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I encountered the author’s short story that’s linked in the article, Lena [1], a while ago, possibly here on HN. It’s really great, but be warned. It’s one of
by codeflo 4y ago
I encountered the author’s short story that’s linked in the article, Lena [1], a while ago, possibly here on HN. It’s really great, but be warned.
It’s one of the most deeply disturbing sci-fi horror stories I’ve ever seen. To be clear, most of the horror is implied rather than described, which I think only makes it worse. Part of me wishes I had never read it.
Highly recommended, but if you’re at all in doubt if you have the stomach for it, maybe stay clear.
[1] https://qntm.org/mmacevedo https://qntm.org/mmacevedo
- walrus01 4y agoParts of it remind me a lot of the black mirror episode where a person's upload is trapped in a "cookie" to do menial task automation. Particularly the part where an upload can be run a multiples of hundreds, or thousands of times real world wall clock time for "conditioning".
- cassepipe 4y agoWhich was I believe some christmas' special episode or something, and really the best I have seen of the whole series
- jwilk 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoA lot of the early episodes were really stomaches turning, and that's what made the series special. It started in the very first episode with an absolutely disgusting scenario that, none the less, was nearly 100% believable in how every step of its ridiculousness went down. It wasn't stomach turning because of the pig thing, it was stomach turning because we knew, deep down, that we were exactly who it depicted us as.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y agoThere's also 'Source Code' https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0945513/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0945513/ Not fully virtual, though. Just the badly maimed torso and head of a victim of a terrorist attack on a train, brain wired to systems, stimulating the last working remains to replay the last 8 minutes over and over again. To gather information and reconstruct 'whodunnit'.
- walrus01 4y agoMost of what I remember from source code, the film, is the cringe worthy Bing product placement.
- thegabriele 4y agoThere's a lot of products placement that nowadays are obsolete, but the story is still good.
- blarg1 4y agoAlso the Bobiverse novels https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y agoSo... feeling a little bit like a Cylon Raider? ( BSG - Cavil's 'I don't want to be human' monologue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VhqsFRTTTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VhqsFRTTTo 1m48sec ) Bobiverse came so often into my peripheral vision, yet I haven't found the time to dive in, so far.
- blarg1 4y agoIt's more an engineer finds himself installed into a self replicating interstellar probe, and how he overcomes problems with an engineers mindset.
- LoganDark 4y agoI love this story. Thank you for this.
- walrus01 4y agoStross's "Missile Gap" is also deeply scary, and has an environment that might be entirely a highly advanced upload simulation. https://web.archive.org/web/20140224051031/https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/spring_2007/fiction_missile_gap_by_charles_stross/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140224051031/https://subterran...
- solstice 4y agoEdit: oof, wrong story. Sorry You mean the redoubt at the end? Didn't they go through a portal to get there? Didn't seem to be an uploading machine. Also, why would they need fighter jets then? But it's an interesting thought...
- throwanem 4y agoThe referenced story is Stross's "A Colder War": http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm It's not at all about uploading, but it is very much worth a read.
- echelon 4y agoI have been thinking of this story since I first read it and have been unable to find it again until now. Thank you for sharing! This is such a haunting story. I love it so much. The future is going to be weirder than we can even imagine.
- sakoht 4y agoSame
- subroutine 4y agoqntm (Sam Hughes) is a great, and if you like this style also check out Greg Egan.
- skrebbel 4y agoQntm appears to try rather hard to hide his real name, maybe consider editing it out of your comment?
- kikokikokiko 4y agoInformation wants to be free, your comment is just Streissanding his name here on HN.
- gryfft 4y agoI believe you are in error [1]. 1. https://qntm.org/interview2 https://qntm.org/interview2
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- subroutine 4y agoI mean, it's literally the first thing that shows up in his wikipedia article. If he truly wants anonymity I apologize.
- caskstrength 4y ago+1 for Greg Egan. Also, check Peter Watts.
- rogual 4y agoThis story convinced me to buy two of the author's novels, "There Is No Antimemetics Division" and "Ra", both of which I also thoroughly enjoyed, the former a little more.
- nlitened 4y agoUnlike the former, reading Ra triggered visuals so intense, I sometimes had to stop reading. Might be acid flashbacks from ten years ago.
- solstice 4y agoFor those wanting a short dip into this feeling should look into the chapter titled "Abstract War" of that book.
- affgrff2 4y agoNo antimemetics division is great. Btw. Making SCP entries with chatgpt is some fun. However, for SCP-3125 I got: SCP-3125 does not exist, as it is not an officially recognized SCP number within the SCP Foundation universe. If you're looking for an SCP entry related to the number 3125, you can create one yourself or ask the community to create it for you.
- andrewflnr 4y agoIncredible.
- joshxyz 4y agoI've just read it. Wow you're right.
- kossTKR 4y agoAbsolute gnostic horror! Interesting how ideas cycle over millennia. The current potential exit from AI dark winter has made me go from; "the singularity is very very far away" to some rather dark philosophical extrapolations becoming relevant. I mean if you play along with Bostroms theorising, who's to say we, or I am not living in some "trickster god" reality. Lol. That's the only answer to that question.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Al-Khwarizmi 4y agoWow, you're right. Not sure if I should have read it. One thing I don't get is, why is the title "Lena"? There seems to be no relation between the story and the title (maybe I'm inadvertently missing something from the story?)
- Metacelsus 4y ago"Lena" was a popular training image in computer vision, of an actress, widely used without her permission.
- oogali 4y agoIt's a connection to the real life story of the test subject used for image processing. The image is banned from use in certain scientific journals, and the subject herself has asked people to stop. But given its digital nature... it can't be stopped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna
- ianai 4y agoI read it. Unless I’m missing something, it amounts to making a slave race out of someone’s mind scan. So I’m someone who never eats animals nor animal products. This is in part from the sheer scale of that industry. But also from simply interacting with non-humans and knowing there’s enough intelligence there for me to honor and be horrified at the suffering or destruction of it. But I’m clearly in the minority here in my views of humanities treatment of non-humans. Perhaps that’s the real disturbing part of that story. It’s believable (if not technically yet).
- xwolfi 4y agoYes I mean I wish life wasnt made in this self eating way, and I dont think intelligence should be the only factor: all the mushrooms you gobble have an intrinsict beauty you're violating, tearing and repurposing like they're mere trash to recycle. But it is so for now and our chemistry is made to make more out of meat quicker, and to feel good eating it as result: we cant stop nor expect others to stop just yet. Dont tell yourself that by selecting superior and inferior species you allow yourself to destroy, you're more than an animal yourself. You're still, like the rest of us, victim of your body. Find a way to abstract us away from our body.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoA mushroom is a weird example for empathy for a few reasons. First, the part you eat is really just the "fruit" or reproductive part of the mushroom that only lasts for a short time before withering away. Second, mushrooms very happily eat you after you die, hell, even before you die you're covered in all kinds of unicellular fungi which are actively trying to eat you. More to your philosophical point, the beauty of life is always transitory. Life begins, blooms, withers and dies but also passes on the small immortal spark that it all came from to the next generation so it can repeat the cycle. I'm against cruelty to animals but I also recognize that eating them is part of life and that it is possible for us as conscious beings to give them a better life than they would have in the wild and then kill and eat them and I'm ok with that. I don't want to live in a world where all cattle or pigs are reduced to a few wild populations scrabbling for survival against the elements and disease while being occasionally mauled and devoured alive and screaming by wolves and other predators. To me that's more immoral than a properly maintained herd that is sheltered, fed and given medical attention and then slaughtered as painlessly as we can manage. Before all y'all reply with "factory farming", yes I'm aware of its prevalence but that just means we should be working to reduce that type of treatment, not eliminating raising animals for meat entirely.
- kibwen 4y agoHere's this story formatted as a Wikipedia article, for maximum verisimilitude: https://dump.cy.md/4042875593f06aa0cbe7722295831c10/Screenshot_2121-02-22%20MMAcevedo%20-%20Wikipedia.png https://dump.cy.md/4042875593f06aa0cbe7722295831c10/Screensh...
- EdwardCoffin 4y agoAnyone liking Lena might also like to read Vernor Vinge's 2003 novella The Cookie Monster, which at least ends on a bit more of a hopeful note.
- notacoward 4y agoDavid Brin's Kiln People also touches on this theme, though in a fairly benign way within the overall structure of a whodunnit.
- Semaphor 4y agoFor someone who wants something less scary (Your comment and those that followed made me decide not to read it, I had enough from "I have no mouth, and I must scream"), I recently read Accelerando [0] by ~~the same author~~ the guy who runs the linked blog. Starts like transhumanist cyberpunk, becomes transhumanist and posthuman sci-fi. I never felt so lost in a book. Like I was the conservative who couldn’t understand the world as it is today. [0]: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...
- KineticLensman 4y agoThe post here is by qntm, a guest blogger, not the author of Accelerando (Charles Stross, the blog host).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- xwowsersx 4y agoHmm, after reading your warning, I was hesitant, but gave it a go anyways. It is definitely disturbing, but not in a visceral way that is hard to stomach. I don't feel "disturbed" and I definitely don't feel the kind of regret about reading it that you did. Not disagreeing with you since that wouldn't make sense because this is totally subjective. It's just interesting to note how differently people react.
- hvl2 4y agoIf you think this is horrific, then you apparently assume that it has "consciousness" rather than only simulating it. A true AGI might be intelligent but only simulate consciousness. And yes, it might be difficult to tell the difference. This reminds me of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. In order to upgrade the Chinese Room to modern deep learning: suppose we run a brain image by instructing each human being on Earth to act as one neuron. Would "we" "feel" discomfort?
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoFor that matter, you might only be simulating consciousness. How could you prove otherwise? I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt though, and treat you as if you were really conscious.
- hvl2 4y agoWell, you should give me the benefit of the doubt because I'm like you: a bag of meat.
- rrsmtz 4y agoIn a community like HN, where most people work on making rocks think, it’s no surprise when most people start applying the logic backwards: that since we think, we can be no more complex than rocks.
- ravi-delia 4y agoIn the narrative there really isn't any reason to think the simulations are 100% as conscious as you or I. But even if I lived in the world of Lena and suspected that uploads weren't conscious, if I were presented with a program which could speak about it's desires, had all the memories of a real person, and had to be cajoled into working with lies and fear, I would be very hesitant to use "red motivation"! Are you so confident you understand what underlies consciousness that you would take that risk?
- jacquesm 4y agoThank you. You'd have to be made of stone not to be moved by that. It is interesting that we - humans - would probably happily follow down this path when presented with the opportunity to do so in spite of stories like these. And this isn't an all that unlikely outcome.
- Procrastes 4y agoMy favorite story by qntm is "There Is No Antimemetics Division"[1]. It's disturbing in a cosmic sort of way. 1. https://books.google.com/books/about/There_Is_No_Antimemetics_Division.html?id=FWrsDwAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/There_Is_No_Antimemetic...
- darepublic 4y agoThis reminds me of black mirror. The cloned human consciousness trapped in simulations
- rektide 4y agoFrom the first paragraph, > More modern brain compression techniques, many of them developed with direct reference to the MMAcevedo [person] image, have compressed the image to 6.75TiB losslessly. This says losslessly which is very different, but I still get such a mega Permutation City vibe from this. And there certainly seem to be some similar threads, about trapped uploads.