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A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

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Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#21

Post by Avshalom »

carbocation wrote: post #14
prepend wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You memorize the bitcoin private key before preservation. In a way that requires consciousness to reconstruct. Public key verifies the value and there’s a smart contract with some percentage to the successful recoverer. Depending on the recoverer’s profit margin they will restore whenever there’s enough value to make it worthwhile. Whether bitcoin will exist and whether it will appreciate is a different story. But as…

Then they threaten to resurrect you 1000x and torture each of your resurrected selves for 1000 years unless you tell them the private key. Roko's basilisk meets bitcoin.

Yeah but by the same logic as The Simulation Hypothesis if I am not being tortured now Rokos basilisk will never come to pass.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#22

Post by rosser »

aurellem wrote: post #16
sarabande wrote: post #6

In the case when you die, but your brain still exists, and it starts processing it again in a new host (computer or organic), isn't that not you anymore? Why would my former self want that? Is this a solved philosophical problem for which literature exists?

If you want to get into some of the literature around mind uploading, I'd start with some of Daniel Dennett's work such as "Consciousness Explained". If you think that it's possible for a computer program to have its own sense of self, then it's interesting to think about what it would feel like for that program to be stopped, copied to a new computer, and then started again. There's definitely a lot of literature an…

I'm not sure that a book written by a dude whose position is basically, "the direct experience you have of your own consciousness is an illusion" is necessarily the best choice for exploring what a "sense of self" or "mind" are all about.

"Consciousness Explained" should really have been titled "Consciousness Explained Away".

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#23

Post by xiphias »

prepend wrote: post #10
dontreact wrote: post #5

Reconstructing a human in silico from a dead brain is likely to be a very expensive process. Why would anyone in the future be interested in going through with it for any more than a few select old brains when there will be plenty of dead brains to go around at that time?

You memorize the bitcoin private key before preservation. In a way that requires consciousness to reconstruct. Public key verifies the value and there’s a smart contract with some percentage to the successful recoverer. Depending on the recoverer’s profit margin they will restore whenever there’s enough value to make it worthwhile. Whether bitcoin will exist and whether it will appreciate is a different story. But as…

Why restore the whole brain if the value is in the private key? Why not just read the private key from the brain and steal it? I would go the old fashioned route and store the Bitcoins in a bank safe and prepay it for 200 years, by which resurrecting people should be either trivial or humanity won't exist). Still, there's no trustless way to do this.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#25

Post by Jesus_Jones »

carbocation wrote: post #14
prepend wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You memorize the bitcoin private key before preservation. In a way that requires consciousness to reconstruct. Public key verifies the value and there’s a smart contract with some percentage to the successful recoverer. Depending on the recoverer’s profit margin they will restore whenever there’s enough value to make it worthwhile. Whether bitcoin will exist and whether it will appreciate is a different story. But as…

Then they threaten to resurrect you 1000x and torture each of your resurrected selves for 1000 years unless you tell them the private key. Roko's basilisk meets bitcoin.

Meets Altered Carbon. But if you wake up in virtual reality, when you enter your key, how can you keep them from taking it from you? You'll never know if you are being man-in-the-middled.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#26

Post by reasonattlm »

Underneath it all, this is a manifestation of an important split in the cryonics community.

One group is (I think overly) critical of present vitrification approaches and the planned future of those approaches. They believe that these approaches are broken, and nothing of value is preserved. I think this is just as ridiculous as saying there is no room for improvement - it is clearly the case that, e.g. nematodes vitrified using the present technologies can be restored and show preserved memory.

That group has a strong overlap with pattern identity theorists, who are quite comfortable with a copy of them living in the future, and throwing away the original brain.

So the intersection of these two groups is motivated to work on technologies such as aldehyde-stablized cryopreservation (vitrifixation) that are incompatible with the future goal of thawing, restoration, and repair, as they are not reversible short of far distant molecular nanotechnology. Their aim is to produce the best possible record of data of the mind with the intent of reading into a machine environment in the future, then discarding it.

To my eyes this is a terrible, terrible, mistaken view on identity, and one that will cause a great deal of existential harm when it is extended from theory to action.

The rest of the cryonics community is interested in a technology path that leads to reversible vitrification in the near future, and some kind of union with the tissue engineering / organ engineering community. They want the flesh restored and repaired, and the end goal of cryopreservation is some form of advanced cell/bio/nanotechnology that can achieve that end.

This is why Alcor, etc, is not adopting vitrifixation.

So on the one hand, great to see progress, and vitrifixation is an excellent advance in tissue preservation in the general sense. It will be of use in many areas of research. On the other hand, pattern identity theory seems to have many of the aspects of religion. A copy of you is clearly not you, and no amount of handwaving is going to make that the case.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#27

Post by BrandonY »

sarabande wrote: post #6

In the case when you die, but your brain still exists, and it starts processing it again in a new host (computer or organic), isn't that not you anymore? Why would my former self want that? Is this a solved philosophical problem for which literature exists?

Well, maybe. This is Ship of Theseus situation. The good news is that, from the perspective of the new you, everything went great, and the old you doesn't have a perspective, so that's a 100% endorsement rate.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#28

Post by kaizendad »

Seems like a big bet on the concept that the physical structure of the brain preserves enough information to resurrect a consciousness. If electrical transmissions are at all required, then this would render a brain nothing more than an amusing curio.

Although, given that their target market is already those planning to be euthanized, I suppose the tradeoff of one's brain being an amusing curio vs. one's brain being worm food is not a reason to avoid this service.

If they are correct, it brings up an interesting question: given that the technology requires a slow, planned process to preserve the brain, at what point should a uniquely brilliant person be euthanized, in order to preserve them, rather than allowing them to die by sudden misadventure, e.g. not paying attention and getting hit by a car crossing the street.

Given that the output of so many brilliant people is skewed to when they are young, do we just start proactively euthanizing the top 0.05% of the population when they reach 50, to preserve our best for the future?

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#29

Post by acrefoot »

prepend wrote: post #11
harryf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting to non-fatal is just a future implementation detail

It’s a feature not a bug.

Given that an early death is only possibly prescribed in cases where a patient is terminally ill (as determined by two physicians), where a patient is of sound mind, and is often in pain, it can be a reasonable alternative to a lot of the (often expensive) interventions that don't do much more than prolong agony in the last weeks of life.

Re: A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal”

#30

Post by kaizendad »

prepend wrote: post #10
dontreact wrote: post #5

Reconstructing a human in silico from a dead brain is likely to be a very expensive process. Why would anyone in the future be interested in going through with it for any more than a few select old brains when there will be plenty of dead brains to go around at that time?

You memorize the bitcoin private key before preservation. In a way that requires consciousness to reconstruct. Public key verifies the value and there’s a smart contract with some percentage to the successful recoverer. Depending on the recoverer’s profit margin they will restore whenever there’s enough value to make it worthwhile. Whether bitcoin will exist and whether it will appreciate is a different story. But as…

So then this becomes something like the fast money/slow money system in Charles Stross's Neptune's Brood: people destroy their physical bodies to take slow trips to distant locations, preparing themselves by stockpiling slow money, like bitcoin, that will have significant value in the future but may not have so much now.
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