6 ms·
Does this freak anyone else out just a little? This project is simulating an entire organism, including its neurology. To what extent does running this code cr
by mshroyer 5y ago
Does this freak anyone else out just a little?
This project is simulating an entire organism, including its neurology. To what extent does running this code create a "real" worm?
Sure, it's just C. elegans for now. But over time, we'll gradually see additional projects to simulate larger organisms...
- scollet 5y agoIt's not that freaky for me. I think it's awesome!
- sho_hn 5y agoReminds me of this short fiction: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y agoOooh, that was awesome.
- mshroyer 5y agoI hadn't run across that story before, so thanks for sharing it.
- _Microft 5y agoIf you liked that, you might enjoy the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. http://dennisetaylor.org/ http://dennisetaylor.org/ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion-we-are-bob https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion-w...
- mshroyer 5y agoOh I think it's an awesome project, too. It's just that it sort of makes concrete what were previously hypothetical arguments about simulating living beings. I can't bring myself to care much about a C. elegans, but let's say we scale this up enough to simulate something the size of a dog plus its environment. Presumably it has subjective experience, like a real dog? What are the ethics of writing code that would result in its "suffering"?
- userbinator 5y agoWhat are the ethics of writing code that would result in its "suffering"? Do you have the same concerns about other, perhaps much simpler but also virtual and pseudointelligent entities, such as computer-controlled players in games? It does raise some deeply philosophical questions about life and what it means in general.
- mshroyer 5y ago> computer-controlled players in games? Nah, I'm not particularly worried about that. Because those are all currently based on models too simple to conceivably have anything like consciousness. On the other hand, once we can simulate a human and its environment at OpenWorm's targeted level of abstraction, presumably we would have a conscious being there?
- reuben364 5y agoThe only consciousness we experience is our own. In the extreme, we can no more say a chair suffers than a human being other than ourselves. Of course we take the pragmatic approach of deciding things that look like suffering to us is suffering.
- mshroyer 5y agoI strongly disagree. The human brain, in its connectome, encompasses enough computational complexity to contain consciousness and suffering. A chair does not, at least not based on any model I've yet seen proposed.
- stefan_ 5y agoDon't worry, it doesn't work.
- mshroyer 5y agoIn what sense does it not work?
- andai 5y agoThe state of the art is described in this blog post (shared by moyix above): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mHqQxwKuzZS69CXX5/whole-brain-emulation-no-progress-on-c-elgans-after-10-years https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mHqQxwKuzZS69CXX5/whole-brai... Basically, while the structure of the network has been known for decades, they don't yet have the technology to figure out how the neurons behave (the weights of the neurons) nor how they learn (changes in the weights), so they can't "upload" data from a real worm.
- omnicognate 5y agoI'm not an expert in anything relevant to this, so this is ill-informed speculation. But isn't referring to not knowing "the weights" (as the article and researchers do) making a rather large assumption about the nature of the problem? It sounds more like the researchers don't know "why the neurons fire when they do", which would leave open the question of whether "weights" is even a sufficient model.
- taneq 5y agoThis is why I roll my eyes when people say we understand the human brain. We don’t even fully understand what individual neurons are doing.