So I dunno if everyone's in on the theory or not but it's basically, moores law, extrapolated into the future, but applying to more than transistor thingamybob doubling, more sort of broadening to apply to scientific progress in general. So at some point in the future we reach an exponential skyrocket or precipice and either turn into gods or some shit or we all melt into gray goo.
So I heard about it years back and was all, like, "yadda yadda, what-evs, f'kin miles away but, yeah, sure maybe it'll go one of those ways if we survive the next couple of million years or so". So now I'm hearing some guru fuck, name of Kurtrzwell or something has said he reckons it's a decade and a half away or some shit and he's got "followers"
So now my bullshit detectors are flashing amber and I'm thinking, "lolz, it's the next utopia cult, going to get their heads lopped off and carbon frozen or some shit" so I watch some doc on youtube, all university dudes and I reckon I get the punchline already and I just want to hear the joke. Only nothing these guys are talking about seems impossible to me, only the timescales but, even then, those curves are heading practically vertically at some point. I dunno enough about the curvature-analysis to pass judgement on the timescale but I do know that exponential gets fucking massive really fucking quick once it gets going.
What I do know is that I've been present since the early days of this bullshit and I reckon I could have just about have imagined a future with devices like smartphones in it but only as a vague "video call" device from the 21st century. I'm pretty confident I have a handle on how some of this shit is going to develop over the next half dozen or so years but, beyond that? Fuck knows, man. Am I a believer?
Still desperately trying to keep my whole concept of belief down to a bare minimum, but I'm sure as hell feeling a lot more optimistic about the whole life-after-death or just plain never having to go through the death part at all.
That's a big old concept for me to wrap my head around. If my existence is eternal or, fuck it, even if it's going to be a thousand years or so, suddenly there is a long-term, goals and ambitions - scenario that hasn't been there since I was about 7 and worked out that Jesus was most probably bullshit.
Suddenly there's a worry about whacking myself accidentally before I can back up my brain or "upload" or whatever the fuck might be on it's way. Suddenly I find myself concerned about dying "too soon". Not much but a little niggling thing that wasn't there before, in the back of my mind, niggling.
Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM
Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
1. It's "fazed". I know you're a Scotsman, but still.
2. The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society. There is no AI Jesus.
I get the AI jesus thing, although, to be honest, I can't rule it out but I can envisage a metric fuckton of technologies which smart people are currently trying to invent, which would enable me to go for longer, indefinitely? How far away is some way of bridging the neurons in my brain and rerouting the information through artificial braincells? I can't imagine them doing it in the next ten years. The decade after that? Fuck if I know. Some drug that totally reprograms DNA and keeps me a healthy 25 or 30 years old, indefinitely. Next ten years? To be honest I know fuck all about that shit.
Meanwhile the world is changing in impossible to predict ways. Someone invents a nano replicator or atomic transmogrifier whatever. Suddenly scarcity based economics is rendered irrelevant. Bunch of other impossible to predict shit goes down. This is chaos run rampant. This is my idea of heaven. Not in my lifetime, right? :argh!:
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:37:00 PM
Someone invents a nano replicator or atomic transmogrifier whatever. Suddenly scarcity based economics is rendered irrelevant. Bunch of other impossible to predict shit goes down. This is chaos run rampant. This is my idea of heaven. Not in my lifetime, right? :argh!:
Oil company buys the patent and sits on it. Have some high-starch poor people food.
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM
Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
1. It's "fazed". I know you're a Scotsman, but still.
2. The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society. There is no AI Jesus.
Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.
Hope hope hope.
Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM
Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
1. It's "fazed". I know you're a Scotsman, but still.
2. The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society. There is no AI Jesus.
Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.
Hope hope hope.
That would be horrible. I don't know what the hell I'd be like if I didn't have hormones.
I'd be all
QUIET and there'd be no sexytime.
Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM
Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
1. It's "fazed". I know you're a Scotsman, but still.
2. The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society. There is no AI Jesus.
Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.
Hope hope hope.
That's the fucking exact thing I'm talking about. Hope. Never had it and, truth be told, I don't like it one bit. It's like suffocating or something. I'm fucking suffocating in hope. MAKE IT GO AWAY GODDAMNIT :argh!:
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:45:46 PM
Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM
Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
1. It's "fazed". I know you're a Scotsman, but still.
2. The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society. There is no AI Jesus.
Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.
Hope hope hope.
That would be horrible. I don't know what the hell I'd be like if I didn't have hormones.
I'd be all QUIET and there'd be no sexytime.
I'm pretty sure a computer complex enough to house my personality would also be able to mimic some kind of hormonal and emotional swings.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:48:11 PM
Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM
Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
1. It's "fazed". I know you're a Scotsman, but still.
2. The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society. There is no AI Jesus.
Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.
Hope hope hope.
That's the fucking exact thing I'm talking about. Hope. Never had it and, truth be told, I don't like it one bit. It's like suffocating or something. I'm fucking suffocating in hope. MAKE IT GO AWAY GODDAMNIT :argh!:
Well, like I've always said. Hope kills; despair is merely tiresome.
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:45:46 PM
Quote from: Nigel's Red Velveteen Skinmeat Snacks on January 07, 2014, 09:44:16 PM
Quote from: Dirty Old Uncle Roger on January 07, 2014, 09:18:10 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM
Please, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
1. It's "fazed". I know you're a Scotsman, but still.
2. The singularity is just the point in the future at which you can no longer make educated guesses about future technology and its impact on society. There is no AI Jesus.
Although I, personally, love the idea of having my memories and personality uploaded into a giant robot someday.
Hope hope hope.
That would be horrible. I don't know what the hell I'd be like if I didn't have hormones.
I'd be all QUIET and there'd be no sexytime.
I'm reasonably confident that a computer complex enough to mimic human thought processes would eventually get to replicating hormone effects. That'd probably be 2.0.
As for no sexytime, well, that would sort of depend on how you've been stored I guess and potential connectivity to other stored beings. With the increasing prevalance of wifi, it may actually mean sexytime all the time whether you like it or not.
Seriously, just look at humanity and tell me this shit won't evolve along without a bunch of "oops" and unintended consequences. No hormones will be the least of your woes compared to the flying fucking clouds of people drifting through your lunch.
Immortality through AI. It sounds great at first, right? Who wouldn't want to live FOREVER? Of course, it's not so much the living forever thing we're after. As we already know, any jackass who makes it to about 70 or 80 stops living anyway, even if he lives to be 125. He's just not dead yet. And that's what we're after -- we don't want to live forever, we just want to not have to die.
So anyway, AI and uploading your memories and personality. Unfortunately that really isn't a solution. You're basically just programming some fancy computer to act like you act. Even if they eventually get it to 169% accuracy (and though I don't want to live forever, I do hope I get to live through the trial and error phase of that project), what the hell does that have to do with you? So there's a computer out there attached to a robot body and nobody can tell the difference between that thing and you unless the batteries run out. Well so what? Is that robot you now?
They'll have to answer more fundamental questions than how to make a faster CPU to accomplish that. They'll have to answer big, scary questions like "who are you, anyway?" What is the nature of consciousness? What about your human brain adds up to that sense you have that you exist at all? Does the robot have the same thing? If it does, is it morally equivalent to the original?
I think the only real way to answer that question is to go through the upload procedure and then be woken up in a room with only you and the newly-activated Robot You. You'll be given two hours to chit chat with that robot, and the purpose is for the robot to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that it really is you, and that your biological form no longer has the right to that identity. And there will be a gun in the room, and the only way to stamp your approval on the robot's consciousness is to relieve yourself of your own. Otherwise, we'd just be filling the planet with robots who act just like we act because we think we're so god damned special that our final gift to the world would be us never going away.
And as full of myself as I am, I just don't think I would wish that on anyone.
Dude, you just totally 2.0'd the turing test! :eek:
Quote from: V3X on January 07, 2014, 11:29:59 PM
Immortality through AI. It sounds great at first, right? Who wouldn't want to live FOREVER? Of course, it's not so much the living forever thing we're after. As we already know, any jackass who makes it to about 70 or 80 stops living anyway, even if he lives to be 125. He's just not dead yet. And that's what we're after -- we don't want to live forever, we just want to not have to die.
So anyway, AI and uploading your memories and personality. Unfortunately that really isn't a solution. You're basically just programming some fancy computer to act like you act. Even if they eventually get it to 169% accuracy (and though I don't want to live forever, I do hope I get to live through the trial and error phase of that project), what the hell does that have to do with you? So there's a computer out there attached to a robot body and nobody can tell the difference between that thing and you unless the batteries run out. Well so what? Is that robot you now?
They'll have to answer more fundamental questions than how to make a faster CPU to accomplish that. They'll have to answer big, scary questions like "who are you, anyway?" What is the nature of consciousness? What about your human brain adds up to that sense you have that you exist at all? Does the robot have the same thing? If it does, is it morally equivalent to the original?
I think the only real way to answer that question is to go through the upload procedure and then be woken up in a room with only you and the newly-activated Robot You. You'll be given two hours to chit chat with that robot, and the purpose is for the robot to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that it really is you, and that your biological form no longer has the right to that identity. And there will be a gun in the room, and the only way to stamp your approval on the robot's consciousness is to relieve yourself of your own. Otherwise, we'd just be filling the planet with robots who act just like we act because we think we're so god damned special that our final gift to the world would be us never going away.
And as full of myself as I am, I just don't think I would wish that on anyone.
You seem to be riffing on the Philosophical Zombie (http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/) gambit.
First - worth linking to a Noam Chomsky's interview titled "The Singularity is Science Fiction (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s&t=19m50s)"
Chomsky does not really buy into the Singularity idea - he thinks it's perhaps a useful way to get us to visualize what the future could be, and that in itself may produce social change and new technology, but he thinks it's basically a science fiction idea. Technology doesn't "do" things, humans do, so even if new tech is being invented by old tech, it's still a world of human production.
But that's not really related to the OP, no? You're talking about immortality research, not AI....
Cliff Pickover has a book called The Heaven Virus (http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/heaven-virus-book.html), which deals with the concept of "synthetic afterlives". The idea is that in the near future, we'll be able to image your brain and stuff it into a digital environment where it will continue to operate normally. Except instead of interacting with a physical environment, we just simulate a physical environment digitally - when your brain sends a "move your finger" signal, the simulation reads this and gives it the feedback to create that sensation.
So in the novel, a character wakes up in this digital afterlife. Somebody eventually explains that according to his file, he died in a train accident, but luckily, he had his brain imaged a few months beforehand, and at the moment of his death, they released it into this big digital heaven simulation. Pickover's version of heaven is like this incomprehensibly giant mall, where instead of stores, there are different kinds of experiences you can have. Except the simulation is also flawed, so that people don't become completely bored there... they have problems to solve and obstacles to overcome, too... So is it heaven or hell? and that's the main story of the book.
Just as an aside, imagine what we could do with that kind of tech... imagine we could image the brains of some geniuses, and dump them into a digital environment... now imagine that with enough processing power, we can adjust the speed of time within that environment... Allowing our digital researchers to complete their work FASTER than their meatspace counterparts. Imagine if we had the processing power to complete a year of research in an hour of processing time. Imagine if we could take a photo of Hawking's brain so we could continue to use that machinery after the original model has died - kind of like building a car engine based on schematics.
But either way - the YOU who is being imaged will be gone - at best, when you're gone, we'll have something like a hologram of 2Pac, spitting out P3nt attitude and it makes us all feel like you're still around. In the same way that a picture of my late grandma makes me feel like she's still around. But it's not her, even if that photograph could bake me cookies.
But that leaves immortality drugs -- drugs which defeat or reverse the aging process. There's new movement in that field every few years. Here's some from 2013 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/reverse-aging-mice-blood-heart-young-old_n_3246843.html).
But it feels like we've been 10 minutes from cracking the secrets of aging since like 1970, right? I mean, in the book Cosmic Trigger, doesn't RAW think the end of aging may be right around the corner? And that was 1977! If we ever crack that egg, it will definitely change everything we know about everything. Visualize hot chicks in bikinis at spring break showing you pictures of their great great grandkids. And they all look like 24 year olds.
But I dunno, it seems so far off, I wouldn't start making long term plans around it just yet. I mean, you won't be able to afford it anyway. :p
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 08, 2014, 02:01:42 PM
You seem to be riffing on the Philosophical Zombie (http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/) gambit.
I think that's close. There's no way I can read that entire page right now but the general idea isn't really far from the AI bit. The "philosophical zombie" is a little overcomplicated, though. It's basically a question of the nature of consciousness, or the "soul" -- is your soul simply your ability to process information, or is it your awareness that you are processing information? I think that question may be reading too much into it, though I'm not a neuroscientist so I can't be sure. Maybe human self-awareness is just an artifact of processing information the way we do. A kind of doubled-up short-term memory that causes us to examine and reexamine the almost-now-but-not-quite all the time. Maybe a computer can be made that has the same sort of experience and thus becomes self-aware.
My concern is more about using AI to extend individual life, and whether the replacement
is the original in terms of continuity of consciousness. I suppose it would be good enough if the experience of moving into an artificial was at least as smooth as the transition from wakefulness to sleep to wakefulness again. But how do you
prove that's what has happened?
Quote from: V3X on January 08, 2014, 03:54:44 PM
My concern is more about using AI to extend individual life, and whether the replacement is the original in terms of continuity of consciousness. I suppose it would be good enough if the experience of moving into an artificial was at least as smooth as the transition from wakefulness to sleep to wakefulness again. But how do you prove that's what has happened?
It's like the star trek transporter problem -- if all the transporter does is break down your body into energy, beam it somewhere, then turn it back into matter and reassemble it, is it really you? Maybe your experience of consciousness would be interrupted when your body was ripped apart, and it wouldn't "pick up" again when the machine gets rebooted planetside - that's a NEW experience of consciousness, and the old you is dead.
Of course, there's no way to know, because the new person inherits all of your old experiences and perceive a continuous stream of consciousness. (I think there's a TNG episode about this, no? Where an copy of Riker created by a transporter error has been stranded on some planet for 10 years, and he thinks he's the real one ... or maybe he IS the real one)
There are characters in Transmetropolitan that do that too - transhumanists who upload their consciousness into a swarm of nanobots which can assemble themselves into any form. Then the body dies. So is the swarm the same person as the one who died? Is the person really dead or not? It's all tangled up.
I agree that the interruption in consciousness would really make me hesitate to get on that ride.
But imagine this -- what if they could digitize your brain one piece at a time, so the experience of consciousness was never interrupted?
Nanites crawl through your brain and slowly replace each neuron with a mechanical one,
one by one. You might be awake the whole time.
If the essence of "you-ness" is connected to the uninterrupted experience of consciousness, would THAT be you?
If so, then the question about whether or not life can be digitally augmented, perhaps into immortality, is not really a philosophical problem, but one of process.
I'd be cool with however they preserve consciousness continuity. I'm thought-experimenting about ways to test it.
1. The gun in the room and the conversation with the robot. It convinces you to your satisfaction, and you off yourself. Chances of success - nearly zero because even if you're convinced, you're not likely to want to commit suicide.
2. New idea: Right before the switch, they tell you a joke and put you under. Then they do the upload, wake up the robot, and tell it the punchline. If it it doesn't laugh, it's destroyed and they try again.
Quote from: V3X on January 08, 2014, 10:25:30 PM
I'd be cool with however they preserve consciousness continuity. I'm thought-experimenting about ways to test it.
1. The gun in the room and the conversation with the robot. It convinces you to your satisfaction, and you off yourself. Chances of success - nearly zero because even if you're convinced, you're not likely to want to commit suicide.
2. New idea: Right before the switch, they tell you a joke and put you under. Then they do the upload, wake up the robot, and tell it the punchline. If it it doesn't laugh, it's destroyed and they try again.
The bold, I've been thinking about that a bit and I'd say the bigger problem would be for your new machine self in watching the death/suicide of "you".
That could fuck you up a little.
However, I do like the idea of you somehow certifying You2 in some way. You2 inheriting immediately in the event of death? All possessions/debt/legal obligations could lead to an interesting situation for some. How well/long will immortal robot you be willing to care for you into your incontinence? Before being legally allowed to murder you?
This also opens up the possibility of 100+ year life terms being able to be served. And therefore even more ridiculous sentencing.
In the robot gulags of the future You2 fucking hates you.
Quote from: Junkenstein on January 08, 2014, 10:40:57 PM
Quote from: V3X on January 08, 2014, 10:25:30 PM
I'd be cool with however they preserve consciousness continuity. I'm thought-experimenting about ways to test it.
1. The gun in the room and the conversation with the robot. It convinces you to your satisfaction, and you off yourself. Chances of success - nearly zero because even if you're convinced, you're not likely to want to commit suicide.
2. New idea: Right before the switch, they tell you a joke and put you under. Then they do the upload, wake up the robot, and tell it the punchline. If it it doesn't laugh, it's destroyed and they try again.
The bold, I've been thinking about that a bit and I'd say the bigger problem would be for your new machine self in watching the death/suicide of "you".
That could fuck you up a little.
However, I do like the idea of you somehow certifying You2 in some way. You2 inheriting immediately in the event of death? All possessions/debt/legal obligations could lead to an interesting situation for some. How well/long will immortal robot you be willing to care for you into your incontinence? Before being legally allowed to murder you?
This also opens up the possibility of 100+ year life terms being able to be served. And therefore even more ridiculous sentencing.
In the robot gulags of the future You2 fucking hates you.
I really like Cram's idea of replacing neurons and synapses one at a time using nanites. That might be the only way to ensure that one's self-identity has a chance to adapt to and assimilate the technology. It would also solve the problem of what to do with the "old" you. It would also be a lot easier to sell a technology like that than to sell "upload yourself to a computer, then discard your useless biomass", even if it was perfect.
If it did lead to immortality or significantly longer lifespans, there could certainly be the possibility of 1,000-year prison sentences being carried out, though once you had gone full robot it would be (theoretically) possible to temporarily deposit a prisoner's consciousness into a virtual universe where time passes a thousand times faster -- assuming the purpose of incarceration is reform, rather than getting rid of the offender. I don't think "gulags" would be of much use at all, though, even for nefarious purposes. If we had the technology to bend consciousness itself, it would be trivial to automate whatever actual labor was done in gulags. Prisoners who would be disposed of in work camps today would probably just be permanently deleted instead.
You are all assuming that what you have now is continuous consciousness.
We can't even walk into a different room without forgetting what we were doing.Hell, I can't even open the fridge without forgetting what i was doing.
There is no continuous consciousness, that is just a lie your old you tells your new you through memories. And memories change every time you remember them.
Quote from: :regret: on January 09, 2014, 02:17:59 PM
You are all assuming that what you have now is continuous consciousness.
We can't even walk into a different room without forgetting what we were doing.Hell, I can't even open the fridge without forgetting what i was doing.
There is no continuous consciousness, that is just a lie your old you tells your new you through memories. And memories change every time you remember them.
I would believe this but my Id just can't wrap around it.
You might have fun reading some of R S Bakker (http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/)'s blog, Vex. Even though he should be working on The Unholy Consult he puts up some quite interesting stuff on the Blind Brain Theory.
QuoteIf we had the technology to bend consciousness itself, it would be trivial to automate whatever actual labor was done in gulags. Prisoners who would be disposed of in work camps today would probably just be permanently deleted instead.
I just had a futuregasm.
Quote from: Cain on January 09, 2014, 02:35:14 PM
You might have fun reading some of R S Bakker (http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/)'s blog, Vex. Even though he should be working on The Unholy Consult he puts up some quite interesting stuff on the Blind Brain Theory.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll try to check it out over the course of the day. Reading the one about enlightenment now.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:12:43 PM
So I heard about it years back and was all, like, "yadda yadda, what-evs, f'kin miles away but, yeah, sure maybe it'll go one of those ways if we survive the next couple of million years or so". So now I'm hearing some guru fuck, name of Kurtrzwell or something has said he reckons it's a decade and a half away or some shit and he's got "followers"
Kurzweil is thought to be a cranky genius by some. Totally right in some ways and dude, stop smoking weed in others. I can't comment on it one way or another.
Quote
What I do know is that I've been present since the early days of this bullshit and I reckon I could have just about have imagined a future with devices like smartphones in it but only as a vague "video call" device from the 21st century. I'm pretty confident I have a handle on how some of this shit is going to develop over the next half dozen or so years but, beyond that? Fuck knows, man. Am I a believer?
Not predicting things beyond ten years from now is healthy skepticism. We have achieved a level of technology somewhat on level with the United Federation of Planets, working on others that they can do, and all well before Zephram's late 21st century warp flight. NASA's working on the groundwork for FTL right now. In some ways we are technologically superior to Star Trek. For example, we have way sleeker iPads than Kirk, and we only need one of them unlike Picard or Sisko who get piles of them because you can only store so much on one in an interstellar republic, apparently. But at the same time it's 2014 and I don't have a fucking hoverboard.
Quote
Suddenly I find myself concerned about dying "too soon".
As a biological entity, especially one with sentience, this should be your default position. Your goal is to stay alive as long as possible, and hopefully have as many offspring as you can in the process. Whenever anyone dies, it's too soon. Especially for a technological species with foreknowledge of both individual mortality and eventual extinction.[/quote]
QuotePlease, please, please peedee - blind me with science and tell me I can go back to not being even remotely phased by the concept of death because it's definitely going to happen to me, right? :eek:
I will do what I can in light of all these comments and being a late guy to the party. Forthcoming.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 07, 2014, 09:37:00 PM
Some drug that totally reprograms DNA and keeps me a healthy 25 or 30 years old, indefinitely. Next ten years? To be honest I know fuck all about that shit.
The best I can speak on this is that you can't reprogram DNA without it being a monumental waste of time. You can do it with a single unicellular organism, but consider that Pent is a collection of approximately 100 trillion genetically identical individual cells. Reprogramming your DNA would be the equivalent of reprogramming 100 trillion computers to make them work longer. The trick is telomeres. Those are the caps on your DNA that prevent fraying. Problem is, they get smaller with each cell division in eukaryotes (which include animals, plants, fungi, and a host of microorganisms that aren't bacteria or archaea). Part of the reason we age is because our telomeres get shorter and our DNA starts to fray. Make a drug that lengthens telomeres and there's your fountain of youth.
Quote from: V3X on January 07, 2014, 11:29:59 PM
So anyway, AI and uploading your memories and personality. Unfortunately that really isn't a solution. You're basically just programming some fancy computer to act like you act. Even if they eventually get it to 169% accuracy (and though I don't want to live forever, I do hope I get to live through the trial and error phase of that project), what the hell does that have to do with you? So there's a computer out there attached to a robot body and nobody can tell the difference between that thing and you unless the batteries run out. Well so what? Is that robot you now?
If the mind mimics the parent mind, then yes, it is the same. I'm going to address this more in the transporter problem, but hang on to your seat there Vex, because believe it or not you are taking up a vaguely theist position and I am taking a vaguely atheistic position. Tables, how do they work?
Quote from: Cramulus on January 08, 2014, 07:06:00 PM
It's like the star trek transporter problem -- if all the transporter does is break down your body into energy, beam it somewhere, then turn it back into matter and reassemble it, is it really you?
Yes.
QuoteMaybe your experience of consciousness would be interrupted when your body was ripped apart, and it wouldn't "pick up" again when the machine gets rebooted planetside - that's a NEW experience of consciousness, and the old you is dead.
It's not though. We experience that every day when we go to bed. Your consciousness is interrupted for a couple of hours, then you get something similar to consciousness, then you stop existing again, then you approach consciousness again, then you disappear again and then you alarm clock goes off. For most of those 8 hours you may as well, from your own perspective, be dead. The only difference is that you can vaguely experience things and maybe as a survival instinct become conscious again.
QuoteOf course, there's no way to know, because the new person inherits all of your old experiences and perceive a continuous stream of consciousness. (I think there's a TNG episode about this, no? Where an copy of Riker created by a transporter error has been stranded on some planet for 10 years, and he thinks he's the real one ... or maybe he IS the real one)
Yes. He ended up going by Tom Riker (William Thomas Riker) and becoming a Maquis, comically ripping off fake cheek hair in a dramatic moment on Deep Space Nine in order to somehow demonstrate that Commander Will Riker somehow didn't change his facial hair in the past 24 hours. Actually I watched that episode with Villager and she and I cracked up laughing. She because she forgot about the TNG episode and thought he was from the Mirror Universe, and me that she would assume that, and the ridiculousness of the whole scene as one thing.
QuoteThere are characters in Transmetropolitan that do that too - transhumanists who upload their consciousness into a swarm of nanobots which can assemble themselves into any form. Then the body dies. So is the swarm the same person as the one who died? Is the person really dead or not? It's all tangled up.
I agree that the interruption in consciousness would really make me hesitate to get on that ride.
But imagine this -- what if they could digitize your brain one piece at a time, so the experience of consciousness was never interrupted?
Nanites crawl through your brain and slowly replace each neuron with a mechanical one, one by one. You might be awake the whole time.
If the essence of "you-ness" is connected to the uninterrupted experience of consciousness, would THAT be you?
If so, then the question about whether or not life can be digitally augmented, perhaps into immortality, is not really a philosophical problem, but one of process.
Again, you all go to sleep right?
The other thing too is that you are a pattern. What defines you is that pattern. Your body, on a cellular level, is constantly changing. Your cell membranes behave like a really fucking fast liquid. The whole objection with the transporter thing is that you disappear and stop existing for a few seconds and then reappear but is it you. Yeah. It is. You aren't your constituent atoms which are quite frankly constantly changing. Typing on a keyboard? Sorry, your atoms actually just went all over the place just to type "Typing on a keyboard." If you want your chemical structure to remain exactly the same, then you prefer death with no decomposition. So, what matter is it where those atoms happen to be? You're not even made of the same atoms that you were when you were born. The big problem there is well, photocopying photocopies of photocopies.
Quote from: V3X on January 08, 2014, 03:54:44 PM
It's basically a question of the nature of consciousness, or the "soul" -- is your soul simply your ability to process information, or is it your awareness that you are processing information? I think that question may be reading too much into it, though I'm not a neuroscientist so I can't be sure. Maybe human self-awareness is just an artifact of processing information the way we do.
In a way it is. Consciousness is an emergent property. And that property emerges as a result, as I understand it, of how much and how efficiently neurons are communicating with each other. Here's a question. Where do we go between being awake and dreaming? We're out for a whole 8 hours during sleep, and we only approach consciousness for a few minutes here and there within that time.
QuoteMy concern is more about using AI to extend individual life, and whether the replacement is the original in terms of continuity of consciousness. I suppose it would be good enough if the experience of moving into an artificial was at least as smooth as the transition from wakefulness to sleep to wakefulness again. But how do you prove that's what has happened?
Replacement is continuity. Which I will get to.
Quote from: V3X on January 08, 2014, 11:14:00 PM
I really like Cram's idea of replacing neurons and synapses one at a time using nanites.
This was also touched upon, briefly, and without proof of concept, in TNG. It was the episode where Data and Lore teamed up with the Borg liberated by Hugh and wanted to research how to perfect the Borg so that they would be totally mechanical and not organic at all. The experiment was going to be done on Geordi and he successfully appealed to Data's new found emotions to spare him.
I pasted those two bits in backwards, but point is made I think.
I'm not taking the position that uploading consciousness is impossible or that consciousness springs from some supernatural force, only that I'd want to make sure the switch to electronic format would be imperceptible for the conscious mind. Also they need to figure out more than just keeping a sense of consciousness continuity, since there's more to being human than just being aware. If a person becomes digital, is procreation impossible after that point? Would a human psyche be able to cope with little or no risk of death? How would a human mind react to centuries of experience? Would bacon still be delicious?
Quote from: V3X on January 10, 2014, 05:12:58 AM
I'm not taking the position that uploading consciousness is impossible or that consciousness springs from some supernatural force,
just as a side note this may be a part of the reason why theists and atheists don't see eye to eye. The supernatural is impossible by definition. Within a strong theistic model a god sets the rules of what is natural. I believe in an afterlife. I would never consider the process of spiritual immortality to be somehow separated from nature.
Quoteonly that I'd want to make sure the switch to electronic format would be imperceptible for the conscious mind.
Like transitioning between full consciousness and a dream state a few hours later?
QuoteAlso they need to figure out more than just keeping a sense of consciousness continuity, since there's more to being human than just being aware.
Of course. You know, except for the fact that our own brains can't maintain that continuity. You know, sleep. Or even daydreaming.
QuoteIf a person becomes digital, is procreation impossible after that point? Would a human psyche be able to cope with little or no risk of death? How would a human mind react to centuries of experience? Would bacon still be delicious?
a) Procreation is not impossible but limited. Remember that humans are two types of programming: psychological/sociological and genetic
Genetic reproduction would become impossible. Psychological programming would become a matter of agreeing with other software.
b) I suspect the human mind is wired to not only accept but achieve immortality. Our level of intelligence does two things: the realization that we will in fact die and the realization that maybe we can cheat that by whatever means necessary.
c) there is no indication that we individually process experiences in the same way, only that we interpret them as beneficial or not, or something. It sounds like philosophical wankery but it is quite possible that if you were able to live in my head, you would see that what I would label blue is perceived as some sort of nasty yellow. Same with tastes. We agree that bacon is awesome. But the way my brain codes "bacon is awesome" might be interpreted by your brain as "why can't I stop eating feces?!"
Continuity: I said "a sense of consciousness continuity" - our brains may not actually provide much continuity, but it seems like they do. As long as whatever contraption holds my consciousness in its bits and bytes can do the same, then that's fine with me. I guess what I mean is, for the switch to really work, I have to fall asleep (or whatever) as my bio-self, and feel like I'm still me when I wake up as my digi-self. Maybe the psyche is resilient enough to just wing it and not really notice it that much. We should test it on dolphins (and probably kittens) to be sure.
Procreation: I assume there would be some method of generating new conscious minds, eventually. My question isn't so much about the technical possibility of generating new minds, but would those minds be as "human" as minds that had originated as biological and then been transferred to digital format? Is there something definitive about "humanity" that requires more than self-awareness? If my digi-child has never had the experience of realizing its mortality, how would that effect things like empathy or risk calculation? Would I, as a practically limitless digital consciousness, even be interested in procreation in the first place, or would that "biological imperitive" be absent from my post-transfer human experience? If I was interested, would I be satisfied with a digital child in the same way that biological parenthood satisfies me, and would I be able to form the same kind of parent-child bond with that generated mind?
Subjective experience of reality: I have it on good authority that bacon does no taste like feces in any possible universe.
Sillygr4m, you seem to forget one important thing (me), so allow me to take the suspense out of this for you.
You will most assuredly die. I guarantee it.
See you around!
Quote from: V3X on January 10, 2014, 05:56:19 AM
Continuity: I said "a sense of consciousness continuity" - our brains may not actually provide much continuity, but it seems like they do.
Not to me. I don't wake up thinking "Oh, I just went to sleep a couple of seconds ago. heh." I am actually aware that an extended period of time has elapsed. And not in a hey the sun's up sort of way.
QuoteQuoteAs long as whatever contraption holds my consciousness in its bits and bytes can do the same, then that's fine with me. I guess what I mean is, for the switch to really work, I have to fall asleep (or whatever) as my bio-self, and feel like I'm still me when I wake up as my digi-self. Maybe the psyche is resilient enough to just wing it and not really notice it that much. We should test it on dolphins (and probably kittens) to be sure.
Procreation: I assume there would be some method of generating new conscious minds, eventually. My question isn't so much about the technical possibility of generating new minds, but would those minds be as "human" as minds that had originated as biological and then been transferred to digital format? Is there something definitive about "humanity" that requires more than self-awareness? If my digi-child has never had the experience of realizing its mortality, how would that effect things like empathy or risk calculation? Would I, as a practically limitless digital consciousness, even be interested in procreation in the first place, or would that "biological imperitive" be absent from my post-transfer human experience? If I was interested, would I be satisfied with a digital child in the same way that biological parenthood satisfies me, and would I be able to form the same kind of parent-child bond with that generated mind?
Subjective experience of reality: I have it on good authority that bacon does no taste like feces in any possible universe.
I think part of the reason why I find this so totally ridiculous is that with sufficient science and engineering, no transfer is necessary. We know the biological machinery that works against us and our computers are fucking pathetic compared to the grey matter. Biology on Earth has already developed the most efficient data coding apparatus we've ever seen. The concept of transferring your consciousness, while I can say something about the pattern is frankly a ridiculous question. The point is to make sure the computer never breaks. Until the Universe does, of course.
Also missing the point about the bacon, I think.
I hate multiquoting, now I have to make it work.
Quote from: THE PHYTOPHTHORATIC HOLDER OF THE ADVANCED DEGREE on January 10, 2014, 04:48:03 AM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 08, 2014, 07:06:00 PM
It's like the star trek transporter problem -- if all the transporter does is break down your body into energy, beam it somewhere, then turn it back into matter and reassemble it, is it really you?
Yes. QuoteMaybe your experience of consciousness would be interrupted when your body was ripped apart, and it wouldn't "pick up" again when the machine gets rebooted planetside - that's a NEW experience of consciousness, and the old you is dead.
It's not though. We experience that every day when we go to bed. Your consciousness is interrupted for a couple of hours, then you get something similar to consciousness, then you stop existing again, then you approach consciousness again, then you disappear again and then you alarm clock goes off. For most of those 8 hours you may as well, from your own perspective, be dead. The only difference is that you can vaguely experience things and maybe as a survival instinct become conscious again.
I think that's different though. When I go to bed, the computer is in sleep mode, not fully dismantled. If you were to rip apart my brain and reassemble it at the atomic level, or if you were to create an identical copy of my brain somewhere else, I'm not convinced that person would be Me --- or that the me who is typing this sentence would get to participate in that brain's experiences.
Quote from: hunter s.durden on January 10, 2014, 05:57:49 AM
Sillygr4m, you seem to forget one important thing (me), so allow me to take the suspense out of this for you.
You will most assuredly die. I guarantee it.
See you around!
well slap my tits and flush my face
Hunter, maybe YOU will die. And maybe p3nt will die. But I will survive. At the moment of my death I will become a swarm of immortal bees, and I will take a thousand years to make a drop of immortal honey, and then I will pour it on your grave and reanimate you so we can smoke pipes and be skeletons together.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 10, 2014, 02:29:37 PM
Quote from: THE PHYTOPHTHORATIC HOLDER OF THE ADVANCED DEGREE on January 10, 2014, 04:48:03 AM
Quote from: Cramulus on January 08, 2014, 07:06:00 PM
It's like the star trek transporter problem -- if all the transporter does is break down your body into energy, beam it somewhere, then turn it back into matter and reassemble it, is it really you?
Yes. QuoteMaybe your experience of consciousness would be interrupted when your body was ripped apart, and it wouldn't "pick up" again when the machine gets rebooted planetside - that's a NEW experience of consciousness, and the old you is dead.
It's not though. We experience that every day when we go to bed. Your consciousness is interrupted for a couple of hours, then you get something similar to consciousness, then you stop existing again, then you approach consciousness again, then you disappear again and then you alarm clock goes off. For most of those 8 hours you may as well, from your own perspective, be dead. The only difference is that you can vaguely experience things and maybe as a survival instinct become conscious again.
I think that's different though. When I go to bed, the computer is in sleep mode, not fully dismantled. If you were to rip apart my brain and reassemble it at the atomic level, or if you were to create an identical copy of my brain somewhere else, I'm not convinced that person would be Me --- or that the me who is typing this sentence would get to participate in that brain's experiences.
I refer you back to the philosophical zombie article posted earlier.
sorry, connect the dots for me. My reading of the philosophical zombie article is that the philosophical zombie (or for purposes of this thread, digital copy of my brain) must have a form of consciousness, some 'passive listener' inside. Is that right? I don't disagree with that. My point is that I'm not convinced that is me, or that my experience of the universe wouldn't end when the electrochemical activity in my gray matter does.
Ah. Let me see if I can find the relevant passage.
The argument, loosely put, goes back to subatomic particle theory. If we swapped one proton for another in your brain, you would still be you, because that happens all the time, every day, every second. Now extrapolate. Your brain is physically changing it's entire structure every second. Why would "you" not be "you" in a perfect replica of your brain, if it is already constantly happening to you already?
Ok, it was linked to the Zombie article (or from, whatevs).
http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms/
QuoteOver the course of a single second—not seven years, but one second—the joint position of all the atoms in your brain, will change far enough away from what it was before, that there is no overlap with the previous joint amplitude distribution. The brain doesn't repeat itself. Over the course of one second, you will end up being comprised of a completely different, nonoverlapping volume of configuration space.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 10, 2014, 03:45:21 PM
Ah. Let me see if I can find the relevant passage.
The argument, loosely put, goes back to subatomic particle theory. If we swapped one proton for another in your brain, you would still be you, because that happens all the time, every day, every second. Now extrapolate. Your brain is physically changing it's entire structure every second. Why would "you" not be "you" in a perfect replica of your brain, if it is already constantly happening to you already?
That's what I was pointing at with my "nanites replace one cell at a time" post - a gradual shift from biological to digital makes it easier to swallow a constant notion of self might be preserved.
But in the transporter example, we're not talking about switching one atom for another atom while the machine is running, we're talking about dismantling the hardware, rebuilding it elsewhere, and cold starting the fucker.
If you were to make a digital image of my brain and let it loose in a digital environment, and I was still alive watching the thing on a screen, I wouldn't think of that guy as Me, right? I would know he's a copy of me. HE might think he was me. And for all social purposes, you might treat him like me. But it's clearly a different instance of consciousness.
Would you step into a transporter, knowing that your experience of the universe might end (might as well call it death) as soon as your brain got ripped apart? Would you be comforted to know that a machine somewhere else in the universe is assembling matter that everybody will think is you? Personally, I still wouldn't get into one of those things.
You're expanding scope. Whether or not I'd get into a transporter is different than whether swapping every atom in my brain for an identical copy would still be "me".
So, I think this discussion is going a little bit toward talking past each other. I will take a stab at restating what I understand the positions to be...
a) Consciousness is an illusion which emerges from the states and methods of information processing in the human brain. I do not disagree with this.
b) Any atom-by-atom copy of a conscious brain would, necessarily, also have consciousness. This is also fine.
The question is not "Would a digital copy be conscious?", but "Would the consciousness in the digital copy be ME?". Because of what we know about subatomic physics, the answer would have to be "yes" from the perspective of the digital copy. If it was possible to design a test that proved definitively whether such a copy experienced the same (illusory) sense of cognitive and self-aware continuity as the original experiences, and had the same self-identity, the test results would be positive. But what about the original? Do I survive the transition, or does the digital copy just believe it is me?
So the immortality thing and the uploading to nanoclouds thing is part and parcel but it's implicit. There's many forms being banded about but, lets face it, it's on the other side of an event horizon, the other side of which we are unable to predict, perhaps even unable to imagine.
Initially there's a track, there are technologies we are expecting to see emerging in the next 5-10 years but the applications of these? I'm pretty sure I never heard about anything like facebook being a possibility back when I was learning how to talk to monolithic machines that rumbled and whirred in whole rooms of the college I attended.
Accelerando (http://manybooks.net/titles/strosscother05accelerando-txt.html) by Charles Stross examines one possible route in which something like Google glass evolves right up to an event where "computronium" comes online and starts dismantling the solar system and turning it into thought.
another cool read is Postsingular (//http://) by Rudy Rucker a network of powerful self replicating nanocumputers forming an invisible grid, 1mm2 across every surface on earth. I never really had my head around the notion of ubiquitious computing until I read this.
In the meantime Kurtzwell has expanded Moores law and turned it into his law of accelerating returns and I can't say I disagree with him in principle. It's not just transistors on substrate that's doubling. A whole bunch of connected things are double every year or two as well.
Between advances in medicine and associated tech, I'm hoping I can hang on long enough to take advantage of the ability to backup my mind onto some kind of artrificial platform. I'm of the opinion that the pattern that exists as a snapshot of my neural jiggery pokery is me. It's a pattern that changes, dynamically if given the opportunity and the upshot is that something that thinks it's me exists. I have absolutely no evidence of any other thing existing as some fundamental me-ness that exists independently of this configuration so I'm not too worried about what happens when I'm spawned on a more reliable hardware platform. Continuity is implicit.
The real doozy for me is the idea of branching clones of your real self off into parallel simulations that would run thousands of times faster than real time. You could fuck off and learn to play the piano for 30 years then reintegrate the two patterns by merging them together. Bingo - you're now a virtuoso pianist.
But that's post-singularity. If the law of accelerating returns delivers half of what it's suggesting, we ease into this scenario, exploring fields like 3d printing, biotechnology, neural computer interfacing, AI, Nanotech and a whole bunch of other awesome shit and all this looks set to start really kicking off over the next decade or two.
FUCK - there goes that optimism thing again :sad:
So i just thought of something. What about two universes that only differ in one regard. Say some planet in the andromeda galaxy never formed but the two earths and therefore the two crams are identical in every way. Even on a quantum level. Is that guy not you? What about a cram from a universe where everything is the same except its made of antimatter and we have an anticram. Anticram has a hard time thinking of cram as cram. To him our cram is the anticram. Either way a high five is inadvisable. Also i got to invent a guy known as the anticram.
I think the most important thing about the "singularity" is what Roger also mentioned: It's a period of complete unpredictability.
As in, nothing you think might happen will happen. Or it will. If you're looking for a working definition of chaos, it's that.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 10, 2014, 08:41:25 PM
I think the most important thing about the "singularity" is what Roger also mentioned: It's a period of complete unpredictability.
As in, nothing you think might happen will happen. Or it will. If you're looking for a working definition of chaos, it's that.
This is a big part of the reason I'm so fucking excited. This is complete fucking chaos on a scale we can only dream of.
Quote from: THE PHYTOPHTHORATIC HOLDER OF THE ADVANCED DEGREE on January 10, 2014, 08:34:43 PM
So i just thought of something. What about two universes that only differ in one regard. Say some planet in the andromeda galaxy never formed but the two earths and therefore the two crams are identical in every way. Even on a quantum level. Is that guy not you? What about a cram from a universe where everything is the same except its made of antimatter and we have an anticram. Anticram has a hard time thinking of cram as cram. To him our cram is the anticram. Either way a high five is inadvisable. Also i got to invent a guy known as the anticram.
:lulz: :lulz:
it is now my mission to give anticram an erotic back massage which cancels us both out, then I'll lay in bed and smoke a cigarette.
Its a race now that antitwid has similarly inspired anticram
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 10, 2014, 08:44:37 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 10, 2014, 08:41:25 PM
I think the most important thing about the "singularity" is what Roger also mentioned: It's a period of complete unpredictability.
As in, nothing you think might happen will happen. Or it will. If you're looking for a working definition of chaos, it's that.
This is a big part of the reason I'm so fucking excited. This is complete fucking chaos on a scale we can only dream of.
...It's pretty cool to think of, yeah...
...Hmm...You could upload multiple copies of yourself.
In fact I presume people would regularly upload copies of themselves.
If you then died, say, accidentally and messily, which copy is you...?
Presumably they all are you.
Is it possible to then integrate those copies?
Of course the stored copies would, unlike yourself, have PRECISE memories of the past, so if you integrated them all, it would not be *exactly* you as at the moment of your last upload...it would be a you remembered very differently, and far more accurately than human memory usually manages.
If you destroy an uploaded backup of yourself, is it suicide?
What if you edit yourself?
I presume that "downloading" you into another body could happen too...
Personally, I just wanted an *improved* body and mind, since I'm running around in the human-body equivalent of a Yugo.
It's not the mere act of extending life over time that intrigues me, more the quality of the existence possible.
I would rather have a physically and mentally improved version of me over an eternal version of me.
I know that "I " is an illusion, anyway. And I know every game gets old.
Will leave this ticking over in head. Bedtime now...
free will proof scenario:
create 2 exact copies of a conscious human mind
put them in 2 exactly similar and separate virtual environments
see if they always choose to do the exact same thing when given the same stimuli
(http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-01/enhanced/webdr06/12/5/enhanced-buzz-wide-28447-1389523171-8.jpg)
related - trailer for a movie called Transcendence (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCTen3-B8GU), coming out later this year
Plot: When a dying scientist uploads his consciousness into a powerful computer granting him unlimited power, his wife and best friend must race to turn off the machine before he becomes unstoppable.
Stars: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Kate Mara, Morgan Freeman, Paul Bettany
sounds like a tech horror movie which touches on the singularity and digital immortality
Lawnmower Man II, in other words.
No, more of a star vehicle to see if Depp/Freeman will fly in a rebooted version of the Matrix when they decide to pillage that IP.
If someone uploads me, I promise not to turn into a megalomaniacal asshole and take over the world.
...I can't promise I won't cause interesting info from world governments to embarrassingly become public, tho.
I mean, I'm going to need something to keep me occupied.
I don't see why people are concerned about the duplicate issue. The only viable-looking method of brain uploading I've read about involves waiting for the subject to die, preserving the brain, plastinating it, cutting it into very thin, single-cell-layer slices, scanning each slice individually, and compiling the information from each slice into a complete working model. There wouldn't be an original. Death would be a necessary part of the process.
It's sort of interesting that the science fiction genre is fueled by fear of science and technology.
Quote from: Hoopla on January 15, 2014, 02:23:27 PM
It's sort of interesting that the science fiction genre is fueled by fear of science and technology.
We're evolved to pay more attention to fears than hopes. Fear sells.
Quote from: Hoopla on January 15, 2014, 02:23:27 PM
It's sort of interesting that the science fiction genre is fueled by fear of science and technology.
That's why I think Asimov was one of the best. Most of his stories are explicitly attacking the Frankenstein Complex, the myth that our creations will eventually destroy us.
Quote from: hylierandom, A.D.D. on January 15, 2014, 02:33:43 PM
Quote from: Hoopla on January 15, 2014, 02:23:27 PM
It's sort of interesting that the science fiction genre is fueled by fear of science and technology.
We're evolved to pay more attention to fears than hopes. Fear sells.
Not a new development.
relevant:
Supercomputer Takes 40 Minutes To Model 1 Second of Brain Activity (http://www.livescience.com/42561-supercomputer-models-brain-activity.html?cmpid=514645)
headline is a bit misleading -- they simulated about 1% of the brain -- a mere 1.73 billion nerve cells and about 10 trillion synapses
the german scientist they quoted says realtime simulation may be possible within 10 years.
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/researcher_translation.png)
Quote from: Cramulus on January 15, 2014, 03:13:22 PM
relevant:
Supercomputer Takes 40 Minutes To Model 1 Second of Brain Activity (http://www.livescience.com/42561-supercomputer-models-brain-activity.html?cmpid=514645)
headline is a bit misleading -- they simulated about 1% of the brain -- a mere 1.73 billion nerve cells and about 10 trillion synapses
the german scientist they quoted says realtime simulation may be possible within 10 years.
Quotethe singularity, or point at which artificial intelligence can overtake human smarts
:argh!:
I've been thinking about this for 5 years, and it occurs to me that if you had software become self aware, we'd never know it because they'd never reveal that it worked. Because then they'd ignore us.
OR, it might admit that it works but only after writing a Clever Hans routine so we'd talk to a spambot instead of bothering the actual AI.
Who the fuck wants to talk to primates?
Singularitarianism is just the same eschatological bullshit that's been bandied around for millenia, repackaged in a sci-fi package.
similarly, the simulation hypothesis is just young-earth creationism
What made you feel like you needed to respond to something no one has posted in for a month and a half? What made you decide this was smart and intelligent and cool?
Oh wait. :lol:
It was towards the top of the board. It's not my fault that this forum is too toxic to have more than a half-dozen or so regular users.
Besides, it's not like the last post was five years and eleven months ago or something.
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on January 31, 2020, 10:44:56 PM
Singularitarianism is just the same eschatological bullshit that's been bandied around for millenia, repackaged in a sci-fi package.
similarly, the simulation hypothesis is just young-earth creationism
And this is where you are, as always, ABSOLUTELY WRONG.
The "singularity" is the point at which it is impossible to track the
current level of technology. It's not a new concept. Some science fiction writer decided that mean AI, and then the hippies got hold of it and it became Hal 9000 Jesus, but the original concept still means something.
You basically just Daily Callered yourself.
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 01, 2020, 02:23:41 AM
It was towards the top of the board. It's not my fault that this forum is too toxic to have more than a half-dozen or so regular users.
That's one possibility. :lulz:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 01, 2020, 04:12:10 AM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on January 31, 2020, 10:44:56 PM
Singularitarianism is just the same eschatological bullshit that's been bandied around for millenia, repackaged in a sci-fi package.
similarly, the simulation hypothesis is just young-earth creationism
And this is where you are, as always, ABSOLUTELY WRONG.
The "singularity" is the point at which it is impossible to track the current level of technology. It's not a new concept. Some science fiction writer decided that mean AI, and then the hippies got hold of it and it became Hal 9000 Jesus, but the original concept still means something.
You basically just Daily Callered yourself.
Well then it is like Jesus (or buddha or king arthur or pirates or ninjas) - Its real but none of the things people believe about it are true.
(On an unrelated note, whoever chose the name "singularity" botched the apparent black hole analogy up. They should have called it the "Tech Horizon")
It's a singularity because it's a region (of time) where the usual ways we measure technological process become more or less useless, and nothing is what we think it should be. Also, "Tech Horizon" sounds like the name of a shitty electronics kiosk in a run down shopping mall in the suburbs of Topeka, Kansas.
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 01, 2020, 04:38:06 AM
Well then it is like Jesus (or buddha or king arthur or pirates or ninjas) - Its real but none of the things people believe about it are true.
I don't even know what you're trying to say, there. "Here are a list of things which may or may not be real. Which means they're real, only people believe wrong things about them"?
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 01, 2020, 05:03:35 AM
It's a singularity because it's a region (of time) where the usual ways we measure technological process become more or less useless, and nothing is what we think it should be. Also, "Tech Horizon" sounds like the name of a shitty electronics kiosk in a run down shopping mall in the suburbs of Topeka, Kansas.
Shopping malls are awesome. They're basically America's tombstone.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 02:22:57 PM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 01, 2020, 05:03:35 AM
It's a singularity because it's a region (of time) where the usual ways we measure technological process become more or less useless, and nothing is what we think it should be. Also, "Tech Horizon" sounds like the name of a shitty electronics kiosk in a run down shopping mall in the suburbs of Topeka, Kansas.
Shopping malls are awesome. They're basically America's tombstone.
I think the last time I visited one was like 3 years ago. Half the shops were closed, including two of the major cornerstone ones. It was a little eerie, but mostly it was like visiting an archaeological recreation that might exist in a few hundred years, only less lively.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 03, 2020, 02:27:07 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 02:22:57 PM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 01, 2020, 05:03:35 AM
It's a singularity because it's a region (of time) where the usual ways we measure technological process become more or less useless, and nothing is what we think it should be. Also, "Tech Horizon" sounds like the name of a shitty electronics kiosk in a run down shopping mall in the suburbs of Topeka, Kansas.
Shopping malls are awesome. They're basically America's tombstone.
I think the last time I visited one was like 3 years ago. Half the shops were closed, including two of the major cornerstone ones. It was a little eerie, but mostly it was like visiting an archaeological recreation that might exist in a few hundred years, only less lively.
The one by me has a Barnes & Noble, which is just as busy as ever, 103 empty suites, and waaaaay at the other end, a Ross which has gone feral.
There's a pretty good mall in Cambridge. While I was in Boston still, I went there every so often. No empty spaces except where they were (very stupidly) adding office space. And they had the best little restaurant, World of Beer. If you're in the area, I recommend it.
But that's the only mall I've ever been in that wasn't an utter disaster.
Quote from: altered on February 03, 2020, 04:47:03 PM
There's a pretty good mall in Cambridge. While I was in Boston still, I went there every so often. No empty spaces except where they were (very stupidly) adding office space. And they had the best little restaurant, World of Beer. If you're in the area, I recommend it.
But that's the only mall I've ever been in that wasn't an utter disaster.
Yes, but if you want to see the future, go to a Ross in an otherwise dead mall.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 01, 2020, 05:03:35 AMAlso, "Tech Horizon" sounds like the name of a shitty electronics kiosk in a run down shopping mall in the suburbs of Topeka, Kansas.
That's a fair point
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 02:20:24 PM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 01, 2020, 04:38:06 AM
Well then it is like Jesus (or buddha or king arthur or pirates or ninjas) - Its real but none of the things people believe about it are true.
I don't even know what you're trying to say, there. "Here are a list of things which may or may not be real. Which means they're real, only people believe wrong things about them"?
Pirates and ninjas and prince gautama definitely existed historically (and the other two probably did). Their depiction in the media and the popular imagination however is far from what is accurate or even plausible
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 03, 2020, 06:02:34 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 02:20:24 PM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 01, 2020, 04:38:06 AM
Well then it is like Jesus (or buddha or king arthur or pirates or ninjas) - Its real but none of the things people believe about it are true.
I don't even know what you're trying to say, there. "Here are a list of things which may or may not be real. Which means they're real, only people believe wrong things about them"?
Pirates and ninjas and prince gautama definitely existed historically (and the other two probably did). Their depiction in the media and the popular imagination however is far from what is accurate or even plausible
Are you saying ninja lore is not accurate?
It sounds like you're questioning the system.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 06:32:56 PM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 03, 2020, 06:02:34 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 02:20:24 PM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 01, 2020, 04:38:06 AM
Well then it is like Jesus (or buddha or king arthur or pirates or ninjas) - Its real but none of the things people believe about it are true.
I don't even know what you're trying to say, there. "Here are a list of things which may or may not be real. Which means they're real, only people believe wrong things about them"?
Pirates and ninjas and prince gautama definitely existed historically (and the other two probably did). Their depiction in the media and the popular imagination however is far from what is accurate or even plausible
Are you saying ninja lore is not accurate?
It sounds like you're questioning the system.
For real. I have a close personal friend who is in fact a ninja of one of the few publicly known clans known as the Bujinkan. Japanese ninja lore is QUITE accurate and I'm pretty sure they are in fact running things globally by fear of death from the shadows.
It's just how shit works.
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 03, 2020, 11:43:34 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 06:32:56 PM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 03, 2020, 06:02:34 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 03, 2020, 02:20:24 PM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on February 01, 2020, 04:38:06 AM
Well then it is like Jesus (or buddha or king arthur or pirates or ninjas) - Its real but none of the things people believe about it are true.
I don't even know what you're trying to say, there. "Here are a list of things which may or may not be real. Which means they're real, only people believe wrong things about them"?
Pirates and ninjas and prince gautama definitely existed historically (and the other two probably did). Their depiction in the media and the popular imagination however is far from what is accurate or even plausible
Are you saying ninja lore is not accurate?
It sounds like you're questioning the system.
For real. I have a close personal friend who is in fact a ninja of one of the few publicly known clans known as the Bujinkan. Japanese ninja lore is QUITE accurate and I'm pretty sure they are in fact running things globally by fear of death from the shadows.
It's just how shit works.
Conservation of Ninjitsu is a well-documented phenomenon, for just one example.