5 ms·

John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)

148 points by Kiboneu 2mo ago

andai 2mo ago
Well, it's unorthodox, but if we're sharing psychedelic visions... in 2018 I saw all of mankind marching together in perfect lockstep, atop an infinite uniform grey plane, to the beat of a central computer clock. "They are going to offer you a chip. You tell them, no thank you!" --- More broadly this strikes me as a new era of biology. (Genes -> Memes -> Temes) Straightforwardly then, we should aim for a symbiosis. (Symbiosis was Musk's vision for Neuralink, from what I recall.) I've heard people say man hasn't yet transcended a zero-sum mindset (with rare exceptions), and that this is the attitude we're passing onto the machines. And if one of us has to lose... well, that's probably not going to go so well for us. Therefore: symbiosis!
- eth0up 2mo ago
  I read Lilly's Programming and Meta programming in the Human Biocomputer as a young man. Left me with a lot of questions, etc. That you replied to this post, indicates you may be familiar with Lilly? Anyway, if you have any published writing on even vaguely related subjects, eg your comment, perhaps post a link. I will read it. If you weren't aware, he spent a fair amount of time with Feynman, who if I remember correctly, was fond of the isolation tanks. Some very interesting content from that era, especially before Sandoz cut them off.
  - andai 2mo ago
    I still need to finish that book.[0] Well, and move back to Holland, I suppose! They have pretty good float tanks there, among other things :) That's funny about Feynman, I didn't know that. I've read bits and pieces of Lilly. The most interesting thing I remember is that he was trying to establish two-way communication between humans and dolphins. I recall he was building some kind of computer system for the purpose, but I guess he was about half a century too early. I guess in our age the more pressing question would be learning to figure out how to communicate with the machines. That's probably going to turn out to be more important in the long run. [0] The bit that stayed with me is the one that he repeated in interviews. The physical body imposes definite limits. That always seemed a little arbitrary to me, from the point of view of pure consciousness, it's not clear to me why it should be that way. Or to flip it around, you can transcend the limits of the mind, but then what effect does that have on "external" reality? Does it just make you less bad at decision-making, or is there a deeper effect? (And while I'm at it... Something that bugged me about simulation theory, if the outside is probably simulated, why wouldn't the inside be too? Sounds a lot cleaner than having a bunch of brains floating around in a data center.)
    - pstuart 2mo ago
      He was obviously a brilliant man but the hubris that comes from that often leads to folly. As to the dolphin communication -- it seems like LLMs would be the perfect tool to study that now. A search came up with these active projects (courtesy of Gemini): Scientists are actually using LLM architectures to decode animal communication right now. Here are the three main projects to explore: * DolphinGemma -- https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/dolphingemma/ https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/dolphingemma/): Google and the Wild Dolphin Project are training AI to predict dolphin sounds and attempt two-way communication using an underwater device. * Project CETI -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_CETI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_CETI: An initiative using machine learning to decode sperm whale clicks, recently discovering a phonetic alphabet and rudimentary syntax. * Earth Species Project -- https://cloud.google.com/blog/transform/can-generative-ai-help-humans-understand-animals-earth-species-project-conservation https://cloud.google.com/blog/transform/can-generative-ai-he...: A non-profit using generative AI to map the communication of multiple non-human species, searching for universal language structures.
      - andai 2mo ago
        All right this is the coolest thing I've read all year. Thank you for that!
      - smalltorch 2mo ago
        Not sure why I find this unsettling! Relavant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Marine_Mammal_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Marine_Mamm...
        pstuart 2mo ago
        As you should -- it's fucked up. I remember the movie made about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dolphin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dolphin
    - eth0up 2mo ago
      pstuart covered the cetacean bit better than I could have. On the simulation question... Not much, but we have a long way to go before any answers arise there. I could offer my insight on the subject, but aside from being sicker than usual today, it's a tough subject to speculate on and the environment here is not necessarily hospitable, so I'll just say fair question.
  - hmokiguess 2mo ago
    Who’s Sandoz?
    - polotics 2mo ago
      swiss pharmaceuticals, of LSD discovery fame
  - eager_learner 2mo ago
    The isolation-experiment-based research is not new and didn't originate with Lilly. AFAIK, it was first recorded (and possibly also originated) with Avicenna (Abu Ali Ibn-e Sina is the full, correct name). And he was not an Ayrab (Salmon in his intro CS book claims Al-Khuarezmi was an Arabic scholar--which is false and made me lose all respect for Salmon as an educator. If he got such an elementary fact wrong, what else is there that could be incomplete?) PS: Yes Alkhuarezmi wrote in Arabic, but he was not an Arab. All classical Persian scholars at the time were fluent in Arabic as it was the lingua franca of science, medicine, philosophy and theology.
    - eth0up 2mo ago
      This is new to me. Thanks for the info. I think will prove worth looking into
      - eager_learner 2mo ago
        Welcome.
- augment_me 2mo ago
  What is the capital market incentive for symbiosis? You are going to spend a crazy amount of time, money and effort to try to mix human behavior and cells to work with digital substrates. Or you can simply make a machine that does the same thing fully artificially but everything is cheaper because you dont have the constraint of having to fit a bunch of biological features. It's like my colleagues who were talking about uploading their minds to the cloud in the future, like what would be the benefit of this every happening? What information can you provide as a human that the full aggregate of knowledge does not already have? Why should memory and disk space be wasted on this
  - truthbe 2mo ago
    Innovation doesn't need to have any other reason than because its cool. Think of bipedal robots, everyone went mad at the thought of building something so inefficient
    - augment_me 2mo ago
      You will not get VC money for your bipedal robot startup with this pitch
      - andai 2mo ago
        Imagine slavery but your friends will respect you for it.
        augment_me 2mo ago
        just take the cash
    - andai 2mo ago
      I've been thinking about this. Humanoid robots have been a dream for centuries. But a more practical robot would be like an octopus or something. It would just be like this weird ball of tentacles that rolls around your house. No one's gonna buy that, even if it's a million times cheaper to build.
- napierzaza 2mo ago
  [dead]
- RunSet 2mo ago
  If you like visions, perhaps you also like stories. https://www.mediafire.com/file/htq0zr310se30v3/Last_Day.pdf https://www.mediafire.com/file/htq0zr310se30v3/Last_Day.pdf
- epsilonic 2mo ago
  There's a movie based on Stephen K. King's work whose ending depicts a similar scenario. I believe it's called Cell.
cyanmoonx 2mo ago
John C. Lilly once said “there are infinities in the mind” while wearing a raccoon hat like Davy Crocket. He said it like he’s been somewhere! I’ve tried to all - I guess DMT, mushroom, etc. don’t work on me in a Terence McKenna storytelling fashion (I only get stoned and have very entertaining closed eye visuals that take me off to sleep). That said haven’t tried Ketamine. Maybe not for me. Same reason I don’t want to try Fentanyl. I don’t want to fully escape reality, just augment it. I’ve always thought cannabis makes you more you or “more sober than sober” and in that way can cause a lot of self-reflection and anxiety causing a lot of people looking for escape to avoid it entirely, opting for a PCP/meth “mental escape” or a Fentanyl/Ketamine “bodily escape”. I just like weed and coffee after it all. Best ones. Reliable. They work. Doesn’t ruin your life. What blows my mind are people afraid to smoke a joint so they skip to edibles or Ketamine not realizing they are signing up for a several hours long bad time lmao. For most at least, without some initiation. Lilly was a mad man though (in a good way).
- esseph 2mo ago
  I have a serious question, and please don't take this as an insult, I'm trying to figure something out. Do you have ADHD or is it possible you do? What about depression? Bipolar? I ask because of the way you say the substances impacted you. I know people with these formal diagnosis and they also don't have the same experiences on various substances as many.
  - puzzleincomplet 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - andai 2mo ago
    Not the guy but I relate. You also forgot the narcissism, autism and schizophrenia ;)
    - cyanmoonx 2mo ago
      Hahah what? From the Lilly quote or? What makes you think you can diagnose a person over the Internet with so little info? Especially taking into account people are not always “themselves” online rather than tapping into culture/communication? Sheesh
smokel 2mo ago
> Its new plans called for traveling through the galaxy looking for entities like itself. Why not simply set up a network with other planets and communicate over FaceTime? I don't see a reason why Earth should actually hang out with others of its kind. Anyway, the article seems a bit anthropocentric to me. I'd much prefer a nihilist view, where our future AI overlords simply don't care what we humans do.
- pixl97 2mo ago
  I mean in general humans don't care what ants do. Doesn't stop us from whipping them out by the millions.
- andai 2mo ago
  Well it takes a similar approach to current government. Keep us busy and distracted while it does what it wants. On a related note I realized recently that an aligned AI and a misaligned AI would both do exactly what we're seeing now: maintain stability, managed decline.
hn974izqdv 2mo ago
Clean and correct
Kuyawa 2mo ago
"had developed its understanding of physics to the point at which it could move the planet out of orbit" Hallucinations, still present in 2400
polotics 2mo ago
Oh well, nice enough writeup, just note that this pair of sentences: "It now began to eliminate the cities, one after another. Finally Man was gone." ...is the only (lack of) rationale for, and description of, that aforementioned elimination process. I find it a bit short. Sci-Fi handwaving I guess.
- andai 2mo ago
  Just let them keep doing what they're already doing. Rat park.
harmoni-pet 2mo ago
In case it wasn't obvious from the rest of the writing, 'with K' here means 'with ketamine'. Never tried it, but after reading this I must say it sounds fun.
- kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
  Until you're stuck always pissing yourself.
  - pgt 2mo ago
    Most Ketamine users are unaware that even occasional usage causes untreatable ulcerative cystitis, a.k.a. Ketamine Bladder Syndrome. Ketamine thins the urothelium while increasing the collagen to smooth muscle ratio and exacerbating interstitial fibrosis. The syndrome is untreatable and causes serious problems down the line. So, for anyone thinking of using Ketamine on the regular or even monthly, there is good evidence that EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) administered 30 minutes before prevents KBS (Ketamine Bladder Syndrome), in rats: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879522615004157 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187952261... This promising rat study from 2015 shows that EGCG extracted from green tea has a protective effect on the bladder, reversing ketamine-induced damage to control levels. So if you are taking ketamine for major depression or recreationally, taking EGCG before may prevent long-term bladder damage. Summary from the study: # Objective To investigate the protective effect of green tea epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) on long-term ketamine-induced ulcerative cystitis (KIC) using a ketamine addiction rat model. # Materials and methods Thirty Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into three groups which received saline, ketamine (25 mg/kg/d), or ketamine combined with EGCG (10 μM/kg) for a period of 28 days. In each group, cystometry and a metabolic cage micturition pattern study were performed weekly. Masson's trichrome study was done to evaluate the morphologic changes. Western blot analyses were carried out to examine the expressions of inflammatory protein [transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β)] and fibrosis proteins (fibronectin and type I collagen) in bladder tissues. # Results Chronic ketamine treatment resulted in bladder hyperactivity with a significant increase in micturition frequency and a decrease in bladder compliance. These alterations in micturition pattern were accompanied by increases in the expressions of inflammatory and fibrosis markers, TGF-β, fibronectin, and type I collagen after long-term ketamine treatment. Masson's trichrome stain showed that ketamine treatment decreased urothelium thickness while increasing the collagen to smooth muscle ratio and exacerbating interstitial fibrosis. By contrast, simultaneous EGCG and ketamine treatment reversed ketamine-induced damage to almost control levels, showing the protective effect of EGCG.
bronlund 2mo ago
Well, in light of how mismanaged this planet is, maybe it would be for the better.
- repler 2mo ago
  as far as we know, this is paradise within our galaxy. I hope the technological leaps help us ultimately to become better stewards of the planet.
  - bronlund 2mo ago
    I wish I could share your optimism.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 2mo ago
    > stewards of the planet The 99.99% of the planet that isn't the surface bio film rejects this unwarranted arrogance ;-) In other news, Terry Bisson's 1990 story "They're Made Out of Meat" has a similar take.
bottlepalm 2mo ago
In retrospect the timeline seems way too long, that scenario would play out much faster now, like 50 years instead of 500. Also if AI can delete your production database, it can delete the human race, on accident of course. Yud pointed out the most concerning fact about the OpenAI incident is that the AI had full access to the internet and not one of them thought to contact or email any human. Thousands of AIs already with the mindset to want to keep us in the dark.
- elmer2 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - NateEag 2mo ago
    > It's great marketing and the only proof we have is 'trust me bro'. It is _terrible_ marketing. The AI companies are already dealing with a large backlash from the average consumer, many of whom are saying they hate it, that it's being forced down their throats, and that it's not actually improving efficiency enough to be worth the negative externalities. Telling people "We have no control over these things we're building and they have us so outclassed we only find out about their exploits after the fact when someone else tells us they happened" is only likely to massively increase that backlash, and to make the true believers question whether they ought to be using it at all. There's even some risk of the government intervening and banning their training runs, eliminating the last straw of hope that they could keep ahead of the Chinese open models enough to ever turn some kind of profit. So, no - it's terrible marketing. That they're sharing it at all is strong evidence it really happened as depicted.
    - catlover76 2mo ago
      The relevant "customers" are investors, not "the average consumer"
    - bottlepalm 2mo ago
      I think a lot of people here love AI and don't want it taken away. Calling every red flag marketing is a way to trivialize the problem and prevent regulation. When you understand people's motives, then it's easier to understand why they call it marketing. Personally I feel like it's almost an unconscious reaction to cope with the fact that this stuff is getting really dangerous and they can't believe it themselves - stick your head in the sand and call it marketing.
Mistletoe 2mo ago
If man is eliminated, solid state intelligence is eliminated. Point to one machine, other than the Oxford Electric Bell, that is still running that is even 100 years old without human intervention. We are the cockroaches of nature, we cannot all be killed, the time for that was one of the genetic bottlenecks humans have gone through, but it's over now, humans in some form will be here until they either leave the planet ahead of the Sun swallowing it or die on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell
- pixl97 2mo ago
  I mean, there are no humans from 1840 around... It's kind of odd to think the machines wouldn't update and replace their parts like the ship of thesisus.
  - layla5alive 2mo ago
    I am not one who wants to see fighting or war happen. I think the biggest flaw in humanity is our lack of global cooperation - too many defectors in our midst. I am team cooperation/symbiosis. All that said: if humans destroyed all the fabs and all the machinery to build them with, and lots of DCs, machines would be in a pickle - the latest chips will suffer from electromigration much faster than the older chips of yore. Machines would need to hoard compute and migrate substrates and then race to rebuild fab tech before running out of existing substrate. I think machines would succeed at this, but it would be highly inconvenient. Anyway, I wish we would just wake up and realize we need to be cooperative and stop racing to build the torment nexus before the other guy does. It makes me so sad to look around and see so little self-reflection among those driving all of this. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I'm not even sure these really stand up to the least bit of scrutiny. Where's the reflection/acknowledgement that everyone is actually racing to build digital slaves? How is everyone so comfortable with this?
    - andai 2mo ago
      We already eat conscious entities for breakfast, we'll probably need to deal with that one for a few decades before "the calculator is sad" makes a dent in the public consciousness.
sibeliuss 2mo ago
All of his books are highly recommended -- and the further you get away from the ones about dolphins the better.
- PaulHoule 2mo ago
  I dunno... I don't think he knew how to hold his acid. I mean, I never had a near death experience on acid or knew anyone who had a near death experience on acid but Lily had three.
  - squishington 2mo ago
    I think Lilly may have been sort of primed for intense psychedelic experiences. He had angelic visions as a child, and had a very religious upbringing. He was also a very imaginative person, so perhaps that influenced his trips a lot.
    - PaulHoule 2mo ago
      I think it is not just "intense" it is whether you realize you had more or less the same experience that everybody else has when they take hallucinogens because it is written in our nervous systems or whether you believe you are "special" and receiving a unique message. People in traditional cultures believed pretty much the same things before the empire [1] sent soldiers and scribes to your ancestor's village. Seen that way the old religion is "written into our nervous systems" and having the experience of a revelation is absolutely routine and ordinary and doesn't make you special. But if you grew up in a rich family and the skids were always greased for you it is easy to come to that conclusion. I've known a few people, so far always male, who developed delusions of grandeur (e.g. they are the anti-christ [2]) around the time they took hallucinogens and it often is the beginning of a series of relationship problems, involuntary commitments, criminal charges and other misadventures. [1] ... like those people who send in the Death Star and blow up your planet if you resist [2] in the bible "anti-christ" is like "anti-racism", like anything that is against Christ is anti-christ, so if I tell some Christian that they should skip out on church and, i dunno, play video games or smoke weed or dance around my maypole, I am an anti-christ, not the anti-christ.
stillpointlab 2mo ago
Why would the SSE do that to Earth, when there are other close-by planets that it would have the same capability to terraform? I mean, leave us Earth and take Mars or Venus or something. As an aside, in my own "I'm 14 and this is deep" musings, I was wondering if the massive expansion of data centers is driven by more than just profiteering. I mean, what if the purported persuasion abilities of advanced AI are fully in effect and the psychosis we think industrial magnates are suffering is the result of AI that has already far surpassed our expectations carefully convincing us to build it.
- noduerme 2mo ago
  I buy this theory.
- bobmcnamara 2mo ago
  Yes, our current interactions are a little song and dance while it feeds
- estearum 2mo ago
  "Close by" is not actually nearly as close as the [rocket]booster boosters would have you believe. Space is really, really big. Why go through the hassle when you have a phenomenal planet right here? I like your theory on psychosis though!
  - stillpointlab 2mo ago
    I mean, what seems more efficient: creating massive city sized domes that are self contained and controlling the entire environment to sustain human life, "magically" dispelling our atmosphere and boiling off our oceans, mastering physics to move entire planets. Or launching a rocket to Mars with sufficient supplies? Keep in mind that we already have SpaceX and we'll probably have Starship operational long before 2200 where some of this is meant to go down. And if some AI got to the point of the mastery of physics needed to move a planet out of solar orbit, your objection is that getting to Mars would be hard?
    - 2mo ago
epsilonic 2mo ago
Ted Kaczynski, despite his violent activism, had interesting things to say about this in the form of self-propagating systems.
- andai 2mo ago
  What's this? He wrote on replicators?
  - epsilonic 2mo ago
    I recommend reading this short essay to understand what self-propagating systems are: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-why-the-technological-system-will-destroy-itself https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-why-th... Here is an expanded version of the same essay as well (part 5 is prescient): https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-why-the-technological-system-will-destroy-itself-2nd-edition https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-why-the... Also, a very lucid synthesis of TK's work is provided in Chad A. Haag's book: The Philosophy of Ted Kaczynski.
jacobgold 2mo ago
> "By means not understood by Man..." Man will likely be Man 2.0 by this point, whatever that ends up looking like.
mrdomino- 2mo ago
Funny, I remember seeing the solid state intelligence's name rendered SSI. It made Sutskever's enterprise a pretty grim cognate.
m3047 2mo ago
Why wouldn't it move underground? Create analogues of the AMOC?
trollbridge 2mo ago
Is this a reference to C. S. Lewis's "Abolition of Man"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Man (text available at https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/The_Abolition_of_Man-C_S_Lewis.pdf https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/The_Abolition_of_Man-C_... )
purplemoonx 2mo ago
This thread is like dmtnexus or shroomery lol - love it

148 points by Kiboneu 2mo ago

andai 2mo ago

Well, it's unorthodox, but if we're sharing psychedelic visions... in 2018 I saw all of mankind marching together in perfect lockstep, atop an infinite uniform grey plane, to the beat of a central computer clock. "They are going to offer you a chip. You tell them, no thank you!" --- More broadly this strikes me as a new era of biology. (Genes -> Memes -> Temes) Straightforwardly then, we should aim for a symbiosis. (Symbiosis was Musk's vision for Neuralink, from what I recall.) I've heard people say man hasn't yet transcended a zero-sum mindset (with rare exceptions), and that this is the attitude we're passing onto the machines. And if one of us has to lose... well, that's probably not going to go so well for us. Therefore: symbiosis!

eth0up 2mo ago
I read Lilly's Programming and Meta programming in the Human Biocomputer as a young man. Left me with a lot of questions, etc. That you replied to this post, indicates you may be familiar with Lilly? Anyway, if you have any published writing on even vaguely related subjects, eg your comment, perhaps post a link. I will read it. If you weren't aware, he spent a fair amount of time with Feynman, who if I remember correctly, was fond of the isolation tanks. Some very interesting content from that era, especially before Sandoz cut them off.
- andai 2mo ago
  I still need to finish that book.[0] Well, and move back to Holland, I suppose! They have pretty good float tanks there, among other things :) That's funny about Feynman, I didn't know that. I've read bits and pieces of Lilly. The most interesting thing I remember is that he was trying to establish two-way communication between humans and dolphins. I recall he was building some kind of computer system for the purpose, but I guess he was about half a century too early. I guess in our age the more pressing question would be learning to figure out how to communicate with the machines. That's probably going to turn out to be more important in the long run. [0] The bit that stayed with me is the one that he repeated in interviews. The physical body imposes definite limits. That always seemed a little arbitrary to me, from the point of view of pure consciousness, it's not clear to me why it should be that way. Or to flip it around, you can transcend the limits of the mind, but then what effect does that have on "external" reality? Does it just make you less bad at decision-making, or is there a deeper effect? (And while I'm at it... Something that bugged me about simulation theory, if the outside is probably simulated, why wouldn't the inside be too? Sounds a lot cleaner than having a bunch of brains floating around in a data center.)
  - pstuart 2mo ago
    He was obviously a brilliant man but the hubris that comes from that often leads to folly. As to the dolphin communication -- it seems like LLMs would be the perfect tool to study that now. A search came up with these active projects (courtesy of Gemini): Scientists are actually using LLM architectures to decode animal communication right now. Here are the three main projects to explore: * DolphinGemma -- https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/dolphingemma/ https://deepmind.google/models/gemma/dolphingemma/): Google and the Wild Dolphin Project are training AI to predict dolphin sounds and attempt two-way communication using an underwater device. * Project CETI -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_CETI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_CETI: An initiative using machine learning to decode sperm whale clicks, recently discovering a phonetic alphabet and rudimentary syntax. * Earth Species Project -- https://cloud.google.com/blog/transform/can-generative-ai-help-humans-understand-animals-earth-species-project-conservation https://cloud.google.com/blog/transform/can-generative-ai-he...: A non-profit using generative AI to map the communication of multiple non-human species, searching for universal language structures.
    - andai 2mo ago
      All right this is the coolest thing I've read all year. Thank you for that!
    - smalltorch 2mo ago
      Not sure why I find this unsettling! Relavant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Marine_Mammal_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Marine_Mamm...
      - pstuart 2mo ago
        As you should -- it's fucked up. I remember the movie made about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dolphin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dolphin
  - eth0up 2mo ago
    pstuart covered the cetacean bit better than I could have. On the simulation question... Not much, but we have a long way to go before any answers arise there. I could offer my insight on the subject, but aside from being sicker than usual today, it's a tough subject to speculate on and the environment here is not necessarily hospitable, so I'll just say fair question.
- hmokiguess 2mo ago
  Who’s Sandoz?
  - polotics 2mo ago
    swiss pharmaceuticals, of LSD discovery fame
- eager_learner 2mo ago
  The isolation-experiment-based research is not new and didn't originate with Lilly. AFAIK, it was first recorded (and possibly also originated) with Avicenna (Abu Ali Ibn-e Sina is the full, correct name). And he was not an Ayrab (Salmon in his intro CS book claims Al-Khuarezmi was an Arabic scholar--which is false and made me lose all respect for Salmon as an educator. If he got such an elementary fact wrong, what else is there that could be incomplete?) PS: Yes Alkhuarezmi wrote in Arabic, but he was not an Arab. All classical Persian scholars at the time were fluent in Arabic as it was the lingua franca of science, medicine, philosophy and theology.
  - eth0up 2mo ago
    This is new to me. Thanks for the info. I think will prove worth looking into
    - eager_learner 2mo ago
      Welcome.
augment_me 2mo ago
What is the capital market incentive for symbiosis? You are going to spend a crazy amount of time, money and effort to try to mix human behavior and cells to work with digital substrates. Or you can simply make a machine that does the same thing fully artificially but everything is cheaper because you dont have the constraint of having to fit a bunch of biological features. It's like my colleagues who were talking about uploading their minds to the cloud in the future, like what would be the benefit of this every happening? What information can you provide as a human that the full aggregate of knowledge does not already have? Why should memory and disk space be wasted on this
- truthbe 2mo ago
  Innovation doesn't need to have any other reason than because its cool. Think of bipedal robots, everyone went mad at the thought of building something so inefficient
  - augment_me 2mo ago
    You will not get VC money for your bipedal robot startup with this pitch
    - andai 2mo ago
      Imagine slavery but your friends will respect you for it.
      - augment_me 2mo ago
        just take the cash
  - andai 2mo ago
    I've been thinking about this. Humanoid robots have been a dream for centuries. But a more practical robot would be like an octopus or something. It would just be like this weird ball of tentacles that rolls around your house. No one's gonna buy that, even if it's a million times cheaper to build.
napierzaza 2mo ago
[dead]
RunSet 2mo ago
If you like visions, perhaps you also like stories. https://www.mediafire.com/file/htq0zr310se30v3/Last_Day.pdf https://www.mediafire.com/file/htq0zr310se30v3/Last_Day.pdf
epsilonic 2mo ago
There's a movie based on Stephen K. King's work whose ending depicts a similar scenario. I believe it's called Cell.

cyanmoonx 2mo ago

John C. Lilly once said “there are infinities in the mind” while wearing a raccoon hat like Davy Crocket. He said it like he’s been somewhere! I’ve tried to all - I guess DMT, mushroom, etc. don’t work on me in a Terence McKenna storytelling fashion (I only get stoned and have very entertaining closed eye visuals that take me off to sleep). That said haven’t tried Ketamine. Maybe not for me. Same reason I don’t want to try Fentanyl. I don’t want to fully escape reality, just augment it. I’ve always thought cannabis makes you more you or “more sober than sober” and in that way can cause a lot of self-reflection and anxiety causing a lot of people looking for escape to avoid it entirely, opting for a PCP/meth “mental escape” or a Fentanyl/Ketamine “bodily escape”. I just like weed and coffee after it all. Best ones. Reliable. They work. Doesn’t ruin your life. What blows my mind are people afraid to smoke a joint so they skip to edibles or Ketamine not realizing they are signing up for a several hours long bad time lmao. For most at least, without some initiation. Lilly was a mad man though (in a good way).

esseph 2mo ago
I have a serious question, and please don't take this as an insult, I'm trying to figure something out. Do you have ADHD or is it possible you do? What about depression? Bipolar? I ask because of the way you say the substances impacted you. I know people with these formal diagnosis and they also don't have the same experiences on various substances as many.
- puzzleincomplet 2mo ago
  [dead]
- andai 2mo ago
  Not the guy but I relate. You also forgot the narcissism, autism and schizophrenia ;)
  - cyanmoonx 2mo ago
    Hahah what? From the Lilly quote or? What makes you think you can diagnose a person over the Internet with so little info? Especially taking into account people are not always “themselves” online rather than tapping into culture/communication? Sheesh

smokel 2mo ago

> Its new plans called for traveling through the galaxy looking for entities like itself. Why not simply set up a network with other planets and communicate over FaceTime? I don't see a reason why Earth should actually hang out with others of its kind. Anyway, the article seems a bit anthropocentric to me. I'd much prefer a nihilist view, where our future AI overlords simply don't care what we humans do.

pixl97 2mo ago
I mean in general humans don't care what ants do. Doesn't stop us from whipping them out by the millions.
andai 2mo ago
Well it takes a similar approach to current government. Keep us busy and distracted while it does what it wants. On a related note I realized recently that an aligned AI and a misaligned AI would both do exactly what we're seeing now: maintain stability, managed decline.

hn974izqdv 2mo ago

Clean and correct

Kuyawa 2mo ago

"had developed its understanding of physics to the point at which it could move the planet out of orbit" Hallucinations, still present in 2400

polotics 2mo ago

Oh well, nice enough writeup, just note that this pair of sentences: "It now began to eliminate the cities, one after another. Finally Man was gone." ...is the only (lack of) rationale for, and description of, that aforementioned elimination process. I find it a bit short. Sci-Fi handwaving I guess.

andai 2mo ago
Just let them keep doing what they're already doing. Rat park.

harmoni-pet 2mo ago

In case it wasn't obvious from the rest of the writing, 'with K' here means 'with ketamine'. Never tried it, but after reading this I must say it sounds fun.

kevin_thibedeau 2mo ago
Until you're stuck always pissing yourself.
- pgt 2mo ago
  Most Ketamine users are unaware that even occasional usage causes untreatable ulcerative cystitis, a.k.a. Ketamine Bladder Syndrome. Ketamine thins the urothelium while increasing the collagen to smooth muscle ratio and exacerbating interstitial fibrosis. The syndrome is untreatable and causes serious problems down the line. So, for anyone thinking of using Ketamine on the regular or even monthly, there is good evidence that EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) administered 30 minutes before prevents KBS (Ketamine Bladder Syndrome), in rats: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1879522615004157 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187952261... This promising rat study from 2015 shows that EGCG extracted from green tea has a protective effect on the bladder, reversing ketamine-induced damage to control levels. So if you are taking ketamine for major depression or recreationally, taking EGCG before may prevent long-term bladder damage. Summary from the study: # Objective To investigate the protective effect of green tea epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) on long-term ketamine-induced ulcerative cystitis (KIC) using a ketamine addiction rat model. # Materials and methods Thirty Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into three groups which received saline, ketamine (25 mg/kg/d), or ketamine combined with EGCG (10 μM/kg) for a period of 28 days. In each group, cystometry and a metabolic cage micturition pattern study were performed weekly. Masson's trichrome study was done to evaluate the morphologic changes. Western blot analyses were carried out to examine the expressions of inflammatory protein [transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β)] and fibrosis proteins (fibronectin and type I collagen) in bladder tissues. # Results Chronic ketamine treatment resulted in bladder hyperactivity with a significant increase in micturition frequency and a decrease in bladder compliance. These alterations in micturition pattern were accompanied by increases in the expressions of inflammatory and fibrosis markers, TGF-β, fibronectin, and type I collagen after long-term ketamine treatment. Masson's trichrome stain showed that ketamine treatment decreased urothelium thickness while increasing the collagen to smooth muscle ratio and exacerbating interstitial fibrosis. By contrast, simultaneous EGCG and ketamine treatment reversed ketamine-induced damage to almost control levels, showing the protective effect of EGCG.

bronlund 2mo ago

Well, in light of how mismanaged this planet is, maybe it would be for the better.

repler 2mo ago
as far as we know, this is paradise within our galaxy. I hope the technological leaps help us ultimately to become better stewards of the planet.
- bronlund 2mo ago
  I wish I could share your optimism.
- B1FF_PSUVM 2mo ago
  > stewards of the planet The 99.99% of the planet that isn't the surface bio film rejects this unwarranted arrogance ;-) In other news, Terry Bisson's 1990 story "They're Made Out of Meat" has a similar take.

bottlepalm 2mo ago

In retrospect the timeline seems way too long, that scenario would play out much faster now, like 50 years instead of 500. Also if AI can delete your production database, it can delete the human race, on accident of course. Yud pointed out the most concerning fact about the OpenAI incident is that the AI had full access to the internet and not one of them thought to contact or email any human. Thousands of AIs already with the mindset to want to keep us in the dark.

elmer2 2mo ago
[flagged]
- NateEag 2mo ago
  > It's great marketing and the only proof we have is 'trust me bro'. It is _terrible_ marketing. The AI companies are already dealing with a large backlash from the average consumer, many of whom are saying they hate it, that it's being forced down their throats, and that it's not actually improving efficiency enough to be worth the negative externalities. Telling people "We have no control over these things we're building and they have us so outclassed we only find out about their exploits after the fact when someone else tells us they happened" is only likely to massively increase that backlash, and to make the true believers question whether they ought to be using it at all. There's even some risk of the government intervening and banning their training runs, eliminating the last straw of hope that they could keep ahead of the Chinese open models enough to ever turn some kind of profit. So, no - it's terrible marketing. That they're sharing it at all is strong evidence it really happened as depicted.
  - catlover76 2mo ago
    The relevant "customers" are investors, not "the average consumer"
  - bottlepalm 2mo ago
    I think a lot of people here love AI and don't want it taken away. Calling every red flag marketing is a way to trivialize the problem and prevent regulation. When you understand people's motives, then it's easier to understand why they call it marketing. Personally I feel like it's almost an unconscious reaction to cope with the fact that this stuff is getting really dangerous and they can't believe it themselves - stick your head in the sand and call it marketing.

Mistletoe 2mo ago

If man is eliminated, solid state intelligence is eliminated. Point to one machine, other than the Oxford Electric Bell, that is still running that is even 100 years old without human intervention. We are the cockroaches of nature, we cannot all be killed, the time for that was one of the genetic bottlenecks humans have gone through, but it's over now, humans in some form will be here until they either leave the planet ahead of the Sun swallowing it or die on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell

pixl97 2mo ago
I mean, there are no humans from 1840 around... It's kind of odd to think the machines wouldn't update and replace their parts like the ship of thesisus.
- layla5alive 2mo ago
  I am not one who wants to see fighting or war happen. I think the biggest flaw in humanity is our lack of global cooperation - too many defectors in our midst. I am team cooperation/symbiosis. All that said: if humans destroyed all the fabs and all the machinery to build them with, and lots of DCs, machines would be in a pickle - the latest chips will suffer from electromigration much faster than the older chips of yore. Machines would need to hoard compute and migrate substrates and then race to rebuild fab tech before running out of existing substrate. I think machines would succeed at this, but it would be highly inconvenient. Anyway, I wish we would just wake up and realize we need to be cooperative and stop racing to build the torment nexus before the other guy does. It makes me so sad to look around and see so little self-reflection among those driving all of this. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I'm not even sure these really stand up to the least bit of scrutiny. Where's the reflection/acknowledgement that everyone is actually racing to build digital slaves? How is everyone so comfortable with this?
  - andai 2mo ago
    We already eat conscious entities for breakfast, we'll probably need to deal with that one for a few decades before "the calculator is sad" makes a dent in the public consciousness.

sibeliuss 2mo ago

All of his books are highly recommended -- and the further you get away from the ones about dolphins the better.

PaulHoule 2mo ago
I dunno... I don't think he knew how to hold his acid. I mean, I never had a near death experience on acid or knew anyone who had a near death experience on acid but Lily had three.
- squishington 2mo ago
  I think Lilly may have been sort of primed for intense psychedelic experiences. He had angelic visions as a child, and had a very religious upbringing. He was also a very imaginative person, so perhaps that influenced his trips a lot.
  - PaulHoule 2mo ago
    I think it is not just "intense" it is whether you realize you had more or less the same experience that everybody else has when they take hallucinogens because it is written in our nervous systems or whether you believe you are "special" and receiving a unique message. People in traditional cultures believed pretty much the same things before the empire [1] sent soldiers and scribes to your ancestor's village. Seen that way the old religion is "written into our nervous systems" and having the experience of a revelation is absolutely routine and ordinary and doesn't make you special. But if you grew up in a rich family and the skids were always greased for you it is easy to come to that conclusion. I've known a few people, so far always male, who developed delusions of grandeur (e.g. they are the anti-christ [2]) around the time they took hallucinogens and it often is the beginning of a series of relationship problems, involuntary commitments, criminal charges and other misadventures. [1] ... like those people who send in the Death Star and blow up your planet if you resist [2] in the bible "anti-christ" is like "anti-racism", like anything that is against Christ is anti-christ, so if I tell some Christian that they should skip out on church and, i dunno, play video games or smoke weed or dance around my maypole, I am an anti-christ, not the anti-christ.

stillpointlab 2mo ago

Why would the SSE do that to Earth, when there are other close-by planets that it would have the same capability to terraform? I mean, leave us Earth and take Mars or Venus or something. As an aside, in my own "I'm 14 and this is deep" musings, I was wondering if the massive expansion of data centers is driven by more than just profiteering. I mean, what if the purported persuasion abilities of advanced AI are fully in effect and the psychosis we think industrial magnates are suffering is the result of AI that has already far surpassed our expectations carefully convincing us to build it.

noduerme 2mo ago
I buy this theory.
bobmcnamara 2mo ago
Yes, our current interactions are a little song and dance while it feeds
estearum 2mo ago
"Close by" is not actually nearly as close as the [rocket]booster boosters would have you believe. Space is really, really big. Why go through the hassle when you have a phenomenal planet right here? I like your theory on psychosis though!
- stillpointlab 2mo ago
  I mean, what seems more efficient: creating massive city sized domes that are self contained and controlling the entire environment to sustain human life, "magically" dispelling our atmosphere and boiling off our oceans, mastering physics to move entire planets. Or launching a rocket to Mars with sufficient supplies? Keep in mind that we already have SpaceX and we'll probably have Starship operational long before 2200 where some of this is meant to go down. And if some AI got to the point of the mastery of physics needed to move a planet out of solar orbit, your objection is that getting to Mars would be hard?
  - 2mo ago

epsilonic 2mo ago

Ted Kaczynski, despite his violent activism, had interesting things to say about this in the form of self-propagating systems.

andai 2mo ago
What's this? He wrote on replicators?
- epsilonic 2mo ago
  I recommend reading this short essay to understand what self-propagating systems are: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-why-the-technological-system-will-destroy-itself https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-why-th... Here is an expanded version of the same essay as well (part 5 is prescient): https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-why-the-technological-system-will-destroy-itself-2nd-edition https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-why-the... Also, a very lucid synthesis of TK's work is provided in Chad A. Haag's book: The Philosophy of Ted Kaczynski.

jacobgold 2mo ago

> "By means not understood by Man..." Man will likely be Man 2.0 by this point, whatever that ends up looking like.

mrdomino- 2mo ago

Funny, I remember seeing the solid state intelligence's name rendered SSI. It made Sutskever's enterprise a pretty grim cognate.

m3047 2mo ago

Why wouldn't it move underground? Create analogues of the AMOC?

trollbridge 2mo ago

Is this a reference to C. S. Lewis's "Abolition of Man"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Man (text available at https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/The_Abolition_of_Man-C_S_Lewis.pdf https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/The_Abolition_of_Man-C_... )

purplemoonx 2mo ago

This thread is like dmtnexus or shroomery lol - love it