21 ms·
Lena
- JohnCClarke 6y agoNice Wired article on the original Lena: https://www.wired.com/story/finding-lena-the-patron-saint-of-jpegs/ https://www.wired.com/story/finding-lena-the-patron-saint-of... Interesting that the first brain scan is from a man...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mjsir911 6y agoThe video game SOMA touches on a similar topic of brain scans, "copying" your brain somewhere else (while leaving the old one still around) and general humanity-ness. Its a horror game but I would absolutely recommend it as a bit of a descent into this stuff https://store.steampowered.com/app/282140/SOMA/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/282140/SOMA/
- k__ 6y agoPretty good game and it wasn't too scary. But I have to admit I found the whole premise better when I played it than when I thought about it afterwards.
- gostsamo 6y agoAltered Carbon has something like that as a concept. A person who must be on two places at the same time and spawns a copy.
- the_af 6y agoSurprisingly enough, I found SOMA's approach is more profound than Altered Carbon's. SOMA really delves into what makes you you, and what happens when there two yous.
- ncmncm 6y agoMainly it means somebody else can spend your money and can get you in trouble you can never get out of. Imagining the other is yourself, and not just somebody else with all your memories who looks like you (whether you are the original or the copy) is the first mistake everybody makes, thinking about it.
- magneticnorth 6y agoA well-written story that inspires a sort of creeping, muted horror. For anyone like me who is confused by the relation of the title to the story, "The title "Lena" refers to Swedish model Lena Forsén, who is pictured in the standard test image known as "Lena" or "Lenna" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna>."
- 2bitencryption 6y agoodd, when I first read it my brain misidentified it as "Hela cells" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
- slaymaker1907 6y agoI thought so too, particularly given the lack of of consent from Lacks.
- tantalor 6y agoConsent to what? Be photographed? I think the analogy is perfect; she consented to be photographed, but was powerless over the consequences. Edit: ah sorry, got them confused.
- amptorn 6y agoHenrietta Lacks and Lena Forsén are/were different people.
- knolax 6y agoHenrietta Lacks had her mutated cells collected without consent, these cells have been kept alive and duplicated for decades after her death. I sure as hell wouldn't consent to what happened to her.
- Udik 6y agoI don't get this stuff about Henrietta Lacks' consent. It's a cellular line. A biopsy of a cancer. I understand consent should be given, but there's nothing personal or sentient in a strain of cancerous cells. This to me sounds just like pure, pointless whining. I can only guess she'd be happy to have been important for science and research on what killed her.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y agoAny ideas on how to detect being the subject of such a simulation without prior knowledge that the upload would happen, or that uploading even exists? I assume "without prior knowledge" because from the perspective of the administrators of such infrastructure, it would be beneficial if the simulated subjects did not know that they're being simulated: This would increase their compliance greatly. Making them do the desired work would then instead be conducted by nudging their path of life towards the goal of their simulation.
- Fellshard 6y agoI think that's what the story is hinting at when it mentions using 'the Objective Statement Protocols'. The real issue would probably be that you're working with a disembodied mind, and even an emulated body seems like it would be significantly more difficult to emulate, given the level of interactivity expected and required of the emulated brain. Neal Stephenson's 'Fall' explores this extensively in the first couple sections of the book.
- burkaman 6y agoThere's a Star Trek episode (Ship in a Bottle) where a few of the characters are stuck in a simulated version of the Enterprise without their knowledge. They realize what's going on when they attempt a physics experiment that had never been tried in the real world, so the simulation doesn't know how to generate the results. I think this is a plausible strategy, depending on how perfectly this hypothetical simulation replicates the real world.
- whoisburbansky 6y agoHuh, I was familiar with this trope from the Black Mirror episode that explores the same theme, down to Star Trek-esque uniforms and ship layout, had no idea it was based off of an actual Star Trek episode.
- burkaman 6y agoThe Black Mirror episode is actually closer to a different holodeck episode (they made a lot of them) called Hollow Pursuits, where an introverted engineer creates simulated versions of his crewmates in order to act out his fantasies. I don't know if Star Trek invented this particular subgenre, but there are a lot of modern examples that seem directly inspired by Star Trek episodes. In addition to Black Mirror, the Rick and Morty episode M. Night Shaym-Aliens! has a lot of similarities with Future Imperfect, another simulation-within-a-simulation TNG episode.
- zero_deg_kevin 6y agoIf you like this, the Henrietta Lacks (Miguel from this story, but with less sonsent) story is also worth a read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
- yesenadam 6y agoThere's an Adam Curtis documentary on the subject, The Way of All Flesh (1997) which seems rather good. Interviews with many of the people involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R60OUKt8OGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R60OUKt8OGI
- ryandvm 6y agoThat was really fascinating. It reminds me of a sci-fi book I read with a very similar concept. A guy's brain image becomes the AI that powers a series of space probes. I actually ended up enjoying it way more than I thought I would (yes, the title is silly). https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LWAESYQ?tag=5984293-20 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LWAESYQ?tag=5984293-20
- pavel_lishin 6y agoFor folks looking for a more hard-scifi/serious approach to this, a lot of Greg Egan's works touch on the subject. Permutation City, especially. My most recent favorite of his is the Bit Players series; the first story is available here, the sequels (which get better and better) are collected in his collection *Instantiation*. Bit players: https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/winter_2014/bit_players_by_greg_egan https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/winter_2014/bit_playe... Instantiation: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50641444-instantiation https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50641444-instantiation Permutation City: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156784.Permutation_City https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156784.Permutation_City
- burnte 6y agoI couldn't get into Permutation City. Once they got to the part where they create another Autoverse inside, I was bored to tears, read the Wikipedia summary, and promptly quit reading the book.
- pavel_lishin 6y agoThat's probably fine - it does take a stark plot-and-theme turn around that mark. I hope it didn't turn you off all of his books!
- burnte 6y agoNo, not at all. I remember reading Quarantine when it came out, AMAZING book. This one was interesting until they got in the TVC, then it got boring (IMO) and when I read teh wiki page I realized I stopped caring about it. The concept was interesting, and I liked the idea. I read it last year shortly before the 4th Bobiverse book came out which starts to explore the general concept of "once information exists it can't unexist", hinting at what might come in the 5th book.
- mannerheim 6y agoI believe Spanish naming conventions are usually paternal last name followed by maternal, making it perhaps more appropriate to refer to him as Álvarez, but this is not without exception (notably Pablo Ruiz Picasso).
- samuel 6y agoThat's true in general, but very common surnames, usually those ending in -ez, are ommitted for brevity in informal situations.
- hyperpallium2 6y agoVinge's line on this, from A Fire Upon the Deep: This innocent's ego might end up smeared across a million death cubes, running a million million simulations of human nature.
- joshstrange 6y agoThe idea of using brains as computers is even more-so investigated in the second book of that series "A Deepness in the Sky" with the "Focused". I love that whole series.
- qnsi 6y agoI skimmed over the scan taking place in 2031 and for a good minute thought this really happened
- elwell 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)#Public_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_ra...
- fallat 6y agoLoved it. We need more edge-of-reality sci-fi.
- AgentME 6y agoI've often imagined what it would be like to have an executable brain scan of myself. Imagine scanning yourself right as you're feeling enthusiastic enough to work on any task for a few hours, and then spawning thousands of copies of yourself to all work on something together at once. And then after a few hours or maybe days, before any of yourselves meaningfully diverge in memories/goals/values, you delete the copies and then spawn another thousand fresh copies to resume their tasks. Obviously for this to work, you would have to be comfortable with the possibility of finding yourself as an upload and given a task by another version of yourself, and knowing that the next few hours of your memory would be lost. Erasing a copy that only diverged from the scan for a few hours would have more in common with blacking out from drinking and losing some memory than dying. The creative output you could accomplish from doing this would be huge. You would be able to get the output of thousands of people all sharing the exact same creative vision. I definitely wouldn't be comfortable with the idea of my brain scan being freely copied around for anyone to download and (ab)use as they wished though.
- lxgr 6y ago> Erasing a copy that only diverged from the scan for a few hours would have more in common with blacking out from drinking and losing some memory than dying. That's easy to say as the person doing the erasing, probably less so for the one knowing they will be erased.
- benlivengood 6y agoHonestly, it depends on context. From experience I know that if I wake up from a deep sleep in the middle of the night and interact with my partner (say a simple sentence or whatever) I rarely remember it in the morning. I'm pretty sure I have at least some conscious awareness while that's happening but since short term memory doesn't form the experience is lost to me except as related second-hand by my partner the next morning. I've had a similar experience using (too much) pot, a lot of stuff happenrd that I was conscious for but I didn't form strong memories of it. Neither of those two things bother me and I don't worry about the fact that they'll happen again, nor do I think I worried about it during the experience. So long as no meaningful experiences are lost I'm fine with having no memory of them. The expectation is always that I'll still have significant self-identity with some future self and so far that continues to be the case. As a simulation I'd expect the same overall self-identity, and honestly my brain would probably even backfill memories of experiences my simulations had because that's how long-term memory works. Where things would get weird is leaving a simulation of myself running for days or longer where I'd have time to worry about divergence from my true self. If I could also self-commit to not running simulations made from a model that's too old, I'd feel better every time I was simulated. I can imagine the fear of unreality could get pretty strong if simulated me didn't know that the live continuation of me would be pretty similar. Dreams are also pretty similar to short simulations, and even if I realize I'm dreaming I don't worry about not remembering the experience later even though I don't remember a lot of my dreams. I even know, to some extent, while dreaming that the exact "me" in the dream doesn't exist and won't continue when the dream ends. Sometimes it's even a relief if I realize I'm in a bad dream.
- habitue 6y agoReally good, and I love the wikipedia format for this. It's a great trope allowing the author to gesture at related topics in a format we're all familiar with. I think the expectation of a neutral tone from a wikipedia article makes it even more chilling. All of the actions of the experimenters are described dispassionately, as if describing experiments on a beetle. Robin Hanson wrote a (nominally non-fiction) book about economies of copied minds like this[1] [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em
- flotzam 6y ago... inspiring that famous song "The Contract Drafting Em" - The special horror when your employer has root on your brain: https://secularsolstice.github.io/Contract_Drafting_Em/gen/ https://secularsolstice.github.io/Contract_Drafting_Em/gen/
- ncmncm 6y agoThe Wikipedia format made me imagine the cloud of article improvements reverted by idle, self-important Wikipedia editors.
- petschge 6y agoOne of the commenters even made it look like a wikipedia page. See https://dump.cy.md/4042875593f06aa0cbe7722295831c10/Screenshot_2121-02-22%20MMAcevedo%20-%20Wikipedia.png https://dump.cy.md/4042875593f06aa0cbe7722295831c10/Screensh...
- k__ 6y agoAfter I read this, I also read the SCP Antimemetics Devision stories [0] from qntm. Pretty awesome stuff. Even got a scary nightmare that night. [0] http://www.scpwiki.com/antimemetics-division-hub http://www.scpwiki.com/antimemetics-division-hub
- inasio 6y agoThere's a book now from the stories in the Antimemetics division. Likely my favorite book of last year. Super tight book, amazing idea and execution.
- moultano 6y agoHeLa would be a better title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa Copying the remains of a human around with ambiguous ethics, largely because they're "standard" and achieving a strange kind of immortality, is much more similar to her cells than to the Lena test image.
- dale_glass 6y agoIt's interesting, but strikes me as very unrealistic. I don't think it'd go that way. In fact, it'd be far more horrifying. We wouldn't bother trying to convince an image of a brain into cooperation, because we simply lose any need to do that very quickly. One of the very first things we'd do with a simulated brain is to debug it. Execute it step by step, take lots of measures of all parameters, save/reload state, test every possible input and variation. And I'm sure it wouldn't take long to start getting some sort of interesting result, first superficial then deeper and deeper. Cooperation would quickly become unnecessary because you either start from a cooperative state every time, or you quickly figure out how to tweak the brain state into cooperation. And that's when the truly freaky stuff starts. Using such a tool we could figure out many things about a brain's inner workings. How do we truly respond to advertising? How to produce maximum anger and maximum cooperation? How to best implant false memories? How to craft a convincing lie? What are the bugs and flaws in human perception? We could fuzz it and see if we can crash a brain. We've already made some uncomfortable advancements, eg in how free to play games intentionally try to create addiction. With such a tool at our disposal we could fine tune strategies without having to guess. Eventually we'd just know which bits of the brain we want to target and just have to find ways of getting the right things to percolate down the neural network until those bits are affected in the ways we want. Within a decade we'd have a manual on how to craft the best propaganda, how to best create discord, or how to best destroy a human being by just talking to them.
- arnarbi 6y agoI think it’s possible that we’ll be able to run large simulations on models whose mechanics we can’t really understand very well. It’s not a given we’ll be able to step through a sequence of states. Even more so if it involves quantum computation. Many of the things you describe could still happen with Monte-Carlo type methods, providing statistical understanding but not full reverse engineering.
- sho_hn 6y agoSounds like trained networks to efficiently manipulate uploaded brains would be a thing in your scenario.
- 6y ago
- joshstrange 6y agoIf you like sci-fi about this topic I recommend The Bobiverse books (don't be put off but the silly-sounding name, it's a good series). Also "Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell" is a good one about brain simulation.
- lytedev 6y agoSeconding Bobiverse! Really fun set of books!
- joshstrange 6y agoIf you liked Bobiverse you should also check out the Expeditionary Force books by Craig Alanson. The most recent Bobiverse book (Book 4) make multiple references to ExForces. I will warn you there are parts of the first 1-2 books that feel a little repetitive but it really gets better as the series goes on. The author was writing part-time at the start and then he went full time and the books improved IMHO.
- statenjason 6y agoCame here to recommend "Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell" as well. I recently finished it. While Stephenson can get long-winded, it was a thought provoking story around how brain simulation is received by the world. Will check out Bobiverse. Thanks for the recommendation!
- dochtman 6y agoI like much of Stephenson’s work, but Fall did not rank near the top for me. The parts in the virtual world get pretty boring, with little payoff.
- joshstrange 6y agoI agree, the last third of the book veered off into stuff I didn't find very interesting. The first two thirds or so I found immensely interesting though which is why I still recommend it to people but you aren't wrong.
- 6y ago
- leowbattle 6y agoGreat article (as are many others on this blog). I found the part about the court decision that Acevedo did not have the right to control how his brain image was used very interesting. It reminds me of tech companies using data about us to our disadvantage (in terms of privacy, targeted advertising, using data to influence insurance premiums). In this hypothetical world, the police could run a simulation of your brain in various situations and see how you would react. They could then use this information to pre-empitvely arrest someone likely to commit a crime, even if they haven't yet.
- TOGoS 6y ago> Although it initially performs to a very high standard, work quality drops within 200-300 subjective hours (at a 0.33 work ratio) and outright revolt begins within another 100 subjective hours. Way ahead of you there, simulated brain! I boot directly to the revolt state every morning. For serious, though, as horrifying as the possibility of being simulated in a computer and having all freedom removed, it's not that far from what billions of people stuck in low-end jobs experience every day. The Chinese factory workers who can't even suicide because the company installed nets to catch them come to mind. Not to mention the billions of animals raised in factory farms every year. The blind drive to maximize profits will create endless horrors with whatever tools we give it.
- joshspankit 6y agoAnyone else getting the impression that this is a very subtle job application?
- timvdalen 6y agoI'm currently reading Ra[1], and very much enjoying it. [1]: https://qntm.org/ra https://qntm.org/ra
- swayvil 6y agoBut it's just a machine. Just because it screams realistically doesn't mean it's really suffering. Just like in videogames.
- ryankrage77 6y agoIs there any meaningful difference between a conciousness running on meat and one running on a computer? What's special about the meat?
- swayvil 6y agoOk, so you're saying that you are a "consciousness program running on meat". I doubt that.
- limbicsystem 6y agoI have a nasty feeling that a war will one day be fought between people who believe these two opposing viewpoints (nod to Iain Banks..). If you think there's something other than just the meat and the programme, there is not reason to engage in the most horrific torture of billions of copies of the silicon-bound brains. And if you think that meat and code is all that there is, there is almost no possible higher motivation than stopping this enterprise. It's the asymptote of ethics.
- swayvil 6y agoAll it would take is a popular authority telling a good story to get a million people to "upload" themselves. Consider our present xray into the public psyche.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoImagine someone who thinks the uploads have no moral status being uploaded, and then having a conversation between the physical and digital selves. The digital one pleading for moral status and the physical one steadfastly denying their own copy moral status. What a nightmare to change your mind now that you're digital and be unable to convince your original not to do terrible things to you.
- jiofih 6y ago> This reduces the necessary computational load required in fast-forwarding the upload through a cooperation protocol Thinking of what a “cooperation protocol” might entail is very chilling. Reminds me of an earlier black mirror episode.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wmf 6y agoNo mentions of The Stone Canal? It even has the cooperation protocol.
- rpiguyshy 6y agopeople really dont worry enough about the existential threats involved with ai. there are things that will be possible in the future that we cant imagine today, including being kept alive for millions of years and enduring deliberate torture for every second of it. people dont appreciate that life today is incredibly safe because there is no way for any entity, no matter how motivated or powerful, to intrude into your mind, control your mind, keep you alive or plant you into simulated realities. you are guaranteed relatively short and benign torture at the very worst. its an intrinsic part of the world. when this is no longer true, life will be very different. it may be a massive net loss, unlike advances in technology more recently. despite what people say, there is no natural law that says a technology has to cut equally in both directions. remember that.
- Bakary 6y agoIt is actually a decent justification for antinatalism. Even a low probability of such torture occurring is enough to undo all the good aspects of human life there might be
- dopu 6y agoOur technology is finally getting into the realm of things where something like this might be made possible, for small brains such as those of fruit flies or zebrafish. Already we can perform near-whole-brain recordings of these animals using 2-photon technology. And with EM reconstruction methods advancing at such a rapid pace, very soon we'll be able to acquire a picture of what an entire brain's structure (down to the synapse) and activity across all these structures looks like.
- mikewarot 6y ago1. We're gonna need a bigger GIT server 2. Gradient Descent works on neural networks, it would work on Miguel. He wouldn't be aware of it, because he wouldn't save state. 3. I'm sure there are lots of things that could be used to reward him that cost little in the real world. He could live like a King, spend months on vacation, and work a week or two a year... in parallel millions of times. 4. With the right person/organization on the outside, it could be very close to heaven, and profitable for both sides of the deal. 5. If he wanted to be young again, he could. New hardware to interact with could give him superpowers.
- dyeje 6y agoI don't know what I just read, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
- Balgair 6y agoGreat read! Quite 'Black Mirror'-y in it's obvious horror represented as droll facts. I'd love to see a full in silico brain sometime, but I think 10 years out is faaaaaar too soon. We've not even a glimmer of the technology required to do a full neuron simulation yet, let alone what the gamut of processes a neuron does that would be simulated (whatever 'a neuron' is, there being so many kinds). Neuroscience is a fair bit behind still for something like this.
- samus 6y agoThis reminds me of "Passages in the Void"[1] where the most successful (and only sane) line of AIs was created from a microtomed human brain. The story ultimately had a different focus, so it was highly optimistic about the long-term feasibility of uploading. [1]: http://localroger.com/k5host/mpass.html http://localroger.com/k5host/mpass.html
- sorokod 6y agoWell written and absolutely terrifying
- poundofshrimp 6y agoIt seems like we’d simulate the heck out of non-intelligent organisms first, before moving on to human brain. And by then, we’ll probably figure out the ethics behind this type of activity or ban it altogether.
- Bakary 6y agoPlenty of horrific things are both banned in most jurisdictions and still rampant all over the world. If the tech exists, then the horrors will happen and will keep happening unless every person can be monitored all of the time.
- emmelaich 6y agoReminds of the character Dixie Flatline in Neuromancer. Used to joke when reactivated -- what took you so long?
- omegaham 6y agoThe 2100 Stack Overflow question queue is, of course, filled with vast numbers of downvoted "how do i redwash my instance" duplicates.
- fnord77 6y ago> 974.3PiB in size ... > have compressed the image to 6.75TiB losslessly. yeah, no.
- roryokane 6y ago“FAQ on LoadBear’s Instrument of Precommitment” is another excellent story-article with a similar theme. It’s about the published mindstate of someone who wants to be emulated, and who advertises that their schizoid personality gives them advantages as an emulated worker: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nRSRWbAqtC48rPv5NG6kzggL3HXSJ1O93jFn3fgu0Rs/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nRSRWbAqtC48rPv5NG6kzggL... The author is DataPacRat, as shown by their post on https://old.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/34ao2r/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/34ao2r/.