive data not from the brain's memory, but from the sensory nerves that send data to the brain. Like recording from the video card rather than the operating system or something. When you see something, your optic nerve sends data to your motor cortex first so the body can take immediate action if necessary, and only then sends the data to the cerebral cortex for interpretation. The conscious mind sees the interpreted data last.

How much does a wafer personality know? Does a wafer personality now have a much better version of memory?

What is the wafer personality is active in different locations at the same time?

It depends on how the memory wafer actually works.

A good TTRPG that discusses this in depth is Eclipse Phase. It's a transhuman/posthuman cyber-nano-bio-whatever-punk game in a post apocalyptic solar system. Transhumanism is normal and people change bodies like underwear. People frequently make clones of themselves and digital copies of their personalities to do different things and then the experiences are recombined for the "alpha personality". People have entire families or clans of these digital duplicates of themselves living in cloned bodies, or bodies that look like anime waifus, pets, cartoon characters, robots, posthuman freaks or whatever can be biotech engineered. It's a detailed interesting game. The PDF's are free under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.
https://robboyle.info/ then scroll down.
 
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