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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”

#331

Post by brett40324 »

mulmen wrote: post #197
mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that children do not generate value?

That’s a very unfavorable and disingenuous reading of my comment. The portion of kaizendad’s comment that I replied to specifically mentioned “output”. I interpret this to mean economic benefit or “value”. The time students spend in school is time they are not working. Children generate almost zero economic benefit until they are out of school and the type of person kaizendad references is likely to spend a lot of ti…

Your position on this is a little disturbing, and ignores every child/young adult who either grew up poor and had to work, or worked part time because their parents didnt buy them a car or every other thing they wanted as a teen. Or, they just actually wanted a job. I mean, in the US you can go anywhere and there's 15 and 16 year olds working as clerks, restaurant employees, etc. I got my first legally taxed job in Indiana as a 'root beer boy' at a diner when I was 14!

Edit:

https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/youth-employment/

From link, "As of October 2015, 49 percent of all youth ages 16-24 were employed in any work, either full- or part-time. Youth enrolled in high school had an employment rate of 18 percent, while the rate for those in college, either full- or part-time, was 45 percent."

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

#332

Post by knowThySelfx »

omegaworks wrote: post #53

Michael Hendricks' take is the best: > “Burdening future generations with our brain banks is just comically arrogant. Aren’t we leaving them with enough problems?” Hendricks told me this week after reviewing Nectome’s website. “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 on the backs of their desc…

Relax, it is not gonna happen. Even if it "happens" in a sense, it won't be "them". Tech dissent is not much appreciated in yc, esp when a yc fellow is backing this.

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

#333

Post by weerd »

whack wrote: post #277

Any sufficiently advanced technology that is capable of resurrecting your brain/consciousness, is also capable of subjecting your digital consciousness to eternal torture worse than anything experienced by Man thus far. If you haven't already, check out Black Mirror's last episode: Black Museum. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, even if there's only an infinitesimal chance of it happening. https://en.wikipedia.or…

This is a main element of DeLillo's latest book Zero K. A state-of-the-art secret facility is built in a middle of nowhere former Soviet bloc country. It's financed by ultra wealthy people whose bodies are disassembled and frozen with the hopes they will be reanimated in the future.

There is a short chapter that is narrated by the detached consciousness of one of the patrons. She has lost all sense of self and is trapped in a dim loop of pure thought, constantly questioning what she is. Probably one of the most quietly terrifying things I have ever read.

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

#334

Post by dfee »

joering2 wrote: post #326
mygo wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers have yet to match many of the capabilities of the brain. Heck I have better image recognition when I’m drunk than all of Google’s image recognition nodes combined. Could a computer host a human mind to its full capacity?

Did you forget that any technology publicly known and available is about 20 years old? Im sure they are systems that can recognize image faster and more accurate than humans but its sort of a “product” you wont find by googling.

I did not know this. I assumed certain technology is more advanced in private industry or classified governmental programs, but I was unaware that my iPhone X is effectively a 1997 device.

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

#335

Post by jiggunjer »

reasonattlm wrote: post #26

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 vit…

"A copy of you is clearly not you, and no amount of handwaving is going to make that the case."

What an unnuanced way of stating your opinion. Views on what "identity" is differ, clearly.

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

#336

Post by pmoriarty »

zebraflask wrote: post #322
whack wrote: post #277

Any sufficiently advanced technology that is capable of resurrecting your brain/consciousness, is also capable of subjecting your digital consciousness to eternal torture worse than anything experienced by Man thus far. If you haven't already, check out Black Mirror's last episode: Black Museum. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, even if there's only an infinitesimal chance of it happening. https://en.wikipedia.or…

This really isn't what YCombinator should talk about. Does this start new companies? The reason for this site in the first place was to start new companies. Brains getting sliced into jars is not impressing anyone.

From the HN Guidelines:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

also:

"Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#338

Post by projektir »

taneq wrote: post #226
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.

The range of different effects that a brain injury can have on your mind is too great, IMO, for this to be true. Consider cases where people forget very specific classes of things, or gain or lose specific faculties, in response to neural trauma. Damage to the brain affects the functionality of the mind itself, not just how clearly the mind can see its inputs and convey its outputs.

I'm not sure what that person's version of the antenna idea is, but mine generally implies the brain is still in charge of the actual effects themselves, but needs somewhere to send it all to. The "somewhere" isn't chemical, and is just a receiver, and can't do anything if the sender (the brain) is damaged.

The "somewhere" is distinguished due to the fact that a given person is a specific person and not another person (if you deny this, this makes ethics and emphatic transfer unworkable, which doesn't seem right).

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

#339

Post by eggsome »

I can't believe no one has mentioned MLP - Friendship is Optimal:

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/62074/friendship-is-optimal

An amazing work that had some help from some of the guys at Less Wrong.

One of the most enlightening and funny things I've read in ages.

Here is a great talk that led me to reading it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7eUomiDaTo

TL;DR: It's a superintelligent AI that just wants to make humans happy... with Frendship and Ponies.

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

#340

Post by musage »

whack wrote: post #277

Any sufficiently advanced technology that is capable of resurrecting your brain/consciousness, is also capable of subjecting your digital consciousness to eternal torture worse than anything experienced by Man thus far. If you haven't already, check out Black Mirror's last episode: Black Museum. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, even if there's only an infinitesimal chance of it happening. https://en.wikipedia.or…

This is still harmless compared to my worries, sadly. Imagine Stalin/Hitler/Mao 9000+, sending coffins into orbits around suns to keep alive and torturing their victims until the star goes out. The Catholic Church in medieval times could "only" threaten and kill, but look how reall the fear of hellfire was... yet just the technological possibility of doing this would suffice, no need to actually do it to every dissident. Do it to some, with great publicity, maybe a live feed of their torture with mandatory attendance for all citizens, secretly kill most others and send out empty dummy coffins. Super cheap, same, horrible result. At scale, "forever".

I wish I could consider it gruesome fiction, but to me this is the ocean the syrup of power and sadism wills towards. It was fantasized about for the same reasons it will be implemented, everything else remaining the same. Humans have gotten more, not less sick.

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