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GeekNights 20100607 - Cyberization

AprecheApreche
edited June 2010 in GeekNights
Tonight on GeekNights we discuss the possibilities of Ghost in the Shell style cyberization. The news is, of course, dominated by iPhone 4.
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  • OmnutiaOmnutia
    edited June 2010
    Tonight on GeekNights we discuss the possibilities of Ghost in the Shell style cyberization. The news is, of course, dominated by iPhone 4.

    Rym's Thing - Wake Up Prank
    Scott's Thing - SSH Reverse Tunnel
    Scott's Thing - SSH Transparent Multihop
    Scott's Thing - SSH vi Back Channel

    Tags: #Monday, #Sci-Tec, #Future, #The_Major
    Post edited by Omnutia on
  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    Link to Episode.
  • AprecheApreche
    Tags: #Monday, #Sci-Tec, #Future, #The_Major
    Hashes in front of the tags. Good idea. I'll put that in.
  • OmnutiaOmnutia
    edited June 2010
    About the 1 hour mark, Rym totally goes off the hypothetical/interesting sci-fi story deep end. By the time we can transfer peoples brains to other mediums, mental degradation isn't going to be a problem.

    Also, at the moment, as far as mental degradation for doing complex problem solving goes: Interns.

    As far as I'm concerned, I hope one day we'll just have robots you raise like normal children to be adults and they do the transitioning for us.
    Post edited by Omnutia on
  • bugmenotbugmenot
    I don't know if anyone else had this happen with them but, when I downloaded the episode, the player I was using to listen to it showed that I was currently listening to: Rym and Scitt.
  • Robyn ChaosRobyn Chaos
    Rym's Thing made me bust out laughing, it's so stupid
  • bugmenotbugmenot
    Did you guys see The Prestige? That movie demonstrated your "what if" about transfer of consciousness, in a way.

    --WHITE TEXT SPOILER--
    Every time Hugh Jackman copied himself, the copy was exact but separate. They each picked up a thread of consciousness from the moment of the copy. Since they occupied different physical spaces, one would interpret the act as teleportation, leaving a copy where he previously stood. The other would interpret the act as producing a copy of himself somewhere else. Since the copy was exact, there was no way to know which interpretation was correct.
    --END SPOILER--

    That's what made the movie for me.
  • jlawson70jlawson70
    Two classic Doctor Who episodes involving the Cybermen, "The Tenth Planet" and "Tomb of the Cybermen" touch on topics covered in the podcast.
  • blast flameblast flame
    What if you were to slowly replace the parts of the brain with a artificial substitute which replicated all the functions of your brain while you were aware? I think that might have a chance of transferring the sophistic you as the process that is you would still go on at first but slowly involve more and more artificial parts.
  • AprecheApreche
    What if you were to slowly replace the parts of the brain with a artificial substitute which replicated all the functions of your brain while you were aware? I think that might have a chance of transferring the sophistic you as the process that is you would still go on at first but slowly involve more and more artificial parts.
    But perhaps are you dying and being reborn each time they replace a part? Or perhaps there is just one particular part, which, when it is replaced you die.
  • RymRym
    What if you were to slowly replace the parts of the brain with a artificial substitute which replicated all the functions of your brain while you were aware?
    Ahh, the Ship of Theseus.

    Here's a better one. What if we, in replacing each individual piece, make an identical piece (stateful and everything) as a copy in a new "brain." At what point would it be "conscious?"
  • blast flameblast flame
    edited June 2010
    What if you were to slowly replace the parts of the brain with a artificial substitute which replicated all the functions of your brain while you were aware? I think that might have a chance of transferring the sophistic you as the process that is you would still go on at first but slowly involve more and more artificial parts.
    But perhaps are you dying and being reborn each time they replace a part? Or perhaps there is just one particular part, which, when it is replaced you die.
    Possible but I'd argue it is unlikely to be relevant.

    Let's look at the particular part idea first. If there was one particular part then you'd just need more precise replacement so as replace that part in multiple parts. In the ideal case of there being some sort of nanobot which can replace a single neuron in the brain, well I think it is highly unlikely that there is some king neuron which when replaced you die so this problem can be seen as a smaller case of the whole brain problem (at least if I'm not missing something).

    The first idea is more plausible. However as the brain is constantly undergoing small changes in the connects between the neurons and small amounts of neurons die for any change to this system to result in death would result in constant death where you don't have anything to lose anyway. I would argue that as the mind is more of a process than simply the individual neurons (I think) this scenario is unlikely.
    Post edited by blast flame on
  • balderdashbalderdash
    John Scalzi neatly bypassed the problem of continuity in Old Man's War - which is a hella good book, if you haven't read it - by having the consciousness transfer between bodies involve a temporary bilocation in which the two brains were temporarily linked together, creating a continuous "path" for the "mind" while the transfer took place. The book hovers somewhere between hard sci-fi and space opera; there's a lot of good exploration of real issues, mostly disguised as character-building, but there's also some hand-waving and some mild technobabble to help create a dashing space adventure.

    Anyway, bilocation seems to me like the necessary solution if you want to both practically and philosophically transfer consciousness from any one "brain" to any other, biological or otherwise. It hadn't occurred to me until just now that Scalzi deliberately set it up that way to avoid the whole sticky issue of continuity, though, instead of having to write a goddamn treatise on it in the middle of his book.
  • RymRym
    It hadn't occurred to me until just now that Scalzi deliberately set it up that way to avoid the whole sticky issue of continuity, though, instead of having to write a goddamn treatise on it in the middle of his book.
    I'm fairly convinced, solipsisticly, that there isn't continuity even in our current state. I'm fairly sure that the thread of my being stops and starts in fits.
  • WyattWyatt
    I'm fairly sure that the thread of my being stops and starts in fits.
    I call this sleep.
  • RymRym
    I call this sleep.
    Yes. Nevermind coma or being knocked out. It is entirely possible, nay likely, that I am the sum of my experiences, but not the sum of my consciousness, which does nothing more than observe my actions and make decisions based on said actions, enriching its own state machine for future spans of consciousness.
  • Dr. TimoDr. Timo
    There is an entirely different tangent that you forgot to mention in the episode. In a world where you can replicate the human consciousness in an artificial structure, if you don't ascribe any "mystical" properties to human consciousness that is needed to start up said structure, there will be non-human consciousnesses. The ensuing AI singularity will most probably lead to the marginalization of human intelligence.

    More than that though, think about the steps of transferring your consciousness into an artificial construct. First you'd take a "record" of your brain state (possibly consciousness), then you'd "write" it into the construct. Unless you somehow manage to make this "brain box" a classical system, there is no way for it not to be powered on and fully functional when you do this write process (quantum systems are only "off" at absolute zero). Effectively you are inserting yourself into a working consciousness, probably one with no memories or a random initial state, but a "person" nonetheless. At least from the point of view of the other artificial consciousnesses you are committing infanticide!
  • RymRym
    if you don't ascribe any "mystical" properties to human consciousness that is needed to start up said structure, there will be non-human consciousnesses
    All the more reason to make ourselves nothing more than our consciousnesses, using whatever structures can contain them as needed.
  • Dr. TimoDr. Timo
    if you don't ascribe any "mystical" properties to human consciousness that is needed to start up said structure, there will be non-human consciousnesses
    All the more reason to make ourselves nothing more than our consciousnesses, using whatever structures can contain them as needed.
    I'm just thinking about what it'll be like with the machine intelligences watching us doing our little things with our small "brain boxes" when they are on iteration 10^100 of their own quantumware. Probably like us looking at apes at the zoo, finding it amusing when they use sticks like tools.
  • balderdashbalderdash
    Also, I have to say that all this discussion of the "solipsistic you" kinda smells of dualism. It's fine to say that there's a philosophical construct that is your... what? Existence? But that doesn't mean it's any more real than Platonic ideal forms.

    Say you're right - and you probably are, in my estimation - that our consciousness essentially "boots up" from memories and physically connected thought pathways every time we wake up. That means there's no continuity as we've conceived it. That doesn't mean there isn't a self, just that it isn't what we used to think it was, even if we wouldn't admit it: a soul.

    Once you look at it that way, you're not dying if you transfer your consciousness, because the same consciousness would emerge if you "booted up" the same memories and pathways in a new receptacle. The notion that you'd die really seems to be rooted more in gut-level misgivings than any actual argument.
  • AprecheApreche
    Probably like us looking at apes at the zoo, finding it amusing when they use sticks like tools.
    That's actually a pretty good result considering all the other possibilities. Having someone provide me with free home and food at the expensive of being in a zoo is a lot better than say, The Matrix.
  • RymRym
    That doesn't mean thereisn'ta self, just that it isn't what we used to think it was, even if we wouldn't admit it: a soul.
    Probably correct. If so, our goal should be to allow our thread of consciousness to run uninhibited and indefinitely. Instead of a thousand thousand daily deaths of Ryms, there is but one eternal Rym.
  • AprecheApreche
    Instead of a thousand thousand daily deaths of Ryms, there is but one eternal Rym.
    Or nine eternal Ryms if you need a baseball team.

    I should have mentioned. Board games will be a lot more awesome with clones. You can play all the damn time!
  • RymRym
    I should have mentioned. Board games will be a lot more awesome with clones. You can play all the damn time!
    I've done this before anyway. Two Rym's with little divergence in experience would make the same decisions given the same circumstances in the game. I can thus simulate what it would be like to play with clones by playing all sides of a single board game.

    I did this several times when I lived alone in the mountains, with Settlers and other games. I always won.
  • ElJoe0ElJoe0
    I did this several times when I lived alone in the mountains, with Settlers and other games. I always won.
    And that is how he became a master.......
  • CremlianCremlian
    edited June 2010
    I always won.
    and you always lose.
    Post edited by Cremlian on
  • WyattWyatt
    It is entirely possible, nay likely, that I am the sum of my experiences,
    Life is a series of rooms. Some large and some small. A few we dwell in for a while and some we walk though. What you do in the room you're in now depends on what was done to you in the rooms you've already visited.

    Yeah,,, Chew on that fo' a little bit. FUCKING MIRACLES!

    But seriously,
    I did this several times when I lived alone in the mountains, with Settlers and other games. I always won.
    It's already been done...
  • ThirdWorldManThirdWorldMan


    Speaking of arm hacks...
  • OmnutiaOmnutia
    Someone needs to study the relationship between how exciting a trailer looks and how likely the finished product is to disappoint.
  • loltsundereloltsundere
    Soooo, is the next show gonna be about that awesome thing we all watched together? ;D
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