[Ar-list] mindrunning and the Matrix

[W Isaac Carroll]

Carter Butts wrote:
> The action of The Matrix is really _netrunning_
> rather than mindrunning, and hence there's not much support for it at
> present.  (Not that it can't be added, obviously.)

That raises the question, how does netrunning relate to mindrunning? I
mentioned the lack of active hostility from the environment and the presence
of other recursors/infiltrators/[net|mind]runners <lack of terminology alert>.
Are there other salient differences?

I can see netrunning vs mindrunning as a continuum. Consider the following
scenario:

Zorbu the Exquisitor is interrogating Hambat, high-ranking devotee of the
outlaw Church of the Archangel Chuck. Zorbu makes a telepathic connection to
Hambat and begins his assault on Hambat's defenses. Hambat, knowing himself to
be outmatched in this contest, calls upon Chuck's divine aid. Through the
spiritual link to His disciple, Chuck transmits a recursive copy of Himself
into Hambat's mind. Zorbu is in for a nasty surprise as he must battle Chuck's
avatar in addition to the normal conflict with the mental landscape.

Which brings up a question I have about the Mindrunning MRS. It seems to imply
that only the recursive method creates the subjective interface that is what I
think of as mindrunning proper. Did you intend that it be possible to do the
same thing discursively? In other words, the recursive copy actually being an
extension of the full mind of the infiltrator. It seems to me that it would be
hard to make it impossible, given the concepts outlined in the MRS.

> W Isaac Carroll wrote:
> > From the movie I get the impression that an infiltrator's mind is actually
> > transferred into the Matrix when he hacks in. The infiltrator's body is
> > (mostly) inert for the duration, and if the link is broken prematurely,
> > both mind and body die. This may need to be handled differently than the
> > creation of a recursive copy.
> 
> Yes, this is IMHO a silly thing about the movie which is happily and
> intentionally absent from the MRS.  :-)  Under the Mindrunning rules,
> you don't actually "go" anywhere when you engage in mindrunning, nor can
> your mind be "trapped" per se.  (Well, recursive copies _are_ trapped in
> a certain sense, but they're a rather different sort of beast.)  This
> isn't astral travel, after all!  But, in any event, to be faithful to
> the movie you should amend this so as to allow for more mind/body
> feedback (including the "pulling the plug" rule).  These kinds of things
> are pet peeves of mine, but then I was not consulted by the movie
> makers....  ;-)

I have a different take on how this works. If you assume that minds need to
run on quantum computers, it makes a lot more sense. A quantum superposition
cannot be copied, but it can be moved around. Therefore a person hacking into
the Matrix would transfer his mind into its surplus capacity. The brain
continues to function because the mind still has one foot in the door, so to
speak.

The brain's dependency on the mind is something which would have to be taken
as an axiom. However it helps the movie make sense, and I don't think it's
that big of a stretch. For example, our computers can have their programming
changed with impunity, but the cells in our bodies can not. The separation
between layers that we design into our computers (that in fact make it
possible for us to design computers) does not entirely exist in biological
systems.

There is still quite a bit of handwaving going on, but I think it's at a level
I can live with in a story intended to be taken seriously.

The movie shows physical injury (profuse bleeding in particular) as a result
of negative manuvering outcomes in the Matrix. Perhaps it can be explained by
people biting their tongues in half, or some such. I'll have to watch those
scenes again to see if that would work.

TTFN