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MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

technologyreview.com

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Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#51

Post by Veedrac »

ilamont wrote: post #29

Never thought I would ask something like this, but here goes: What's Y Combinator's stance on the death requirement? Nectome was at demo day last month and Sam Altman is (or was) on the waiting list. Following the example of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, it is sizing up demand by inviting prospective customers to join a waiting list for a deposit of $10,000, fully refundable if you change your mind. So far, 25 people…

First and foremost cryogenics has a PR problem. It is somehow more popular to say that you're glad people are dying by the billions than to align yourself with the people trying to make an earnest effort to stop it (now imagine how fast I would be banned for the same position around genocide).

I'm not sure whether this will just further the kneejerk anti-cryogenics sentiment or if it will seem to more normalise normal post-death cryogenics, but it does seem a rather dangerous play. I don't want cryogenics to find itself tangled up in crazy legal issues.

At an object level I'm not all that concerned with the ethics of people taking this bet, given the science is pretty sound. It does not make sense to allow people to take medical treatment that have a significant chance of serious harm for the chance of a few years longer health if it pans out, but then ban a bet as safe as cryogenics.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#52

Post by anonytrary »

> Most neuroscientists think the ability to recapture memories from brain tissue and re-create a consciousness inside a computer is at best decades away...

At best, decades away? That's some crazy hubris. It's not even imaginable how far away it is. I find it absurd that humans think they can achieve arguably the highest level of godliness in mere decades. This is almost as crazy as saying teleportation is less than a hundred years away. We can't make predictions about things we don't understand.

Edit: I'm getting some flak for not including the rest of the quote, but I would argue that it doesn't matter. The rest of the quote was "and probably not possible at all". Their conclusion makes no sense. How can something either be impossible or potentially very possible? This statement shows how little academia actually knows about neuroscience. And no, this is not comparable to opinions about the moon landing in the 50's. By the 1950s we already had a completely sufficient theoretical framework for achieving space flight. The same cannot be said about consciousness upload as of today.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#54

Post by Veedrac »

walrus01 wrote: post #49

If hundreds of millions of people were to do this, what economic, cultural or religious incentive do people have 500 years from now to resurrect anyone? Maybe people who were famous geniuses, sure, but with my view of human nature I get the impression that unless the resurrection process is extremely low cost and easy, nobody will go to the effort to bring back the consciousness of huge numbers of random people. This…

For the same reason that wealthy countries have public health services, basically. You are right that there are economic issues at play, but there are good arguments that the intrinsic cost of revival should be pretty low, and the process of getting there is just waiting however many thousands of years of technical development it takes.

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#55

Post by apsec112 »

anonytrary wrote: post #52

> Most neuroscientists think the ability to recapture memories from brain tissue and re-create a consciousness inside a computer is at best decades away... At best, decades away? That's some crazy hubris. It's not even imaginable how far away it is. I find it absurd that humans think they can achieve arguably the highest level of godliness in mere decades. This is almost as crazy as saying teleportation is less than…

" To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." - Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube, 1957

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Incorrect_predictions

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#56

Post by dickfickling »

anonytrary wrote: post #52

> Most neuroscientists think the ability to recapture memories from brain tissue and re-create a consciousness inside a computer is at best decades away... At best, decades away? That's some crazy hubris. It's not even imaginable how far away it is. I find it absurd that humans think they can achieve arguably the highest level of godliness in mere decades. This is almost as crazy as saying teleportation is less than…

> Most neuroscientists think the ability to recapture memories from brain tissue and re-create a consciousness inside a computer is at best decades away and probably not possible at all.

Did you deliberately ignore the rest of that sentence?

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#58

Post by mateosu »

Eliezer wrote: post #30
lvs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... if the startup goes south The startup is a snake oil scam. It is by definition "south." It is not "unclear if the upload is feasible." It is simply NOT feasible.

The startup is not claiming to have current uploading technology. The startup is researching (does not claim to have) brain preservation techniques leading to long-term structure preservation in hopes of uploading sometime in the indefinite future. If your personal opinion is that this cannot happen, that does not make other people who have different beliefs and are upfront about their arguments for them "scammers".

There's no real evidence that the human brain functions anything like an Information Processor and, in fact, a growing body of evidence that suggests it's not. We still know so little about the brain and comparing a brain to a computer is is at best a flawed metaphor and at worst an outright falsehood. The idea that any sort of human consciousness can be uploaded or stored by a computer is asinine

Re: MIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploading

#60

Post by s73v3r_ »

Veedrac wrote: post #51
ilamont wrote: post #29

Never thought I would ask something like this, but here goes: What's Y Combinator's stance on the death requirement? Nectome was at demo day last month and Sam Altman is (or was) on the waiting list. Following the example of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, it is sizing up demand by inviting prospective customers to join a waiting list for a deposit of $10,000, fully refundable if you change your mind. So far, 25 people…

First and foremost cryogenics has a PR problem. It is somehow more popular to say that you're glad people are dying by the billions than to align yourself with the people trying to make an earnest effort to stop it (now imagine how fast I would be banned for the same position around genocide). I'm not sure whether this will just further the kneejerk anti-cryogenics sentiment or if it will seem to more normalise norma…

Can you imagine what this planet would be like if people didn't die? How much more crowded we'd be? How much more of a strain we'd be placing on the earth's resources?
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