[HN Gopher] Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers ...
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Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers (2012) [video]
Author : nabla9
Score : 163 points
Date : 2023-05-12 11:38 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| The copyrights by gosh 18k per month. Either fiat has continued
| its crash or their overcharging for copyrights.
|
| It's a disaster that these things exist quite as long as they do
| bragr wrote:
| I think you are underestimating how much synchronization
| licenses cost.
| fxj wrote:
| was that the idea of upload?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upload_(TV_series)
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| the Androids in "Do Androids dream of electric sheep" by Philip K
| Dick also make things up, just like an LLM.
|
| The book calls this "false memories", where we call it
| "hallucinations"...
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Obligatory link to the popular "Lena" short form novel on the
| same topic: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| That's definitely worth a read, although I'm not sure it's the
| same topic. ROT13'd, contains spoilers:
|
| Gung fgbel vf zber bs n serr sbe nyy, jurer crbcyr qb nalguvat
| naq rirelguvat gb na hcybnqrq uhzna.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| Why blame lawyers? Lawyers apply the laws. If you don't like the
| laws, change them.
| reubenmorais wrote:
| If you liked this, you might like the novel Permutation City by
| Greg Egan.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson has aspects of "who
| pays for the digital afterlife and who gets to control it?" as
| well.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| And _Surface Detail_ for a pretty gruesome depiction of what
| happens if you do a public-private partnership for hell.
| grammarxcore wrote:
| I really struggled to get into this; I've had several people
| recommend it. How far do you think it's important to read
| before deciding it's not for me?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I usually like Stephenson quite a bit, but I couldn't get
| through this one either.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It wasn't Egan's best, from a storytelling perspective, but
| the ideas were juicy enough to keep me engaged.
| qup wrote:
| It's not important for you to read it at all. Skip it.
| reubenmorais wrote:
| I just quickly paged through it to try to answer this. I'd
| say peak engagement for me when I couldn't wait to find out
| what happened next was around 60% of the way in, but I was
| fully engaged from the beginning, I read it over 2 days.
|
| I'd support qup's comment, there's too many good books in the
| world to drudge your way through a book that doesn't click :)
| newswasboring wrote:
| You also might like the later Bobiverse books.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Really like the authors style. He has a new book too.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| I'd like to also recommend his other work of speculative fiction:
|
| The Artificial Intelligence That Deleted A Century
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JlxuQ7tPgQ
|
| It is a great intersection of copyright maximalism and the
| dangers of making general purpose AIs without proper care in
| developing their goal function.
| Daffodils wrote:
| This is superb, very Black Mirror-esque.
| tgv wrote:
| It's too far fetched and too flimsily executed, IMO. It's
| more of a parody of the paperclip factory than a serious
| warning against unleashed AIs.
| matmann2001 wrote:
| Reminded me of the Amazon show called Upload. Sort of a
| lighter, more humorous take than Black Mirror, but the darker
| philosophical complexities still surface regularly.
| elmomle wrote:
| An oddly prescient (though much less nuanced) version of a
| similar concept is in Rollerball (1975):
| https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/720ad4a5-5a51-4b97-b521-2a1d1fa...
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Single Point of Failure: The (Fictional) Day Google Forgot To
| Check Passwords - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4GB_NDU43Q
| is another, different topic, but still worth watching.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| Don't forget to check out this gem:
| https://youtu.be/O2RIvJ1U7RE?t=153
|
| "EctoLife: The World's First Artificial Womb Facility"
| disqard wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but this video looked like dystopian
| satire... did anyone else view it that way?
|
| It reminded me of Keiichi Masuda's "Hyper Reality":
|
| https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| it is - it's dystopic art
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| As someone who had to wait five years for a baby and we
| only just barely got one thanks to IVF: someone _please_
| make an artificial womb facility. It would bring nothing
| but joy.
|
| That video is fantastic. I hope it comes.
|
| Oh jeez, I see why people were upset. The video makes a
| stupid moral argument about genetic engineering. Maybe that
| will be an issue someday, but the tech isn't there; we just
| want babies.
| IndigoIncognito wrote:
| This is a cult classic
| classified wrote:
| At over 10 years of age, it's still totally accurate. Permadeath
| is the only way to escape advertisers and copyright hoarders.
| EwanG wrote:
| Made 11 years ago, still holds up (unfortunately).
| mock-possum wrote:
| not really sure what lawyers have to do with this
| spdustin wrote:
| This reminds me of "The Upload", a comedy series on Amazon Prime,
| where your digital consciousness is uploaded to a commercial
| cloud when you die, to live on in a digital utopia. A utopia with
| IAPs, low-data cap slums, etc.
|
| Edit: in fact, "The Upload" almost seems like it came directly
| from this short.
| xtracto wrote:
| That reminded me of the San Junipero episode in Black Mirror. I
| guess the series you mentioned was inspired by that episode.
| em-bee wrote:
| yup, this is just like "Upload". great series too.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| After seeing the current wave of AI, the "restricted mental
| activities" makes me think such a program would prohibit sexual
| fantasies and other NSFW thoughts.
| rootsudo wrote:
| "3,553,858 views 11 years ago."
|
| Still feels quite valid and the future we're heading towards.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Let's face it, this is everything Silicon Valley has ever wanted.
|
| Just needs more targeted advertising and AI and it's current.
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Reminds me of:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEEBE7_-aMM&list=PLD3WAy9LRI...
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| How do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like? Maybe they
| got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually
| tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a
| lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn't
| figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken
| tastes like everything.
| nico wrote:
| Nice username, the beginning of time
| pallas_athena wrote:
| -- The Matrix (1999)
| texxxo wrote:
| [flagged]
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| To be clear, it wasn't ruined by lawyers. It was ruined by
| copyright laws
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| It's an interesting idea but is it scary? Any such
| "consciousness" existing in a digital realm is a copy and so the
| real organic you would never experience these things
| boerseth wrote:
| In order for me to still feel like "me" afterward, there would
| have to be a linking stage during which I could get used to
| this digital extension of my mind, like an artificial limb for
| me to get used to as part of my body. Then, as the biological
| mind withered and died, like pouring a liquid from one
| container to another, the digital brain would come to represent
| a larger and larger part of "me", finally containing all of my
| consciousness.
|
| You could compare the process to how the cells of your body (in
| particular your brain) eventually all get replaced, yet the
| stream of consciousness flows uninterrupted through a number of
| these replacements.
| harha_ wrote:
| This. I can think of a 3D+time process where your "continuum"
| isn't interrupted.
| failuser wrote:
| Your continuum is interrupted all the time, e.g. by sleep
| or loss of continence. Is that subjectively different from
| death? A pretty scary thought. Will waking up as a
| different being feel no different?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Will waking up as a different being feel no different?
|
| I expect it would. Much of my experience has to do with
| the "hardware" (so to speak) of my body. It's difficult
| to imagine what it would be like if my brain was
| mechanical (physics-based) instead of biological
| (chemistry-based), for example. Abstract thought seems
| like the only thing that even _could_ be the same.
|
| (Also, continence -> consciousness. I'm literally pissing
| myself over that. :D)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The ethical conundrum is: at one point and afterwards, there
| will be "two" of you - basically, a digital fork of your
| physical consciousness.
|
| Now, the physical consciousness may wish to live a separate
| life instead of fully "passing over" or ceasing to exist
| eventually (i.e. to die). But who will be considered "you"
| from that point? The physical "you" or the virtual "you"? Can
| the virtual "you" force the physical "you" to die?
| amacbride wrote:
| Explored brilliantly in "Learning To Be Me" by Greg Egan, a
| short story in his collection "Axiomatic."
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I've got that one in a pretty-good short story collection
| called _Beyond Flesh_. Decent book to track down for
| anyone who wants a _bunch_ of stories about that broad
| category of stuff.
| teddyh wrote:
| The "you" of today won't experience the problems that the "you"
| of tomorrow will, so why not throw caution to the wind?
|
| > _the real organic you_
|
| It's part of the concept that there _is_ no "real" you; they
| are both equally real.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Why does this matter given that you would still perceive things
| as if it were were still in your real and organic state?
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| > you
|
| A fascinating and complex concept there.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Perhaps it is if you want to get lost in the philosophical
| implications. Practically, you would perceive exactly as
| you did while alive.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| > Practically, you would perceive exactly as you did
| while alive.
|
| Who would? Me? I'm dead at this point.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Actually, you die every night and I just load the copy of
| your mind I took of you right after you fell asleep and
| loaded it on a copy of your body. You're old dead body
| gets incinerated. You've been reborn every day and have
| never noticed the difference.
| Filligree wrote:
| Well, stop replicating the wear and tear then!
| goatlover wrote:
| Would your digital self though? It's a simulation, so
| maybe digital you wouldn't be conscious of perceiving,
| dreaming, imagining, etc. If you take the philosophical
| position that computation is an abstraction from
| individual first person experiences, then your digital
| self wouldn't be conscious, since the functional leaves
| out the experiential. Your digital self would be a
| p-zombie.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| Can you be "you" without your body?
| capableweb wrote:
| Or, how much of your body is required in order for you to
| feel like you? Plenty of people without any limbs, and
| probably they feel like a "you". But what if you were
| just a head? Or just a brain?
| idiotsecant wrote:
| This is, to me, the most foundational and profound
| realization that a person can have. Entire religions and
| social structures have been invented to avoid thinking
| about it.
|
| 'You' is indeed a pretty complex concept. It's one of those
| things that works as long as you don't squint too hard at
| it, but if you do start to think through some of the cracks
| in the idea you quickly reach a point where the only
| reasonable response is existential horror.
| vasco wrote:
| Would have an interesting impact on the capitalist system which
| bases some of the incentives on leaving an inheritance to your
| offspring which gets taxed. If your assets would be used in the
| afterlife the dynamic changes. All your earnings would still be
| able to be taxed but how many people would leave any
| inheritance for descendents if you'll need it for your next
| consciousness? Would people value their alter-ego having a good
| forever life or their offspring having a good real-life? The
| societal changes in behavior would be interesting.
| tough wrote:
| Lookiing at how egypt pharao's did it they very much went
| with the good forever life
| fwlr wrote:
| There's a lot of philosophical discussion about what would
| happen with uploading consciousness, grappling with the
| question of "do you get a 'transfer' where your consciousness
| wakes up in the digital realm" and so forth.
|
| I've always thought the obvious result is that both the
| physical and the digital consciousness would wake up. Physical
| you would have some convincing personal experience of "I did
| not experience a transfer", meanwhile digital you would have
| some equally convincing personal experience of "I _did_
| experience a transfer".
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Suppose you do it ship-of-theseus style, one neuron at a time
| (or heck, one atom at a time if you want). In that case I'd
| find it hard to argue for your position.
| troyvit wrote:
| I haven't watched the video yet so take this with a grain of
| salt.
|
| dd for a human amirite? Maybe one atom at a time, but you'd
| have to make sure you get all the bacteria that helps control
| your personality as well right?[1] Then you need to simulate
| the changes in that system, based on how you interact with
| the rest of a virtual world, including relationships with
| other people[2], so you'd have to have an accurate copy of
| that too. What do you do if your virtual self needs to
| interact with a still living, breathing human? How do you
| simulate the changes to your micro-biome that occur there?
| How do you simulate what your copied human "eats" and how it
| processes that food?[3] Having a copy of all your atoms is a
| start but you also need to simulate all of those processes
| accurately if you want it to be truly "you."
|
| Then what you end up with is -- assuming we know everything
| that makes up a human being and how it behaves -- a perfect
| copy of you along with a perfect copy of your world.
|
| [1] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-
| rul...
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37298-9
|
| [3] http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_intermetabolism/inte
| rme...
| ouid wrote:
| You dont have to replace yourself perfectly in order for
| the proposal to make sense. All that matters is that you
| agree the two versions are connected by conscious
| experience. If you take steroids that massively change your
| personality and mood, you still perceive it as happening to
| you.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| If you have an illness and lose a good chunk of your
| microbiome did you just die? No. You're still you, just a
| version of you slightly further along the timeline after
| some event that modified 'you'. Any copy of you that fails
| to simulate the mites on your left pinkie toenail is also
| 'you', just a version slightly further along the timeline
| after some event that modified 'you'.
|
| There is no 'you' - just an unbroken chain of chemical
| interactions stretching back to the first self-replicating
| molecule. 'You' is a concept that the pattern replicating
| event predictor engine that evolved to live in your skull
| is desperately clinging to. It has no real physical basis.
| mock-possum wrote:
| why should that make it any less scary for such
| "consciousness?"
| DanHulton wrote:
| Well, if you have empathy for others, it's still scary.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| You can always say "no" when it asks if you want to continue
| life, unlike in Lena as some other commenter mentioned
|
| Better than current reality, where "no" is shoved on your
| throat and most people insist you better be grateful about it
| newswasboring wrote:
| > You can always say "no" when it asks if you want to
| continue life
|
| You should reconsider that statement. I mean, this is
| literally "at gun point" kind of situation.
| em-bee wrote:
| is it a no? religions say otherwise. the problem is, we
| don't know. if we could upload into a computer but we would
| not be able to communicate with those uploaded, we wouldn't
| know anything about their continued existence either.
| brycedriesenga wrote:
| Eh, I have a much less narrow definition of "you" than you do.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Even if it's not "me" (whatever that means), I do fear for
| whatever/whoever that consciousness is. It's the same fear I
| have towards the next generation, I don't want to leave a
| horrible world for them.
|
| PS: My god I have always known writing about this stuff is hard
| because language is inadequate for recursive thoughts, but I
| never thought I would see a day when it will practically affect
| my daily discourse. These were discussions I usually had under
| the influence of specific substances.
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