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Of more concern to me would be control of my own consciousness uploads. I don't believe that hell exists now, but it would certainly be possible to create a te

Of more concern to me would be control of my own consciousness uploads. I don't believe that hell exists now, but it would certainly be possible to create a technological hell if brain uploading and simulation is possible. Torture is already horrific, but at least you can only be tortured to death once. With brain simulation, it would be possible to torture someone again and again and again.

kentrado 15y ago
Wow that's fucking sick.
dodo53 15y ago
Or even without maliciousness - someone could screw up a simulation such that the simulated mind is in pain for a subjective eternity
- rbranson 15y ago
  There's a light at the end of the tunnel. It's likely whatever energy source for the simulation would be disrupted by some catastrophic event. Even without sentient intervention, over tens of millions of years you've got starvation of some resource -- even if it's something like fusion or the raw resources needed to build and maintain "renewable" energy. Over hundreds of millions or billions of years you've got asteroid impacts and cosmic events, eventually ending with the heat death of the universe. Not so bad after all, just tough it out soldier.
  - hasenj 15y ago
    That's not really much of a consolation.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pavel_lishin 15y ago
On the bright side, it's also possible to create heaven.
- randallsquared 15y ago
  At least people wouldn't voluntarily sign up to live in hell forever. Virtual heaven might be a Great Filter -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter .
jerf 15y ago
"Of more concern to me would be control of my own consciousness uploads." I don't bring it up very often, but this is actually one potential positive case for DRM. I want control over my brain state. If Hell does not exist, Man may very well create it for himself. I've come up with some nasty tricks you can play with brain states that I don't even want to record to electrons, though the odds of nobody else ever thinking of them are zero.
- nooneelse 15y ago
  "I've come up with some nasty tricks you can play with brain states that I don't even want to record to electrons, though the odds of nobody else ever thinking of them are zero." Even before we get to minds on chips, there are nasty mind tricks coming ever closer to our reach. Imagine how much more successful an "investigator" at Guantanamo Bay could be during "interviews" if they (unbeknownst to the person being interviewed) had a "pleasure center" or "warm friendly feelings" remote control in their pocket. That just requires advanced brain prosthetics and some surreptitious surgery. An advanced form of putting a euphoric drug in someone's iv when they see you, so they come to like you a lot over time.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    That technique doesn't even require drugs, and has been used for millennia. In fact, drugs can tip potential "interviewees" off that something is not right.
  - leot 15y ago
    Doesn't even need to be an iv. A spray will do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin#Drug_forms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin#Drug_forms (in fact, I'm guessing that oxytocin is what this guy is spraying around so that the lions he's playing with don't decide to eat him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kjWBgA81LM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kjWBgA81LM see minute 0:57)
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > I want control over my brain state. But who is "I"? If there is a meat you, and a digital copy of you, does MeatJerf get to control DigiJerf's distribution? How about one MeatJerf and two copies, DigiJerf1, and DigiJerf2? How about when MeatJerf dies, leaving behind two digital-orphan-clones?
pingou 15y ago
It reminds me of the short story http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_S...
- Fuzzwah 15y ago
  Reminded me of a short novella called Deus X by Norman Spinrad: Norman Spinrad explores the depths of what it means to be human; more accurately, he delves into the nature of the soul in our increasingly computerized technological age. Featuring a poignant new Afterword by Spinrad, this reprinting of one of Spinrad's most cherished works is more timely than ever before. Can human consciousness exist within the framework of an electronic "brain" and still maintain its humanity? In DEUS X, a dying priest's consciousness is uploaded into the most advanced computer of the day - and what ensues is a thought-provoking, entertaining and overly intriguing clash between the various characters surrounding the experiment, a female Pope and a computer guru who'd rather be sailing and smoking pot, for example. http://www.amazon.com/Deus-X-Norman-Spinrad/dp/0979477018/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305768162&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Deus-X-Norman-Spinrad/dp/0979477018/re...
anigbrowl 15y ago
You could do that to someone already with the aid of drugs. Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress is an absurdist novel which explores these ideas.
nooneelse 15y ago
If copying everything wholesale is possible before brain science is able to fully understand every detail brain scientists want to write a thesis about, then using systematically modified copies for "knock-out" studies will seem like a very tempting methodology. Also gives researchers numerous virtual insane patients to try virtual drugs on. Or perhaps something with some clear virtuous intent (and nothing particularly tortuous)... what about running Monte Carlo simulations using many identical instances of the same copy to find which pedagogical method(s) and steps best educates someone about a difficult to grasp subject? Even when the creation of the virtual minds is only of good intent, one can wonder about the ethics of it. What if anything is owed the legion of virtual students after the classes are done? I suppose some of them could be given some other useful employment to earn their watts.
juiceandjuice 15y ago
GHOST IN THE SHELL!
AndrewMoffat 15y ago
> I don't believe that hell exists now, but it would certainly be possible to create a technological hell if brain uploading and simulation is possible. Bostom's simulation argument says we're almost certainly living in a computer simulation. This opens up the doors right now for posibilities like "hell." Life after death (with memories, etc) becomes possible...all kinds of things. Scary, really.
hasenj 15y ago
I don't believe/think that consciousness/awareness is a property that can emerge from running a brain or a brain model. But, even if it were: a computer simulating my brain will not be me; I will not experience what it experiences. Suppose someone came from the future and claimed to be "me"; that is, 20 years from now I will go to the past; or something like that. Let's call the future me F and the present me P. I'm P, when P sees the color red, it's me who's seeing it. But, when F sees the color red, P doesn't experience the same thing. (it will experience it 20 years later, when it becomes F). So if a clone of me experiences something; I won't experience it. So if you upload my memories to a brain and then torture that brain, you wouldn't be torturing me; you'd be torturing a machine that happens to have my memories. In the same sense that if you clone me then torture my clone, he will experience the pain; but I won't. If I do experience the pain of my clones, then we (me and my clones) must be telepathically communicating, or something like that, which, while philosophically not impossible, it's not compatible with physicalism, which you have to accept if you think consciousness can arise from running a brain model. I say telepathy is not compatible with physicalism because telepathy implies a super-natural communication between minds (where minds are implies to be super-natural entities).
- FlowerPower 15y ago
  Do you think it is OK for F or a brain mdoel to experience pain? As long as it is not you who is feeling the pain, it is moral acceptable? Is that what you are saying?
  - Mahh 15y ago
    He's only saying that a copy of a brain would create a separate entity, and that separate entities won't share experiences. Like how identical twins have different experiences. There were no claims about morality of using brain models for testing.
  - hasenj 15y ago
    Well no, of course not! (assuming a brain model does experience pain) I'm just saying if this theoretical "virtual hell" does really happen, it will be a computer hell, not a human hell. Although I don't actually think a computer simulating a brain model will have consciousness. However complex that simulation is, it's nothing more than electrons flowing through a circuit, and this flow has no intrinsic meaning; I have no reason to believe consciousness can arise from such a thing.
arethuza 15y ago
The latest Culture book from Iain M Banks has a war in virtual heavens over the existence of virtual hells: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail
- JabavuAdams 15y ago
  Yup, I should have mentioned that. I thought I arrived at this idea independently, and then was surprised to see that it featured in the book. OTOH, considering I've read every Iain M. Banks book, it's a bit silly to talk about arriving at a conclusion independently (rather than having followed the same path).
  - arethuza 15y ago
    In "A Colder War" by Charlie Stross, Cthulhu runs the souls it eats: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm Edit: this is a rather splendid wee story where "weakly godlike agencies" are treated like any other strategic cold-war weapon, leading to an even scarier version of the Cold War.
bugmenot 15y ago
> Torture is already horrific, but at least you can only be > tortured to death once. With brain simulation, it would be > possible to torture someone again and again and again. Already been done. To Jack Bauer.

kentrado 15y ago

Wow that's fucking sick.

dodo53 15y ago

Or even without maliciousness - someone could screw up a simulation such that the simulated mind is in pain for a subjective eternity

rbranson 15y ago
There's a light at the end of the tunnel. It's likely whatever energy source for the simulation would be disrupted by some catastrophic event. Even without sentient intervention, over tens of millions of years you've got starvation of some resource -- even if it's something like fusion or the raw resources needed to build and maintain "renewable" energy. Over hundreds of millions or billions of years you've got asteroid impacts and cosmic events, eventually ending with the heat death of the universe. Not so bad after all, just tough it out soldier.
- hasenj 15y ago
  That's not really much of a consolation.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

pavel_lishin 15y ago

On the bright side, it's also possible to create heaven.

randallsquared 15y ago
At least people wouldn't voluntarily sign up to live in hell forever. Virtual heaven might be a Great Filter -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter .

jerf 15y ago

"Of more concern to me would be control of my own consciousness uploads." I don't bring it up very often, but this is actually one potential positive case for DRM. I want control over my brain state. If Hell does not exist, Man may very well create it for himself. I've come up with some nasty tricks you can play with brain states that I don't even want to record to electrons, though the odds of nobody else ever thinking of them are zero.

nooneelse 15y ago
"I've come up with some nasty tricks you can play with brain states that I don't even want to record to electrons, though the odds of nobody else ever thinking of them are zero." Even before we get to minds on chips, there are nasty mind tricks coming ever closer to our reach. Imagine how much more successful an "investigator" at Guantanamo Bay could be during "interviews" if they (unbeknownst to the person being interviewed) had a "pleasure center" or "warm friendly feelings" remote control in their pocket. That just requires advanced brain prosthetics and some surreptitious surgery. An advanced form of putting a euphoric drug in someone's iv when they see you, so they come to like you a lot over time.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  That technique doesn't even require drugs, and has been used for millennia. In fact, drugs can tip potential "interviewees" off that something is not right.
- leot 15y ago
  Doesn't even need to be an iv. A spray will do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin#Drug_forms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin#Drug_forms (in fact, I'm guessing that oxytocin is what this guy is spraying around so that the lions he's playing with don't decide to eat him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kjWBgA81LM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kjWBgA81LM see minute 0:57)
pavel_lishin 15y ago
> I want control over my brain state. But who is "I"? If there is a meat you, and a digital copy of you, does MeatJerf get to control DigiJerf's distribution? How about one MeatJerf and two copies, DigiJerf1, and DigiJerf2? How about when MeatJerf dies, leaving behind two digital-orphan-clones?

pingou 15y ago

It reminds me of the short story http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_S...

Fuzzwah 15y ago
Reminded me of a short novella called Deus X by Norman Spinrad: Norman Spinrad explores the depths of what it means to be human; more accurately, he delves into the nature of the soul in our increasingly computerized technological age. Featuring a poignant new Afterword by Spinrad, this reprinting of one of Spinrad's most cherished works is more timely than ever before. Can human consciousness exist within the framework of an electronic "brain" and still maintain its humanity? In DEUS X, a dying priest's consciousness is uploaded into the most advanced computer of the day - and what ensues is a thought-provoking, entertaining and overly intriguing clash between the various characters surrounding the experiment, a female Pope and a computer guru who'd rather be sailing and smoking pot, for example. http://www.amazon.com/Deus-X-Norman-Spinrad/dp/0979477018/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305768162&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Deus-X-Norman-Spinrad/dp/0979477018/re...

anigbrowl 15y ago

You could do that to someone already with the aid of drugs. Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress is an absurdist novel which explores these ideas.

nooneelse 15y ago

If copying everything wholesale is possible before brain science is able to fully understand every detail brain scientists want to write a thesis about, then using systematically modified copies for "knock-out" studies will seem like a very tempting methodology. Also gives researchers numerous virtual insane patients to try virtual drugs on. Or perhaps something with some clear virtuous intent (and nothing particularly tortuous)... what about running Monte Carlo simulations using many identical instances of the same copy to find which pedagogical method(s) and steps best educates someone about a difficult to grasp subject? Even when the creation of the virtual minds is only of good intent, one can wonder about the ethics of it. What if anything is owed the legion of virtual students after the classes are done? I suppose some of them could be given some other useful employment to earn their watts.

juiceandjuice 15y ago

GHOST IN THE SHELL!

AndrewMoffat 15y ago

> I don't believe that hell exists now, but it would certainly be possible to create a technological hell if brain uploading and simulation is possible. Bostom's simulation argument says we're almost certainly living in a computer simulation. This opens up the doors right now for posibilities like "hell." Life after death (with memories, etc) becomes possible...all kinds of things. Scary, really.

hasenj 15y ago

I don't believe/think that consciousness/awareness is a property that can emerge from running a brain or a brain model. But, even if it were: a computer simulating my brain will not be me; I will not experience what it experiences. Suppose someone came from the future and claimed to be "me"; that is, 20 years from now I will go to the past; or something like that. Let's call the future me F and the present me P. I'm P, when P sees the color red, it's me who's seeing it. But, when F sees the color red, P doesn't experience the same thing. (it will experience it 20 years later, when it becomes F). So if a clone of me experiences something; I won't experience it. So if you upload my memories to a brain and then torture that brain, you wouldn't be torturing me; you'd be torturing a machine that happens to have my memories. In the same sense that if you clone me then torture my clone, he will experience the pain; but I won't. If I do experience the pain of my clones, then we (me and my clones) must be telepathically communicating, or something like that, which, while philosophically not impossible, it's not compatible with physicalism, which you have to accept if you think consciousness can arise from running a brain model. I say telepathy is not compatible with physicalism because telepathy implies a super-natural communication between minds (where minds are implies to be super-natural entities).

FlowerPower 15y ago
Do you think it is OK for F or a brain mdoel to experience pain? As long as it is not you who is feeling the pain, it is moral acceptable? Is that what you are saying?
- Mahh 15y ago
  He's only saying that a copy of a brain would create a separate entity, and that separate entities won't share experiences. Like how identical twins have different experiences. There were no claims about morality of using brain models for testing.
- hasenj 15y ago
  Well no, of course not! (assuming a brain model does experience pain) I'm just saying if this theoretical "virtual hell" does really happen, it will be a computer hell, not a human hell. Although I don't actually think a computer simulating a brain model will have consciousness. However complex that simulation is, it's nothing more than electrons flowing through a circuit, and this flow has no intrinsic meaning; I have no reason to believe consciousness can arise from such a thing.

arethuza 15y ago

The latest Culture book from Iain M Banks has a war in virtual heavens over the existence of virtual hells: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail

JabavuAdams 15y ago
Yup, I should have mentioned that. I thought I arrived at this idea independently, and then was surprised to see that it featured in the book. OTOH, considering I've read every Iain M. Banks book, it's a bit silly to talk about arriving at a conclusion independently (rather than having followed the same path).
- arethuza 15y ago
  In "A Colder War" by Charlie Stross, Cthulhu runs the souls it eats: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm Edit: this is a rather splendid wee story where "weakly godlike agencies" are treated like any other strategic cold-war weapon, leading to an even scarier version of the Cold War.

bugmenot 15y ago

> Torture is already horrific, but at least you can only be > tortured to death once. With brain simulation, it would be > possible to torture someone again and again and again. Already been done. To Jack Bauer.