{"id":30,"date":"2014-10-24T18:35:14","date_gmt":"2014-10-24T07:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greole.com\/blog\/?p=30"},"modified":"2014-10-24T18:35:14","modified_gmt":"2014-10-24T07:35:14","slug":"writing-my-own-gestalt-sentient-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2014\/10\/24\/writing-my-own-gestalt-sentient-beings\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing my own gestalt-sentient beings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"0b26a13\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the mid-1990s I read a book with an idea that captured my imagination. In Verner Vinge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep” I read of a canine gestalt-sentient species called the Tine. A gestalt-sentient species, as portrayed in that novel, was one that had a sort of group mind or group consciousness. So an “individual” might be made up of five or six beings who shared a consciousness.<\/p>\n

What really intrigued me was that if one of these five or six died, then the dynamics of the consciousness changed: its very psychology. Likewise if a new creature entered into this group mind. So if a creature with genetic traits that made it aggressive died and a new passive creature entered the consciousness, then this would impact the over-all being’s thinking and behaviour. Also, as components of the whole could die and be replaced, such a consciousness had the potential to live on as long as it could find component creatures to subsume.<\/p>\n

In originally writing “Tempting in Shade” I had a vague concept of this in one of my characters but had decided to wait and explore it in the sequel. However feedback from my beta-readers suggested that in some cases I was providing insufficient information about certain characters. So the re-written novel is being expanded to include full disclosure of many things formerly hinted at (or even ignored).<\/p>\n

In this rewritten version of “Tempting in Shade” I am experimenting fully with this concept of gestalt-sentience, but on humans and not some alien race. I figure that humans will increasingly integrate themselves with technology, including artificial intelligences. The traditional science fiction extrapolation of this idea has been cyborgs. But how would a cyborg think if it not only has the human component but several AI components? It can either be a master-slave model with one consciousness dominating the others or it would be some sort of gestalt-sentience.<\/p>\n

Given the latter, what mechanisms would in place to facilitate it? What happens when new “self-aware” components are added or old ones are removed? Even still, what would happen if such a consciousness was split and prevented from reforming? Or if one component lost its sanity while the others remained sane?<\/p>\n

Yes, a worthy idea to elaborate upon.<\/p>\n

Greg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the mid-1990s I read a book with an idea that captured my imagination. In Verner Vinge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep” I read of a canine gestalt-sentient species called the Tine. A gestalt-sentient species, as portrayed in that novel, was one that had a sort of group mind or group consciousness. So an “individual” might be made up of five or six beings who shared a consciousness. What really<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":[],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[3,5,9,4],"series":[],"class_list":["entry","author-soulthief","post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-magic-science-and-the-arcane","category-shadytales","tag-fantasy","tag-magic-2","tag-science-fiction","tag-writing","clearfix"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/mythoughts.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greole.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}