Other Memory


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SadisticCynic
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Re: Re:

Post by SadisticCynic »

loremaster wrote:
loremaster wrote:I actually thought one plausible hypothesis was going to be a "time protein" aspect of genetics.

Gibberish? but when you look at how mutation occurs, it is quite conceivable that any sort of protein structure which manipulated time to the tiniest degree would be the basis of the whole books.

By then taking commonly known mechanisms in genetics (such as copy number or expression) you could vary strength. Translocation of the time-bending coding region into other proteins would generate many new proteins which might have new abilities. Mutation would generate similar, non/semi functional proteins a la Siona.

In much the same way as i once wanted to explain OM via oscillations in molecules, i think time-proteins might explain prescience AND om.

Imagine that one somehow quantumly unstable protein could come about, which had implications for time. If that protein could oscillate in such a way as to generate a signal, where everything occuring around it could subtly alter the frequency/variation of the many-dimensional wave it generated, then potentially another receptive protein might be able to pick up and decode that signal, which might have come from the past or the future in time. Interference would also explain how prescients were shielded from other prescients. Guildsmen might be poor recievers but good transmitters, Or it might be the converse (not transmitting therefore unable to be seen.) Someone like Leto would probably be both good at recieving AND transmitting. I dont know, its a method, not a mechanism :p .

Being biological would instantly validate any and all breeding/hereditary links too, since thats the whole basis for biology.

On the other hand my understanding of physics is cack, so signals which travel in time much like others travel in 3 might be total bollocks. But to me, any wave which DID travel in time would explain lots, especially if that wave had the ability to "collapse" any quantum uncertainties, thus "Locking" the future in place.


Feel free to pick that apart at your leisure. I'll be dissapointed if i dont provoke a reaction in at least 'Chig and Phaedrus.
Shameless self bump, but i noticed what Terimikitirmasu (sp?) said about only reading six pages and figured, if im on the seventh, i have no chance!

Sadistic - epigenetics is a fascinating field, but it never encodes anything new, it only modifies pre-existing genes. methylation can reduce expression etc but it will almost never, due to it's massive resetting during meiosis and embyrogenesis, produce novel ideas. Errors in epigenetics (for example, imprinting[/] in prada-willis/angelmann syndrome) modify expression of existing sequences, they dont have any potential to recombine.

Cellular memory does NOT have to be DNA based. There are dozens of examples of cells remembering "simple" past which can then be transmitted to decended cells. Cells have mechanisms for remembering recent bouts of oxidative stress, of damage. RNA, Proteins and hundreds of other messenger molecules can remain in/around cells for years. Cells contains lots of marks and signals showing their history.



Interesting. Yeah, about epigenetics, I simply don't like deterministic explanations of things. I'll admit to a bias, I really like quantum weirdness and it gets a lot of it from indeterminacy and some sort of strange 'wholeness' to it. And consequently, the possibility of a protein interacting in the way you described has my love solely on the basis of how cool it sounds, never mind how beautiful the maths might be.

You would love the experiment where you fire single photons at a half-silvered mirror so that the photon has a 50% chance of taking the short path to a detector (right through the mirror) or taking a longer path by bouncing off the partially silvered mirror to another proper mirror then reaching the detector. Apparently you still achieve an interference pattern. This implies the photon interferes with it's own potential temporaly. I think Roger Penrose also has some stuff on consciousness and quantum physics but I haven't got a chance to read his book yet (I have it reserved).

Anyway, a possible problem with storing the information anywhere other than DNA is that what else other than DNA is transmitted to offspring? Only the sex cells, as far as I understand.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

I love wave interferance patterns. Once you understand how phase cancellation works they make more sense (I would imagine, I learned wave physics long before partical physics), but I just get so much enjoyment out of not understanding why the wave pattern fails to show up when you monitor which path the particle takes. Good mental gymnastics!
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Re: Other Memory

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A Thing of Eternity wrote:I love wave interferance patterns. Once you understand how phase cancellation works they make more sense (I would imagine, I learned wave physics long before partical physics), but I just get so much enjoyment out of not understanding why the wave pattern fails to show up when you monitor which path the particle takes. Good mental gymnastics!
Yeah, a major headache in wave physics is simply the fact that waves are oscillations and thus use the functions used to describe them are all sine and cosine functions etc. Harder to conceptualise I find. I'm doing EM waves at the moment and we have an intensity equation for two slit diffraction that has a cosine squared function AND a sine squared function. But the arguments of those functions both themselves contain sine functions. :!: (No doubt they'll find a way to slip in an exponential or two as well).

Guess I'm gonna love the Schrodinger equation. Statistics and waves. Yay! :) *sarcasm but with a smile*
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Re: Other Memory

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

To be honest, amplitude math is a very weak spot for me, I'm better with frequency math, basic node calculations etc. The stuff I know is pretty much just the applied stuff that's actually useful for real world audio situations. But that understanding of audio waves helped me quite abit with EM waves and such. The math mostly goes over my head, but I understand the concepts and experiments well.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by SandChigger »

Have you read what the guy with the "Frank Herbert The Works" blog thinks about OM? That each individual's genetic code is some kind of key to a universal holographic memory in which the personae of ancestors are embedded. (Alia posted something similar last year over on the MySpace Dune group.) He also thinks that the personae-in-memory ARE the actual personalities, not just simulacra that run in the host's mind like little subroutines.

I've just skimmed his argument and am far from convinced at this point.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

Supernatural by any other name would smell as sour.

I don't go for that kind of stuff masquerading as science myself. Unless the author specifically decides to state/hint that that kind of thing is what they're going for (the void that binds, and other plot devices never meant to be taken as literal scientific ideas). I'd have to see some pretty convincing evidence that something like that is what FH intended, and seeing as he calls it cellular memory and such in the books, I doubt he was intending OM to be mystical.
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Re: Other Memory

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He claims (using evidence from other non-Dune books) that FH recognized the problem that DNA could not hold the type of ancestral memory portrayed because it would have to increase in size and eventually fill the interior of every cell. He uses his interpretation to explain both Alia's communication with Mohiam and Duncan's possession of memories from incarnations that he doesn't have cells for, why there aren't multiple versions of a persona in the OM of someone who received from different sources. (I didn't recall that last having come up as an issue in the books. ???)

I'm thinking about emailing the guy and seeing if he will make a PDF or other version of his book available: it's a colossal PITA reading it on Blogger.
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Re: Other Memory

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SandChigger wrote:...why there aren't multiple versions of a persona in the OM of someone who received from different sources. (I didn't recall that last having come up as an issue in the books. ???)
You mean, like if a RM had an ancester in OM and shared with someone who also had that ancestor?

Overwrite existing files?

Yes to all.

:P

Seriously though, it seems that after gaining OM the recipient must spend time sorting all that out. See Murbella.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by SandChigger »

If you think about it, Alia, Leto and Ghanima all had Jessica in their OM and while she was still alive. But it would have been two slightly different Jessicas, right, because the twins would have the earlier (younger) version through their father. None of them seem to receive any insight quasi-telepathically from the living Jessica (as when they are wondering why exactly she is returning to Arrakis).


(The Hack seems to think that OM personae learn and remember and share information as well, as indicated by the Serena-in-memory crowing to Sheeana about how she taught Muad'Dib about the art of jihad, in one or the other of the "Dune 7" tragequels. Just to be clear, that's an example of an RM accessing the memories of a non-RM female persona who remembers what interactions she had with a male ancestor as an OM persona in the mind of that male ancestor. Yeah, that makes sense. :roll: )
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Re: Other Memory

Post by lotek »

SandChigger wrote:(The Hack seems to think that OM personae learn and remember and share information as well, as indicated by the Serena-in-memory crowing to Sheeana about how she taught Muad'Dib about the art of jihad, in one or the other of the "Dune 7" tragequels. Just to be clear, that's an example of an RM accessing the memories of a non-RM female persona who remembers what interactions she had with a male ancestor as an OM persona in the mind of that male ancestor. Yeah, that makes sense. :roll: )
but my head hurts now :lol:
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Re: Other Memory

Post by SadisticCynic »

lotek wrote:
SandChigger wrote:(The Hack seems to think that OM personae learn and remember and share information as well, as indicated by the Serena-in-memory crowing to Sheeana about how she taught Muad'Dib about the art of jihad, in one or the other of the "Dune 7" tragequels. Just to be clear, that's an example of an RM accessing the memories of a non-RM female persona who remembers what interactions she had with a male ancestor as an OM persona in the mind of that male ancestor. Yeah, that makes sense. :roll: )
but my head hurts now :lol:
That means you can be certain it makes sense. :)
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Re: Other Memory

Post by loremaster »

Argh, physics.

I've said before on the interwebs that i wouldnt be surprised if humans look back in 200 years and say "hah, quantum mechanics, duality etc.... put it on the pile with Ether and Phlogiston and all the other whoopsies of scientific history".

I'm sure what they are proposing now fits pefectly with current observations, so did the concept of negative mass and space filling ether.

But trying to understand/visualise it? Just because it can exist on paper, doesnt mean it has a real world analogue. And imaginary (unreal?) numbers can hop it too. TanH and CosH and De Moivre and anything involving i.

I still have problems with quantum entanglement, who dreamt that one up?!?! And from there it just gets wierder. I can just about deal with rubber sheets and lead balls, ( :shock: ), but that's where it stops for me.

Has anyone ever read Flatland? - if not, i highly recommend you do, by the unfortunately named Edwin Abbott Abbott. The best analogy for physics since, well, ever really.

RE: what else is transmitted - obviously all the original components of egg cells, plus about 2 mitochondria from the sperm, and some other bits. It's a tiny amount of the whole foetus, but if it only takes on domino to knock the others down (a La Prion Proteins) then thats all it would take. Don't forget that on the maternal side the foetus has nine months gestation too, but then Frank specifically states that "from the moment of conception" so thats probably out. It probably is DNA though, Occam would have my hide for suggesting otherwise.

Sandchigger - what about that nonsense Duncan spouts when he works out Alia is possessed. I'm sure one of you PDF'ers can quote me but his logic (paraphrased) is -
Alia is in possession of jessica's memories.
Yet Alia is trying to destroy jessica.
If alia still had contact with jessica within, trying to destroy herself would cause conflict.
But she definately is trying to kill jessica.
Therefore Alia cannot be in touch with Jessica within.
This could only happen if she was possessed.
From there he has a magic leap and concludes it is the baron.(lord knows how)

Gibberish? or is it possible you cant hurt someone you have in your own other memory - but Alia went baron-hunting? It's one quote which has always bothered me.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by lotek »

wasn't the Baron the ruler of the Inner voices of Alia?
And wouldn't that work in the same way that Harum and Leto's agreement?

I seem to remember it's because of the unbearable clamour of OM that Alia surrenders to the Baron in exchange of his help, and so the Jessica within Alia would be reduced to silence just like all the others no?

And I know that Jessica recognizes the Baron's presence through his typical finger tapping rythm under stress, wouldn't Hayt/duncan as a mentat and long time enemy of Harkonnens be able to detect clues too?
This is too foggy in my memories and no copies of the books under hand to check that, but I doubt that Frank would have resorted to "magic" to explain this knowledge in one of his characters(leave that to the Leech)
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Re: Other Memory

Post by loremaster »

Lotek - you're absolutely right, my issue is with Duncan's assertion that "Alia wouldnt try to harm jessica if she was still in touch with jessica-within".

Why? is there some moral compulsion which prevents you attacking your OM ancestors?
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Re: Other Memory

Post by Lundse »

Computation: A reflected Lady Jessica lived out a pseudo-life in Alia's awareness. He saw this as he saw the reflected pre-ghola Duncan Idaho which remained a constant in his own awareness. Alia had this awareness by being one of the pre-born. He had it out of the Tleilaxu regeneration tanks. Yet Alia denied that reflection, risked her mother's life. Therefore Alia was not in contact with that pseudo-Jessica within. Therefore Alia was completely possessed by another pseudo-life to the exclusion of all others.
This does seem extremely simplified.
And contradictory, if the the argument is taken to rest solely on "any attack against anyone you have Other Memory of, means you must be possesed by some other OM figure" - Alia killed the Baron, as loremaster pointed out.

What may be lacking here, is the special status of Jessica-with-Alia. If Duncan is working from an assumption that Jessica-within had been "integrated" into Alia's persona (as Duncan-Prime is within Hayt-become-Duncan), then turning against Jessica-without could be taken as a sign that Alia is no longer integrating Jessica-within. And denying a part of your integrated persona would, presumably, be a sign of possesion.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by lotek »

loremaster wrote:Lotek - you're absolutely right, my issue is with Duncan's assertion that "Alia wouldnt try to harm jessica if she was still in touch with jessica-within".

Why? is there some moral compulsion which prevents you attacking your OM ancestors?
ooowwwkkayyy
I get it now :)

First I would say if there was a moral compulsion the first thing that springs to mind would be the renowed "Atreides honor", ingrained into them in a quasi genetic way.
Does Duncan know about the Baron's presence at that point?

If no then to me it looks like some sort of wishful thinking and a over reliance on his own set of values to assert the situation.(ins't he still in love with Alia anyway?)

If yes (or he has doubts)it complicates matters, but I would need a full quote to work on, I feel like I am going to blabble about worms and mustard without a hook on reality ;)



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loremaster wrote:Why? is there some moral compulsion which prevents you attacking your OM ancestors?
I just thought there can't be other wise it would not have happened ;)
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Re: Other Memory

Post by reverendmotherQ. »

Alia's possession by the Baron no doubt strengthened her desire to obliterate her mother, but certainly before the onslaught of total possession she had personal motives too.
Alas, I do not have the copy of Children of Dune I have been in need of for a long time to back up my claim and it's been years since I have read it. But I remember sensing personal motives intermingling with the Barons and by the time she was completely subjugated by his control in her consciousness she had no way of enacting inhibitions or accessing her own sense of moral restraint.
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Re: Other Memory

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reverendmotherQ. wrote:Alia's possession by the Baron no doubt strengthened her desire to obliterate her mother, but certainly before the onslaught of total possession she had personal motives too.
Alas, I do not have the copy of Children of Dune I have been in need of for a long time to back up my claim and it's been years since I have read it. But I remember sensing personal motives intermingling with the Barons and by the time she was completely subjugated by his control in her consciousness she had no way of enacting inhibitions or accessing her own sense of moral restraint.
Because Jessica abandonned her on Arrakis at the tender age (if there is such a thing for the pre-born) of seventeen.

[Now that I think of it more, she may have been younger than that. I'll need more coffee to think about that...]
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Re: Other Memory

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Of the first three books,(Paul is a given) Alia, just below Chani, leaves my heart hurting. She is set up from birth and just has no path of her own. I would tend to agree that she had motives but I feel that her soul deep love for Paul would have prevented that at any cost. That is, up until Paul walked into the dessert and before the barons eventual corruption of her.

The window between those is small, and her feelings could have built rapidly. Counterpoint, FH brings us the preacher and I think her curiosity about it being Paul would have the reins back again.

IMHO.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by Apjak »

I could see Alia having the personal motive that she resented her mother for taking the spice essence while pregnant thereby transforming Alia in utero. Along that line of reason, her hatred for her mother is really Jessica's self hatred. Besides the eventual possesion by the late Baron, with RM Jessica's persona being her starting point, I tend to think of Alia as the more Harkonnen version of Jessica. What Jessica might have been without the Bene Gesserit during her pubescence, and eventually the love of the Atreides Duke. While Alia had all the powers and memories of a full Reverend Mother, she had no childhood of her own, and therefore, was left to her own devices growing up, having no supervision (not that she needed it or could accept it) and receiving no Unconditional Motherly love.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

trang wrote:Of the first three books,(Paul is a given) Alia, just below Chani, leaves my heart hurting. She is set up from birth and just has no path of her own. I would tend to agree that she had motives but I feel that her soul deep love for Paul would have prevented that at any cost. That is, up until Paul walked into the dessert and before the barons eventual corruption of her.

The window between those is small, and her feelings could have built rapidly. Counterpoint, FH brings us the preacher and I think her curiosity about it being Paul would have the reins back again.

IMHO.
I think Alia made me sadder than Chani in some ways, especially when Duncan is coming to terms with loosing her, I really felt that. Messiah does such a good job of building her up as a character that I care about, and then CoD just totally destroys her, much worse than FH did to Paul. Chani I never got quite that attached to.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by reverendmotherQ. »

i need to read the earlier ones again to better understand, along with the personal choices made in regards to their preborn possession of other memory, as the major differences between Alia and the Atreides Twins. I know that the Twins were awakened to consciousness with an overload of spice from Chani's diet as opposed to Alia being startled from infantile comfort by the violence of the concentrated essence of the spice, and perhaps these differences may contribute to the degree of vulenrability each of them had to the threat of possession.
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Re: Other Memory

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

I think they were about on par with eachother for vulnerability, but the twins saw what was happening to Alia and avoided large amounts of spice, keeping their inner voices a bit quiter and more managable. Until Leto wound up being severely overdosed again and again of course, at which point he did have to deal with possesion.
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Re: Other Memory

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A Thing of Eternity wrote:I think they were about on par with eachother for vulnerability, but the twins saw what was happening to Alia and avoided large amounts of spice, keeping their inner voices a bit quiter and more managable. Until Leto wound up being severely overdosed again and again of course, at which point he did have to deal with possesion.
True. Didn't he at that point not have ghanima or any one to ground him to reality? If I remember correctly, she was long dead by that point.
Being locked in a body of a worm with only sycophants for companionship must have been maddening with all of those voices available upon demand.

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Re: Other Memory

Post by Freakzilla »

:cylon101:

Alia was all Atreides/Harkonnen while the twins had Fremen blood and more of a tolerance for spice. It was the combination of large quantities of spice and Irulan's contraceptive that awoke the twins to preborn awareness yet they didn't experience a spice overdose/trance. Alia was awakened by the unchanged Water of Life and her initial consciousness was a spice trance.

The twins had nine years to form their own personas before Leto had to integrate all his ancestral personas. Alia never had a chance, plus she regularly overdosed throughout her live.

The spice trance leaves the pre-born succeptable to possession.
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