4 ms·

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

by andai 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
      All right this is the coolest thing I've read all year. Thank you for that!
    - smalltorch 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
  Who’s Sandoz?
  - polotics 3mo ago
    swiss pharmaceuticals, of LSD discovery fame
- eager_learner 3mo 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 3mo ago
    This is new to me. Thanks for the info. I think will prove worth looking into
    - eager_learner 3mo ago
      Welcome.
augment_me 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
    You will not get VC money for your bipedal robot startup with this pitch
    - andai 3mo ago
      Imagine slavery but your friends will respect you for it.
      - augment_me 3mo ago
        just take the cash
  - andai 3mo 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 3mo ago
[dead]
RunSet 3mo 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 3mo ago
There's a movie based on Stephen K. King's work whose ending depicts a similar scenario. I believe it's called Cell.

by andai 3mo ago

eth0up 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
    All right this is the coolest thing I've read all year. Thank you for that!
  - smalltorch 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
Who’s Sandoz?
- polotics 3mo ago
  swiss pharmaceuticals, of LSD discovery fame
eager_learner 3mo 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 3mo ago
  This is new to me. Thanks for the info. I think will prove worth looking into
  - eager_learner 3mo ago
    Welcome.

augment_me 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
  You will not get VC money for your bipedal robot startup with this pitch
  - andai 3mo ago
    Imagine slavery but your friends will respect you for it.
    - augment_me 3mo ago
      just take the cash
- andai 3mo 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 3mo ago

[dead]

RunSet 3mo 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 3mo ago

There's a movie based on Stephen K. King's work whose ending depicts a similar scenario. I believe it's called Cell.