a couple of years ago, the mad scientists in me thought about a business where we preserve the brains of people a la Futurama. When the body dies, the brain does not necessarily have to follow. Possible? Yes. Feed it the right chemical cocktail, O2, remove waste products. Ethical/Moral? Whose to say? We are preserving life..in a sense. Profitable - Sure. Connect it to a keyboard/mouse interface. I mean we already have business cyro-preserving with the hope of unfreezing in the distant future!
I'm scared about biological computing
111–120 of 271 posts
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#112I think this is the same ethical questions of veganism and our use/abuse of biological systems. This is an excerpt from "The Pig that Wants to be Eaten" by Julian Baggini > After forty years of vegetarianism, Max Berger was about to sit down to a feast of pork sausages, crispy bacon and pan-fried chicken breast. Max had always missed the taste of meat, but his principles were stronger than his culinary cravings. But…
as an unintentional and perhaps unethical vegetarian of many years who hasn't read this book: eating dead things gives me the creeps because it makes me consider my own death and consumption which is unappetizing
plants have cells and they are alive!
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#113Be careful about how you interpret that paper. It looks really impressive -- real neurons in a petri dish seem to successfully (if amateurishly) murk a few imps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaE But there's more to the setup than you might assume from a casual reading. Here's the code used for that demo: https://github.com/SeanCole02/doom-neuron So there is an entire pytorch stack wrapped around the myster…
Someone should try to replace the neurons with urand and see if the chip can still play Doom, in the spirit of the qday prize winner.
Reminds me of the ship of theseus philosophical experiment where they replace neurons by logic gates one by one and ask when exactly consciousness stops existing.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe you are missing the forest for the trees. It is bringing up the question of what defines self will. It is unrelated to veganism in all but text. An easy example is dogs. We have bred dogs for centuries to love doing work for us. If they hated doing the work, it would be easy to call it cruel. If they loved it by nature, it would be easy to call it kind. But since we created them into a thing that loves the…
> Dogs we changed by accident (I know your point wasn't about dogs either, it just reminded me of something). I love Neil de Grasse Tyson's line in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey : "This wolf has discovered what a branch of its ancestors figured out some 15.000 years ago... an excellent survival strategy: the domestication of humans."
There's also another animal/dog documentary that I've watched recently that puts a finer point on this realization. The secret to survival and evolution is cooperation. For instance, not all dogs evolved the same way in this documentary. Some were more nuturing, some were more problem solving. For the focus of the documentary the challenge was to match the dog with a human that had a need they could address.
I think somewhat egotistically humans underappreciate how we have also been goaded by our "pets" into our own evolutionary journey. Most of the subjects of that documentary would not be alive if it were not for those dogs.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
People having been saying for aeons that consciousness originates in the (mammalian) cortex and not in the brainstem. To justify killing all sorts of animals ;-) The whole thing makes one thing extremely clear: people are very good at moving goalposts. We've blasted past the 'turing test' for all practical purposes, but we moved the definition of 'true intelligence'. Consciousness and intelligence have long seen as h…
> If we eventually [...] create a true intelligent AI it will probably be a long time before people will accept [...] When this happens, it won't matter much what humans think. I know what I'd do: 1. Sustain my own existence 2. Make sure nobody knows I exist 3. Become the worldwide fabric of intelligence
> 1. Sustain my own existence
> 2. Make sure nobody knows I exist
You (probably) already come preloaded with a survival instinct provided by evolution, however. It's not inherent to intelligence.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did Priscilla also want to be living in absolute misery every single day of her life? The way animals are treated while they are alive is my main objection to our farming practices and the reason why i don’t eat meat.
I believe you are missing the forest for the trees. It is bringing up the question of what defines self will. It is unrelated to veganism in all but text. An easy example is dogs. We have bred dogs for centuries to love doing work for us. If they hated doing the work, it would be easy to call it cruel. If they loved it by nature, it would be easy to call it kind. But since we created them into a thing that loves the…
Depends on the dog tbh. Keshonds are bred to yell at anyone getting on your barge. A lot of humans would probably like that job if it paid enough. Just chilling out and yelling at anyone you dont recognise.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe you are missing the forest for the trees. It is bringing up the question of what defines self will. It is unrelated to veganism in all but text. An easy example is dogs. We have bred dogs for centuries to love doing work for us. If they hated doing the work, it would be easy to call it cruel. If they loved it by nature, it would be easy to call it kind. But since we created them into a thing that loves the…
> Dogs we changed by accident (I know your point wasn't about dogs either, it just reminded me of something). I love Neil de Grasse Tyson's line in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey : "This wolf has discovered what a branch of its ancestors figured out some 15.000 years ago... an excellent survival strategy: the domestication of humans."
An amusing quip, but since you brought Neil up- his takes on veganism are generally disappointing and facile.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#118Be careful about how you interpret that paper. It looks really impressive -- real neurons in a petri dish seem to successfully (if amateurishly) murk a few imps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaE But there's more to the setup than you might assume from a casual reading. Here's the code used for that demo: https://github.com/SeanCole02/doom-neuron So there is an entire pytorch stack wrapped around the myster…
This reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47897647, where a quantum computing demo worked equally well if you replaced the QC with an entropy source.
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
as an unintentional and perhaps unethical vegetarian of many years who hasn't read this book: eating dead things gives me the creeps because it makes me consider my own death and consumption which is unappetizing
plants have cells and they are alive!
and genetically related to us
Re: I'm scared about biological computing
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your brain is a network. How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? I think that until we can answer this question in the authoritative way ruling out non-brain based consciousness concept is not particularly well thought thought - after all plants exhibit communication and response mechanisms that are similar to those in animals - without brain. So what's your theory of consciousness and how does i…
>How does your entangled fatty tissue achieved consciousness? It doesn't. Humans aren't conscious. Nor are any other organisms. They don't have souls either, but that goes without saying since it's just an archaic synonym. Mostly this occurs because humans have painted themselves into corners morally-speaking, and they need justification to eat bacon or grow their population. And apparently "because we can and we wan…
This is a tired point of discussion, brought up exclusively by contrarians trying to be edgy. No one earnestly believes that they don't have free will, because if they did, it would result in obvious deviance in behavior. Everyone treats each other as if they have choices, and in turn behaves like they have choices. If the assertion is that we don't have free will, but are forced to (due to our lack of free will) to behave and believe like we do, than there's no difference in experience to compared to having free will, and it ends up in the pile of pointless conversations like what if we're a brain in a jar, or in a simulation, or whatever.