Maybe they could run for senate in my home state
Depends on how quickly the neurons can learn to be incompetent and waste tax payer money, only then will they have a real chance ;)
Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
51–60 of 144 posts
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#52It seems needlessly provocative to use human neurons to do this. Presumably they could have had the same effects with neurons from another species. It’s like they want to provoke a backlash from religious people against scientific experimentation.
It's not needlessly provocative human neurons have shown in almost every study to be superior to all other animal neurons.
Let the backlash happen and as a society let's put a stop to letting religious idiocy get in the way of science.
There is an entire field of study for ethical science and I stand behind that 100%.
Unethical science can get lost!
I'm not a progress at any costs type of person.
But is this actually unethical or just something a religious idiot doesn't like?
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah this makes me really uncomfortable. We have no idea really what causes consciousness to arise, but "enough actual animal/human neurons to perform complex tasks" doesn't seem like an unlikely way to do it to me. "Unimaginable suffering in a petri dish" is not something I want even a tiny chance of creating.
To evaluate these chances, one has to understand what “suffering” is. It may (or may not) be purely evolutional thing which cannot be easily reproduced in a dish. Perhaps the whole thing is a plague that only emerges in/for natural-life conditions. While the configuration space is likely(?) almost infinite, the natural selector is only one.
Well.... no. It's only necessary to know whether suffering exists (it does). After that it's sufficient to consider whether there's a greater than zero chance of creating it (there seems to be).
That's enough to say "let's not do this until we have better data".
If it turns out the second step is unknowable, that's enough to say "let's never do this".
These are subjective decisions, and some may suggest that there are gains that outweigh the potential suffering. I am currently unconvinced.
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
To evaluate these chances, one has to understand what “suffering” is. It may (or may not) be purely evolutional thing which cannot be easily reproduced in a dish. Perhaps the whole thing is a plague that only emerges in/for natural-life conditions. While the configuration space is likely(?) almost infinite, the natural selector is only one.
Well.... no. It's only necessary to know whether suffering exists (it does). After that it's sufficient to consider whether there's a greater than zero chance of creating it (there seems to be). That's enough to say "let's not do this until we have better data". If it turns out the second step is unknowable, that's enough to say "let's never do this". These are subjective decisions, and some may suggest that there ar…
> After that it's sufficient to consider whether there's a greater than zero chance of creating it (there seems to be).
That is a Kantian, deontological approach, an ethical framework not shared by all. The utilitarian would ask how much suffering would be caused as compared to how much good it would produce.
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes you think that experiments on living rodents aren’t hell already? What is the crucial ethical difference between these species, apart from two facts, first that a full human has a legal status, second that most people will relate to an empty human brain more than to a non-empty non-human one (regardless of packaging). I understand legal/relatable parts, but is there more to it?
One scientist studies tumors by causing tumors in rats. Another scientist studies tumors by causing them in humans. If you said to the second scientist "Hey, that's wrong, stop!" And he said "What's the crucial difference between rats and humans?" Would you be convinced by that line of argument?
Well, is that not basically the vegan argument against suffering, in any form, for any type of animal or sentient being? The vegan would probably posit that they are equal.
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#56If there are extraterrestrials, "Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong" is probably the sort of thing they say while watching us from their UFOs.
I tend to think that if there are extraterrestrials, they probably look a lot more like neurons in a dish than like us.
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#57It seems needlessly provocative to use human neurons to do this. Presumably they could have had the same effects with neurons from another species. It’s like they want to provoke a backlash from religious people against scientific experimentation.
It's not needlessly provocative human neurons have shown in almost every study to be superior to all other animal neurons. Let the backlash happen and as a society let's put a stop to letting religious idiocy get in the way of science. There is an entire field of study for ethical science and I stand behind that 100%. Unethical science can get lost! I'm not a progress at any costs type of person. But is this actually…
Only religious idiots would prefer a "normal" life over having human-brained gorilla chimeras do all the work and just consuming psychotropics all day, right?
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#58i would urge people to read the paper instead. The 'learning' is a bit iffy , and this was meant to test the brain theory of Friston rather than plug neurons into pong. Still, great job on the neurotechnology involved and a step in the direction where we should be going, controlling large numbers of neurons Ars Technica has a better article, although they dont describe the dense electode array correctly: https://arst…
Genuine question: why "should" we be going in this direction?
post-apocalyptic horrible scenarios aside, there are plenty of therapeutic reasons why it would be nice to have neuron-level control of brain tissue.
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#59SF author (and marine biologist) Peter Watts described something very much like this, only more advanced, in his book Maelstrom (2001):
"Achilles Desjardins had always found smart gels a bit creepy. People thought of them as brains in boxes, but they weren't. They didn't have the parts. Forget about the neocortex or the cerebellum—these things had nothing. No hypothalamus, no pineal gland, no sheathing of mammal over reptile over fish. No instincts. No desires. Just a porridge of cultured neurons, really: four-digit IQs that didn't give a rat's ass whether they even lived or died. Somehow they learned through operant conditioning, although they lacked the capacity either to enjoy reward or suffer punishment. Their pathways formed and dissolved with all the colorless indifference of water shaping a river delta."
Much of his work, including Maelstrom, is freely available on his own website:https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
Re: Neurons in a dish learn to play Pong
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well.... no. It's only necessary to know whether suffering exists (it does). After that it's sufficient to consider whether there's a greater than zero chance of creating it (there seems to be). That's enough to say "let's not do this until we have better data". If it turns out the second step is unknowable, that's enough to say "let's never do this". These are subjective decisions, and some may suggest that there ar…
> After that it's sufficient to consider whether there's a greater than zero chance of creating it (there seems to be). That is a Kantian, deontological approach, an ethical framework not shared by all. The utilitarian would ask how much suffering would be caused as compared to how much good it would produce.
Pong playing? Infinite good!