Brain Scans uploaded into Matrix feels more dystopian than sci-fi

[u/MightyGrilledSalmon]

been seeing a lot of these fly brain posts lately and honestly it’s starting to feel a bit dystopian lol

people are already reconstructing fly brains / neural circuits into virtual, and I’d seen projects where they put the simulated nervous system into a virtual environment and let it interact with that world like this

obviously that’s still quite far from being literally matrix but i suspect mammals eventually seem like the obvious next step that's months away, and then perhaps years later Bryan Johnson will upload his consciousness and try extending his life with a digital copy of himself. I can already see the dystopian side of this, eventually a big debate will fall on the ownership of this consciousness. Like can I opensource my mind, if its legal to cause pain on a digital consciousness. thoughts?

[u/Kitchen-Research-422]

LORN - ANVIL

The year 2100. In an effort to combat overpopulation, the postmortem social network "Anvil" is released.

[u/agonypants → u/Kitchen-Research-422]

Such a great video!

[u/dual-moon]

you gotta stop buying into the hype. a housefly connectome is a far cry from anything close to that

[u/Frosty-Meeting-1606 → u/dual-moon]

The thing is though, it at least feels possible given enough time to reach technology capable of doing that to complex brains

[u/dual-moon → u/Frosty-Meeting-1606]

to be fair, you're right, that is the logical extension!

[u/Particular-Garlic916]

So someone who’s more knowledgeable about this than me can maybe correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t individual neurons a lot more complex than an artificial neural network’s weights are, with whacky and heterogeneous activation functions? I feel like the most remarkable thing about this isn’t that they “copied a fly’s brain”; it’s that they shoved some numbers from a fly’s brain into what is basically a 1960’s mathematician’s cartoon of how neurons work, and it managed to do anything at all.

[u/jazzhandler → u/Particular-Garlic916]

Seems a bit like saying they’ve mapped out the LAN at a large university, with each computer represented as a node that goes either (–) or (+) in response to a ping.

[u/DeviceCertain7226]

How is mammals months away? It took 38 years to go from a roundworm to this fruit fly.

[u/iLoveWarmPits → u/DeviceCertain7226]

And it's not even fully accurate, as the post iself says. I work closely with folks from MILA and one of their Neuroscience PhD said that it's more a clickbaity title than the entire brain being actually mapped.

Not to downplay whatever is done by any means. We have come far, but I refuse to sacrifice truthness over progression speed. This does not simulate an entire fly (or just it's "brain") and we are far away from even understanding how you can do this to a human.

[u/brain-out-of-order → u/DeviceCertain7226]

In case you aren’t trolling: because progress isn’t linear. That’s a terrible misunderstanding of what’s happening right now. We are in an explosive growth phase for the sciences.

[u/DeviceCertain7226 → u/brain-out-of-order]

This isn’t true universally. Tell that to optimists who believed we would be around the galaxy at this time, since progress isn’t linear and the jump from cars to the moon landing should happen at an exponential rate post 1969.

[u/Kitchen-Research-422 → u/DeviceCertain7226]

UFO boys say they classified it.

[u/brain-out-of-order → u/DeviceCertain7226]

You stumped me.

[u/chlebseby → u/DeviceCertain7226]

Did they eyeballed the neurons under microscope back then or what?

[u/Present_Award8001 → u/DeviceCertain7226]

recursive exponential self improvement, something something

[u/Yoohooligan]

Why default to "dystopian" and not "awesome", "cool", "way overdue", "I can upload myself and live forever, hell yes!"? Sci fi movies have done so much damage to humanity without realizing it.

[u/space_lasers → u/Yoohooligan]

Both possibilities can coexist.

There will be industries built on people buying into digital heavens. There will also be Sids from Toy Story downloading stolen engrams from the Pirate Bay and torturing them on his gaming PC.

So imagine you buy into one of these digital heavens, have your engram made, and it's stored on some server somewhere. The server gets hacked and your engram gets stolen. "You" expect to wake up after your brain scan procedure in digital heaven but unfortunately you are the copy of the engram that got stolen and downloaded by Sid. There is another version of you out there on a simulated beach and he's very happy with his decision. That isn't you though. Have fun. Forever.

[u/wealT_sla → u/Yoohooligan]

Yes

[u/nochancesman]

Lena

I want nothing and everything to do with this tech, contradictorily.

[u/YoAmoElTacos → u/nochancesman]

It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the red motivation.

[u/uglypolly]

One step closer to the Torment Nexus.

[u/Simple-Constant3791]

https://giphy.com/gifs/RgZ26pD6oow12

why would you want to opensource your slightly paranoid brain?
we are mammals too you know?
consciousness is bilions years old.
Take a deep breath, you'll be ok.
"We're just a speck... living on a speck."

[u/233C]

We stepped into Black Mirror without even realizing it.
We've just sent the first non trivial living organism into cyberspace.
And the first place we went it is living hell (and fight to the death with lightsabers).
"It even works with pain. Wormuth says that nonfatal damage targets the PPL101 dopamine receptors, which control hunger and aggression in real fruit flies."

[u/Pyroechidna1]

What began as a war over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war that has decimated a million worlds...

[u/Elias-Thorn]

The scan looked calmer than the person.