Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

technologyreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 441 posts

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

#191

Post by kerkeslager »

grkvlt wrote: post #60
kerkeslager wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case when you die, but your brain still exists, and it starts processing it again in a new host (computer or organic), isn't that not you anymore? I've yet to come across any evidence of a "self" that exists outside a brain. > Is this a solved philosophical problem for which literature exists? It's a problem that was hypothesized (and not solved) by philosophy, but as far as I know there's no evidence the pr…

> invisible monsters are breeding all around us [...] before they wipe out the human race See also, the germ theory of disease.[0] I think we have this covered already... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease

Haha fair enough.

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

#193

Post by blt »

matte_black wrote: post #163
noetic_techy wrote: post #107

This is going to sound a bit out there, but what if your brain is simply an antenna for your consciousness to come through from wherever. Has anyone actually tried to boot up an artificial brain derived from a real organism? I'd like to see a proof of concept that your brain IS indeed the seat of your consciousness, and not just a fancy quantum antenna.

If you've ever suffered from Depersonalization/Derealization disorder, it will become very clear that your mind and your consciousness are not the same thing at all . DP/DR is quite possibly the worst mental disorder you can ever fall into. It is the feeling where you are convinced everything around you is not real, you see people you know, you know they are significant, but they just feel like actors in a show and y…

Any links to interesting sources about this?

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

#194

Post by kristianp »

cwkoss wrote: post #75
PeanutNore wrote: post #42

“Burdening future generations with our brain banks is just comically arrogant. Aren’t we leaving them with enough problems?” Hendricks told me this week after reviewing Nectome’s website. “I hope future people are appalled that in the 21st century, the richest and most comfortable people in history spent their money and resources trying to live forever on the backs of their descendants. I mean, it’s a joke, right? Th…

Anyone who is cryopreserved, but is viewed as a villian in the zeitgeist of the future, could end up being booted up into a personal hell for the amusement/vindictiveness of future people. If a 'Hitler' VM was publicly available online, how many people would torture it? What are the ethics around torturing virtual consciousnesses of evil people?

Iain Banks' novel "Surface Detail" describes virtual hells where people can be tortured for eternity.

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

#195

Post by notahacker »

twoodfin wrote: post #113
kingbirdy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how inflation works - in the future, the value of the dollar will be less, not more.

Not universally: The value of $1 (nominal) worth of computing resources and information storage in 2018 is surely thousands of times the value of $1 (nominal) worth of the same in 1958. EDIT: Some quick math on deflation in storage costs. The IBM 305 RAMAC[1] was introduced in 1956, provided 5MB of magnetic storage and cost $3,200/month in 1956 dollars. To pick a random modern storage provider with a similar pricing…

Focusing on the exceptions doesn't help the rule. You could get an average US house for $20k and a brand new car for $2k in 1956, and a $4k annual income was a comfortable middle class living. Commercial flight wasn't just prohibitively expensive by modern standards in 1856, it was impossible, but you could live on $100 a year at the time.

If you want to pay 2118 people to resuscitate you (in the unlikely event the technology is feasible and people are willing and able and developed) you're going to need to invest that money well.

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

#196

Post by notahacker »

foxhill wrote: post #104
vtange wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is still deflation. Deflation is any decrease in the general price level of goods and services. It does not matter if it is due to increased production by advanced AI robots, etc. After all, if you knew you can get something cheaper tomorrow, why spend at all? Like you said, the Fed will run against this.

because you need food to live. no amount of tightness on spending can delay the necessity of food. it always boggles me why people scoff at deflationary economics with this line of reasoning - i see little evidence that the average person is so wise with spending money today.

It always boggles me that people scoff at the notion of people deferring many purchases and not investing at all in a deflationary economy because the relatively small fraction of spending which is necessary for survival is likely to be unaffected.

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

#197

Post by mulmen »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #184
mulmen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given that the output of so many brilliant people is skewed to when they are young... [citation needed] Is this really the case? If so why do salaries increase with age? What do you mean by "young"? The bottom half of living people by age? How do you explain the years our children spend in school generating no value at all?

Are you sure that children do not generate value?

That’s a very unfavorable and disingenuous reading of my comment.

The portion of kaizendad’s comment that I replied to specifically mentioned “output”. I interpret this to mean economic benefit or “value”.

The time students spend in school is time they are not working. Children generate almost zero economic benefit until they are out of school and the type of person kaizendad references is likely to spend a lot of time in school. Their economic contributions probably do not start until their late 20s.

I think a persons maximum economic output is probability closer to middle age than their early adult years. Perhaps kaizendad and I simply misalign on the definition of “young”.

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

#198

Post by incompatible »

sowbug wrote: post #166
jjr8 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, interesting. Assuming resurrecting you was easier than picking your brain, there would be the problem of you lying, both when you died and after you were brought back to life. How would they deal with that? I guess they could just kill you again. But would the threat of that happening in the future deter you from lying at time of death, when you have nothing else to lose? It seems like there would need to be sys…

You're describing public-key cryptography. Sign a message to prove you know a private key that also authorizes the release of funds. This happens to be exactly the functionality of Bitcoin. It is debatable whether known public-key cryptography systems will survive attack for the amount of time under discussion here. I suspect the hack will be to extract the secret from the brain being resurrected, recover the funds,…

It's pretty unlikely that any particular system like Bitcoin will still be around in 100 years. It would be difficult to think of any investment that will still be worth something in 100 years. Buried gold perhaps?

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

#199

Post by ericb »

ajuc wrote: post #183
ericb wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I cloned you, tortured your clone and killed it while you were asleep, then merged his memories to you - was it you who I was torturing or not? Why is the difference meaningful? If I merged the bash logs where I nuked rm -rf / on a given computer into the logs of one where I have not ran that command, the result is not the same. > You can serialize an instance of a class, delete the instance, then deserialize it…

> If I merged the bash logs where I nuked rm -rf / on a given computer into the logs of one where I have not ran that command, the result is not the same. What if you had 2 git repositories, and merged changes from one to another? Or 2 disk images? Why would memories be logs and not contents of the repository in this analogy? And if you care about changes to the brain state that aren't memories - just add these chang…

> Why would existence of a copy change anything? In programming it doesn't, yet you seem to argue it does.

It isn't the copy that changes things. It is the potential of a copy that makes it glaringly obvious that the result is not the same instance. If there is some process that makes a second me, I don't have access to the copy of me's thoughts. This proves second me isn't actually me because I'm still here, and we are trying to define what I am, and at-minimum, my definition of my consciousness does not include other consciousnesses which I don't have access to.

> Does that split identities into 2 and immediately kills one of them?

Yes.

While I think programming isn't perfect as an analogy, there is no other vein in which people think that has as many good metaphors for this. On the contrary, I think these corner cases are where you can actually refine your reasoning about these things. I think many of your corner cases are really useful because it is entirely conceivable that many could leave the realm of silicon and enter the world of flesh and blood (like memory merges, etc).

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

#200

Post by CardenB »

matte_black wrote: post #186
DoreenMichele wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, easily attributed to brain chemistry and not necessarily anything woo.

There is no known cause. Or cure for that matter.

AFAIK, it's frequently linked to anxiety, and SSRIs do a good job of treating it.
Post reply on HN