Chapter 1683: The Essence of Self

Although the current Tower Spirit is quite different from what Xia Duo originally envisioned, and is not the type of artificial intelligence he thought it was, but rather a flawed Consciousness Copy without a self.

Yet he also discovered the superiority of this flawed Consciousness Copy compared to a Spellcaster's consciousness: it is not afraid of trouble, and its response speed is very fast, basically the thinking speed of the subconscious.

This gave it the potential to become a substitute for a computer.

In reality, humans—or rather, Spellcasters themselves—also have this potential, but the consciousness of a normal human has various emotional interferences, and coupled with the layered organizational mode of the Conscious Mind and subconscious, efficiency is often not higher than that of the pure subconscious.

But if there were no Conscious Mind, it would likely be like the twisted Phantoms Xia Duo had seen before, with thinking nearly transparent and completely undefended.

The integration of the subconscious and Conscious Mind that Xia Duo pursues is not to fuse the two into one, but to cover both with a self that can perceive itself.

Thereby obtaining true extraordinary characteristics that transcend both; at that time, his consciousness would not lose the natural Protection of the Conscious Mind layer, while simultaneously fully controlling the high-speed, precise, and multi-threaded thinking ability of the subconscious.

An average Spellcaster might find it difficult to develop the practical value of the subconscious, only able to achieve the goal of disguised utilization through a flawed Consciousness Copy like the Tower Spirit.

Of course, for Xia Duo, until his progress in integrating the subconscious and Conscious Mind reaches a certain level, he can only use this method to utilize the subconscious.

And the Mental Model he wants to find is actually an algorithm at the level of consciousness; all of a person's Mental Models added together form their Personality.

Personality plus memory is, without a doubt, the best embodiment of a person's self.

The "Personality backup"—or perhaps it could be called "memory backup" or "self backup"—that Xia Duo performs during his Meditation Training every morning.

Since the three seem to exist in one person simultaneously, they do not actually have very clear boundaries for that person.

At least Xia Duo cannot currently determine well where the boundaries between Personality and memory lie, because in his view, Personality is the sum of all of a person's Mental Models, which are gradually formed through long-term training in the cognitive process.

So-called "memory" is actually the sum of information before and after cognition; it undoubtedly plays a vital role in the process of Personality formation, and is even fundamentally a component of Personality.

A Personality detached from memory does not exist.

By the same token, memory detached from Personality will also be discrete and empty.

……

In the process of deleting and testing the underlying Ziliaoku of the "Communication Artifact Spirit," Xia Duo gradually realized that the Mental Model he wanted to find would largely be composed of individual key memory Nodes.

Just as a person's temperament will change after experiencing certain major life events, this is how memory Nodes affect the Mental Model.

But unfortunately, even after deleting memories until the "Artifact Spirit's" intelligence was flawed, and even to the point of affecting the cognitive process, Xia Duo still could not find any identifiable key memory Node.

The "Artifact Spirit's" intelligence flaw seemed to be just a qualitative change after memories were continuously deleted; the process within this was quite smooth, at least not something that could be analyzed in a few simple tests.

But Xia Duo did not doubt the existence of the Nodes; it was just that these Nodes might not be what he thought they were.

Of course, Xia Duo was not without any gains; although he failed to discover special algorithms like Mental Models that point more toward the formation of intelligence, he did discover quite a few thinking patterns used by the subconscious when processing information.

The latter could also be considered Mental Models, but their function is more concentrated on thinking itself, rather than forming intelligence.

In reality, for the current Xia Duo, discovering the thinking patterns of the subconscious might be more useful than finding Mental Models.

Because thinking patterns are directly usable, while Xia Duo has not yet thought of where Mental Models can be used.

After all, the threshold for "Artifact Spirit" intelligence was already crossed the moment the 【Enlightenment Spell】 was completed; generally speaking, people only research how to strengthen intelligence, and lowering intelligence is really a bit counter-trend.

However, exploring the starting point of intelligence is helpful for researching the essence of consciousness, and is more focused on long-term considerations.

……

In the Laboratory.

Xia Duo once again irritably swept a pile of Mithril Components with fading spiritual light into the recycling bin, then took a deep breath and began to pack up the destroyed 【Enlightenment Scroll】 with an expressionless face.

The cracking work has continued until now; compared to a few days ago, the progress cannot be said to be non-existent, but it is also very limited, and only the last two copies of the Scroll remain.

"Since you want to let it slide, why make it so complicated!"

Although Xia Duo is accustomed to looking for reasons from himself first, the long-delayed cracking work still made him unable to help complaining about the Seven Towers.

It is very clear that even if the Seven Towers wants to earn Gold Coins or other benefits through the Spirit Quality that carries the Tower Spirit, they still set a fairly high cracking threshold for things like the 【Enlightenment Scroll】 that are destined to be cracked once released.

That's true too; even if it's destined to be cracked, so what? Do you expect them to give it away for free?

……

After settling his emotions, Xia Duo began to review the latest test report submitted by Kente. Since the test before last, that "Communication Artifact Spirit" had been pretty much played to ruin; he didn't know what the result would be this time.

He skipped the test process directly; as before, Xia Duo flipped to the end to look at the result—the test target was slow to react to the test, and had already developed serious memory errors, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies.

Looking at the analysis process again, after these days of testing, Kente and the others had also grown quite a bit; the analysis process was combined with the test process, and almost every step had an analysis.

Xia Duo looked over it roughly and decided to pause the exploration of Mental Models and instead study the thinking patterns of the subconscious; it just so happened that the "Communication Artifact Spirit" that had already been played to ruin could still exert its last bit of residual heat.

……

After transferring 1000 Progress Society points to Kente's team, Xia Duo terminated the mission and retrieved the Communication Magic Tool.

Although the "Artifact Spirit" was already played to ruin as an intelligence, some of the thinking patterns unearthed within it were not affected much, and instead became purer, which was conducive to the next step of research.

In the Laboratory, Xia Duo looked at the Communication Magic Tool in his hand, whose spiritual light had not changed much compared to before, and knew that the damage to the Artifact Spirit did not have much impact on the Magic Artifact itself.

Next, he began to continue deleting memories; unlike before, where he only deleted sensitive information and memories of cognitive processes, this time he also performed a large-scale deletion of memories after cognition.

He only kept the part related to specific thinking patterns, which was equivalent to strengthening that part of the thinking patterns; of course, using "highlighting" here might be more appropriate.