[Politics] Geth Go Construction Crazy

Geth Go Construction Crazy

Vesnic Veghae, Eye on the Veil Blog

If the geth have been known for one thing after their 300-year isolation, it is their insatiable need to build. From the construction of their fleet and stellar-scale superstructures to their invaluable help in rebuilding the galaxy after the war, the image of geth as haywire robots hell-bent on destruction has quickly been replaced with one of the “construction bot.”

The offer the geth collective has made to the other galactic civilizations, should, in this context, not have been a surprise. Yet one cannot help but wonder if the geth have become “construction crazy,” for early this morning the geth collective offered to create over 50 megastructures near (and often in) densely-populated systems.

"The proposals they came up with are just insane," one anonymous source said, "They propose to build gigantic topopolis' in the capital systems. One of those is big enough to offer room for over fifty trillion individuals, and they want to build ten of those things. Then there are the Matrioshka brains, Issa Filaments, Dyson constructs and the Goddess only knows what else."

The earliest concern over where construction material would come from (some feared it would come from the homeworlds themselves) was alleviated as the geth offered a list of uninhabited systems where needed material could be found. Another issue that raised brows was the aggressive timetable; according to geth planners, all fifty structures could be built in less than a thousand years.

There is a 'cost,' however, that some detractors find unpalatable. "These robots want to go in our star systems and build things that might cause our homeworlds harm, by for example destabilizing their orbits... but that's not the biggest issue,” stated one agitated salarian. "Did you look at the plans? Many of these constructions might have room for organics, but there is a lot more room reserved for geth servers. The largest one [a dual-intertwined topopolis in the vicinity of Trebia, tentatively called 'Duty' and 'Honor' will have a computer substrate below the surface that is well over 500 meters thick, and would be a home for innumerable geth programs."

There has been no official response to the offer as of publication.

It's a conspiracy! The geth just want to round us up into mass orgy camps! Everyone get to the bunkers!

Yes. Yes. Joke away and don't be alarmed at all that the things want to build megastructures (that will, as the article pointed out house servers that can hold millions of geth programs) in home systems like Trebia. Oh no, nothing alarming at all about that.

You build hotels to accommodate visitors in your cities and resorts, and conference halls for large meetings. Geth cannot utilize these to achieve consensus with other runtimes efficiently. Servers however they can. And they are not built in middle of cities where space is at a premium, but in space with resources that do not hinder rebuilding efforts.

The megastructures are not there for conquest, but peaceful co-existence.

I don't think there's much risk of the major powers allowing it.

That said, don't you think we'll have figrued out how to upload ourselves by the time it's finished? By the time it's done we won't need the same infrastructure.

A curious proposition. On Rannoch, there are terminals that are capable of uploading an organic mind into direct contact with the consensus, but they have remained unused at large. However, they require a geth assistant for the organic to filter out the data, to prevent overload of the organic user. Or so we theorize.

If you were able to digitize your consciousness, would you return to your old body or elect to have a new one? Or if a unrepairable injury happened to the body, would you be willing to discard it for life in the digital form?

Really? Wow. When you say 'unused at large', do you mean that this has actually happened? And when you say 'uploading', does an actual extraction of... 'consciousness', I guess... from the physical body take place? Or is it more a matter of these terminals interfacing with the organic mind in its natural setting, so to speak, and allowing the transmission of an analogue of sensory data between the organic mind and your consensus?


I'm... not sure I can quite get my head around the idea of 'transferring' a mind - and before anyone says it, yes, I know, the Detweiler ship, but work with me here. Obviously it's something that's entirely practical for geth, but for organics? I think it's fair to say there's still significant doubt where our consciousness even resides, whether it's a matter of brain-internal biochemistry, or intangible factors, or an interface between one or both of those and the physical form. If 'you' had your mind taken out and dropped into a different body, are you still 'you'? We know our minds, what we perceive as ourselves, are affected by our bodies, our hormones, variations between subtypes like genders, or species on a larger scale - if I were female, say, a male 'me' would certainly behave and react differently to certain situations, but a situation such as we're talking about obviously wouldn't take the subject's genitals along for the ride when it moves a mind around (unless it does, in which case, well, I can understand why those terminals you mentioned don't see much use). Is there an argument to be made that transferring an 'intact' mind, by the definitions of this discussion, would irreparably alter it?

Not that that's by definition a bad thing - our minds are 'altered' all the time, shaped by our experiences and internal reflections. And I suppose in a sense I can conceive of the notion being attractive - not going into unnecessary detail but when I meld it's for the joining itself, the fact that Ana and I become our own minds again afterwards is a given but the fact that it is temporary isn't... I'm not sure how to explain it, but let's say the notion of changing what constitutes 'me' isn't an idea I find hostile to my entire way of thinking.

But I don't know, even avoiding the obvious response (I really like my body)... I don't know. What you're talking about isn't just a new means of experiencing sensory data, it's a new mode of consciousness entirely. Certainly there are attractions to the idea (whenever the old 'what supernatural ability would you have?' discussion comes up over the kaffe table at the club, I always go with shapeshifting, because just experiencing other beings' worlds via melding is incredible, to be able to be a hanar, or a turian, or a volus, yeah). I... might give it a try, but then again I might not. Some non-asari, attracted to the idea of melding, find it's too alien an experience when they actually try it - their life to that point, their culture and sense of identity, their whole existence has been based on perceiving the physical world entirely through their own senses, to suddenly have a glimpse of something real that isn't arriving through that known channel is... difficult. That's not me, but I understand the feeling entirely - maybe, above this threshold, that would be me.

The question of existing entirely in the 'digital realm' is, I think, too theoretical for me to even try to answer - I don't know what 'living' in that realm is, and perhaps I couldn't without experiencing it. Using the best analogy I can bring to the idea, the comparison between physical experience and experience via melding - I guess it comes down to quality of life, but that may not even be a useful analogy anyway.

Order us both and shipping is free! ;)

Well, not any one... besides, a lot of my 'collection' was in the old house, and there were more important things to pack in the move, so they're now buried in rubble (if by some freak chance they got buried intact, and deep enough that the reclamation project doesn't eventually unearth them, they'll be an interesting find for some xenopaleontologist in the far far future). But if the geth can manufacture an accessory better in its category than one of [these], they've got my permission to build their space-house in my star system. :)

(That link is Safe For Work, if anyone's concerned - Suana Artisans have a very tasteful extranet site. Just don't select the 'view in use' option unless you're sure you want to.)

(...oh hey, they put the new vids I sent up in the 'customer testimonials' section, yay!)

Now that's in interesting thought. I know there is considerable effort put into virtual reality by organic engineers. But this basically means to get an artificial sense into the organic brain, not the other way around. I am not sure I would want that - no actually i am sure i would not want that. I like my body way too much for this and yes, although we meld, we still stay inside our bodies. It is more of a connection than any exiting the actual body.

As to answer the question, no i probably would not and I think even in the case of a severe damage to it... there have been cases where people felt highly alienated to artificial limbs even if they were cloned from their own material so it had to be removed again due to the psychological aspects. That means, it can be worse to have a substitute for a limb than to have none for an organic. this is of course a highly individual thing and some try to cut of healthy limbs because they want an artificial one. We seem to really be interwoven with out physical existence and it strongly depend if you are positive about your body or not.

Question to you geth:
could you consider a life restrained to a single platform?


Daia, are you fishing for an advertisement contract with that review? I think "Daiva's world of [deleted by VI]" carries them, right? We should go downtown shopping some time, maybe after the Cup? I could seriously need an expert explanation about the use of [this], [this], [this] and [that]. Especially the last one!

I'm not entirely sure how to express how quickly I'd be slamming that 'upload' button. There would, of course, be issues with verifying that it works, but digitization has some impressive benefits.

I'm interested, though, would any geth be interested in trying out the organic, hormone-driven lifestyle for a period of time?

Creators of amiable disposition towards the geth have used these terminals to interact with the consensus, but their numbers remain low. Most usual form of contact between the creators and geth involves a physical platform, followed by geth runtime inhabiting a creator's envirosuit.

Correcting previous statement; these terminals interface the organic user with the consensus. The user enters the terminal and must refrain from excess movement during the interfacing to avoid excess nerve signal noise from interfering with the process. After the connection has been established, the user's actions will be transmitted to their virtual avatar within the consensus. At present, they will not be able to move both within the consensus and in the physical world. A geth 'guide' is recommended to accompany all interfaced organics as they need to be oriented to how to work with the virtual representation and exit it without unwanted complications.

We are exploring possibilities of developing portable versions of the terminal to allow simultaneous interaction between physical and virtual worlds, but additional augmentations may be required for the users to make this work as intended.


Dr. Jordan Detweiler and other volunteers who agreed to swap their bodies with the inhabitants of the virtual world ship have demonstrated there are people who are willing to experience post-organic form of life, and the ship's technology also proved it is possible to swap conscious entities between physical organic bodies.

However I question willingness of organics to make that transition eagerly. Trends suggest even if swapping bodies at will was possible, it would take much time until it would become a norm.


I cannot speak for the consensus, but as for myself, this entity within this platform, I am interested for reasons of science.

For not being used much, the terminals have a spectacular wait-list. I don't think the Captains and Admiralty are all that keen on the concept.


If we could clone a copy body without the immunosuppression, I might choose that. But…I don't feel that attached to this one. It's strong enough, and smart enough, but it's generally unhealthy and I know we can do better.

Given access to a technology like that would probably happen would be a short, overemotional period of body hopping, the calibration involved in which would drive you nuts, followed by my settling in to something recognizably quarianform and male but ridiculously augmented. Or wait! I want to be a spaceship! (Joking-but given a million years of life, who wouldn't want to be a spaceship for part of it?)

It's amazing how fast you're developing personalities. Morning Chorus has no interest in emulating organics.

The problem there is we have no real way to gauge the transfer of consciousness. I mean, it definitely proves that you can transfer memories (which grey box technology had already sort-of proven) and possibly personality quirks (though accurately measuring that would be a science that stretches into years of research).

Regardless, without extensive genotherapay the hormonal responses, synapse paths, and even chemical balance of the brain would be entirely different. So, at that point, you have to ask, is that person really the same person? It's... A hard question, to say the least.

Likewise, if you remove the physical side of consciousness, I'm not sure you can label the virtual mind as being the same person. The physical responses of the body are intregal in the creation of what we percieve as a person. Trust me... I know this.

And this isn't even dealing with the philosophical or spiritual issues that arise when we start swapping souls around.

Granted, there are examples of such processes, like the virtual aliens and that one USNA president or something. It's just that everything we know about biology points to, at best, these being nothing more than facsimiles of the individual. The scary thing is, its going to think its the same person, since it has the same memories, but... I just dont know. Maybe the VA's have tech more advanced than ours in this regard, but if they do, we have yet to see evidence of them sharing it.

That being said, if you told me there was a way to transfer Joe's mind out to a new body, that it could fix what's wrong with him and in the end it would be the honest to goodness same Joe... I don't know. I would be tempted, beyond belief, but... The thought that it's not the same Joe, that, in some ways, I decided to play god with his consciousness... Yeah, that's unsettling.

I want my friend back, but I think there are some lines we are not prepared to cross.

There are persons who, for the sake of their mental health, dramatically alter their hormone levels (transsexuals transitioning to their preferred gender) and while there's certainly change going on, they're the same person. Our synapse paths change over time. Same person.

I suppose it's a high tech version of "Good Old Ship" problem. "She's a good old ship. We've replaced the drive core five times and the hull three". But I really do believe that by the time a thousand years have passed, we'll have overcome these issues.

Certainly the former, but if I remember right there's still some doubt as to the latter - it happened, certainly, but what exactly happened, did the process transfer a whole sapient mind, completely and without interruption of 'continuity of consciousness', or is it possible some intangible factor was omitted? (I know the 'is a postulated difference that makes no observable difference relevant?' argument, but the classic comeback to that also has weight: if you could be copied precisely, such that the copy had no reason to believe she was a copy, would it bother you to die and have her continue your life?)

Actually, turn that around. Geth routinely transfer themselves from platform to platform, uploading and downloading. Do geth have (or theorise about) a concept analagous to organic beliefs regarding souls, and if so, is it ever questioned whether transferring geth from one platform to another may bring about the kind of 'undetectable identical copy' scenario I mentioned?

...Mind you, I guess it might be fair to wonder if the soul's not bothered by such a thing after all. Nobody's ever found 'soul receptors' in our physical beings that allow this intangible essence to 'connect' to our mushy biological brains, who's to say if you tech-magically take that brain's thoughts apart and reassemble them somewhere else, the soul won't just reconnect without missing a beat? Must do some reading on this when I get the chance.

It's a date. :) (That last one's actually meant for volus, but there's this thing you can do with it where- on second thought, I'll explain in person.)

Those aren't even close to being on the scale of transferring a whole mind.

So, a few decades, not next Tuesday. :)

Okay, Capice? You need to cut that "I'm just going to repost what I just said, Lolz" crap out. If you want to have an intelligent discussion, have one. Otherwise go be a obnoxious baby somewhere else.

:l

@Proof. It's not a matter of when it will happen, but scale. I mean, you are changing every aspect of a person, minus memory patterns. We don't even have a basic understanding of what that would do scientifically, regardless of its philosophical or moral implications.

It would be like calling the invention of a internal combustion engine the same thing as the invention of the aero plane, because they rely on related technology. The scale is so off that an understanding of one doesn't automatically grant an understanding of the other.

No. I am blaming the omni-tool interface. I tried to post a message and the entire thing repeated again. >_> But that one deleted when I told it to.

Seriously? When I am trying to be an ass there will be more curse words.

Nah, you don't have any reason to apologize. If anyone was being a jerk, it was me.

I think its just... I don't know if you remember, but my best friend has some pretty heavy brain trauma, enough that... well, I sometimes wonder if he is even really in they're anymore. In short , it's a subject I have a vested interest in and... I jumped the gun.

Anyways, no hard feelings, yeah?

Nah, I get what it's like to be easily triggered. But you're obviously stressed out so I'm going to make you a casserole. You can either tell me where to deliver it or be responsible for the waste. You don't have to talk to me, and it freeezes well.