The End of the World
- Thread starter earendil 1
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Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
I'm with you, but with a slightly different angle. I think most people will deliberately replace themselves with something silicon-based.
Imagine that you could integrate a computer board right into your brain so that you could just think questions at it and "feel"/"hear" the answers, and that this could be done without disfiguring you. I suspect that this will eventually become possible, and then popular.
Meanwhile, AI may progress to the point where artificial systems can perform as intelligently as we do. There are a lot of arguments that claim this is impossible -- for example, pointing out that we are analog systems, not digital (true but irrelevant) -- but I doubt they hold water. As soon as that happens, some people will trade their on-board computers for complete replacement of the brain with silicon.
Suddenly, your philosophical views will literally and directly take on life-or-death importance. For, critics will say (rightly IMHO -- and here is where some of the above arguments are no longer irrelevant) that these people are not just changing themselves, but killing themselves.
At first, the critics will be the majority. But the "new people" will look and act just like regular humans, only smarter. Acceptance will increase until only a few hardliners, with an almost "religious" faith in their ways, refuse the technology.
The Amish are still with us, despite their immense technological inferiority to other groups and despite -- or perhaps because of -- their pacifism. If other groups wanted to eliminate the Amish and take their resources, they could, but they don't want to. This fact holds immense hope for humanity.
Perfection
The Great Head.
I would consider these to be just an extension of humanity, because we aren't going away, we are just changing
CurtSibling
ENEMY ACE™
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- Aug 31, 2001
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I think a person from 1500AD would be gob-smacked at the world nowadays.
If we went 1000 years hence, then we would be shocked!
If we went 1000 years hence, then we would be shocked!
TNG
Sad, sad little man
well, we have 3 billion years to have that happen to us if we don't die out befor then.
earendil 1
The Halfelven
TNG: umm...just because the un will die in 3 billion yrs doesnt mean that humanity will die with it. In fact i read some statistics that said that Earth will become so hot because of global warming that it will be unsuitable for life in a matter of millions of years.
Ayatollah So: Why would they put silicon in our brains? It s very unlikely that they would even use silicon chips that far in the future. They might just find some way to biologically alter the brain.
Ayatollah So: Why would they put silicon in our brains? It s very unlikely that they would even use silicon chips that far in the future. They might just find some way to biologically alter the brain.
Mark2010
The holy fighter
The world will end when we build machines and over produce them. Then they get indepent and take over the world and start sucking out our energy. Then they make the matrix where all humans live while the suck out our energy....yes i think about the matrix too much, hey its like 2:00 A.M now and im freakin tired...Need sleep.....haha
See the animatrix Second reniassance to see what im talking about...www.theanimatrix.com
See the animatrix Second reniassance to see what im talking about...www.theanimatrix.com
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
I hope you're right, but I think it will take longer to make the advances that would allow a "supercharged" biological brain. I think there will be a period where silicon "brains" will be smarter than real ones (Moore's law, etc.) If real brains eventually catch up, that will only matter if there are still some real brains hanging around to take advantage.
@Perfection: your response seems to assume that I'm wrong when I say that keeping your biological brain is a matter of life and death. Well maybe I am, but you haven't given me any reason to change my mind.
Sturmgewehr
Warlord
My idea is a combination of "asteroid impact, disease and alien invaders" Basically, a comet with some sort of virus in it from another planet, directed at earth by alien invaders! 
The Lord will come and judge everyone. Then he will put them in either heaven or hell and then destroy the earth with many disasters. Including angry demons, seas turning to blood, mountains falling over and such.
Sturmgewehr
Warlord
I recomend visting a thread of mine.. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53019 some of it seems pretty outlandish but the black hole created by a particle accelerator would be cool to see.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Nice pun!
But anyways, the biological process has nothing to do with our wiring, if we had the same high level network design asa computer then both of these brains would run equally well, it's not about the substrate it's about the node interactions, if they are the same, then it really doesn't matter!
Siegmund
King
"I would consider these to be just an extension of humanity, because we aren't going away, we are just changing:"
I'll pencil that thought down. And we, of course, aren't actually humanity, either, just an extension of apishness / primordial-slime-ness, which didn't go away but is just changing.
Come to think of it, that sounds a little bit TOO much like how many so-called humans I know act.
I'll pencil that thought down. And we, of course, aren't actually humanity, either, just an extension of apishness / primordial-slime-ness, which didn't go away but is just changing.
Come to think of it, that sounds a little bit TOO much like how many so-called humans I know act.
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
Originally posted by Perfection
Nice pun!
You say two different things -- first you say "if a computer had the same high level network design as us", but later you say "it's about the node interactions". I think I agree with the second point, but only if you include very low-level, detailed brain functionality. Let me explain.
Life isn't just about behavior. It's about experience. A computer can't have the moral-equivalent-of-a-life unless it can have experiences akin to our own.
The problem is that similar outward behavior can stem from radically different experience. I can smile, and tell you what a wonderful host you are, and eat the dinner you serve with appreciative sounds, and secretly hate every minute of it. Or it could be that I truly love it. Or perhaps with the right training or drugs I might do all this with little or no consciousness at all. My experience of pleasure or pain is not any particular pattern of behavior -- it is a particular sort of cause of that behavior.
Here is a limited analogy. Internal combustion is not the fact of a car's acceleration: it's a particular way of making cars accelerate. If you want to know whether a car involves internal combustion, you can't just observe how it handles. You have to look under the hood.
If you can reproduce the functionality of a regular brain on the level of individual brain cells by using computer hardware, then perhaps you can conclude it has experiences like ours. But if all you do is reproduce the outward behavior, you've probably used radically different connectivity at the lower levels. In which case you have no reason to attribute similar experience to it. I suspect that progress in AI will proceed the latter way.
Perfection
The Great Head.
But if we can give a computer a similar environ (like a reality simulator) then it would have similar traits!
