Chapter 2194: Mind Network

Inside the Laboratory.

Xia Duo put on the headband. As the Magic Artifact automatically synchronized, he gradually felt as if an exit had opened within his inner self; this feeling was just like suddenly sensing another existence while contemplating "I think, therefore I am."

How marvelous!

It was just that this other existence was not concrete, but rather a vague void. When he tried to pour a question into that void, the void immediately fed back a piece of information—

"How is the weather today? Including twelve pieces of Subconscious Information, sixty-eight pieces of Subconscious Information!"

The former, "How is the weather," was the question Xia Duo asked the void—that is, the Mind Network linked via the Inspiration Headband—while the latter "included information" was the information he had inadvertently leaked while asking the Mind Network.

It had been received and parsed by the intelligent brain at the other end of the Mind Network, then fed back to Xia Duo's main body.

This was, in fact, the main task of the first stage of testing: if the Inspiration Headband were only to transmit the questions asked by the user's Conscious Mind.

Xia Duo would undoubtedly be prying into the user's privacy. Furthermore, parsing other people's conscious information was also a burden for him; even if these could be done by the Consciousness Copy within the intelligent brain, it would still reduce efficiency.

The boundary line between the subconscious and the Conscious Mind of a sentient being is not obvious and can only be approached gradually by adjusting the Perception threshold of the Inspiration Headband. But even so, there would be a few special individuals whose Conscious Mind is too deep and whose subconscious is too shallow.

【To be honest, I've been using Wild Fruit Reading to catch up on updates lately. Switching sources, many reading voices, available on both Android and Apple.】

This would cause them, when using the Inspiration Headband, to either be unable to accurately transmit the information they wanted to transmit, or to transmit too much information, to the point of leaking their privacy.

Xia Duo using himself for the experiment was actually very inaccurate, because he had already embarked on the path of integrating the subconscious and the Conscious Mind; the boundary between the two types of consciousness would be even more blurred for him.

If only a fixed value were used, then using himself for the experiment was indeed inappropriate. But what he was thinking of was developing a Perception adjustment function for the Inspiration Headband, so that he, who could accurately distinguish his own consciousness, would have more of an advantage than others.

The first stage of testing did not consume too much time. After determining the Perception adjustment precision of the Inspiration Headband, as long as the feedback information of the intelligent brain was modified, the user could adjust it themselves.

"How is the weather today?" This is a question asked by the Conscious Mind.

If the feedback is—"Signal strength is weak, it is recommended to increase the headband's sensitivity!"

This is actually letting the user increase the headband's Perception intensity. If it is "Signal strength is too high," then the Perception intensity needs to be lowered.

In about three days, Xia Duo completed two versions of the Inspiration Headband's updates and iterations, after which he busily arranged the second stage of testing.

The goal of this stage was to find out the intensity of the stimulation, or rather the triggering, of the user's subconscious by the headband under the condition that the headband's Perception precision was determined.

This step essentially already belonged to the category of violating privacy, that is, using specific questions to ask the subconscious of every user in the Mind Network.

If the user agreed to this operation, it would be equivalent to opening part of their subconscious to the Mind Network. If Xia Duo harbored malice, he could strip the deepest secrets of the user's heart clean!

Therefore, the intensity of the headband's triggering of the user's subconscious could also be understood as the degree to which the user opens their subconscious to the Mind Network.

If this degree were too low, a certain thinking process could not be completed, and networking would not have much significance. If the degree were too high, the effect would of course be better, but the degree of privacy violation would also be higher.

Trading privacy for convenience or efficiency is a highly controversial topic even in Xia Duo's hometown. Xia Duo believed that the premise for defining whether such behavior is reasonable is necessity and whether privacy is being abused.

Placed on the issue of the Inspiration Headband, Xia Duo had his own principles, so of course there was no abuse, but the necessity had to be questioned: was it necessary for the user to open their subconscious as much as possible to form an effective Mind Network?

The answer was clearly negative.

This stage of Xia Duo's experimental testing, or rather experimental exploration, was precisely to find this minimum value for opening consciousness!

The experimental process was somewhat similar to the first stage, except that it was turned over to the intelligent brain to ask Xia Duo's main body questions, and if the subconscious information were not parsed, his main body would have no perception of all this.

In other words, what Xia Duo was doing now was actually working on locking the moral bottom line. If he disregarded the bottom line, he could simply let the user open enough of their subconscious; this would only be beneficial to the Mind Network and would not require additional testing.

Now, instead, the workload and difficulty had increased!

But as for this thing called a bottom line, if one can cast it aside once, one can cast it aside twice. Although Xia Duo did not think that his future self would always adhere to the same bottom line as his current self, at least in the eyes of the current him, some bottom lines could not be discarded at will.

This was his most real thought at this moment, and he was willing to pay the price for it.

……

Because it was necessary to explore a minimum effective concrete value, Xia Duo using only himself to conduct experiments was far from enough.

However, after determining a rough range on himself, he began to post tasks at the Tower of Time Task Management Office to recruit volunteers.

Soon, the first batch of twenty volunteers arrived at his Laboratory in the Floating City Research Zone. This group of people were mostly new Mages who had grown up after the reforms of the Tower of Time. Seeing Xia Duo, their expressions were all excited:

"President!"

"Mm, good afternoon, everyone."

After a simple greeting, Xia Duo began to introduce the content of the cooperation experiment, "What you need to do is very simple: just put on the headband over there on the experimental bench, then stay in this Laboratory, and do whatever you want. After staying for one hour, I will confirm the completion of the task at the Task Management Office."

"So simple, and 20 points are already in hand? This is too easy!"

Although they were somewhat incredulous, it was after all something Xia Duo had said himself. These twenty volunteers trusted Xia Duo very much, and without asking for more details, they went to the experimental bench, picked up the headbands, and put them on their heads.

Then they had nothing to do, because Xia Duo had said they could do whatever they wanted. Only then did they begin to discuss this somewhat strange cooperation experiment task.

They could not see the headbands on their own heads, but the ones on others' heads had no cover at all. The finger-thick, Crystal-textured headbands were emitting bursts of mysterious aura in everyone's eyes.

But after careful study, apart from the dim spiritual light they emitted themselves, there were no further discoveries.

Although Xia Duo had said they could do whatever they wanted, they couldn't exactly take the headbands off their heads; this certainly wasn't included in that "anything."

However, although they couldn't take them off, couldn't they ask? So someone asked directly: "President, what is this headband for? Is it some kind of benefit for future members of the Progress Society? Can you tell us about it?"