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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”

#351

Post by Klathmon »

EGreg wrote: post #268
prepend wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly, morality and the greater good of humanity requires that we proactively euthanize any genius who hits 60. Even against their will. All assets should go to the euthanasia team to cover costs.

Or, you know, you could just clone them, like Riker. Or make a copy without invasive means. And anyway, if people have cybernetic implants, I wonder what being human will mean.

People talk about how cybernetics will change what it means to be human, however I really believe we are already past that point.

My cell phone and computer augment my ability to do things to such a degree that I feel I'm not myself without those abilities. I rely on note apps to remember things, calendars to schedule, internet searches to re-discover information or lookup specifics. My social life, my professional life, and my personal life are all significantly changed by computers.

I honestly feel taking your eyes and hands out of the equation and putting stuff directly into your brain is going to be more evolutionary than revolutionary.

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

#353

Post by zebraflask »

pmoriarty wrote: post #336
zebraflask wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Yea, I get the mod rules, but this is bad.

The purpose of YCombinator was to start new companies, not to argue about brain slices.

If you want to argue about brain slices, that's cool, I'm just saying. Not what this discussion board was meant for.

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

#354

Post by e12e »

WatermelonApe wrote: post #316
mirimir wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather a key theme of the Kovach trilogy. Envoys get reconstructed to resist digital torture. "Get to the next screen." Edit: The novels are much better than the Netflix videos. They are, in my opinion, crude hacks. Randomized and simplified. The virtual torture sequence in Altered Carbon is vastly more horrible than the one in the video. Even if I didn't care about spoilers, I'd hesitate to describe it here. An…

I watched the Netflix series and I really liked the premise but found the story and acting lacking in some areas. However I really liked the noir protagonist and the scene you described was my favorite episode in the show. I am interested how the story continues. Are the books much better than the show? How would you rate the trilogy among your favorite cyberpunk novels? Thanks.

I'd rate the second book (broken angels) as one of my favourite sci-fi books (which might include tiger,Tiger/the stars my destination, neuromancer, fire upon the deep, holy Fire... There are many great ones).

I started with that one though, and then read the other two.

I'd say overall as a triology, it rates alongside neuromancer /the sprawl triology. A little more pulp - but a similar serious take on technological evolution.

[ed: the netflix series is to ac, a little like the Johnny Mnemonic film is to the short story. Although the series is a bit closer to the books]

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

#355

Post by weerd »

daodedickinson wrote: post #349
weerd wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tr…

I had something similar happen to me once and didn't know how long it was going to last and it really was that terrifying, except instead of questioning what I was, I could remember everything I normally could. I just couldn't sense anything but my own thoughts and memories. Luckily I came out of it, but it would be an awful hell.

That is intense. I hope that's the only time you have to experience that. Speaking of hell, it's actually similar to what my Catholic school taught us hell would be like. No physical pain or brimstone... Just your mind, alone and separated from all for eternity.

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

#356

Post by e12e »

WatermelonApe wrote: post #316
mirimir wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather a key theme of the Kovach trilogy. Envoys get reconstructed to resist digital torture. "Get to the next screen." Edit: The novels are much better than the Netflix videos. They are, in my opinion, crude hacks. Randomized and simplified. The virtual torture sequence in Altered Carbon is vastly more horrible than the one in the video. Even if I didn't care about spoilers, I'd hesitate to describe it here. An…

I watched the Netflix series and I really liked the premise but found the story and acting lacking in some areas. However I really liked the noir protagonist and the scene you described was my favorite episode in the show. I am interested how the story continues. Are the books much better than the show? How would you rate the trilogy among your favorite cyberpunk novels? Thanks.

By the way, Bruce Sterling's "Holy Fire" offers some thoughts on extended life, in a more near-future, no jumping bodies/sleeves setting.

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

#357

Post by hyperpallium »

wmf wrote: post #269
hyperpallium wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Larry Niven ( Rammer ), the courts will find the dead cannot own property. I observe there's a certain prejudice, in that law is written by the living. The other ideas of cryptocurrency/escrow/private keys would escape the law... until you tried to spend it legally. You might as well bury gold in a chest.

I observe there's a certain prejudice, in that law is written by the living. Until the "dead" uploads outnumber the living, at which point they vote in a bloc to expropriate and enslave the meat-humans, as in the novel The Uploaded .

We have a saying up here, life is wasted on the living.

A. thanks for the suggestion, great, terrific, wonderful (was flux good?) but B. The dead shouldn't hang about trying to interfere with the living!

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

#358

Post by hyperpallium »

DonHopkins wrote: post #249
hyperpallium wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Larry Niven ( Rammer ), the courts will find the dead cannot own property. I observe there's a certain prejudice, in that law is written by the living. The other ideas of cryptocurrency/escrow/private keys would escape the law... until you tried to spend it legally. You might as well bury gold in a chest.

According to Douglas Adams, Hotblack Desiato once spent a year dead for tax reasons. http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Hotblack_Desiato

DNA is strangely relevant here (as he often is):

[...] I don't know what this great think I'm meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right?

"The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so hoopy. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain - my own brain - and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be able to go and be President, and I wouldn't be able to steal this ship, which must be the important thing.

"But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? OK, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got.

"Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own."

Zaphod banged the console in fury, oblivious to the dumbfolded looks he was attracting.

"The old me is dead!" he raved, "Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying to interfere with the living!"

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

#359

Post by onion2k »

earenndil wrote: post #303
aaron_m04 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it's cheaper to extract the key from your brain and dump the rest?

It's unclear that that's possible, though.

We're considering the funding implications of uploading a consciousness to storage and retrieving it later. None of it is possible.

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

#360

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

DKnoll wrote: post #256
hyperpallium wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Larry Niven ( Rammer ), the courts will find the dead cannot own property. I observe there's a certain prejudice, in that law is written by the living. The other ideas of cryptocurrency/escrow/private keys would escape the law... until you tried to spend it legally. You might as well bury gold in a chest.

I wonder if you could use a trust corporation to do this... I don't know anything about law though.

Corporations have more personhood - certainly more legal agency - than many people do.

Uploads aren’t even the biggest worry. If it turned out to be possible to upload analyse and upload personalities, it would also become possible to synthesize new personalities on demand to a required spec.

How much value does organic personality actually have?

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