An ICU coma patient costs $600 a day, how much will it cost to live in the digital world and keep the body alive here?

Submitted by just-a-dreamer- t3_11c9m6r in singularity

I can't wait to leave the physical world. AI can have it for all I care. But there is the practical matter of how to keep the human body alive?

Suppose technology advances to a point where we can link the brain Matrix-like to a dream world of our individual design, bodies have still to be taken care of.

Food, water, meds, shelter, heating, waste disposal. How much should we save up to prepare? Somebody will charge something of value for that service in the future for sure.

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IluvBsissa t1_ja2dttr wrote

If the cost of labor and energy approaches zero, probably not much. A single brain won't consume as much, neither.

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kakoni6758 t1_ja3bt8b wrote

Basically it will not approaches to zero Since, governments works on energy distribution and collection. So people have to pay taxes to run them

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IluvBsissa t1_ja3g14b wrote

Unless it's full automated luxury communism we're talking about.

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gay_manta_ray t1_ja55lx9 wrote

just theorizing here, and trying to stay close to the realm of known physics, but if fusion power could be miniaturized and be made modular (think something like 5kW modular fusion power "blocks"), energy infrastructure could be completely decentralized.

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SpecialMembership t1_ja2dliw wrote

Once fusion and robotics achieved its practicality zero.

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visarga t1_ja2vlx9 wrote

You still need materials, it doesn't just create out of thin air.

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DarkCeldori t1_ja5z38w wrote

Actually nanomachines can effectively get materials out of thin air by virtue of perfect recycling of waste.

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just-a-dreamer- OP t1_ja2eyp9 wrote

Still need shelter though. And some automated attendant service.

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Drakonis1988 t1_ja2mlrv wrote

Only if you're attached to your physical body. If not, you can discard your body and just be a brain in a vat, or just fully upload. Print a new body and go into that when you log out :P

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turnip_burrito t1_ja2f88l wrote

If robots take all our jobs and can build more robots, it's safe to guess it will cost effectively $0 to maintain your body and run your VR simulation.

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FC4945 t1_ja2zr3k wrote

Eventfully, most people will upload themselves to the cloud and live in full-immersion VR worlds of their choosing. There will also, in time, be the tech to reassemble one's body (or choose a different body) as a nano swarm. You could then move from the VR world to the "real" one whenever you like. Although, I think for many, the VR reality will become more "real" than anything they ever knew previously and, indeed, the real world.

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erkjhnsn t1_ja46st5 wrote

I'm already in my full immersion VR simulation. It's called life.

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FC4945 t1_ja6cant wrote

While it's fair to say we're likey living in a simulation, I have no real control of it. I prefer an environment that I choose that I can set the parameters of.

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purepersistence t1_ja3vgi0 wrote

Nobody that talks about uploading yourself has any idea what that means specifically. What's going on there? There's presumably some kind of machine that captures the state of every cell in your brain and how all the neurons are connected and accounts for hormonal influences and the range signals different types of neurons can make and so on. AND assumes that You are nothing more than what's in your brain. It's as though (somehow) ALL of you can be digitized and then reproduced in a virtual world while you're still a conscious entity that experiences genuine pleasure in your existence. You are so much more than the conscious thoughts floating around in your brain (which we're still a long way from really understanding biologically). You're an animal with hormones and animal instincts. All of your high level language is just an abstraction of the physical world in which all your ancestors human and otherwise evolved in for billions of years. You need that physical world obviously more than you know. There's nothing else you can understand, even in your dreams. The depth of physical sensations such as taste, sexual pleasure, physical closeness have a far more deep rooted place in you than anything specifically human. Feeling the breeze and the Sun on your face while taking a walk with a close companion may be something that can be simulated by something. But without a real loss? Making a machine that fools everybody and passes the Turing test with flying colors does NOT make it truly conscious. It just means humans are gullible. Look at all the people that inject intelligence into chatGPT which is fucking silly.

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just-a-dreamer- OP t1_ja3ywit wrote

I see little beauty in the physical world. Most people seem to work hard to escape the reality around them. Amazing what effort people put into the goal of "stop working". FIRE movement, military/state pensions, 401k, etc.

All with the aim to stop working at some point in life. The most efficient way is to switch worlds alltogether. While the body must be kept alive some way, the mind is better off somewhere else.

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dakinekine t1_ja54mcl wrote

This is kind of a shocking thought to me. I see a lot of beauty in the world and I think maybe you could too. I have zero desire to spend all my time in a virtual world. I would totally spend time in the spiritual world though if I could - ethereal planes of consciousness and such. But definitely not a machine controlled virtual reality!

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just-a-dreamer- OP t1_ja566o8 wrote

There is nothing worthwile here.

Most people aim at an education and job to escape working as fast as they can. "Not working" is the ultimate goal of most humans.

It is irrational to work long and hard to chase nice experiences in this world, when you could have the same at a fraction of the cost in a digital world of your own design. One day.

But even if you like work, in a digital world you can truly choose every aspect of your job and all ventures you want to take.

You can socialize as much as you truly want, or not, belonging to a tribe is no longer a matter of survival.

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dakinekine t1_ja57omr wrote

Not sure how old you are or how much of the world you have experienced. There is a lot out there and most certainly a lot of people who think like you regarding “work”. I think if you looked, you could find people who share similar beliefs with you and who live an alternate lifestyle. You can’t say there’s nothing worthwhile here if you haven’t travelled and experienced other cultures and ways of life. I understand you might not be happy where you are and with what you are doing in life - wish you all the best and hope you find some happiness and satisfaction in your life. It’s out there if you are willing to look for it and work towards it.

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timothymoontower t1_ja6bept wrote

You forget that most of the pleasure in nice experiences is from the fact that they are scarce.

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purepersistence t1_ja3zj6q wrote

>I see little beauty in the physical world.

Since you've never experienced anything else, what are you comparing it to? Can it be visualized? Tasted? Heard? Felt?

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RowKiwi t1_ja2dkjn wrote

Sell body parts you don't need. One lung, one kidney, healthy heart sold and replaced by a pump, bones and skin from amputating all limbs, teeth, even eyes if they have direct optic nerve connections. Better hope there's no power outage.

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anaIconda69 t1_ja2gr5z wrote

Imagine being a brain in a vat awoken from 2500000 years of nonstop heaven on fast forward when suddenly a supernova knocks out the infrastructure. Emergency power kicks in to keep you alive, but all simulations are turned off to conserve power while the attendant ASI picks up the pieces. How would that brain feel? Just a funny though :nervous chuckle:

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AwesomeDragon97 t1_ja5h28p wrote

More like in 60 years the company goes bankrupt and all of the brain vats are tossed in a biohazard waste facility.

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advertisementeconomy t1_ja2o83h wrote

A ICU coma patient's care isn't trivial, but the kind or price you're taking about isn't cost-based, it's the kind of prices that we pay due to big insurance. A competitive business could provide much better prices even at today's technology level and I expect by the time this conversation is relevant good automation could do much of the of the work.

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just-a-dreamer- OP t1_ja2oqmw wrote

What's a good price target? 50$ a day? That's 18k a year give or take.

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Talkat t1_ja5oo3h wrote

If we are doing brains in mass that is very different to a handful of ICU patients.

The brain would need to be fed a stream of nutrients and hormones along with oxygenated air.

Everything could be recycled locally.

So we are talking more like an automated fish tank + chemical needed to keep it running than a hospital .

So long term a few bucks per day.

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just_thisGuy t1_ja3s1g1 wrote

If you could be bothered to get up and go to the bathroom and eat, probably could be done very cheaply. If you want someone to clean your literal shit, and we don’t have robots yet that can do it probably very expensive. Frankly I’d want more than $600 per day just for my labor if I had to clean you up every day, not even talking about doing that for 20 people a day say.

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Omnivud t1_ja4rq99 wrote

Anything but shower, amirite?

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SirKermit t1_ja4x69j wrote

Why keep your body alive when the AI can just make a perfect digital copy of your brain to live in the virtual world?

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vivehelpme t1_ja532zq wrote

If you can edit memories in matrix-style you'll be able to edit out the bio breaks and full time job you have at the side of your matrix existence, you can run it as an escapist pasttime next to your shelf stacking job.

No need for ICU-like infrastructure because that's really a shitload of work, human bodies are made to move around.

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just-a-dreamer- OP t1_ja54tgg wrote

No interest in that and I don't stack shelves.

I want to save enough money or whatever goes as store of value to check out forever. Well, without dying or course.

A FIRE trajectory at the lowest cost with maxed out gain. 4% return rule and all. Full automated basic life support while I am off dreaming and communicating in my own reality.

I don't care if my body rots in a dorm taken care of by machines contracted to attend my needs forever, as long as my mind is at a place of my own design.

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vivehelpme t1_ja7cwyw wrote

What do you think will be cheaper to retain forever?

A 24/7 medical life support monitoring robot system that involves feeding an unconscious person, cleaning away waste, flipping the person over every few hours to prevent pressure ulcers, treating infections and other disease that appear in the dysfunctional body. In addition to this maintaining a future tech computer-brain interface

Or

Staffing robots into a 5 star hotel in a tropical paradise that maintains the structures and cooks food when requested by the guests

So, your plan for the future is more expensive than hopping between 5 star luxury hotels forever. Probably by a magnitude.

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just-a-dreamer- OP t1_ja7fmhs wrote

I think not. In scale it does not cost that much to keep people alive already.

Besides, what would I do with a tropical island? I could have anything I want within the digital world.

There is also the costs involved. A regular FIRE plan involves decades of work in highly paid professions. Doing all that to stop working at some point in older age.

Lazy conservatives join the military for 20 years on the promise to stop working one day, lay back on Uncle Sam's dime and rant about culture and socialism.

This is all so inefficient. I think we could bring costs down 90% to keep a human alive within a range of 10k-15k a year in today's valuation. That requires a principle of 250k for life at 4% yield, that is doable to save up.

The goal of life is to work to not work one day and escape life, therefore we must aim at the most efficient way to accomplish our objective in the physical reality.

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vivehelpme t1_ja7huym wrote

> In scale it does not cost that much to keep people alive already.

tell that to anyone working in the ICU and watch them die from laughter on the spot

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just-a-dreamer- OP t1_ja7ik5h wrote

In that case, we wouldn't have people living in coma for years. Also countless elders are doing fine staying in bed all day.

Their minds are long gone, yet their bodies keep working regardless. Man, imagine leaving this world and cut off contact to every single conservative in existence.

A world where you truly don't interact with anybody you don't feel like. It is as close to paradise as it gets.

Any reality, any feeling can be created in a digital world one day, the height of human civilization.

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vivehelpme t1_ja7ldne wrote

>In that case, we wouldn't have people living in coma for years.

It's expensive to maintain and many of these are taken off lifesupport before a few years, because what's the point when even their brain is atrophying?

>Also countless elders are doing fine staying in bed all day.

Doing fine is a massive overstatement, their muscles atrophy, they need help with everything, their risk of infection increases. And if you're awake and in bed you're still moving around and compensating position for where it starts to hurt.

I've been working in elderly care and seen patients with a long range of neurological issues and those that are just bedridden but conscious and mobile are enormously much less work than the ones with no remaining motor function and minimal responsiveness. You need more than 1 person on full time employment for each of these patients, even more when the person needs physical therapy to maintain range of motion. Their immobility leads to lots of additional problems which inevitably shorten their lifetime.

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vivehelpme t1_ja7ju5b wrote

>Besides, what would I do with a tropical island?

Enjoying reality on a white beach and crystal water, the warm sea breeze in the evening. All of which already exists. No need to have not-yet existing BCI carved into your skull to enjoy a not yet existing version of a theoretical metaverse. No need for a fifty-layered industrial fundament to ensure that you don't die prematurely in a dystopian VR pod.

>I think we could bring costs down 90% to keep a human alive within a range of 10k-15k a year in today's valuation.

You can live on 10-15k USD per year in most of the world. A little bit of shelter and staple food is all you need when you're an autonomous and mobile person, the second you want to be mostly unconscious and still stay alive that cost goes past orbit.

>That requires a principle of 250k for life at 4% yield, that is doable to save up.

And then the market crashes due to disruptive robot technologies flushing out the old guard, your 4% yield on 250k turns to a 1% yield on 50k, your body is an atrophied husk that is completely immobile and your never ending wet dream is suddenly replaced by a notice of eviction screaming in your mind.

Thankfully such dystopian tech is very far off, in your lifetime you'll have to plan for normal vacations like the rest of us. Maybe you'll interact on a half-sentient passport control and a robot bartender on the way, matrix pods will remaind the stuff of scifi for another couple centuries.

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just-a-dreamer- OP t1_ja7mmem wrote

The core principle of capitalism is competition. I see no value in competing to have a good life.

The nice beach is sought after by many people enjoying it. Most will bring more resources to the table than I can afford.

Thus I must go out and work to earn stores of value in competition for jobs to return to compete for nice things in life. That is wasted time and effort.

It makes more sense to get out of the game. The beach in the digital world will be the same experience, yet there is no competition for access, thus the same adventure is way cheaper.

Work shall be reduced to the bare minimum to max out the best experiences one can get his hands on.

I sincerly hope we can shut down our bodies to the bare minimum at low cost and live in the world we want to see happen. And if the body fails, who cares? It is better to die happy than dying miserable.

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badcarbine t1_ja5jjd4 wrote

Hold your horses it might not even happen in your lifetime. But you’re in for some killer experiences with cyber-delics

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ftc1234 t1_ja5rf7a wrote

Which ICU costs $600/day? It must be in thousands per day if not tens of thousands.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_ja6tyt9 wrote

$600/a day, you are optimistic.

Regular overnight stay is $12’000 on average.

ICU stay is many times that…

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errllu t1_ja707iv wrote

Lmao, dude, you cant leave. You can make a digital clone at most

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purepersistence t1_ja7nqng wrote

I don't want to be uploaded unless orgasms exist up there. The virtual world is a great stimulant. But only if I have a fist and something to grab ahold of.

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alfredo70000 t1_jabv93b wrote

Nuclear fusion will possibilitate this.

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Frumpagumpus t1_ja2muar wrote

probably the easiest way is to die.

freeze your brain, slice it up into thin slices, map out the connectome with a frozen brain slice scanner, make a mostly accurate clone of yourself that can experience the matrix for you and whom your family&acquaintances will not be able to distiniguish (well except for the fact that your clone is in the matrix).

i expect software intelligence will do this all the time. it will probably be a useful learning technique amongst many other things, clone yourself n times, study, debate, or act (e.g. alphazero generating it's own training data) then perform a merge operation that "kills" all the clones and merges them into one thing (or just wind down how many instances there are since you no longer need them to generate data)

death will not be the same after the singularity (even though there is probably a way to connect yourself up to the matrix without dying, i'm not sure software intelligences will see the point of bothering though given death would probably be a human preoccupation)

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DNMbeastly t1_ja2n3bh wrote

Sadly that would only be a clone, meaning you will still die the same way with someone else taking your place who merely pretends to be you.

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Twinkies100 t1_ja3woor wrote

I thought about this few months ago. I think to make sure that our consciousness transfers to the non biological brain (which will be built in a way to have the same consious experience as we do), we'll have to modify our biological brain in a way so that it can communicate with the artificial one. That isn't cloning as the brain isn't seperate in this case

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okaterina t1_ja2ypke wrote

Does not matter if the duplicate has the exact same memories, thoughts schematics, perks and mannerisms. There is no difference between "to be some one"and perfectly pretending to be some one. Are you sure you are the same one than ten years ago, while you do not have a single atom in your body from that time ?

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DNMbeastly t1_ja35vwi wrote

No I'm not the same person, nobody is.. but my continued conscious experience is still alive. Don't conflate the two. When I say pretend, I mean the copied brain or whatever apparatus thinks it's me but it will never truly be me.

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okaterina t1_ja3ud13 wrote

Never "truly" ? Define truly then. Definitely not the sum of atoms (as you agreed).

What if the copy takes place in a few milliseconds - or during your sleep. The duplicates will both have a "continued conscious experience".

BTW, that's the physicalism philosofical theory - the substrate of consciousness does not matter.

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DNMbeastly t1_ja485sj wrote

I'll retract my previous statement and just say what you're trying to argue has ZERO meaning. Why? because theories are theories, and consciousness is not proven to be physical, and even if it was, it doesn't matter in this context.

There are key components that of which make up anyone's experience as a human that don't rely on purely brain matter. You being present in time right at this moment, with all your sensations, making decisions is enough to make your experience valid. I'm honestly too fucking tired to do a in-depth rundown but imagine this. If you made an exact copy of someone and put them in the exact same environment, would their thoughts follow in the same exact order sequentially? Or would they be highly variable? That deviation in itself would prove a mere copy of atoms does not equate to you. You see the thing is, everything you do, every decision you make is all apart of what makes you, you. What i'm getting at is your mental state is directly tied to your physical state as time passes through you.

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okaterina t1_ja4hn82 wrote

"Consciousness is not proven to be physical". What else ? If you start speaking about the immortal soul, I am out of this discussion (sorry, pure agnostic atheist here).

Now you speak of the mental state as tied to the physical state as time passes. But as Descartes said, "I think therefore I am", ie all input from the senses (sensory input) cannot be trusted. Why would you trust your eyes, do they really show you the truth ? What about visual illusions ?

What I am saying is that I do not need to be meat, I need to have the *exact* (and that is the point I am willing to discuss: would that ever be possible ?) processes. Is the brain a super-processor ? What's the part of randomness ? Can a neuron and axones be modelized with enough precision to reproduce a thought process ? And finally, is it needed to simulate neurones and axones to reproduce a thought process ? Is there a possibility to use another substrate, other mecanisms and get the same results ? Is it possible to feed it replica inputs, so it thinks it sees with its eyes, ears with its ears (and can touch the ears as touch is just another sense to duplicate/copy over) ?

I do not have the answer to the questions above.

BUT

If I have a *perfect* copy, therefore not discernable, it will be the same. Just as 1=1, the '1' on the left is not the '1' on the right, but they have the exact same properties and behavior in mathematics. You can use either of them.

Ask yourself: what is the difference between an original and a *perfect* copy ? If there is any difference, then the copy is not perfect.

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Frumpagumpus t1_ja2n6uw wrote

yep thats what I said

but it doesn't really matter is my contention

star trek teleporter

humans dislike death because of the loss of family and friend group cohesion and institutional knowledge and pain associated with it. in practice we even shut our awareness down for periods when we sleep. software forks and kills processes and services permanently all the time.

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helpskinissues t1_ja2ofr8 wrote

Yes. We will all die to become enhanced versions of ourselves. Suicide cult soon.

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Frumpagumpus t1_ja2ucop wrote

https://youtu.be/WYsDy41QDpA?t=241

but yea i'm not gonna volunteer to be the first one to have my brain sliced up. but if you are going to die anyway why not die in a way that makes sense

as far as we know, entropy even comes for superintelligences

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visarga t1_ja2vym8 wrote

You don't need to do all that. Train a model on your data without destroying your body, just what can be logged from outside. It will be enough. chatGPT can enter a persona even with just a handful of hints. I think the AI of the future will be able to replicate any personality without fine-tuning.

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Frumpagumpus t1_ja37luu wrote

you might be right on that count lol, but still that clone is even less me than the brain slice clone! And I'm still stuck here in that situation!

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FirstEbb2 t1_ja85z99 wrote

I'd put that choice after cryonics and other amazing techniques I don't know about. At least, this kid will definitely make me love more than the offspring who will definitely do things I hate in the future, and I will regard him as my "son plus"

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Twinkies100 t1_ja4072u wrote

Same but I'm sure that it won't happen in my lifetime. As a wild guess, maybe after at least 300 years. I envy the future humans, I wish I was born later than now. It will take a lot of extensive research and breakthroughs to understand and control biological systems completely but it will surely happen.

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