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Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

theguardian.com

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Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#181

Post by mrguyorama »

jstanley wrote: post #96
dexwiz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno about you, but I don't care about a computer program that believes it's me living on after I die. You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you. If anything, living a life in a way that you put off doing the fun things until the after life, spiritual or digital, sounds awful.

> You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you. If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life, if the virtual version shares all your memories, hopes, fears, thought patterns... Then in what way is it not you? Do you also think that "reconstructive teleporting" would build another person but that person would not be you?

>If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life

There cannot be. There isn't even a continuity of experience for when you go to sleep.

It doesn't matter at all how perfect the copy is, because I STILL AM ME.

Brain uploading has never made sense because, well, I can't fit in the wires.

It doesn't matter that some digital simulation of my brain activity happens, and that the simulation feels like it was me and now is an immortal simulation, because I still die. My consciousness cannot be transported to software.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#182

Post by saratogacx »

moduspol wrote: post #68
mickael-kerjean wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology This is precisely why I love Black Mirror. Despite the warnings, we're allowing companies to build killer robot and are running a large scale experiment to b…

We always have moved forward technologically despite doomers. They were there for first person shooter games, the Internet in general, dating apps, etc. That’s not to say those things didn’t have significant downsides. They do. But it took years to get there and they weren’t an overnight surprise, like they seem to be in the Black Mirror episodes I saw. Imagine what a few Black Mirror episodes would look like if they…

It isn't like it didn't happen. Here's an example [0] where a factory owner started replacing the workers with automation/robots. This was in 1964. There's another episode [1] where a scientist creates a computer that can converse with him and it goes all wrong.

These kinds of plots were actually quite common as people wrestled with the unknown future of the coming nuclear age.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_Center_at_Whipple%27s
    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Agnes%E2%80%94With_Love

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#183

Post by uxcolumbo »

Animats wrote: post #91

It's not that Black Mirror is bad. It's that, as the article points out, we don't have a fictional vision of the future to use as a goal. The author mentions Jill Lapore's 2017 article in the New Yorker, which is sort of a survey paper of dystopian fiction from that period.[1] No alternatives are presented. For most of human history, the big problem was making enough stuff. There just wasn't any way to make enough st…

We do, it's called Star Trek - The Next Generation.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#184

Post by jstanley »

mrguyorama wrote: post #181
jstanley wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you. If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life, if the virtual version shares all your memories, hopes, fears, thought patterns... Then in what way is it not you? Do you also think that "reconstructive teleporting" would build another person but that person would not be you?

>If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life There cannot be. There isn't even a continuity of experience for when you go to sleep. It doesn't matter at all how perfect the copy is, because I STILL AM ME. Brain uploading has never made sense because, well, I can't fit in the wires. It doesn't matter that some digital simulation of my brain activity happens, and that the simul…

> There isn't even a continuity of experience for when you go to sleep.

But you remember having lived the previous day. Why is it any different if you remember having lived as a human a second ago and are a computer program now?

> My consciousness cannot be transported to software.

You perhaps don't notice that your entire argument hinges on this claim. This is the central point of disagreement.

I'm saying "if your consciousness was uploaded to a computer you would still experience being yourself", and you're saying "no, if my consciousness were uploaded to a computer I wouldn't experience it as being myself, because uploading a consciousness to a computer is not possible".

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#185

Post by ckw »

simpaticoder wrote: post #71
anyfoo wrote: post #38

While I don't fully agree with the article, I really like this sketch about "Black Mirror in medieval times": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1aSqZ23ydk It does show rather well (and rather funnily) how it can be a fine line between warning about technology, and taking it too cynically.

Thanks for the link - that was great. Yeah, with some exceptions (15 million merits being one, given that it's pure allegory) the show seems to ask, "given some new technology, what is the cruelest most horrifying situation in which it could be used?" This basic premise can indeed be applied to anything, past or present. Personally I'd take the automobile, call the episode "Meat Grinder," reference the ~30k deaths/ye…

This is a great idea. Like a 1905 person’s weird vision of the 1950s— getting a bunch of things wildly wrong, like fashion and geopolitics, but strangely accurately describing a fledgling attempt to mandate ‘seat belts’ and criminalize drunk driving, so as to diminish the tens of thousands of preventable traffic deaths yearly, against the lobbying efforts of industry and the insouciance (and even outright opposition) of the public.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#186

Post by beefnugs »

mvdtnz wrote: post #46

Toxic positivity. Some of us just enjoy dark fiction. Let us be.

Yeah this series is consistently excellent. If you want positivity you want "cutesy robots" and anime stuff. Everbody wants lovable robots that work for us instead of the corp. (Twist your own brain to imagine that capitalism wouldn't ruin it guaranteed)
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