10 ms·
They are using human neurons for this? The one substrate we can be sure of is capable of producing consciousness?
by ALittleLight 4y ago
They are using human neurons for this? The one substrate we can be sure of is capable of producing consciousness?
- djmips 4y agoInteresting question! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02986-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02986-y
- ALittleLight 4y agoThis seems like a research area so horrific it could exist only in a comic book. This type of thing should not be funded or researched. I'm surprised it needs to be said but we shouldn't grow human brains to experiment on them. Maybe if we could understand and quantify consciousness and be sure we weren't subjecting something to hell - but certainly not while we can't do that.
- johnnylambada 4y agoJust as possible that allowing this consciousness to do exactly what it was designed to do and achieve such a sublime state of flow that it would be a crime to NOT let it experience Pong.
- thrown_22 4y ago
- MarcelOlsz 4y agoYC '23 - Stem Cell Recycling - Stem.ly It almost writes itself.
- bigyikes 4y agoFlame bait comment. It’s not a valid comparison. Terminating a natural embryo is not the same as growing an artificial brain which, for all we know, might experience the worst kind of hell imaginable.
- thrown_22 4y ago
- wruza 4y agoWhat makes you think that experiments on living rodents aren’t hell already? What is the crucial ethical difference between these species, apart from two facts, first that a full human has a legal status, second that most people will relate to an empty human brain more than to a non-empty non-human one (regardless of packaging). I understand legal/relatable parts, but is there more to it?
- ALittleLight 4y agoOne scientist studies tumors by causing tumors in rats. Another scientist studies tumors by causing them in humans. If you said to the second scientist "Hey, that's wrong, stop!" And he said "What's the crucial difference between rats and humans?" Would you be convinced by that line of argument?
- fjeifisjf 4y agoObviously yes, rats don’t deserve tumors.
- cercatrova 4y agoWell, is that not basically the vegan argument against suffering, in any form, for any type of animal or sentient being? The vegan would probably posit that they are equal.
- wruza 4y agoThis hypothetical situation implies something I wouldn’t fail to ask first. Are these humans persons or are they “empty”? I don’t see a difference between a {person,experience}-less human and a rat (in this setting, legal and parental implications aside), but maybe you do. Both are able to experience pain and negative emotions. One of them being of a [non-]familiar kind changes nothing to me. Iow, put yourself into the shoes of that rat or that empty brain and tell: - which one would you choose to be (if given no other option), - why, - and what you expect to sense differently.
- p1necone 4y agoYeah this makes me really uncomfortable. We have no idea really what causes consciousness to arise, but "enough actual animal/human neurons to perform complex tasks" doesn't seem like an unlikely way to do it to me. "Unimaginable suffering in a petri dish" is not something I want even a tiny chance of creating.
- wruza 4y agoTo evaluate these chances, one has to understand what “suffering” is. It may (or may not) be purely evolutional thing which cannot be easily reproduced in a dish. Perhaps the whole thing is a plague that only emerges in/for natural-life conditions. While the configuration space is likely(?) almost infinite, the natural selector is only one.
- austinjp 4y agoWell.... no. It's only necessary to know whether suffering exists (it does). After that it's sufficient to consider whether there's a greater than zero chance of creating it (there seems to be). That's enough to say "let's not do this until we have better data". If it turns out the second step is unknowable, that's enough to say "let's never do this". These are subjective decisions, and some may suggest that there are gains that outweigh the potential suffering. I am currently unconvinced.
- cercatrova 4y ago> After that it's sufficient to consider whether there's a greater than zero chance of creating it (there seems to be). That is a Kantian, deontological approach, an ethical framework not shared by all. The utilitarian would ask how much suffering would be caused as compared to how much good it would produce.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoPong playing? Infinite good!
- 4y ago
- UncleOxidant 4y ago"Hundreds of thousands of human neurons growing in a dish" It seems doubtful that hundreds of thousands of human neurons would lead to consciousness. "Although the company calls its system DishBrain, the neurons are a far cry from an actual brain, Kagan says, and show no signs of consciousness." ...then again, would they be able to tell? There's not a lot of I/O in this situation.
- tsol 4y agoYou can monitor brain activity. Hard to be conscious if there is no activity in the cells.
- ALittleLight 4y agoI agree that low numbers of neurons are unlikely to lead to human-level consciousness. I have zero faith that researchers in this area won't continue to push the limits - perhaps even if they don't publish on doing so. I see this research as a red flag "hey, we are approaching something very bad" and while the flag itself may not be a problem we should heed the warning and change direction. All this said, my understanding is that this research is in part inspired by or associated with the phenomenon of people with encephalopathy who have greatly diminished brain volumes but are still conscious. This says to me we can't reliably predict how many neurons are necessary before creating consciousness.
- austinjp 4y agoIndeed. Although the lab couldn't check for signs of consciousness. If they'd been able to do so, they'd have cracked the "hard problem" of consciousness, which would be far bigger news. So this is blather at best, and ethics-washing at worst.
- drdeca 4y agoI think "being able to describe exhaustively the conditions under which something is conscious" is sometimes called the "pretty hard problem of consciousness", as opposed to the hard problem? (Also considered unsolved though)
- sva_ 4y ago> The one substrate we can be sure of is capable of producing consciousness? How can you be sure that anyone other than you is conscious? Why shouldn't animals be conscious?
- tshaddox 4y ago> How can you be sure that anyone other than you is conscious? That doesn't seem like a more or less difficult question than asking how I can be sure that human neurons are the substrate responsible for producing consciousness. If it turns out that the other humans I observe only seem like they're conscious, then it could also turn out that my neurons only seem to be the substrate producing my consciousness. Of course, this is just terrible epistemology.
- sva_ 4y agoYeah, and I really don't see how that substrate should be much different from that in other animals such as, say, chimpanzees. It seems silly to criticize this research just based on the fact that the neurons were cultured from humans in my opinion.
- melagonster 4y agohuman just can't accept human suffer. most of legal of us is about protecting human.
- stagas 4y agoYes imagine a life where you play pong for orgasms.
- whaaswijk 4y agoI hope you’re joking because that actually sounds like a terribly impoverished life for a human consciousness.