Chapter 157: I Leak

Saturday, April 30, 2005 (Continued)

When I was in Julia's room again, I thought I might have some time before the girls arrived. I was eager to test what I ironically thought of as my "Memory Leakage Problem". Leakage isn't a problem - NOT having leakage is! Having four separate memories is a nuisance. We've had to become used to it, but we'd much rather be able to access each other's memories. But - far more seriously than mere nuisance - we've recently realized that not being able to share memories is probably going to cause us at least one serious problem.

^

[Some explanation is required to help you appreciate the magnitude of the issue. Ideally all of my minds would experience and remember everything, but this doesn't happen for three reasons:

The first reason is because of "Inactive On Duty". The mind that is on duty doesn't remember most of what happens during that time. Memory of a single past event isn't a problem, because three active minds would've seen it. When we later need to remember it, at least two of the then active minds will have a memory of it. But for multiple events, where it might be important to consider all of them together in order to get a full understanding, it's possible that each of my minds might've missed one or more of those events.

There are two possible solutions to this problem of being on duty. The solution we use is when a mind comes off duty, we try to tell it everything it needs to know to bring it up to date. This isn't a perfect solution, as sometimes there's too much stuff to recount, or something that might become important later wasn't mentioned at the time because it seemed insignificant then. But most of the time this solution works well.

We practice "Active On Duty" quite often, but it's so vulnerable to distraction that it can't be considered a solution. We're getting better at it though, so maybe in a year or so we'll be good enough at it to make it our normal procedure. Maybe a year or two after that, we'll be so good at it that even major distractions won't cause us to lose center. Those times are only guesses, because it's very difficult to estimate progress with something so subjective. And even when we think we're perfect at it - maybe five or ten years from now - something REALLY distracting might happen which will cause us to lose center.

The other solution would be to have no minds on duty, except on occasion when we deliberate wanted to, such as emergencies or to lazily turn the bedroom lights off. We rejected this as projecting ki, strengthening NP, and centering, are clearly so important that we want to practice them.

The second reason why a mind might miss out on knowing something is a very mundane reason, but still important: it might have been distracted. My minds get distracted much more often than you'll imagine, because it's our deliberate intention that they do so. When we're talking to someone, one mind will be focused on the conversation, but the other active minds will be seeking distractions. In other words, they'll try to be aware of what else is going on around us because that way we learn a lot more. This is similar in effect to being on duty in that the non-focusing minds can miss learning something, but it's not nearly as severe because they still listen in (with 'half an ear', as it were). The problem is only severe when something captures their attention so completely that they become totally distracted from the main conversation, or when the main conversation becomes so interesting that it captures all our attentions.

Distraction, as a reason to miss something, occurs countless times a day, but it's usually of a very short duration, listening in with half an ear greatly reduces its effect, and it's very easy for the non-focused minds to be brought up to date if they feel they missed something. Another reason it's usually not a major problem - despite its being our normal way of operating - is that most things occur slowly enough to not need our full attention. Let's say I'm having a conversation with someone, but also eavesdropping on another conversation going on nearby. One mind can focus on each, and they can pass comments back and forth in real-time (including the third active mind in the internal conversation too), so none of the active minds miss out on knowing what's happening in either conversation. Nonetheless, occasionally one or more of my active minds will be truly distracted, so they might not know what else happened.

Many times a day my minds will be chatting with each other, when one of them will say, "I don't have any memory of what you are talking about," or, "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?" This occurs so frequently we've developed a shorthand phrase for it; we just say, "I've got a hole," or "Have you got a hole?" (It's not an anatomical comment.) [[In writing this autobiography, I've left those out, because they are very frequent, repetitious, dull, and mostly irrelevant as my minds can usually fill in each other's memory holes then carry on without it having had any real-world effect.]]

I am, however, seriously worried that I won't be able to compensate for the third cause of gaps in my memory, those caused by my double-speed, "Divide and Conquer" college studying approach. Deciding which mind is going to learn (or not learn) each subject is much more complex than it first seemed, because different sets of knowledge can sometimes combine in ways that multiply out to give us awkward choices about who learns what. With 'only' four minds, it doesn't take much complexity to exhaust our capacity. The severity of this problem occurred to me after Prof enrolled me in two more courses, when I realized that I will have to choose which minds study them.

I'm studying Algebra and Calculus college courses now, so minds #1 and #2 know Algebra (call it "A"), with #3 and #4 knowing Calculus (call it "B"), and I'm about to start two more courses ("C" and "D"). Which minds should learn "C" and which "D"? (The way things have developed, I'll actually be doing independent chunks of "C" and "D" with different pairs of minds, which complicates things even worse. I'll ignore that complication in this discussion). Should #1 and #2 learn "C", or #1 and #3, or some other pair of minds? The answer depends on all the courses AFTER "C" and "D". If learning "E" requires knowledge of "A" and "C", while learning "F" requires knowledge of "B" and "D", then that dictates which minds learn "C" and "D". But if "E" requires "A" and "D", then that changes things.

By the time I've finished my fourth course, each of my four minds might know a unique combination of two courses, with every combination accounted for. Then which minds learn "E" and "F"? Because I've only got four minds, by the time I've learned "E" and "F" there will be some missing combinations. Which ones I should miss depends on the needs of future courses. "G" might need "A", "C" and "E", which is only one course from each pair, so I'd better make sure that the single mind of mine that learned "A" and "C" also learns "E" in preference to "F". But what about if "H" also needs "A", "C" and "E"? The theoretical solution to that is to delay learning "H" until after "G" is finished, but that ripple could cause an increasing number of future schedule and coordination problems.

It all gets horribly worrying, and it seems all too likely that this is going to bite me on my ass one day as there are so many college courses and they build on each other.

If I make the wrong choices, I might not be able to study two courses simultaneously further downstream, halving my study rate. Potentially even less efficient is if multiple minds have to converse together before they can pool enough knowledge to understand the current lecture. It's very easy to imagine that by the time I'm doing third and fourth year courses - the hardest ones, which I'm already very worried about - that I'll be in big trouble trying to get my minds to pool their knowledge anything close to efficiently.

I only recently realized this problem. It might seem that I should've discovered it at school, but it doesn't happen there, for two reasons: Every school subject is independent. For example, if one mind specialized in English (although that'd be too cruel), then it wouldn't matter that the other minds missed out on that subject's - I'll charitably call it - knowledge, whereas there are dozens of college courses which are ALL Mathematics. The second, and main reason I don't have such problems at school, is because school is SLOW! I can have an 11th grade textbook or notes open on my desk while a 10th grade class is in progress, and all my active minds can digest everything we're doing, as well as explaining to the mind that was on duty during the last class what we learned during the previous hour. But this isn't the case with my college studying. Each pair of minds is learning their subject at full speed, leaving no capacity to learn the other subject.

I hope you can see by now that I've become SERIOUSLY worried about this issue, on top of all my already worrying about college being too difficult for me, so the possibility of memory leaking from one mind into the others is extremely appealing! To solve the problem of there being too many prerequisite course combinations, I need each of my mind's knowledge and understandings to "leak" into each other, so I'm very eager to explore that possibility.]

^

Julia has a small bookcase in her room, containing a few books. She used to have more, but she had to sacrifice wall space to gain more closets; a sacrifice she'd apparently had no reluctance over. The books are mostly romance twaddle, but they're still usable as a memory test. They'll make a very good test actually, as it's hard to imagine stuff that I'd be less interested in remembering.

The rough idea for testing I'd had several hours previously, was to have one of my minds open a book at a random page while the other minds concentrated on being Inactive On Duty. The active mind would consciously note the page number. Then the on-duty minds would come off duty and attempt to 'remember' the page number. Then we'd repeat the test with different types of facts, such as reading the description of a character to see if the image it created was differently retrievable than a number, looking at the picture on the front of the book (although they all pictured a heroine in the arms of a handsome, bare-chested hunk, so we'd have to try to retrieve the fine details).

We'd also decided to see if motivation made a difference, mainly whether the owner of the memory could make it more or less private, not that privacy had much meaning for us. We knew that we could choose who we internally chatted to, so it seemed reasonable that retrieving memories might be similarly controllable. How much effort the receiving mind put into retrieving the information was another issue. All of these presuming anything at all could be retrieved, otherwise the test series was going to be very short.

We started on the first test, grabbing a book and having only one mind look at a page number. It didn't send the number to the other minds as we normally do when we chat or send pictures, but it tried to 'want' them to be able to access the memory. There was no mental action associated with that 'want' (we couldn't think of how to do anything like that anyway), merely trying to more strongly feel our sincere desire that this work.

We'd agreed that each of the three receiving minds were to say when they thought they had the answer, but not say what it was until all three were ready. About two or three seconds after the retrieval attempt started, #2: <I think I've got it.>

A few more seconds went by with no word from #3 or #4.

#2: <Try visualizing what our body did when it was opening the book. Try hard to imagine that the body was totally under your control, and you were doing it all, so it was you that looked at the page of the book when it opened. I put a great deal of effort into my visualization, so I don't know... >

#4: <Got it!>

#3: <Me too, I think. I got "73", what about you guys?>

#2: <Same here, yippee!>

#4: <Likewise. What was the page number #1?>

#1 had used his finger to keep his place in the book, and he opened it, showing us page 73.

#1: <That's good news, isn't it?>

#2: <Can we do the same thing again please, because I want to try it with less visualization effort.>

We repeated the test. None of the minds could get the answer until they tried HARD to relive the experience of creating the memory, and then it worked perfectly again.

We tried another variation, where #1 wanted to keep the memory private. We weren't sure it was possible for #1 to feel this privacy motivation, as privacy wasn't a big deal with any of us since sharing the same body means we share its embarrassments no matter which of us causes them. Another demotivating reason was that we all preferred this test to fail. If it succeeded, it might mean that the owner of a memory had to make a conscious effort to allow it to be shared at the time it was created, which would be a pain.

#1 did his best to be selfish when he looked at the page number, and also while the rest of us were trying to access the memory. Apparently he succeeded, because no matter how hard the other minds wanted to retrieve the memory, they couldn't.

We did another willing-to-share test, just to make sure we hadn't broken anything, and it worked fine.

So the owner's attitude to sharing was important, but was it his attitude at the time the memory was created, or when the attempt was made to retrieve it? To test this the owner would want the memory to be private when he created it, then he'd change his mind a minute later. We did the first half, and the other three minds couldn't access the memory. During the minute I was waiting, the girls arrived. They didn't disturb my concentration, because I wasn't concentrating; I was chatting among myself to kill time while the minute passed. So when the girls came in, I was happy to talk with them.

The first thing I noticed was that Carol was not naked (I've specially trained myself to notice things like that). She'd wrapped herself in a towel, which she unfortunately kept on, probably because of Ava and me being in the same room. I also noticed that the girls were all chatting away happily, which was good. I'd been a little concerned that I might have told Sophia off too harshly, and caused some sort of problem. To be sure, I asked, "Was Sophia okay after I left? I was a little concerned I might have offended her, or something."

Julia answered, "She's fine. You came across very well, I thought. We stayed for a few minutes because she had more questions. She was very curious about how it worked, so we had to make up some good stories. Your being our Lord would have been too much for her to handle. Sophia is fairly straitlaced, so she was scandalized enough without our mentioning that."

^-- Spotting the book in my hand, Julia said, "I see you've finally developed some good taste in literature. I've got some boxes of them in storage downstairs. Would you like to take a box or two home with you?"

"No way! I was testing my memory. In fact, can you all give me a few seconds of silence please, while I finish my current test."

"Silence" is another one of those concepts that girls' brains aren't wired to grasp, along with "logic", "sensible clothes shopping", and "everyone is equally responsible for anniversary celebrations", so they immediately asked me questions about what I was doing.

I gave them a VERY brief explanation, "Doing a memory test. I truly do want you all to stand completely still and not make any noise. Please, just for a few seconds, so I can concentrate."

I know I was asking for a lot, wanting three girls in the one room not to talk, but it was only for a few seconds. They agreed, which I took to mean, "We'll try our best, but we can't make any promises."

In the ensuing unnatural silence, #1 tried to share the memory of the page number, and the others tried hard to retrieve it. They all got a number, which when we compared them, agreed with the place in the book our finger was holding. We considered this to be very good news.

Julia, seeing me looking at the book then smile happily, broke her silence (five seconds was pretty impressive, I thought), "What're you doing?"

I couldn't tell her anything that involved multiple minds, but it was safe to say, "As you know, I read two different college courses at the same time, but I've recently realized there's potentially a serious problem integrating my memory of the two subjects. That doesn't matter much for school subjects because I learn them so slowly - at the speed the teachers set - that I can integrate them as I go, but I'm learning the college courses as fast as I can, which doesn't give me time to do any integration. Since two-thirds of my college courses will be mathematics, and there are lots of prerequisites, I need to manage my memory of them much better than I am now. I've just started working on a method that might allow me to do that."