Your contribution is not wasted however. First brain that was able to talk to the world and received full human rights was Peter Thiel's brain.
When beating heart corpses (technically brain dead but body is alive) have their organs removed, in some cases the bodies go through symptoms of a live human being killed by vivisection. These are generally ignored.
Let's hope our understanding of brain death is fully and completely correct.
When asked some question post surgery, she blurted "I could really use a beer!" She didn't drink, but the young male donor of her organs who died in a motorcycle crash did.
She wrote a book about her experience. Initially, she had bizarre dreams, as if tapping into the psyche of her organ donor. Over time, those stopped.
Mention of this tends to not go over well on HN, though it would be easy enough to google who got the first heart-lung transplant, find her book and read it to confirm if I'm making this up or misremembering it or if it's a true story (at least insofar as me remembering that she claimed such things).
I’d be surprised if most such changes have statistically strong correlation with organ donor personalities.
Thanks.
I’d be surprised if most such changes have statistically strong correlation with organ donor personalities.
So would I.
I'm not talking about most such changes or statistical significance. I'm talking about one specific case that was unusually well documented and highly scrutinized that potentially supports the idea that "souls" -- or something we might describe with that word -- might actually be real.
A high percentage of people go to church or otherwise have some kind of spiritual belief. But some kind of scientific affirmation that this isn't simply adult thumb sucking and there may be something to it seems pretty uncommon.
I found her story interesting from that angle.
But, I mean, if your mind is made up that souls are nonsense, then you are probably not the target audience for my comment.
I'd love to think that my parents and grandparents aren't just gone when they died, that they are somewhere else, alive, functioning, happy. But all evidence points another way.
I don't personally think it's hugely important whether one prefers the framing of self over soul. The woman told a tale that credibly suggested she got something of his consciousness in the exchange, not just his physical organs.
I realize it matters a whole lot to most people which framing gets used. Again, this is why I did my best to qualify it.
The existence of the self, and it being seated in physical organs, is noncontroversial, and in no way particular associated with the spiritual belief of people who go to church. The idea that the self is seated somewhere distinct from the body—the soul—is. So, I think that the “framing” is quite relevant to the connections you tried to draw upthread.
Which isn't to say it's not an interesting anecdote (though, on its own, of very little probative value) either way.
It seemed pertinent to that line of thinking.
There's a fairly rich history of Western Christians who were serious scientists and also sincere believers in God who argued that belief is a matter of faith, God is not provable and there is zero contradiction between being both a Christian and a scientist.
I don't have some personal need to relitigate that point. I'm very aware that some people frame things in terms of religion and some don't.
I don't personally feel it is critically important to pick a camp in order to see the story this woman told as intriguing and potentially casting light upon or at least calling into question some of our current framing concerning brain death being the single most important detail.
I know it's a touchy subject for most people. Whether they believe in a soul and a religious/spiritual framing or not, they tend to feel strongly that the other camp is in the wrong and that this is a really big deal.
I generally agree with the conclusion that "being a believer" is a matter of faith. Some people believe. Some don't.
I believe in souls and reincarnation and so forth. My ex did not. Everyone swore that a marriage could not work if you didn't have the same belief system in that regard.
We both believed in the American Constitutional right of freedom to believe as you saw fit. It was the only thing we didn't fight about in two decades of non stop arguing.
Having different points of view in this matter had no bearing on the decision to divorce.
I think if you’d said “‘self’ is more than just the (brain|connectome)”, a lot more people would agree with you.
Here is a past discussion of a BBC article related to the subject, about 2.5 years old.
It's sort of like being given a choice at the time of death. Would you rather everything ended now, or do you want to opt for a small chance at future life if there's also a chance that life consists entirely of torture of one type or another.
Death does. Pain and torture don't deprive you of your future. They are all about what you have to go through to get to that future, and possibly alter how you are physically and/or mentally in that future.
At an extreme end of the spectrum is complete brain death, but just before that might be extreme brain damage. Would you choose a reality in which you're so mentally diminished that your existence is comprised entirely of terror and confusion? Opting into that, even the possibility of that, especially since once you're in that state, you may no longer be capable of changing your mind?
Even for people that don't believe in the religious version of hell, some might consider this the closest equivalent. The question then becomes, would you subject yourself to the possibility of being in a hell equivalent for an indeterminate amount of time after your death to provide an indeterminate amount of benefit to science?
> If you are already dead, you do not have any future to lose
That assumption only works if you assume you can't be brought back, even as a brain in a jar. It doesn't make sense to use assumptions based on death being the ultimate end when reasoning about death not being the ultimate end.
> If you are already dead, you do not have any future to lose, and in that case if your torture can help others, the rational choice is to help.
By that reasoning, if there was a program where you could donate your body to science while you're still alive and they could do any tests they want, including live vivisection, would you do so? If not, why is that any different?
They take your time when you go through them, and possibly break your body in some way, which reduces the number of things you can do in the future.
Of course there may be scenarios where accepting pain or death gives you some advantage, but in that case the pain is not bad! (think dying to keep your children alive, cutting your hand to not die in the desert).
> It doesn't make sense to use assumptions based on death being the ultimate end when reasoning about death not being the ultimate end.
My assumptions are that brain is something that can be simulated on a computer, there is no soul, and that the people who die and are buried cannot be brought back to life. So my choices are either to become brain in a jar for experiments, or feed earthworms.
> By that reasoning, if there was a program where you could donate your body to science while you're still alive and they could do any tests they want
No, because if i am still alive, i can do something more useful for me with my body, but when i am dead, (or at a point when i want euthanasia), i do not have any use of my body, and hell with a small chance of helping people i love is better than nothingness.
I think the same regarding the brain. My point is that we are discussing what if your donated brain is revived to the point of consciousness, but without a body, and perhaps without the experimenters realizing consciousness exists (or realizing it and not considering your consciousness worth the same consideration of a full person).
When reasoning about the possibility of that scenario, which is what this thread is about, I don't think it makes sense to use assumptions about death being the ultimate end, because this is specifically about the case where that is false, because you're a brain in jar with consciousness after death.
> No, because if i am still alive, i can do something more useful for me with my body
Not all live people have bodies that can be used. Not all people with useless bodies are useless. Also, this reasoning leads us to having no consideration for any living beings besides those that can communicate and be of use. Is it okay to torture animals for science, if there is a way to do so without causing pain? Should we not consider the case of a brain in a jar then, and whether it feels pain? It's your choice whether you want to subject yourself to the possibility of a tortured existence after death, but I would rather have some laws in place and information on what to expect (i.e. existing cases where we have reason to believe that the regarding the legal status of after death brain testing than going into the future blind.
There's a possibility of upsides (science advancement without torture, possibly life of a sort after death), but also the possibility of downsides (that life after death might be indefinite mental torture). It's not that I'm against donating my brain, it's that I'm against donating my brain given the minimal amount of information we have on outcomes, and how that relates to the extreme mngative worst case I can imagine.
The question is, if we map out a matrix of possibilities with outcomes of no science advancement, science advancement, second life on one axis, and no consciousness, consciousness but not you (amnesia), your consciousness but impaied, your consciousness close to your current capabilities on the other axis, some of those paired outcomes are what I would consider completely unacceptable, and others would be absolutely wonderful, and then there's various middling levels in between. The problem is there's no idea currently what the chances of any of those are, so am I willing to gamble a completely unacceptable outcome for the chance of a wonderful outcome given no odds?
But until that the choices we have here are nothingness and an experiment with unknown outcome. Given this choice i don't see any experiment that is worse than the nothingness.
Btw. if you agree that brain is equivalent to a program that can run on a computer, then you should also agree that pain, infinite torture and other "hellish" things are not a big deal, they are just pointless computations.
That only follows if you think that about your life right now. If you think it's not a big deal right now, then it's not a big deal if you're a brain in a jar. If it is a big deal right now, then it is a big deal if you're a brain in a jar.
Pain is useful for living organisms as a variable to use in our fitness functions (minds) that allows us to avoid situations that decrease our survival rate. Ir may be mostly useless for a brain in a jar, but that doesn't necessarily mean it should be ignored.
One can make an argument that complete rationality should discard feelings and work only on whether something is useful or not. I think that argument is incorrect when taken to that extreme, as it looks at a shorter horizon than the evolutionary scale which has produced us, to good effect. I would argue that the social aspect of our species is what has allowed us to not only thrice, but completely dominate the environment we are in. To ignore our empathy is to ignore what has brought us to this point.
We can say that a brain in a jar in pain should not be catered to because it has nothing to provide (which also might be incorrect), but by that reasoning we should also say that the person in hospice with weeks or months left to life with no relatives should not be catered to. Should we cause pain to or end the existence of each of those without any regard to their own feelings? We could just as easily use the person in hospice for testing. Amazing scientific discoveries could be unearthed.
But if we agree that emotion has played a positive role in the development of the species, then "hellish" things and the avoidance of them is not pointless computation.
> But until that the choices we have here are nothingness and an experiment with unknown outcome. Given this choice i don't see any experiment that is worse than the nothingness.
Given the known outcome of coming back after death for an existence of even known time, say one week, where that time comprised of pain and suffering exclusively, I would opt to not have that time, thus opting for nothingness. Given an outcome I would not choose, and an outcome I would choose, it them becomes an equation of what is the likelihood of each, and how much to I want or want to avoid each.
Given that the possible negative outcome is as close to the biblical interpretation of hell as I can imagine, and one of the benefits of being an atheist is not having to worry about that, I'm not in a hurry to opt into something that then provides that possibility. That's what I was getting at before.
Do you think that simply carrying out a computation can be immoral? I think no, and the difference between experimenting on a real person and a person in your simulation is that in the second case nothing would exist if you didn't spend your resources to run the simulation, (or in the original context spend resources to revive a discarded brain).
> Given that the possible negative outcome is as close to the biblical interpretation of hell as I can imagine, and one of the benefits of being an atheist is not having to worry about that
Interesting, i have never thought of this as a benefit, to me the hell seemed better because there you do not die, and logically have a chance to get out, because of love and forgiveness preached by some parts of the bible.
Yes. If something can experience pain, I think it's immoral to cause pain when it's unnecessary. If something is sentient, I think it's immoral to stop sentience without reason.
> Do you think that simply carrying out a computation can be immoral? I think no, and the difference between experimenting on a real person and a person in your simulation is that in the second case nothing would exist if you didn't spend your resources to run the simulation, (or in the original context spend resources to revive a discarded brain).
Yes. If you run a simulation that works on sentient AI's, then IMO mistreating them is immoral. I view them as life, and creating life comes with responsibilities.
Importantly, I think this view is important otherwise morality breaks down entirely. There's a chance we're all in a simulation right now. Does that mean nothing we do to each other can be immoral? What if we could prove we were in a simulation? That that free people form moral constraints?
> Interesting, i have never thought of this as a benefit, to me the hell seemed better because there you do not die, and logically have a chance to get out, because of love and forgiveness preached by some parts of the bible.
I'm not a bible scholar, but to my understanding, you go to hell for "eternity". Given the mystical nature of the whole supposition, I don't think it's useful to believe it existence is correct but the unescapability is not.
exactly, but it doesn't help if we say that you have to indefinitely keep computing the future states of the ai because you have started doing it, or that you are not allowed to add two numbers because that operation completes the calculation of suffering for the ai.
The only solution i can see is to base morality on private property: If i kill someone in the same simulation as me i take something that is not mine, and it is not ok. If i shut down the computer with a simulation, or start a simulation to see how people behave during genocide, i do not do any harm to anyone that exists or could exist independently from me, so it is ok.
And how does that work with children? It definitely follows some of the older thinking on the subject, but not any "modern" thinking on it. If I and my wife decide we don't want kids any more, are we free to end our children? I could claim that they can't exist indepdently of me (at least up to a certain age). It's also possible that an AI in a simulation might be able to provide enough benefit to someone to receive income, and enough to pay for its own resources. I think "could exist independent of me" is fairly ambiguous in this context.
Ultimately, this is all philosophical, and I don't think there's really a right or wrong answer, just people - walking talking examples of emergent phenomena - trying to find meaning. I actually don't think it's possible for a person for be completely consistent in behavior because of this, and at best we can hope to at least be consistent in how we perceive our actions. Thus, it doesn't surprise me that I find some of your views inconsistent, and that you likely find the same of me. We ultimately have different perceptions of what's being explained, and thus what seems entirely logical and consistent to one of us seems askew to the other. Exploring those views does have merit though, as it allows for a more comprehensive view of the subject.
In the case when child is truly incapable to exist without the mother, (before it is born), even most of the modern thinking allows to end it. But i think this will change when we have technology to grow people from cell to child in a lab.
With children it is still easy to argue that if parents do not want them they can't kill them because they are unique and the society always needs more of them. But ai is not unique, you can have an ai interacting with real world, providing for itself, and use an exact copy of that ai in an experiment (even the ai could experiment on a copy of itself!).
I think if a society decides to not allow any experiments on ai/brains in a jar, it would have hard time to enforce this, and if it succeeds enforcing the ban it will be out-competed by a neighbour that allows such experiments.
I'm not going to disagree with that. I argued the same earlier in this discussion in a more general sense.
> But ai is not unique, you can have an ai interacting with real world, providing for itself, and use an exact copy of that ai in an experiment (even the ai could experiment on a copy of itself!).
Which is an argument for duplicates, but 1) as a copy gets different inputs and diverges, it is unique, in the same way the you of this second is different slightly than the you before you started reading this sentence (and throw in Ship of Theseus for flavor). 2) even if the copies aren't viewed as diffierent, what about the last copy? If you've grown an AI, deleting the last copy is eliminating something something unique, if there was any possible input that cannot be replicated.
> I think if a society decides to not allow any experiments on ai/brains in a jar, it would have hard time to enforce this, and if it succeeds enforcing the ban it will be out-competed by a neighbor that allows such experiments.
The same could be said of any human experimentation that is banned. And that might be right. It's only been a relatively short time it's been in place in any enforceable way, in historical context.
You'd be ok with effectively being blind, deaf, mute, paralyzed, and probably brain damaged, in the name of science?
Sure, at first, the peacefulness of absolute sensory deprivation would probably feel pretty relaxing.
But then, it never ends. An eternity (or as long as your brain was kept alive) of nothing. You see nothing. You hear nothing. You feel, taste, and smell nothing.
If you're lucky, you'd start building a fake reality to imagine yourself in, like a dream. Over time, maybe you'd accept this reality as being real. People that lose a sense such as sight often gain an enhancement in another sense such as hearing. Maybe with the loss of all senses, the brain's imagination could gain more power.
Maybe it wouldn't be that bad, after all.
1: https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-for-you-to-awaken-aft...
Or your enemies took power, and when they were going through the vats for payback they picked yours (along with many others). If you think you have no enemies, or that you know them all personally, you are better than me.
You made the assumption that I considered them enemies, or that they would even know who I am. If I am an identifiable member of the wrong community, social group, or race from the point of view of the mob in power, I don't have to consider them my enemy in order for them to see me (or my family, or friends) as one. Do you want to contemplate the possibility of genocides, of which we have seen plenty in the last 30 years, being replaced by "vaticides"? Because once the technology allows it, it will happen.
I've lived through this kind of historic upheaval once already; I know that of which I speak. The point I'm making is that any new technology can and will eventually be used by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, and that the likelihood for that to happen is directly proportional to its potential for good. We better make sure that potential good is really in balance with the potential bad before we commit to bringing it to life (pun intended).
If you are a person of color, white supremacists are your enemy, even if you have never personally met them.
Etc.
Your remark comes across to me like "I live an extremely privileged and cushy life and I think that's completely the norm. I'm not interested in understanding the reality of people for whom that's not the norm."
If you ask someone to name three friends, they wouldn't consider all friendly people, they would consider their actual friends.
If you ask someone to name three enemies you would expect them to name specific people they actually know and have interacted with, not specific people that are known to hate their race or belief but they have had no direct interaction with.
But I imagine lots of minority members et al are keenly aware of specific people who are generally against their minority group who have caused them, personally, harm because of it.
If they publicly start their view that "X person personally harmed me" it is usually unprovable and the statement just makes their own problems worse for various reasons.
Thus my impression that you must have an awfully cushy life that you are projecting as the norm when there is zero reason to see it as such.
If you're not convinced, try changing your frame of reference. Don't think of white males as being privileged. Trying to convince people of that is often a useless endeavour.
Instead, recognize the disadvantage PoC have. Most reasonable people will believe PoC have a harder time than white people. That's what white privilege is. It's not dealing with the additional hardships that PoC deal with. White privilege doesn't mean having the world being handed to you because you're white. It means not having the world taken away just because you're not white.
And what part of being targeted for skin color is a "consequence that come[s] from believing in the supernatural?"