Live data from Hacker News

A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

github.com

71–80 of 208 posts

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#71

I have no exposure to connectomes - or really anything quite like this (as opposed to good ol’ fashioned perceptrons) - so forgive my following uninformed question: Can someone explain if this software is ethical?

Is ethics another tool in a power play game (religion being another) that people use to exert dominance over other people? No one expects of cat or pigeon to be ethical. But somehow humans sometimes get overloaded by external demand to think of gazillion things that might offend someone (sometimes unreasonable demands, or how it might get interpreted (sometimes incorrectly)) before acting. Im not saying ethics is bad…

Ethics has nothing to do with how an action is perceived, rather its focus is on is the action moral.

One should never take any action without considering the ethical implications of that action. Being capable of that is, arguably, the sole thing that meaningfully separates us from the (real or simulated) fruitfly.

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#72
post #21

I have no exposure to connectomes - or really anything quite like this (as opposed to good ol’ fashioned perceptrons) - so forgive my following uninformed question: Can someone explain if this software is ethical?

If your circle of empathy includes fruit flies, fuck no, we murdered so many of those guys to figure out how their tiny brains work. If you do not think of fruit flies as moral patients, sure, yeah, who cares, they're like just fruit flies you know?

If your circle of empathy doesn’t include fruit flies, endeavor to expand your circular of empathy until it does.

Goto 0.

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#74
post #12

I appreciate the open source approach over the startup's sensational claims. This is more transparent. That said, I think it still presents itself as if the fly is being controlled by the connectome, when (if I'm reading the source correctly) it's more accurate to say scripted behaviors have been hooked up to be triggered by the connectome. Put another way, you might as well have the "escape" trigger open a YouTube v…

cursor input get scripted into loom input to the LC4s which are evidently simulated faithfully enough to drive giant fibers, which is actually how fly escape behavior works. what more could you want

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#75

I have no exposure to connectomes - or really anything quite like this (as opposed to good ol’ fashioned perceptrons) - so forgive my following uninformed question: Can someone explain if this software is ethical?

unbelievable amount of coarse graining to get from a real fly to this. same leve of ethical quandary as giving your dog a stuffed bear to tear apart. besides, you should see the things we do to real flies...

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ethics another tool in a power play game (religion being another) that people use to exert dominance over other people? No one expects of cat or pigeon to be ethical. But somehow humans sometimes get overloaded by external demand to think of gazillion things that might offend someone (sometimes unreasonable demands, or how it might get interpreted (sometimes incorrectly)) before acting. Im not saying ethics is bad…

Ethics has nothing to do with how an action is perceived, rather its focus is on is the action moral. One should never take any action without considering the ethical implications of that action. Being capable of that is, arguably, the sole thing that meaningfully separates us from the (real or simulated) fruitfly.

I think the question is valid. Why should a human have a moral responsibility towards non-humans, while a cat doesn't have a moral responsibility towards non-cats, just because the human is capable of making moral judgements? Is there any analogous situation where capacity engenders responsibility? Are gorillas more responsible for how they use their strength, since they're stronger than humans?

>Being capable of that is, arguably, the sole thing that meaningfully separates us from the (real or simulated) fruitfly.

That's a bit of an extreme hyperbole, don't you think?

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#77
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your circle of empathy includes fruit flies, fuck no, we murdered so many of those guys to figure out how their tiny brains work. If you do not think of fruit flies as moral patients, sure, yeah, who cares, they're like just fruit flies you know?

If your circle of empathy doesn’t include fruit flies, endeavor to expand your circular of empathy until it does. Goto 0.

Are you seriously suggesting that we should have empathy for ... fruit flies? Speechless

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ethics another tool in a power play game (religion being another) that people use to exert dominance over other people? No one expects of cat or pigeon to be ethical. But somehow humans sometimes get overloaded by external demand to think of gazillion things that might offend someone (sometimes unreasonable demands, or how it might get interpreted (sometimes incorrectly)) before acting. Im not saying ethics is bad…

Ethics has nothing to do with how an action is perceived, rather its focus is on is the action moral. One should never take any action without considering the ethical implications of that action. Being capable of that is, arguably, the sole thing that meaningfully separates us from the (real or simulated) fruitfly.

"Ethics has nothing to do with how an action is perceived" "...considering the ethical implications of that action"

Are these two not contradictions?

And is it not the too big of a load on an actor to think about everything before acting? I would prefer to delegate this function to my empathy part of the brain...

At the end i think ethics is valid only for cases where empathy is functioning. You can not be ethical to a rock unless you feel empathy for it. Same probably would go for extra strange extraterrestrial life forms that you could not empathise with. Lets say hive of microbes that makes the hive sentient but no limbs, no shared communication signals, different size categories (planetary hive)

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#79
post #35
post #3

No demo video?

FYI it takes less than 30 seconds do clone, build, and run.

it would've taken the similar amount of time for the OP to do a 10 second screen recording and paste it into the project root to be linkable from the README.md and it would avoid thousands of people having to waste compute cycles and electricity and 30 seconds of their lives cloning and building , wouldn't it?

Re: A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

#80
post #29

It's weird to write MacOS specific software in this era.

do you mean they should've spent more time writing for other platforms or do you insinuate that they should've shipped a chromium browser instead of writing native software?
Post reply on HN