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

technologyreview.com

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

#111

Post by mannykannot »

So, assuming the technical premises are correct here, who will be paying for the uploading? If it is a trust fund established from the initial fee, then the question of who manages the fund becomes an existential matter - it's not like you can switch managers post-(your)-mortem.

On the other hand, if the continued operation of this service depends on later recruits, that's quite the pyramid scheme that you are participating in.

IIRC, in one of Larry Niven's novels, the funds of the frozen dead had been confiscated because they were monopolizing global wealth, and the living were indebted to the dead.

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

#113

Post by twoodfin »

kingbirdy wrote: post #58
savanaly wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel too bad about it. If economic growth stays even slightly positive it won't take too many generations for our descendants to be unimaginably more wealthy than we are. They can put up with our brain banks and dry their tears with their one dollar notes that are worth $1,000 in 2018 dollars.

That's not how inflation works - in the future, the value of the dollar will be less, not more.

Not universally: The value of $1 (nominal) worth of computing resources and information storage in 2018 is surely thousands of times the value of $1 (nominal) worth of the same in 1958.

EDIT: Some quick math on deflation in storage costs. The IBM 305 RAMAC[1] was introduced in 1956, provided 5MB of magnetic storage and cost $3,200/month in 1956 dollars. To pick a random modern storage provider with a similar pricing model, in 2018 Dropbox offers 1TB for $10/month. Putting aside all the other advantages Dropbox gives you over a 305, the pure storage value of $1 (nominal) has gone from 1.6KB/month to 100GB/month, a multiple of over 50 million.

[1] https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/650/650_pr2.html

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

#114

Post by serans »

noetic_techy wrote: post #107

This is going to sound a bit out there, but what if your brain is simply an antenna for your consciousness to come through from wherever. Has anyone actually tried to boot up an artificial brain derived from a real organism? I'd like to see a proof of concept that your brain IS indeed the seat of your consciousness, and not just a fancy quantum antenna.

That's pretty much what Descartes proposed! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactionism_(philosophy_of_....

My favourite argument against this idea is that it would violate the law of conservation of energy. In any case it looks to me that all these dualist theories of mind are non-falsifiable

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

#115

Post by Turing_Machine »

debrisapron wrote: post #100

"I hope future people are appalled that in the 21st century, the richest and most comfortable people in history spent their money and resources trying to live forever" I hope nobody tells this guy about chemotherapy, he's gonna flip.

> I hope nobody tells this guy about chemotherapy, he's gonna flip.

Or about vaccines. Or about antibiotics. Or about sterile surgery procedures. Or about running water and electricity. Or about....

Just about everything that makes up our modern quality of life was only available to a privileged class when it first came on the scene.

My bet is that future people won't be appalled in the slightest.

Something tells me that Professor Hendricks isn't living a Neanderthal lifestyle (or even a modern Third World lifestyle).

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

#116

Post by mozumder »

noetic_techy wrote: post #107

This is going to sound a bit out there, but what if your brain is simply an antenna for your consciousness to come through from wherever. Has anyone actually tried to boot up an artificial brain derived from a real organism? I'd like to see a proof of concept that your brain IS indeed the seat of your consciousness, and not just a fancy quantum antenna.

This is what I've always thought. I think the structure of DNA or proteins themselves is that antenna that interacts with a fifth fundamental force of nature - which is that life spirit.

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

#117

Post by saputeweobo »

noetic_techy wrote: post #107

This is going to sound a bit out there, but what if your brain is simply an antenna for your consciousness to come through from wherever. Has anyone actually tried to boot up an artificial brain derived from a real organism? I'd like to see a proof of concept that your brain IS indeed the seat of your consciousness, and not just a fancy quantum antenna.

What a fascinating idea. Did you take it from somewhere or did you conceive it by yourself? I would love to read about it.

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

#118

Post by 21 »

Balgair wrote: post #73
OscarCunningham wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If electrical transmissions are at all required, then this would render a brain nothing more than an amusing curio. That fact that people sometimes survive lightning strikes and epileptic fits suggests that normal brain activity can be restarted after a disruption.

The current research in Neuro is that a memory a synaptic condition, in that some synapse is structured in some way in relation to other neurons. There are W-many GABA receptors and X-many vesicles, Y-many AMPA receptors and Z-many neurotransmitters. Each receptor is in some state of flux in terms of it's age and other chemical modifiers on the protein. The synapse itself is tethered in some way and has structural pr…

> You'd need to know where pretty much every ion was and it's momentum, and I'm pretty sure that's impossible.

As parent said, people do stuff like trans-cranial electric stimulation which surely changes where some ions are, yet they do not lose their personality afterwards.

I'm pretty sure our brain is more robust than the exact position of every ion. Biology is very messy, and stochastic.

Also note how artificial neural networks are very noise resistant, which allows people to run them on low-precission numbers.

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

#119

Post by Turing_Machine »

kingbirdy wrote: post #58
savanaly wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel too bad about it. If economic growth stays even slightly positive it won't take too many generations for our descendants to be unimaginably more wealthy than we are. They can put up with our brain banks and dry their tears with their one dollar notes that are worth $1,000 in 2018 dollars.

That's not how inflation works - in the future, the value of the dollar will be less, not more.

It is how investments and productivity gains work, however.

We are incredibly more wealthy than people of a hundred years ago, in almost every respect.

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

#120

Post by Turing_Machine »

hartator wrote: post #105

> It has also won a $960,000 federal grant from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health I have nothing against the elite trying to live forever. However, I wish they weren’t using our taxes in the process.

You don't think that freezing a brain in this way is likely to produce a lot of generally valuable scientific knowledge, regardless of whether it leads to something like "immortality"?

I disagree. I bet they'll learn all kinds of useful stuff from this, however it turns out.

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