10 ms·

The most realistic and rational path to life extension is creation of behavioural replicants with purpose of only extending the lifespan of one's agency. To re

by Xen9 2y ago

The most realistic and rational path to life extension is creation of behavioural replicants with purpose of only extending the lifespan of one's agency. To reach next 1000 years, you need to do: (1) Information theoretic presevation, IE body imaging, cryo, and proper archival / storage. (2) Behavioural emulation, IE a virtual replicant that roughly makes same decisions far enough for you to identify with it and trust it will carry on your pursuits, even though it will be at least for the beginning slower than the meat was. Behavioural emulation is much less difficult and much more computationally efficient than whole brain emulation. Many humans would say they want someone to be there taking care of their kids, if nothing else. But there is nothing really pioneering this. I hope the separate developments in neuroimaging, qualia research will eventually converge.

Loughla 2y ago
The problem is that without a massive internal shift toward some kind of altruistic behavior, this won't ever really be a focus, I bet. The simulant may be Me (as in another version of me) but it's not me (the consciousness I experience inside my body). Therefore, it's life extension for me, but for everyone's benefit but mine. That doesn't help the selfish ego inside me that wants to live forever. That just does not scratch the eternal life itch, I'm afraid.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  If there was a shift to altruistic behavior, we could all increase the amount of other people's lives through charity and having children.
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    altruism has a massive freeloading problem, it's likely why it is unstable beyond a very limited set of very close relatives. If you want your statement above to be true you need to crush free loading or expand the very limited set of people the population doesn't mind freeloading. both those things have huge risks of enforcement/creation because they damage other aspects of human dignity we like and benefit from (i.e. the fundamental freedoms that give us a competitive productivity edge over time through allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation is heavily damaged by the authoritarianism that is the easiest path to crushing freeloading [up until the authoritarians become the freeloaders] or the nationalism that can lead to problematic outcomes interfacing with the inevitable outgroup but is the easiest way to expand the group that can freeload without causing instability.)
    - kmeisthax 2y ago
      "Freeloading" is a feature, not a bug. Human[0] socialization is hard-wired to be altruistic. If altruism didn't work, we wouldn't be socializing, we'd still be hairless primates wandering around the jungles of Africa, alone, killing and eating anything and everything we met. Hell, ants wouldn't be in colonies if that were the case. Altruism works evolutionarily because selfless actions improve group fitness, even if they don't increase individual reproductive success. Insamuch as "freeloading" is an actually deleterious behavior, it is because individuals are trying to move resources out of their altruistic in-group and towards themselves. To address your specific examples: - The whole goal of authoritarianism is to "become the freeloaders". The key rhetorical strategy of authoritarianism is to accuse your opponents of what you plan to do. If they agree with you and stop doing that thing, then you've won, because they are now tying their hands behind their back. If they try to normalize the thing as OK, then you've won, because now you get to do the thing. So in this case, authoritarians will identify and demonize the freeloading of some out-group, both to attack the out-group as well as internally justify their own freeloading. - Nationalism is rather arbitrary in what is and isn't considered to be the altruistic in-group. In fact, I would argue that it is a subset of the freeloading authoritarianism I mentioned above, at least in our modern age. Nationalists want to divide and conquer humanity. - "Allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation" is a freeloading behavior. Copyright and patent laws allow inventors to take from the public commons of knowledge and legally enclose it off for themselves. The intent is for this to be limited, but the limits are extremely weak[1]. "IP"[2] is the engine by which large corporate empires build fiefdoms around themselves. The counterargument to this is to gesture vaguely at the European medieval period's economic stagnation, but my counter-counterargument is to point out that this economic stagnation was itself the product of a system in which the vast majority of economic wealth was the product of rents. Diving further into that last point... the economic system in which the majority of wealth is the product of rents is called "feudalism". We associate this with agrarian economies and extreme material poverty, but modern "IP"-heavy business practices are not that far off from feudalism, recast in the mold of modernity. You can't innovate in a feudal system because of all the owners demanding their cut. Innovation requires freeloading. If those who own the resources of innovation are positioned to charge more than you could ever hope to make from that innovation, then there will not be innovation. [0] actually most mammals and primates especially [1] Copyrights last "practically forever". Patents have 20 year terms but the patent office is not shy about permitting another 20 years on minor modifications to the invention that can then be used to bully competing users of the original patent. This practice is known as evergreening and it's endemic in the pharmaceutical industry. [2] "Intellectual property" as in "federal contempt of business model"
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  You aren’t the same “you” that you were a few years ago, from a mental perspective. Brains change all the time. We don’t generally get hung up on this concern because, fundamentally, the self-preservation drive is just an evolved reflex rather than anything fundamentally rational. We want some specific evolutionary-selected version of “self-preservation” for the same reason we crave unhealthy foods or are revolted by certain smells. TL;DR Let your rational brain decide what it wants, try to cope with the rest from there.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    There's nothing rational about a desire to live forever. It's completely driven by a fear of the unknown/driven that comes past death.
    - Livanskoy 2y ago
      I don't see that as universal explanation. Anyone who enjoys live will want to prolong it (without sacrificing the enjoyment part, of course). Many people see the death not as "unknown", but as the "end of experience".
      - pclmulqdq 2y ago
        Why do they see it as the "end of experience"? Because they don't know what comes after it? When I see people use that explanation, I also see a fear of the unknown. Nobody has any idea what comes after death: It could be the start of a brighter and better experience or it could be absolutely nothing. Taking things to the far extreme, for all we know, there could actually be a heaven or a hell as described by one of the desert-dwelling hallucinogen-enjoying people whose book caught on. And I don't mean some ethereal concept, I mean the actual things with 72 virgins or angels with 100 eyes and 50 wings and wheels on their wheels. Despite feeling implausible, we have exactly as much evidence of nothingness after death as we do of a heaven or a hell. Before you mention that this is absurd because there's no brain activity after death, we still don't know how the brain and "mind" work, we can't observe the vast majority of matter or energy in the universe, and there's a lot we don't know. Filling that unknown space in with "it's the end of everything I experience" is as irrational as filling that in with "72 virgins if I kill enough infidels."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
narrator 2y ago
So I thought about the brain uploading stuff for my next novel, "The Godlike Era" and my conclusion is : Dude, brain uploading to ONE replicant after you die is totally pathetic. Make 100,000 brain replicants. Run them in parallel on a nuclear powered GPU cluster. Have them learn all specialties of modern civilization in faster than real time. Have them teleoperate 100,000 robots. Build out whole civilization's worth of infrastructure on other planets with you as the ceo of that 100,000 person planetary development corporation WHILE YOU'RE STILL ALIVE.
- krisoft 2y ago
  That is a common scifi trope. For example it is the starting point of We Are Legion (We Are Bob).
  - narrator 2y ago
    The part that I don't like about that one is Bob is dead. What if you do this while you're still alive? Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too. Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily.
    - krisoft 2y ago
      > What if you do this while you're still alive? Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change? > Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too. Stars radiate a lot of energy. Simple fact of the Kardashev scale. > Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily. This is mumbo-jumbo.
      - narrator 2y ago
        >Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change? The AI would have loyalty to its creator, and it would get into the deep philosophical aspects of what is a living organism vs what is a machine and why that matters. >Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too. Yeah, but if someone became intelligent 10,000 years before us, which is a pretty trivial amount of time technologically, their Von Neumann probes would have eaten our planet already, so probably not going to be militarily feasible if there's other intelligent life in the galaxy that's keeping an eye on us. >This is mumbo-jumbo It doesn't defy the laws of physics to power people with electricity. Sure, we're going to need a lot of engineering to figure out how to plug people into the wall to recharge, but with AI we might get there in 100 or 200 years. The benefits would be enormous. People need 2000 calories a day which is a trivial amount of electricity compared to say an AI cluster. It would make a lot of sense to send humans around for most things if they used such a small amount of energy.
krisoft 2y ago
What you are describing is just an AGI aligned with a particular person. So we (humanity) is working on that problem. Not sure if it will ever satisfy the desire to lenghten human lifespan though. Just as a thought experiment imagine that we have this tech. You have your perfect replica. It responds exactly like you would and no one else, not even you can tell its responses apart from yours. Once you have that, and attained “immortality” as such, do you mind if someone shoots you in the head? The real you i mean. After all you are immortal. Your behaviouraly emulated clone will keep doing what you do, loving your wife, taking care of your kids, supporting the causes you support etc. For me the answer is that I would absolutely not let my real body killed just because i have my behavioural clone. Which to me implies that at least for me it is not a true continuation of my life. More like having a living will, or a son who is way too similar to me, but still not me. Basically I would not reach 1000 years. This thing created in my image would.
- Xen9 2y ago
  You cannot make such AGI if the information is gone. Imaging & cryopreservation sort of insure against early death. I agree that at point behavioural replication is possible, AI probably also will be. Harsh. Now the point you ended your reply in is a very common response. Many follow the same direction of thought. I think that to think one should not get a behavioural replica because you don't think it would be you is a non-sequitur however; if the behavioural replica continues to advance your interests, is it not the rational thing to do? Moreover, if you said "no, it doesnt matter, I'll be dead" you would be following a strategy that'd lead to huge loss if it turned out you actually never died.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > I think that to think one should not get a behavioural replica because you don't think it would be you is a non-sequitur however Didn’t say that. Do get one if you can afford it. It would be usefull for all kind of things. But continuation of my life it is not. Simply it does not solve the longevity extension problem from my perspective.
xg15 2y ago
OK, then I have some sort if AI clone who roughly acts like I'd do. What does that have to do with lifespan extension and (if I'm not a delusional tech billionaire) why would I want that? Actually, how would that sort of "immortality" even be fundamentally different from the traditional way of becoming "immortal" - by having your children or contemporaries carry on your estate in your name, according to their interpretation of "what you would have wanted"?
sn9 2y ago
Probably something like 95% or more of people aren't even doing the basics for health: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorities-be-to-improve-my-health/ https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorit...

by Xen9 2y ago

Loughla 2y ago

The problem is that without a massive internal shift toward some kind of altruistic behavior, this won't ever really be a focus, I bet. The simulant may be Me (as in another version of me) but it's not me (the consciousness I experience inside my body). Therefore, it's life extension for me, but for everyone's benefit but mine. That doesn't help the selfish ego inside me that wants to live forever. That just does not scratch the eternal life itch, I'm afraid.

whatshisface 2y ago
If there was a shift to altruistic behavior, we could all increase the amount of other people's lives through charity and having children.
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  altruism has a massive freeloading problem, it's likely why it is unstable beyond a very limited set of very close relatives. If you want your statement above to be true you need to crush free loading or expand the very limited set of people the population doesn't mind freeloading. both those things have huge risks of enforcement/creation because they damage other aspects of human dignity we like and benefit from (i.e. the fundamental freedoms that give us a competitive productivity edge over time through allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation is heavily damaged by the authoritarianism that is the easiest path to crushing freeloading [up until the authoritarians become the freeloaders] or the nationalism that can lead to problematic outcomes interfacing with the inevitable outgroup but is the easiest way to expand the group that can freeload without causing instability.)
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    "Freeloading" is a feature, not a bug. Human[0] socialization is hard-wired to be altruistic. If altruism didn't work, we wouldn't be socializing, we'd still be hairless primates wandering around the jungles of Africa, alone, killing and eating anything and everything we met. Hell, ants wouldn't be in colonies if that were the case. Altruism works evolutionarily because selfless actions improve group fitness, even if they don't increase individual reproductive success. Insamuch as "freeloading" is an actually deleterious behavior, it is because individuals are trying to move resources out of their altruistic in-group and towards themselves. To address your specific examples: - The whole goal of authoritarianism is to "become the freeloaders". The key rhetorical strategy of authoritarianism is to accuse your opponents of what you plan to do. If they agree with you and stop doing that thing, then you've won, because they are now tying their hands behind their back. If they try to normalize the thing as OK, then you've won, because now you get to do the thing. So in this case, authoritarians will identify and demonize the freeloading of some out-group, both to attack the out-group as well as internally justify their own freeloading. - Nationalism is rather arbitrary in what is and isn't considered to be the altruistic in-group. In fact, I would argue that it is a subset of the freeloading authoritarianism I mentioned above, at least in our modern age. Nationalists want to divide and conquer humanity. - "Allowing innovators to get fabulously wealthy off their innovation" is a freeloading behavior. Copyright and patent laws allow inventors to take from the public commons of knowledge and legally enclose it off for themselves. The intent is for this to be limited, but the limits are extremely weak[1]. "IP"[2] is the engine by which large corporate empires build fiefdoms around themselves. The counterargument to this is to gesture vaguely at the European medieval period's economic stagnation, but my counter-counterargument is to point out that this economic stagnation was itself the product of a system in which the vast majority of economic wealth was the product of rents. Diving further into that last point... the economic system in which the majority of wealth is the product of rents is called "feudalism". We associate this with agrarian economies and extreme material poverty, but modern "IP"-heavy business practices are not that far off from feudalism, recast in the mold of modernity. You can't innovate in a feudal system because of all the owners demanding their cut. Innovation requires freeloading. If those who own the resources of innovation are positioned to charge more than you could ever hope to make from that innovation, then there will not be innovation. [0] actually most mammals and primates especially [1] Copyrights last "practically forever". Patents have 20 year terms but the patent office is not shy about permitting another 20 years on minor modifications to the invention that can then be used to bully competing users of the original patent. This practice is known as evergreening and it's endemic in the pharmaceutical industry. [2] "Intellectual property" as in "federal contempt of business model"
matthewdgreen 2y ago
You aren’t the same “you” that you were a few years ago, from a mental perspective. Brains change all the time. We don’t generally get hung up on this concern because, fundamentally, the self-preservation drive is just an evolved reflex rather than anything fundamentally rational. We want some specific evolutionary-selected version of “self-preservation” for the same reason we crave unhealthy foods or are revolted by certain smells. TL;DR Let your rational brain decide what it wants, try to cope with the rest from there.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  There's nothing rational about a desire to live forever. It's completely driven by a fear of the unknown/driven that comes past death.
  - Livanskoy 2y ago
    I don't see that as universal explanation. Anyone who enjoys live will want to prolong it (without sacrificing the enjoyment part, of course). Many people see the death not as "unknown", but as the "end of experience".
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      Why do they see it as the "end of experience"? Because they don't know what comes after it? When I see people use that explanation, I also see a fear of the unknown. Nobody has any idea what comes after death: It could be the start of a brighter and better experience or it could be absolutely nothing. Taking things to the far extreme, for all we know, there could actually be a heaven or a hell as described by one of the desert-dwelling hallucinogen-enjoying people whose book caught on. And I don't mean some ethereal concept, I mean the actual things with 72 virgins or angels with 100 eyes and 50 wings and wheels on their wheels. Despite feeling implausible, we have exactly as much evidence of nothingness after death as we do of a heaven or a hell. Before you mention that this is absurd because there's no brain activity after death, we still don't know how the brain and "mind" work, we can't observe the vast majority of matter or energy in the universe, and there's a lot we don't know. Filling that unknown space in with "it's the end of everything I experience" is as irrational as filling that in with "72 virgins if I kill enough infidels."
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

narrator 2y ago

So I thought about the brain uploading stuff for my next novel, "The Godlike Era" and my conclusion is : Dude, brain uploading to ONE replicant after you die is totally pathetic. Make 100,000 brain replicants. Run them in parallel on a nuclear powered GPU cluster. Have them learn all specialties of modern civilization in faster than real time. Have them teleoperate 100,000 robots. Build out whole civilization's worth of infrastructure on other planets with you as the ceo of that 100,000 person planetary development corporation WHILE YOU'RE STILL ALIVE.

krisoft 2y ago
That is a common scifi trope. For example it is the starting point of We Are Legion (We Are Bob).
- narrator 2y ago
  The part that I don't like about that one is Bob is dead. What if you do this while you're still alive? Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too. Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > What if you do this while you're still alive? Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change? > Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too. Stars radiate a lot of energy. Simple fact of the Kardashev scale. > Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily. This is mumbo-jumbo.
    - narrator 2y ago
      >Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change? The AI would have loyalty to its creator, and it would get into the deep philosophical aspects of what is a living organism vs what is a machine and why that matters. >Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too. Yeah, but if someone became intelligent 10,000 years before us, which is a pretty trivial amount of time technologically, their Von Neumann probes would have eaten our planet already, so probably not going to be militarily feasible if there's other intelligent life in the galaxy that's keeping an eye on us. >This is mumbo-jumbo It doesn't defy the laws of physics to power people with electricity. Sure, we're going to need a lot of engineering to figure out how to plug people into the wall to recharge, but with AI we might get there in 100 or 200 years. The benefits would be enormous. People need 2000 calories a day which is a trivial amount of electricity compared to say an AI cluster. It would make a lot of sense to send humans around for most things if they used such a small amount of energy.

krisoft 2y ago

What you are describing is just an AGI aligned with a particular person. So we (humanity) is working on that problem. Not sure if it will ever satisfy the desire to lenghten human lifespan though. Just as a thought experiment imagine that we have this tech. You have your perfect replica. It responds exactly like you would and no one else, not even you can tell its responses apart from yours. Once you have that, and attained “immortality” as such, do you mind if someone shoots you in the head? The real you i mean. After all you are immortal. Your behaviouraly emulated clone will keep doing what you do, loving your wife, taking care of your kids, supporting the causes you support etc. For me the answer is that I would absolutely not let my real body killed just because i have my behavioural clone. Which to me implies that at least for me it is not a true continuation of my life. More like having a living will, or a son who is way too similar to me, but still not me. Basically I would not reach 1000 years. This thing created in my image would.

Xen9 2y ago
You cannot make such AGI if the information is gone. Imaging & cryopreservation sort of insure against early death. I agree that at point behavioural replication is possible, AI probably also will be. Harsh. Now the point you ended your reply in is a very common response. Many follow the same direction of thought. I think that to think one should not get a behavioural replica because you don't think it would be you is a non-sequitur however; if the behavioural replica continues to advance your interests, is it not the rational thing to do? Moreover, if you said "no, it doesnt matter, I'll be dead" you would be following a strategy that'd lead to huge loss if it turned out you actually never died.
- krisoft 2y ago
  > I think that to think one should not get a behavioural replica because you don't think it would be you is a non-sequitur however Didn’t say that. Do get one if you can afford it. It would be usefull for all kind of things. But continuation of my life it is not. Simply it does not solve the longevity extension problem from my perspective.

xg15 2y ago

OK, then I have some sort if AI clone who roughly acts like I'd do. What does that have to do with lifespan extension and (if I'm not a delusional tech billionaire) why would I want that? Actually, how would that sort of "immortality" even be fundamentally different from the traditional way of becoming "immortal" - by having your children or contemporaries carry on your estate in your name, according to their interpretation of "what you would have wanted"?

sn9 2y ago

Probably something like 95% or more of people aren't even doing the basics for health: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorities-be-to-improve-my-health/ https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorit...