A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is “100 percent fatal” • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by eggpy » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:13 PM UTC

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.

Let's start here: > In 2013, 138.3 million taxpayers reported earning $9.03 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.23 trillion in income taxes. [0]

Assuming the taxes collected this year are even remotely similar, and assuming this grant came 100% from income tax, and assuming you pay an equal amount in taxes as everyone else, this grant cost you (960000/1.23 trillion)=1/1281250 of the taxes you paid. I know that's a lot of assumptions, but even if that calculation is off by several orders of magnitude, the tax burden is pretty darn small. If you earned $100,000 last year you paid roughly 8 cents for this. It could open up doors to a lot of interesting research. Maybe nothing will come of it. I'd pay 8 cents to find out though.

Also, who says this is "the elite" wanting to live forever and us schlubs footing the bill?

[0] https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...

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

#162

Post by smaslennikov » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:15 PM UTC

where do i sign up

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

#163

Post by matte_black » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

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.

If you've ever suffered from Depersonalization/Derealization disorder, it will become very clear that your mind and your consciousness are not the same thing at all.

DP/DR is quite possibly the worst mental disorder you can ever fall into. It is the feeling where you are convinced everything around you is not real, you see people you know, you know they are significant, but they just feel like actors in a show and you don't care. You look in the mirror, and you don't recognize yourself as you, you just see a body. Worse, your body just moves around the world and accomplish things on autopilot, while you watch everything unfold on what feels like a screen, completely detached. If you died, you wouldn't care much, because you wouldn't feel it's you dying, in fact you want to die, because you are trapped in a hell from which there is no escape.

I've never suffered from this disorder, but I investigated it for some time and am convinced it reveals something we do not yet understand about our existence in this world. The source of our existence may not be where we think it is.

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

#164

Post by dhimes » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

jjr8 wrote: post #158

bulletsvshumans wrote: post #151

If folks really want to make sure they come back from the dead, they might also think about setting up proper incentives for performing the potentially highly laborious process that resurrection might entail even 100+ years from now. It might be helpful to place a sort of back-to-life bounty on yourself, to be held in escrow, and only to be paid out upon successful resurrection. The bigger the bounty, the higher your…

Hmm, interesting. Assuming resurrecting you was easier than picking your brain, there would be the problem of you lying, both when you died and after you were brought back to life. How would they deal with that? I guess they could just kill you again. But would the threat of that happening in the future deter you from lying at time of death, when you have nothing else to lose? It seems like there would need to be sys…

Or the conjugate problem: people bringing you back before they really have the capability to do it well, and having you be some sort of invalid/derelict version of yourself. That's terrifying to me.

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

#165

Post by hartator » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

eggpy wrote: post #161

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.

Let's start here: > In 2013, 138.3 million taxpayers reported earning $9.03 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.23 trillion in income taxes. [0] Assuming the taxes collected this year are even remotely similar, and assuming this grant came 100% from income tax, and assuming you pay an equal amount in taxes as everyone else, this grant cost you (960000/1.23 trillion)=1/1281250 of the taxes you paid. I know t…

> Also, who says this is "the elite" wanting to live forever and us schlubs footing the bill?

I think it's reasonable to think that's someone that is ready to put aside $10,000 in the eventually of an accident leading to coma for the small odds that future people will be able and willing to give him a new body is probably part of the elite.

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

#166

Post by sowbug » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

jjr8 wrote: post #158

bulletsvshumans wrote: post #151

If folks really want to make sure they come back from the dead, they might also think about setting up proper incentives for performing the potentially highly laborious process that resurrection might entail even 100+ years from now. It might be helpful to place a sort of back-to-life bounty on yourself, to be held in escrow, and only to be paid out upon successful resurrection. The bigger the bounty, the higher your…

Hmm, interesting. Assuming resurrecting you was easier than picking your brain, there would be the problem of you lying, both when you died and after you were brought back to life. How would they deal with that? I guess they could just kill you again. But would the threat of that happening in the future deter you from lying at time of death, when you have nothing else to lose? It seems like there would need to be sys…

You're describing public-key cryptography. Sign a message to prove you know a private key that also authorizes the release of funds. This happens to be exactly the functionality of Bitcoin.

It is debatable whether known public-key cryptography systems will survive attack for the amount of time under discussion here.

I suspect the hack will be to extract the secret from the brain being resurrected, recover the funds, and toss the brain in the trash.

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

#167

Post by bambax » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

There's a company in the US that pitches taking care of your pets after "the rapture" (a once-in-the-history-of-the-world event where, apparently, the righteous will ascend to heaven).

It's a kind of insurance, because you won't be able to pay the company after the rapture, so you have to pay now. Also, the company has to be manned by evil people (as a matter of fact and marketing), because if they were good they wouldn't stay behind after the rapture to execute their contractual obligations.

The best kind of commerce is when you take money and don't have to deliver anything in return; however sometimes customers feel cheated. The bestest kind of commerce is the same, but the customer is happy.

But, SV should be wary of becoming its own caricature.

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

#168

Post by ericb » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #137

ericb wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is. If you cloned me while I'm sleeping and I never knew about it, you could torture and kill the other "me" and I'd be none the wiser, so that definitely seems like it isn't "me" because for whatever definition of me that I have, it involves this particular instance of conscious experience. Other conscious experiences, even if they are similar, are not me if they don't share my conscious experiences. P…

> If you cloned me while I'm sleeping and I never knew about it, you could torture and kill the other "me" and I'd be none the wiser If I tortured you, then healed you and removed your memories you would be none the wiser as well. Does that mean I weren't torturing you, but someone else? If I cloned you, tortured your clone and killed it while you were asleep, then merged his memories to you - was it you who I was to…

> If I cloned you, tortured your clone and killed it while you were asleep, then merged his memories to you - was it you who I was torturing or not? Why is the difference meaningful?

If I merged the bash logs where I nuked rm -rf / on a given computer into the logs of one where I have not ran that command, the result is not the same.

> You can serialize an instance of a class, delete the instance, then deserialize it.

This would not be the same object since you can do that, but not delete the object.

Programming is a great analogy. I think the answer for identity/consciousness, even in programming involves an uninterrupted flow of unique locations in time/space that has continued existing as a cohesive whole.

> Some GC languages can move objects in memory when the application is running. Is this the same object?

In general, if there can be "two" instances simultaneously utilizing a given approach (like mind transfer), then it is not the same "one." But this is a flow, so ship of theseus alterations like you propose do not change identity, they are part of the flow.

> Then sleeping is the same as death.

I can't rule that out, actually, although I seem to be conscious some of it, so there's that.

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

#169

Post by resource0x » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

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.

And this antenna does not necessarily reside in your brain. Fascinating TED lecture: E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBGt5OeAQFk

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

#170

Post by drb91 » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

eggpy wrote: post #161

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.

Let's start here: > In 2013, 138.3 million taxpayers reported earning $9.03 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.23 trillion in income taxes. [0] Assuming the taxes collected this year are even remotely similar, and assuming this grant came 100% from income tax, and assuming you pay an equal amount in taxes as everyone else, this grant cost you (960000/1.23 trillion)=1/1281250 of the taxes you paid. I know t…

> Also, who says this is "the elite" wanting to live forever and us schlubs footing the bill?

...because it will be the rich who can afford such an exclusive treatment.

Additionally, it's just straight up irrational--quantity of life does not improve quality. It is a better decision to spend your money on your quality of life. Why even waste 8 cents on this? Peter Thiel can pay for all the young blood he wants, so long as it ain't my tax payer money.