I'm scared about biological computing

Post by asklfjnasfas » Wed, May 06, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #206

maybewhenthesun wrote: post #71

Earlier 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…

Since well before LLMs, people have been talking about "philosophical zombies," hypothetical objects that could emulate human behavior perfectly but had no inner experience. Some philosophers (one modern example being Kastrup) point out that the only thing we really know is our own conscious experience. We don't go full-on solipsist because other people appear to be built the same way as ourselves, so it's a small ju…

Post by noosphr » Wed, May 06, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

AmbroseBierce wrote: post #191

stackghost wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What I wanted to do after dish brain pong, but never had the budget for, was using live animals as the computational substrate. What does the ethical due diligence process look like, for something like this?

Haha, you made me laugh quite a bit, like ethical due diligence was even a bleep in the mental model of someone who talks like that about sentiment life forms.

Post by cinntaile » Wed, May 06, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

noosphr wrote: post #222

constantius wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I wanted to do after dish brain pong, but never had the budget for, was using live animals Torture, so casually mentioned. For what, I wonder.

When we can turn off distress and pain in farm animals we would have done more to improve well-being in the world than anyone alive today. Factory farms stop being an efficient evil and become the only moral way to produce meat. And as a side effect we also get super intelligence on a substrate that is 10 orders of magnitude more energy efficient than silicon.

Post by Schmerika » Wed, May 06, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

4gotunameagain wrote: post #188

altmanaltman wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does but most of what we do to animals is terrifying. I could see why getting funding for this idea might not have been that easy though "I want to mind control three animals to play Doom" is certainly a pitch

That is the fallacy of relative privation. The fact that most of what we do to animals is terrifying should be the motivating factor to NOT do more of it, such as the atrocity described above.

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 06, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #225

noosphr wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we can turn off distress and pain in farm animals we would have done more to improve well-being in the world than anyone alive today. Factory farms stop being an efficient evil and become the only moral way to produce meat. And as a side effect we also get super intelligence on a substrate that is 10 orders of magnitude more energy efficient than silicon.

Do you mean we'll input their brains with an alternate reality or just removing their pain and distress signals? Regardless of the answer. Lab meat still seems more ethical, it was never a sentient being in the first place.