This is what SOMA was about.
Even if you “digitize” your brain, it won’t be you. It might be a perfect copy of you, but it won’t be your consciousness. You’ll still be dead. At best you’re signing up to be replaced by an immortal clone.
to be fair if I was close to death the idea of an immortal clone following in my footsteps would be quite a bit of solace to me.
I loved SOMA, and it introduced an even more interesting twist on this.
SOMA plot
Simon had his brain scanned in 2015 as part of an experimental treatment for his head injury, and the WAU rebuilt him from the 90 year old brain scan it had sitting in its digital training data. That scan wasn’t even a perfect copy of Simon like the other scans the WAU was working from, it was only an approximation that could be used to test treatments. The treatments, notably, didn’t work and the original Simon died soon after. It’s notable because Simon seems really mentally inflexible, he just doesn’t get how the digital uploads are copies and that he doesn’t get to escape to the ARK, which leads to him having a meltdown in the end. Is that because of the brain damage and it transferred to his copy? Or is it because he’s actually just a chatbot trained on Simon’s brain scans?
I think that particular sticking point hinges on him
spoiler
literally having brain damage
Ohhh no, I tripped over the power cord halfway through the procedure.
even assuming this somehow worked (it won’t), why would you want to ‘live forever’ as a piece of software code owned by others with no bodily autonomy and no freedom? Does he realize he can simply be deleted or traded away or turned off or altered to do some task? only the first ever couple of people to do this would be respected as great pioneers and their “lives” followed with interest. once it ceases being a novelty, the software people are getting enslaved
Yeah, the software either needs to own and defend itself (which introduces a lot of legal and logistical issues) or it would need to be owned collectively by living humans who believe in the autonomy of digital people. Even then, there’d have to be whole new legal fields carved out to protect the rights of digital people and regulations on how our digital remains can be used.
And a lot of people aren’t going to give a shit, so getting them all on board with this religion will be the work of generations anyway.
I’m fully on board with digital conversion as a concept, but there’s real problems with it beyond the technology simply not existing.
He clearly hasn’t watched Black Mirror
Same people who think HRT is an unforgivable sin BTW.
Reminds of me “looksmaxxers” who take a hammer to the face thinking they’ll look more chiseled based on pseudoscience, while simultaneously opposing safe gender affirming care. 🤡
this process doesn’t exist.(After checking the article) Yep I called it. He signed up for a fancy embalming process, with the hope that eventually such a digital scanning process exists. This is just a new spin on cryogenic freezing.
Dew it.AI centers haunted by the digital ghost of Altman who can’t stop killing babies in the middle east.
The hubris to believe anyone besides you will have any use for a copy of your brain. You won’t get immortality. Smarter people exist now. Smarter people will exist in the future.
On the bright side, maybe we can get a chance to study the configurations of neural pathways that result in people being arrogant dickheads.
Great, so how soon can he undergo the procedure?
This seems like the setup to an Agent 47 mission, where he has take care of both the targets’ digital and physical bodies to succeed
you wouldn’t download Sam Altman’s brain and trap it in the Torment Nexus
Pfff. This is just the same PR stunt that Barrel Body Man made when we claimed he would be on the first colony in Mars. This shit will never happen
I wouldn’t be as annoyed by this if they weren’t gong about it in such a backasswards way. Like, biological immortality is possible, we’re already able to reverse the biological age of human cell cultures by inducing partial stem cell reversion. All that has to be worked out is treatments for different tissues that have different conversion rates, and how to stop regression. We are so tantalizingly close to real immortality in a way that humanity has never been before. But of course these computer touchers are so enamored with The Machine and so resentful of their own biological basis for existence that they’d rather try and shove their brains into some RAM. It’s insane, they have the resources to pursue true prolonged life on this earth in an unbelievably complex machine of nature’s creation, but are blinded to that possibility by a fascist ideology and aesthetic that sees the living body as crude and impure. Anyway Sam Altman give me a stem cell lab
I mean, if I could put my brain into a robot, I would
But then again, i’m more of a loveable doofus than an evil billionaire so it would probably work out good for me and everyone else
Why wait?
