15 ms·

Welcome To Life

545 points by ryannielsen 14y ago

sakai 14y ago
Wow, and I thought this was going to be uplifting. Cool concept nonetheless.
- itmag 14y ago
  Wow, and I thought this was going to be uplifting. Pun intended? :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction)
nazgulnarsil 14y ago
how can we preclude 4chan from the utility calculations the AI makes?
sandieman 14y ago
What happens if you don't agree to TOS?
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  Welcome to "Death"/null.
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    This. It's all but explicitly stated on the screen. Notice the notice informing you that your "simulated personality" will be terminated upon refusal to accept the TOS. Not that it matters, clones don't have souls, like twins. [0] [0]: http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#22 http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#22
    - DeepDuh 14y ago
      Thinking about it, OPs concept may have potential for a game. Something in the style of Introversion's "Darwinia" (I highly recommend it btw.), but with first person gameplay. The linked video could perfectly serve as an intro to the game. It could have a very immersive effect, e.g. no menus or splashscreen or anything. The gameplay could adopt some elements from the "Myst" series. The setup for these games could easily be a passage of the player's character to the netherworld anyways. sigh damn. Too many ideas, not enough time. Imagine if you could program in your afterlife. Imagine all the projects you could do with infinite amounts of time. Humanity's progress would get another exponential factor attached.
- drostie 14y ago
  Then you get to go to heaven. Which might sound better at first, but you might have to agree to an even stricter TOS to stay there.
  - arethuza 14y ago
    Or a copy of your mind could be put into a virtual hell - a rather disturbing concept from Iain M. Bank's novel Surface Detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail
    - lordlicorice 14y ago
      Great book, but I don't think the treatment of virtual hells was very convincing. First of all, the characters in hell would have gone insane with agony, but they just kind of wince it off and keep chatting. It reminded me of Niven and Pournelle's awful 1976 adaptation of Dante's Inferno, in which, for example, the macho protagonist grits his teeth and swims across a boiling lake. Anyway, secondly I don't understand where all the devil-with-pitchfork stuff comes from in Banks's hells. Why not just have everyone floating in blackness and experiencing the maximum possible amount of pain at all times? To prevent them from becoming catatonic you just keep resetting their brain state to the moment of their death, so they're always feeling the first shock of agony. And it scales fantastically; just copy that small simulation a billion times and run them concurrently. Of course, there will be some philosophical problems (are two identical concurrent brain simulations really two distinct subjective consciousnesses? If so, what are the implications of error-correcting server memory that store everything twice? And does resetting someone's memory so that the same simulation plays out repeatedly actually cause the person to experience things multiple times, or is it immaterial how many times you replay it?) but that will be of no comfort to you when you wake up in the pain box hell.
      - arethuza 14y ago
        "I don't understand where all the devil-with-pitchfork stuff comes from" I assumed that it was all cultural (note the lowercase c there) - societies would construct, using technology, the Heavens and Hells that their religions had told people already existed. Other writers have covered the idea that higher powers might use some of their resources tormenting virtual copies of lesser beings - I'm sure this is mentioned as something that some Transcendent Powers do in A Fire Upon the Deep. Not to mention Charlie Stross's excellent A Colder War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Colder_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Colder_War
- pirateking 14y ago
  You can wander in purgatory forever as a row in the database, or you can go to Hell, where you will be forced to hack on the codebase for Life - in Brainfuck. Fortunately you may be able to scrape together your wages after a while to purchase your way to a Tier 1 Life. Some find it worth the trouble, just to enjoy the real sky.
billpatrianakos 14y ago
Very cool. There were a lot of parallels to a handful of different things. I loved it but if you're looking for so,e feedback I'd suggest maybe a bit more focus on any one subject. If I didn't know better I'd guess this was inspired by Vanilla Sky. But back to focus, I saw references to Vanilla Sky, tiered subscription services, and copyright. While the message of each gets across fine they all don't seem to fit really well. It was kind of awkward. If this is an after-death experience then it really wouldn't matter if you couldn't remember copyrighted works. But beyond that I don't think copyright holders would care if you remembered their works because you're no longer able to be a customer. Same with the ads. If the service works like it did in Vanilla Sky then advertising is also pointless. Dead people don't buy things again. They pay for the after death experience and that's it. But otherwise it's cool and interesting. Maybe I'm reading into it too much. Maybe there was no message and it was just a fun joke. Or maybe it wasn't based on vanilla sky. I don't know, I feel bad offering that criticism but while I was watching it that's what popped in my head.
- jhuckestein 14y ago
  This seems to be based on the assumption that you continue consuming content and services in the Life network. That way the advertisements and copyright parts make a lot of sense.
- foenix 14y ago
  Yeah, but I think it's still something to keep in because it calls into question the rationale for 3 "tiers" in the first place. The anti-features involved in making tier 2 and 3 probably have higher costs than the supposed "open" model in tier 1. Also, I would really be keen on having the option of looking at the source code of something that can mess with my conciousness.
- drostie 14y ago
  The copyright issue that they've raised is actually one of the parts of copyright that I consider mind-blowing. The idea that memory is copying changes a great deal of the discussion -- for example, when the movie industry says "oh man, we're losing profits because all these people are getting free copies from the Internet," there is a direct parallel to them saying, "oh man, we're losing profits because all these people are remembering." Imagine, they spend all those millions of dollars on new films when they could just spend that as a one-time cost and zap us all with a Forgetting Ray as we leave the theater. Did you feel entitled to keep those memories? Ugh, kids these days, feeling entitled to copy our movie and share it with their friends. What is not really addressed here, and you're hinting at it, is whether your after-death experience requires working for a living. The premium service mentions a 'subscription' so I assume it does. It's not strictly true that "Dead people don't buy things again." I mean, you might not buy physical clothes again, but you might pay the Life Store for trendy clothing-data that someone has coded for them. I especially liked the "you can either agree to our Terms of Use or die, your choice."
sikhnerd 14y ago
It's tough not to immediately draw the many parallels to what we see happening in society right now and the scary part is that this is so easily conceivable as a realistic future. Well done!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- sigkill 14y ago
  Facebook has almost made everyone have a presence online. Google Glass will make sure we're always online.
arethuza 14y ago
If you find this interesting then I can recommend Greg Egan's novel Permutation City: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City
- lordlicorice 14y ago
  The "rate limited" option in the video reminds me of slow clubs from that book. For people who haven't read it, in the novel there are virtual parties called slow clubs where poor consciousnesses go to meet. Everyone agrees to limit themselves to the processing speed of the slowest (poorest) person there, so that people who can only afford the occasional spare clock cycle can have meaningful human contact.
  - arethuza 14y ago
    One idea that I found quite haunting from Permutation City is that idea that you could set up a higher level controller for your running Copy mind that would periodically chose a new obsessive interest and then provide you with a rich environment to support your obsession. As someone who is prone to rather obsessive interests (as I suspect many are on HN) I'm increasingly conscious of that fact that I can't directly control what I find interesting.
    - lordlicorice 14y ago
      I know! People get so attached to the idea of free will. What free will? You do what you want, but you have no control over what you want.
oskarth 14y ago
Lets just hope the use of "traffic accident" as a euphemism doesn't increase in order to end a trial prematurely. I would prefer to use my trial version for as long as possible (or would I really? Look at all those nice plugins!). Some (rather lame) lingo for the coming pay model of life: Cheapskate, you're such a trialler You haven't really lived until you lived with Life TM. He hasn't upgraded in a long, long time Do this for me and I'll make you live forever You gotta commit suicide at least once, the rush beats base jumping hands down, and the white tunnel effect is pure bliss - and it's legal Well you know, I could sponsor your life subscription if that would help the situation
vsviridov 14y ago
Kinda reminded me of Pleix's E-Baby, circa 2003 - http://pleix.net/filter/film/E-Baby http://pleix.net/filter/film/E-Baby
fabricode 14y ago
The true nightmare begins when it says... Please log in with your Facebook id and password
its_so_on 14y ago
This is a side point, but to me, it was amazing how well the video captured the usability frustration of our time. Every time during watching the video that we're jarred out of the 'future', with an unexpected Rejected, first are offered an option but can only choose one with others greyed out, etc, it feels so much like the awful experience we all have using just about anything today. I mean, even down to the error BEEP jarring you out of the faux-pleasant music. Maybe the video creator didn't have this in mind at all, but just wanted to make it seem 'realistic' - but they got the usability nightmare we live in spot-on!
VMG 14y ago
This is a little silly. Simulated life will obey very different economics than normal life. People should check out Robin Hanson's blog for more info: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/em-econ-101-talk.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/em-econ-101-talk.html
qrlawified 14y ago
I wonder how different the product would look depending on who was making this. I.e. Apple vs Google...
ilaksh 14y ago
Very entertaining and interesting concept. BUT.. are people really so pessimistic about technology and the future that the main thing that comes to mind when they think of digital immortality is.. this? Your virtual body can be anything you want. You can't die as long as your digital code is backed up somewhere. If you can't see the bright side of that stuff, there is some kind of psychological issue.
- jerf 14y ago
  It has both effectively infinite possibility for goodness and infinite possibility for badness. Your virtual body can be anything you want... as long as you control the execution parameters. This is not guaranteed! What if $YOUR_LEAST_FAVORITE_COMPANY is the one in control? Or worse? Even the option of suicide can be removed from you. If Hell does not exist, there is a non-zero chance Man will make it for himself. Indeed, if things are just left alone I would not even say the default state is that you'll be in control of your own code. It will be a company that develops this technology first, since the alternative is inconceivable, and they will have their own agenda. There's a lot more possibilities that could emerge than just a happy utopia.
  - JonnieCache 14y ago
    >Indeed, if things are just left alone I would not even say the default state is that you'll be in control of your own code. It will be a company that develops this technology first, since the alternative is inconceivable, and they will have their own agenda. There's a lot more possibilities that could emerge than just a happy utopia. One might argue that these technologies are so advanced that they will not be developed until the current resource scarcities which govern our lives have been removed, and as such we wouldn't be subject to the same degrading economic pressures. This makes some sense to me, but maybe I've just been watching too much Star Trek.
  - satori99 14y ago
    Iain M Banks most recent Culture novel, Surface Detail, dealt with the idea of Digital Heavens, and of course Digital Hell's. They are run by religious high technology civilizations. A virtual hell is a nasty place where sinners are copied into post death, for eternity. Sometimes young sinners are given day trips there to straighten them out, before death. He talk a little about it in this wired interview: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/iain-banks/all/1 http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/iain-banks/all/1
keyle 14y ago
I think you just have a script for a tv show or even a movie. Right there.
TamDenholm 14y ago
Great video, i find it amusing but also quite depressing at the same time. I would be utterly unsurprised if the original premise was possible, this is what would happen.
delinka 14y ago
"Your personal brand preferences may be altered to align with those of our sponsors." What marketer wouldn't want the ability to do exactly this?
ericb 14y ago
I'm not excited about this future. Whatever is uploaded isn't me, it is merely like me--a copy. Anything that is theoretically capable of running while I'm still alive is just a copy--it isn't me.
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  What makes you so sure of that? What is the important difference between the copy and you, assuming that they behave identically? How much "like" you would a copy have to be before it caused you ontological distress?
  - ericb 14y ago
    It isn't about degree of similarity. If I don't have access to their mental state, they are not me. I think I am like an instance of an object, and my identity is related to my path through space and time. To be me, they'd have to be standing where I stand, and have stood where I stood. A 100% copy of the mona lisa is still not the mona lisa--it lacks the history.
    - scotty79 14y ago
      You don't always get what you want. When mona lisa gets destroyed 100% copy becomes just as good with it's own history of being perfect copy of something that had long history.
- dmbass 14y ago
  The "copy" becomes the "real" you because it has extended life. Both you and the "copy" consider yourselves to be the "real one" (or maybe you accept the coexistence), but you are going to die and the copies will live forever. You think: "That copy isn't me, ericb!" * dies * Copy thinks: "Great! I, ericb, just got a new lease on life!"
  - ericb 14y ago
    That is great for the copy, but not helpful for me. Death of my consciousness can't inflict a new identity on the copy. The copy is a copy--he's awesome, just like me, but not me because I am dead.
sodiumphosphate 14y ago
While it does make for some entertaining fiction, and may provide some benefits to the living, I do not believe that 'uploading' is a desirable experience. In fact, I don't believe that one can experience it at all. Imagine the procedure (for a conscious person): your brain is connected to a computer interface and a copy of your mind is taken. Great. Now there is a digital copy of your mind. So what? You still get to die. Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it regardless of how many mental copies are made. I much prefer the idea of human metamorphosis. I want to inject nanorobots into my body which will transform it gradually, cell by cell into an improved synthetic one. In this way, immortality and superhumanity can be achieved without loss of continuity. I imagine the experience would be one of waking up a little better (stronger, smarter, etc.) every morning until the cells are all upgraded. I don't read enough these days because of chronic eyestrain, but if you are aware of anything dealing with this concept of human metamorphosis, fiction or otherwise, I would appreciate a link. It's something I would like to read about (if it's even been dealt with), someday when I have time (and don't have a headache).
- indiecore 14y ago
  I disagree. Your individual consciousness will diverge of course (you are just a meat machine) but your computer copy will continue on and your ideas, ideals, and personality would continue. Writing this I just had a major existential crisis because I realized that at the exact point of divergence there is a point where 'you' are both alive and dead at the same time, Schrodinger's Tomb. I agree with you in that I think a gradual change is less crisis inducing even though it equals out to the same thing. I think that I'd get a brain backup anyway, just in case.
- arethuza 14y ago
  Greg Egan's short story Closer has people implanted with a device, a "jewel", that learns to mimic the behaviour of their brain - to the point where people actually choose to switch from their biological brain controlling their body to their jewel.... http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&section=fiction http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&se...
amalag 14y ago
As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change. The change of body is like changing your clothes. Does anyone really think conscoiusness is limited by matter?
SudarshanP 14y ago
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2603&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+smbc-comics%2FPvLb+%28Saturday+Morning+Breakfast+Cereal+%28updated+daily%29%29 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2603&#... "Here lies humanity... Do not resucitate"
tomrod 14y ago
This is cool. And terrifying.
jakeonthemove 14y ago
Hmm, if this was possible, I'd rather rig up an autonomous backup machine that I would periodically backup to and which would start automatically if I miss a scheduled backup (which would mean I'm dead). It would be like using hosted vs self-hosted, buying CTO or pre-built computers.
gren 14y ago
Brilliant!
nova 14y ago
There is a lot of the classical discussion on personal identity here. The argument about a copy being "identical to me but it's not me" is a very natural and intuitive reaction, but it's probably wrong. A very illuminating explanation is http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms and related posts. I'll try a personal approach: imagine a country with no computers, no photocopiers, no presses, and a very strict law that forbids making copies of books which is indoctrinated from birth. There is only one copy of each literary creation, guarded in the National Library. We can imagine that the people of that country have a very hard time to distinguish between "The Lord of the Rings" in an abstract sense and material object #1434 stored in the second floor, section Fantasy. For them LOTR is just that set of paper and ink. Even if someone secretly made a copy, letter by letter, it will be "just a copy", not the "true" LOTR. That's quite obvious to them. And in a sense that's a bit our current situation with people (not exactly, because books are static and people aren't). We can't scan people-as-information out of people-as-protein-body and store them as people-as-silicon-body, so we mix the concepts. But it's just confusion due to technological limitations. So in a sense we DO have souls, but it's a mathematical or information-theoretical soul, not a metaphysical one. It's always bound to a material instantation, but that concrete physical manifestation is not the same as the dynamic, interactive information process a person is. So if technology advances enough we'll be able to copy a person, and it'll make no sense to ask which of them is really "you". Both are.
- jterce 14y ago
  Yes, of course both are. But still, you're only ever going to be conscious from the perspective contained within the original you. The copy may be mathematically identical, but it does not make sense that there would be any kind of a magical transition of consciousness from one to the other. The other "you" would have its own consciousness entirely separate from yours. I.e., if you copy yourself and kill the original, you will lose consciousness. You will not wake up.
  - nova 14y ago
    Words fail me. Imagine I have a magical device with which I can "stop time", or more precisely, stop movement of all particles except mine. In the beginning I am at our right. I stop time, move leisurely to your left and resume time. What you see is me teleporting from your right to your left. You don't feel "trapped in a body who can't move", because your neurons are also magically frozen. Your consciousness feel continuous, even is you have been "suspended" for a while, because your memories are properly structured. Consciousness is not "something else", it is a property of your memories. (The blog post on lesswrong.com about timeless physics is important to see this point of view, I think, even if you don't buy the theory). So if my copy is mathematically identical then there is nothing else left. There is no extra consciousness stuff that the "original" has and the "copy" does not. Sorry, I really can't explain myself better. I'd suggest reading the link provided.
Spoom 14y ago
Under current laws, wouldn't the way the Terms of Service are presented be considered a contract signed under duress? I mean, they are saying that if you don't sign the contract, they'll kill you, which is kind of the textbook definition of duress.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  They could counter you are already dead and they are offering you the possibility of "post-mortem health care".
  - aeturnum 14y ago
    That doesn't remove the duress. :) However, before we get to a point where people are being uploaded into a system, we have a lot of legal president to set. The legal rights of the bits that are copied from your consciousness, for one.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  They could argue you are not strictly human, nor a citizen, I'm sure.
- BenOfTomorrow 14y ago
  To be boringly practical: The contract would almost certainly be determined when you first signed up for the service (i.e., when you were still alive).
dennisgorelik 14y ago
Human mind keeps only few key details about "copyrighted works" we observed. These are not enough details stored in order to violate copyright.
- sukuriant 14y ago
  That's why some people can recite whole poems and other people can play songs from memory while singing them too. That's why you know just when to pause when you're singing to a song on the radio and the singer stops, and you know when the pitch changes, and what that particular beat is in the background that you follow. There's more than enough details to be considered a violation of copyright.
  - dennisgorelik 14y ago
    Only few people remember thole poems and minority of people remember whole songs. In any case, the number of fully copied items would almost always stay below one hundred (not hundred thousands). And even those "copies" would not really be considered a copy by our contemporary judge (circa 2012). These are "backups" at best.
beernutz 14y ago
I like the idea i read somewhere about "Spinning off" versions of "you" to go do/learn something, then re-integrating that version of you back into yourself! I still agree with sodiumphosphate however, in that i prefer immortality and dodging the "end" of this mind. I MUCH prefer the idea that nanites can make us better, rather than "uploading" ourselves totally. This is also why i don't like the idea of a Star Trek style transporter. At what point do you stop being you? I'd much rather stay alive and in one piece thank you. 8)

Welcome To Life

545 points by ryannielsen 14y ago

sakai 14y ago

Wow, and I thought this was going to be uplifting. Cool concept nonetheless.

itmag 14y ago
Wow, and I thought this was going to be uplifting. Pun intended? :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction)

nazgulnarsil 14y ago

how can we preclude 4chan from the utility calculations the AI makes?

sandieman 14y ago

What happens if you don't agree to TOS?

DeepDuh 14y ago
Welcome to "Death"/null.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  This. It's all but explicitly stated on the screen. Notice the notice informing you that your "simulated personality" will be terminated upon refusal to accept the TOS. Not that it matters, clones don't have souls, like twins. [0] [0]: http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#22 http://www.thinkwithportals.com/comic/#22
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    Thinking about it, OPs concept may have potential for a game. Something in the style of Introversion's "Darwinia" (I highly recommend it btw.), but with first person gameplay. The linked video could perfectly serve as an intro to the game. It could have a very immersive effect, e.g. no menus or splashscreen or anything. The gameplay could adopt some elements from the "Myst" series. The setup for these games could easily be a passage of the player's character to the netherworld anyways. sigh damn. Too many ideas, not enough time. Imagine if you could program in your afterlife. Imagine all the projects you could do with infinite amounts of time. Humanity's progress would get another exponential factor attached.
drostie 14y ago
Then you get to go to heaven. Which might sound better at first, but you might have to agree to an even stricter TOS to stay there.
- arethuza 14y ago
  Or a copy of your mind could be put into a virtual hell - a rather disturbing concept from Iain M. Bank's novel Surface Detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail
  - lordlicorice 14y ago
    Great book, but I don't think the treatment of virtual hells was very convincing. First of all, the characters in hell would have gone insane with agony, but they just kind of wince it off and keep chatting. It reminded me of Niven and Pournelle's awful 1976 adaptation of Dante's Inferno, in which, for example, the macho protagonist grits his teeth and swims across a boiling lake. Anyway, secondly I don't understand where all the devil-with-pitchfork stuff comes from in Banks's hells. Why not just have everyone floating in blackness and experiencing the maximum possible amount of pain at all times? To prevent them from becoming catatonic you just keep resetting their brain state to the moment of their death, so they're always feeling the first shock of agony. And it scales fantastically; just copy that small simulation a billion times and run them concurrently. Of course, there will be some philosophical problems (are two identical concurrent brain simulations really two distinct subjective consciousnesses? If so, what are the implications of error-correcting server memory that store everything twice? And does resetting someone's memory so that the same simulation plays out repeatedly actually cause the person to experience things multiple times, or is it immaterial how many times you replay it?) but that will be of no comfort to you when you wake up in the pain box hell.
    - arethuza 14y ago
      "I don't understand where all the devil-with-pitchfork stuff comes from" I assumed that it was all cultural (note the lowercase c there) - societies would construct, using technology, the Heavens and Hells that their religions had told people already existed. Other writers have covered the idea that higher powers might use some of their resources tormenting virtual copies of lesser beings - I'm sure this is mentioned as something that some Transcendent Powers do in A Fire Upon the Deep. Not to mention Charlie Stross's excellent A Colder War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Colder_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Colder_War
pirateking 14y ago
You can wander in purgatory forever as a row in the database, or you can go to Hell, where you will be forced to hack on the codebase for Life - in Brainfuck. Fortunately you may be able to scrape together your wages after a while to purchase your way to a Tier 1 Life. Some find it worth the trouble, just to enjoy the real sky.

billpatrianakos 14y ago

Very cool. There were a lot of parallels to a handful of different things. I loved it but if you're looking for so,e feedback I'd suggest maybe a bit more focus on any one subject. If I didn't know better I'd guess this was inspired by Vanilla Sky. But back to focus, I saw references to Vanilla Sky, tiered subscription services, and copyright. While the message of each gets across fine they all don't seem to fit really well. It was kind of awkward. If this is an after-death experience then it really wouldn't matter if you couldn't remember copyrighted works. But beyond that I don't think copyright holders would care if you remembered their works because you're no longer able to be a customer. Same with the ads. If the service works like it did in Vanilla Sky then advertising is also pointless. Dead people don't buy things again. They pay for the after death experience and that's it. But otherwise it's cool and interesting. Maybe I'm reading into it too much. Maybe there was no message and it was just a fun joke. Or maybe it wasn't based on vanilla sky. I don't know, I feel bad offering that criticism but while I was watching it that's what popped in my head.

jhuckestein 14y ago
This seems to be based on the assumption that you continue consuming content and services in the Life network. That way the advertisements and copyright parts make a lot of sense.
foenix 14y ago
Yeah, but I think it's still something to keep in because it calls into question the rationale for 3 "tiers" in the first place. The anti-features involved in making tier 2 and 3 probably have higher costs than the supposed "open" model in tier 1. Also, I would really be keen on having the option of looking at the source code of something that can mess with my conciousness.
drostie 14y ago
The copyright issue that they've raised is actually one of the parts of copyright that I consider mind-blowing. The idea that memory is copying changes a great deal of the discussion -- for example, when the movie industry says "oh man, we're losing profits because all these people are getting free copies from the Internet," there is a direct parallel to them saying, "oh man, we're losing profits because all these people are remembering." Imagine, they spend all those millions of dollars on new films when they could just spend that as a one-time cost and zap us all with a Forgetting Ray as we leave the theater. Did you feel entitled to keep those memories? Ugh, kids these days, feeling entitled to copy our movie and share it with their friends. What is not really addressed here, and you're hinting at it, is whether your after-death experience requires working for a living. The premium service mentions a 'subscription' so I assume it does. It's not strictly true that "Dead people don't buy things again." I mean, you might not buy physical clothes again, but you might pay the Life Store for trendy clothing-data that someone has coded for them. I especially liked the "you can either agree to our Terms of Use or die, your choice."

sikhnerd 14y ago

It's tough not to immediately draw the many parallels to what we see happening in society right now and the scary part is that this is so easily conceivable as a realistic future. Well done!

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sigkill 14y ago
Facebook has almost made everyone have a presence online. Google Glass will make sure we're always online.

arethuza 14y ago

If you find this interesting then I can recommend Greg Egan's novel Permutation City: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City

lordlicorice 14y ago
The "rate limited" option in the video reminds me of slow clubs from that book. For people who haven't read it, in the novel there are virtual parties called slow clubs where poor consciousnesses go to meet. Everyone agrees to limit themselves to the processing speed of the slowest (poorest) person there, so that people who can only afford the occasional spare clock cycle can have meaningful human contact.
- arethuza 14y ago
  One idea that I found quite haunting from Permutation City is that idea that you could set up a higher level controller for your running Copy mind that would periodically chose a new obsessive interest and then provide you with a rich environment to support your obsession. As someone who is prone to rather obsessive interests (as I suspect many are on HN) I'm increasingly conscious of that fact that I can't directly control what I find interesting.
  - lordlicorice 14y ago
    I know! People get so attached to the idea of free will. What free will? You do what you want, but you have no control over what you want.

oskarth 14y ago

Lets just hope the use of "traffic accident" as a euphemism doesn't increase in order to end a trial prematurely. I would prefer to use my trial version for as long as possible (or would I really? Look at all those nice plugins!). Some (rather lame) lingo for the coming pay model of life: Cheapskate, you're such a trialler You haven't really lived until you lived with Life TM. He hasn't upgraded in a long, long time Do this for me and I'll make you live forever You gotta commit suicide at least once, the rush beats base jumping hands down, and the white tunnel effect is pure bliss - and it's legal Well you know, I could sponsor your life subscription if that would help the situation

vsviridov 14y ago

Kinda reminded me of Pleix's E-Baby, circa 2003 - http://pleix.net/filter/film/E-Baby http://pleix.net/filter/film/E-Baby

fabricode 14y ago

The true nightmare begins when it says... Please log in with your Facebook id and password

its_so_on 14y ago

This is a side point, but to me, it was amazing how well the video captured the usability frustration of our time. Every time during watching the video that we're jarred out of the 'future', with an unexpected Rejected, first are offered an option but can only choose one with others greyed out, etc, it feels so much like the awful experience we all have using just about anything today. I mean, even down to the error BEEP jarring you out of the faux-pleasant music. Maybe the video creator didn't have this in mind at all, but just wanted to make it seem 'realistic' - but they got the usability nightmare we live in spot-on!

VMG 14y ago

This is a little silly. Simulated life will obey very different economics than normal life. People should check out Robin Hanson's blog for more info: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/em-econ-101-talk.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/em-econ-101-talk.html

qrlawified 14y ago

I wonder how different the product would look depending on who was making this. I.e. Apple vs Google...

ilaksh 14y ago

Very entertaining and interesting concept. BUT.. are people really so pessimistic about technology and the future that the main thing that comes to mind when they think of digital immortality is.. this? Your virtual body can be anything you want. You can't die as long as your digital code is backed up somewhere. If you can't see the bright side of that stuff, there is some kind of psychological issue.

jerf 14y ago
It has both effectively infinite possibility for goodness and infinite possibility for badness. Your virtual body can be anything you want... as long as you control the execution parameters. This is not guaranteed! What if $YOUR_LEAST_FAVORITE_COMPANY is the one in control? Or worse? Even the option of suicide can be removed from you. If Hell does not exist, there is a non-zero chance Man will make it for himself. Indeed, if things are just left alone I would not even say the default state is that you'll be in control of your own code. It will be a company that develops this technology first, since the alternative is inconceivable, and they will have their own agenda. There's a lot more possibilities that could emerge than just a happy utopia.
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  >Indeed, if things are just left alone I would not even say the default state is that you'll be in control of your own code. It will be a company that develops this technology first, since the alternative is inconceivable, and they will have their own agenda. There's a lot more possibilities that could emerge than just a happy utopia. One might argue that these technologies are so advanced that they will not be developed until the current resource scarcities which govern our lives have been removed, and as such we wouldn't be subject to the same degrading economic pressures. This makes some sense to me, but maybe I've just been watching too much Star Trek.
- satori99 14y ago
  Iain M Banks most recent Culture novel, Surface Detail, dealt with the idea of Digital Heavens, and of course Digital Hell's. They are run by religious high technology civilizations. A virtual hell is a nasty place where sinners are copied into post death, for eternity. Sometimes young sinners are given day trips there to straighten them out, before death. He talk a little about it in this wired interview: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/iain-banks/all/1 http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/10/iain-banks/all/1

keyle 14y ago

I think you just have a script for a tv show or even a movie. Right there.

TamDenholm 14y ago

Great video, i find it amusing but also quite depressing at the same time. I would be utterly unsurprised if the original premise was possible, this is what would happen.

delinka 14y ago

"Your personal brand preferences may be altered to align with those of our sponsors." What marketer wouldn't want the ability to do exactly this?

ericb 14y ago

I'm not excited about this future. Whatever is uploaded isn't me, it is merely like me--a copy. Anything that is theoretically capable of running while I'm still alive is just a copy--it isn't me.

JonnieCache 14y ago
What makes you so sure of that? What is the important difference between the copy and you, assuming that they behave identically? How much "like" you would a copy have to be before it caused you ontological distress?
- ericb 14y ago
  It isn't about degree of similarity. If I don't have access to their mental state, they are not me. I think I am like an instance of an object, and my identity is related to my path through space and time. To be me, they'd have to be standing where I stand, and have stood where I stood. A 100% copy of the mona lisa is still not the mona lisa--it lacks the history.
  - scotty79 14y ago
    You don't always get what you want. When mona lisa gets destroyed 100% copy becomes just as good with it's own history of being perfect copy of something that had long history.
dmbass 14y ago
The "copy" becomes the "real" you because it has extended life. Both you and the "copy" consider yourselves to be the "real one" (or maybe you accept the coexistence), but you are going to die and the copies will live forever. You think: "That copy isn't me, ericb!" * dies * Copy thinks: "Great! I, ericb, just got a new lease on life!"
- ericb 14y ago
  That is great for the copy, but not helpful for me. Death of my consciousness can't inflict a new identity on the copy. The copy is a copy--he's awesome, just like me, but not me because I am dead.

sodiumphosphate 14y ago

While it does make for some entertaining fiction, and may provide some benefits to the living, I do not believe that 'uploading' is a desirable experience. In fact, I don't believe that one can experience it at all. Imagine the procedure (for a conscious person): your brain is connected to a computer interface and a copy of your mind is taken. Great. Now there is a digital copy of your mind. So what? You still get to die. Consciousness is mortally bound to the physical body, and will die along with it regardless of how many mental copies are made. I much prefer the idea of human metamorphosis. I want to inject nanorobots into my body which will transform it gradually, cell by cell into an improved synthetic one. In this way, immortality and superhumanity can be achieved without loss of continuity. I imagine the experience would be one of waking up a little better (stronger, smarter, etc.) every morning until the cells are all upgraded. I don't read enough these days because of chronic eyestrain, but if you are aware of anything dealing with this concept of human metamorphosis, fiction or otherwise, I would appreciate a link. It's something I would like to read about (if it's even been dealt with), someday when I have time (and don't have a headache).

indiecore 14y ago
I disagree. Your individual consciousness will diverge of course (you are just a meat machine) but your computer copy will continue on and your ideas, ideals, and personality would continue. Writing this I just had a major existential crisis because I realized that at the exact point of divergence there is a point where 'you' are both alive and dead at the same time, Schrodinger's Tomb. I agree with you in that I think a gradual change is less crisis inducing even though it equals out to the same thing. I think that I'd get a brain backup anyway, just in case.
arethuza 14y ago
Greg Egan's short story Closer has people implanted with a device, a "jewel", that learns to mimic the behaviour of their brain - to the point where people actually choose to switch from their biological brain controlling their body to their jewel.... http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&section=fiction http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer&pagetitle=Closer&se...

amalag 14y ago

As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change. The change of body is like changing your clothes. Does anyone really think conscoiusness is limited by matter?

SudarshanP 14y ago

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2603&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+smbc-comics%2FPvLb+%28Saturday+Morning+Breakfast+Cereal+%28updated+daily%29%29 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2603&#... "Here lies humanity... Do not resucitate"

tomrod 14y ago

This is cool. And terrifying.

jakeonthemove 14y ago

Hmm, if this was possible, I'd rather rig up an autonomous backup machine that I would periodically backup to and which would start automatically if I miss a scheduled backup (which would mean I'm dead). It would be like using hosted vs self-hosted, buying CTO or pre-built computers.

gren 14y ago

Brilliant!

nova 14y ago

There is a lot of the classical discussion on personal identity here. The argument about a copy being "identical to me but it's not me" is a very natural and intuitive reaction, but it's probably wrong. A very illuminating explanation is http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms and related posts. I'll try a personal approach: imagine a country with no computers, no photocopiers, no presses, and a very strict law that forbids making copies of books which is indoctrinated from birth. There is only one copy of each literary creation, guarded in the National Library. We can imagine that the people of that country have a very hard time to distinguish between "The Lord of the Rings" in an abstract sense and material object #1434 stored in the second floor, section Fantasy. For them LOTR is just that set of paper and ink. Even if someone secretly made a copy, letter by letter, it will be "just a copy", not the "true" LOTR. That's quite obvious to them. And in a sense that's a bit our current situation with people (not exactly, because books are static and people aren't). We can't scan people-as-information out of people-as-protein-body and store them as people-as-silicon-body, so we mix the concepts. But it's just confusion due to technological limitations. So in a sense we DO have souls, but it's a mathematical or information-theoretical soul, not a metaphysical one. It's always bound to a material instantation, but that concrete physical manifestation is not the same as the dynamic, interactive information process a person is. So if technology advances enough we'll be able to copy a person, and it'll make no sense to ask which of them is really "you". Both are.

jterce 14y ago
Yes, of course both are. But still, you're only ever going to be conscious from the perspective contained within the original you. The copy may be mathematically identical, but it does not make sense that there would be any kind of a magical transition of consciousness from one to the other. The other "you" would have its own consciousness entirely separate from yours. I.e., if you copy yourself and kill the original, you will lose consciousness. You will not wake up.
- nova 14y ago
  Words fail me. Imagine I have a magical device with which I can "stop time", or more precisely, stop movement of all particles except mine. In the beginning I am at our right. I stop time, move leisurely to your left and resume time. What you see is me teleporting from your right to your left. You don't feel "trapped in a body who can't move", because your neurons are also magically frozen. Your consciousness feel continuous, even is you have been "suspended" for a while, because your memories are properly structured. Consciousness is not "something else", it is a property of your memories. (The blog post on lesswrong.com about timeless physics is important to see this point of view, I think, even if you don't buy the theory). So if my copy is mathematically identical then there is nothing else left. There is no extra consciousness stuff that the "original" has and the "copy" does not. Sorry, I really can't explain myself better. I'd suggest reading the link provided.

Spoom 14y ago

Under current laws, wouldn't the way the Terms of Service are presented be considered a contract signed under duress? I mean, they are saying that if you don't sign the contract, they'll kill you, which is kind of the textbook definition of duress.

rbanffy 14y ago
They could counter you are already dead and they are offering you the possibility of "post-mortem health care".
- aeturnum 14y ago
  That doesn't remove the duress. :) However, before we get to a point where people are being uploaded into a system, we have a lot of legal president to set. The legal rights of the bits that are copied from your consciousness, for one.
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
They could argue you are not strictly human, nor a citizen, I'm sure.
BenOfTomorrow 14y ago
To be boringly practical: The contract would almost certainly be determined when you first signed up for the service (i.e., when you were still alive).

dennisgorelik 14y ago

Human mind keeps only few key details about "copyrighted works" we observed. These are not enough details stored in order to violate copyright.

sukuriant 14y ago
That's why some people can recite whole poems and other people can play songs from memory while singing them too. That's why you know just when to pause when you're singing to a song on the radio and the singer stops, and you know when the pitch changes, and what that particular beat is in the background that you follow. There's more than enough details to be considered a violation of copyright.
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  Only few people remember thole poems and minority of people remember whole songs. In any case, the number of fully copied items would almost always stay below one hundred (not hundred thousands). And even those "copies" would not really be considered a copy by our contemporary judge (circa 2012). These are "backups" at best.

beernutz 14y ago

I like the idea i read somewhere about "Spinning off" versions of "you" to go do/learn something, then re-integrating that version of you back into yourself! I still agree with sodiumphosphate however, in that i prefer immortality and dodging the "end" of this mind. I MUCH prefer the idea that nanites can make us better, rather than "uploading" ourselves totally. This is also why i don't like the idea of a Star Trek style transporter. At what point do you stop being you? I'd much rather stay alive and in one piece thank you. 8)