Wherever I wander I wonder whether I’ll ever find a place to call home…

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  • 331 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
Cake day: December 31st, 2025
  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyztoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world•there is a special place in hell for these scientists
    1·
    1 day ago

    The end goal is probably a vat that billionaires can hook their brains into at the end of their lives so they never die.

    That probably has something to do with their push for virtual reality and the ‘metaverse’ (fuck zuck for appropriating the greek language for his pet project; I used to use that word to describe a sort of hypothetical hyperdimensional multiverse where “spirits” inhabit 4D/5D topologies).

    Oh and why they’re training AI agents in “environments” now (basically, 3D-scanned renderings of real life spaces).

    If they can put all the pieces together before they die, then they can hook their brains into these computers and control a little avatar so they never have to die and can continue making our lives hell (at least as long as they maintain ownership of private capital, or until we seize the means of production and redistribute the wealth).

  • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyztoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world•there is a special place in hell for these scientists
    52·
    2 days ago

    There’s a lack of evidence for anything not being conscious.

    So should we just assume that nothing is conscious? After all, I can’t prove that you’re conscious, nor you I. So should we relegate ourselves to an amoral solipsism?

    Neurons work by generating electrical signals in response to stimulus and they do this in a physical way.

    I know how neurons work. Nobody knows why they produce consciousness or what particular mechanism is responsible for human awareness.

    I’m not sure there’s any requirement for consciousness to include “human-like reasoning” or “understanding” for it to have some kind of experience and perspective or awareness.

    That’s… irrelevant. I never said they have “human-like reasoning” or “understanding.” I said we don’t understand enough, meaning humanity writ large, including the experts. There are too many unknowns about the nature of consciousness.

    A cluster of neurons trained to play doom might have consciousness but it’s not likely to think like a human

    Again, it doesn’t need to think like a human in order to be capable of experiencing suffering. Babies don’t “think like humans,” or at least we don’t have any solid evidence that they do, but they’re certainly capable of suffering.

    Your mentality is the same one people have used for generations to justify circumcising infants without anaesthetics. How far are you willing to extend it? Do pets “think like humans”? Do uncontacted tribes “think like humans,” in whatever vague way you define it in order to justify cultivating human braincells in a petri dish?

    Do you not see how problematic this is? What if the technology grows and in a decade they’re studying a clump of 2 billion neurons in a vat? Will it suddenly become human enough to deserve your consideration? What about when it becomes 20 billion?

    Whether it’s ethical to squash an ant or turn off an iPhone or stimulate a lab-grown neuron depends on your ethical framework and your philosophical worldview.

    Whether it’s ethical to murder an entire village of your enemies “depends on your ethical framework and philosophical worldview.” See what a slippery slope moral relativism is? Amoral people exist, moral cynicism exists, nihilism exists, solipsism exists, hell even social darwinism exists.

    Any of those frameworks and worldviews can be used to justify atrocities in the minds of those who hold them. And yes, an unethical or even anti-ethical persuasion is still an “ethical framework,” in the strictest sense of the term.

    Just because something can be seated in philosophical jargon doesn’t mean we should grant it license to do whatever it wants.