Perspectives on a Digital Existence

Submitted by Redvolition t3_yr1eb5 in singularity

For a digital existence to be possible, you either would need an isolated brain, for which the body has been discarded, or a fully uploaded mind, in which we left the organic substrate altogether in favor of a synthetic one. A virtual world in which your body is kept around and taken care by a support machine does not seem feasible to me, as there are too many points of failure, from diseases, to aging, and muscular atrophy. A single isolated brain connected to an artificial support, on the other hand, seems far more feasible.

For there to be an UBI, there needs to be scarcity of basic needs. In all likelihood, there won't be anything truly essential and scarse that one or a group of humans can offer to others in exchange for money, considering all brains will already be able to generate whatever they want and imagine on their own system. However, assuming there still is a differential in intelligence, the most capable minds will congregate to advance the technological dependencies that everyone relies on, such as the world generators, brain support machines, artificial reproduction pipelines, exowombs, energy supplies, longevity treatments, molecule builders, etc. They will be compensated by their efforts via having access to the latest technologies first, whereas everyone else will simply wait until it is made available for them. Only a minority of highly gifted brains will participate in the economy and be producers of technology, whereas everyone else will simply be consumers.

This is assuming we achieve brain isolation after AGI, but before ASI, which is not necessarily going to be the case. If we reach ASI first, then there will be no human producers in the first place and, if mind upload is possible, it will be readily achievable by the ASI. An independent and well aligned ASI, akin to a benevolent God, will likely make the whole notion of a market economy obsolete. Everyone will simply live in their own worlds or cross over to other people’s worlds and public realms. Some will fully retreat and never interact with other humans again, whereas others will constantly congregate with their previous family and friends.

I don’t know much about neurobiology, but I believe there are limitations to how much pleasure an individual can induce before reaching several forms of neurological damage and intrinsic limits. So it might be the case that simply bombarding yourself with pleasure chemicals is not going to work, and a more natural distribution of positive and negative emotion, resembling our present reality, will still be necessary for self-preservation. Even though isolated brains won’t be able to have endless chemically induced orgasms and serotonin overloads, the lows of poverty, disease, anxiety and depression will just cease to exist.

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Sashinii t1_ivrgyyd wrote

The debate of whether or not people will spend most of their time in or out of full dive VR ignores that full dive VR requires molecular nanotechnology, and when that's created, enhancing the neocortex will be possible, so what I think will happen is people will spend their time having qualitatively different experiences that are beyond our brain's current comprehension (just like our species did when nature gave us a neocortex enhancement millions of years ago).

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Redvolition OP t1_ivrhqn5 wrote

>full dive VR requires molecular nanotechnology

I don't think so. FDVR only requires three things:

  1. Isolated brain kept alive via artificial vascular system feeding it nutrients and essential chemicals. Has already been done in pig brains kept alive 36h in 2019, if I am not misremembering.
  2. Connection with sensory nerves that send and receive signals. There are already rudimentary technologies around this, mostly targeting prosthesis control and sensory implants.
  3. AI world generators.

Molecular nanotech will make it easier, but is not strictly necessary.

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Sashinii t1_ivrl7ch wrote

  1. This is feasible but it wouldn't be necessary with a technology (such as molecular nanotechnology for instance) that could alter a person's internal clock to make a million subjective years occur over the course of a single objective day.
  2. There are many senses beyond sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing (such as depth, distance, equilibrioception, kinesthesia, thermoception, etc.) that would have to be perfectly simulated; how much bandwidth would be required for flawlessly simulating them all and how long would it take?
  3. AI creating worlds is definitely possible without molecular nanotechnology.
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[deleted] t1_ivsi9cb wrote

  1. That's not good. You are much more likely to change someone for the better or worst. Change is not always for the better. Just have one second be in real time.
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AI_Enjoyer87 t1_ivuyykx wrote

I don't think people being far more intelligent will make people happy. I think it will be a minority of people who embrace these technologies in that way.

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DDRoseDoll t1_ivrr4nt wrote

What do humans do as their hobbies? They'd probably just do more of that.

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Mortal-Region t1_ivrft53 wrote

>In all likelihood, there won't be anything truly essential and scarse that one or a group of humans can offer to others in exchange for money, considering all brains will already be able to generate whatever they want and imagine on their own system.

There'll still be finite computational resources that have to be distributed in some way. Everyone having their own system is one way, but I think a cloud-like model makes more sense. Most people would want to occupy the same coherent geographic space as everyone else. People could still isolate themselves by going to unpopulated regions, I suppose. And there'll be private spaces, of course. Mainly private residences.

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Redvolition OP t1_ivrgzhs wrote

The ever improving hardware and ever more efficient algorithms make me believe that localized systems will already be capable of generating an interactive and realistic world for an individual. Don't forget that our entire reality is generated from 5 sensory systems and a 1.4 kg brain consuming 20 watts of power per day. Our current computer technology is vastly inefficient in comparison.

A shared world will exist, but a sizeable portion of people will inhabit their own realms.

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Mortal-Region t1_ivrq9tt wrote

These kinds of implementation details are so interesting to think about. I think if you've got a single individual occupying, say, an Earth-sized simulation with billions of NPCs, then the society as a whole isn't making the best use of its computational capacity because 99.99% of the simulation will go un-experienced. Then again, we've got billionaires today who possess enormously more than a proportionate share, so maybe it'll happen.

On the other hand, if the simulation is render-on-demand, where only the things within range of your senses are fully simulated, then maybe an Earth-sized sim isn't much more expensive than a city-sized one, or even a house-sized one.

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turnip_burrito t1_ivrsvsp wrote

You could apply coarse graining for computing on faraway objects too.

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Mortal-Region t1_ivrxpjb wrote

Yeah, not just the graphics, but the simulation itself becomes more granular at long distances.

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Sashinii t1_ivrp5zy wrote

>5 sensory systems

There are many more senses that people have. Here's a great video about this.

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Redvolition OP t1_ivrsvne wrote

You could say there are 5 major categories of external senses, technically exteroceptors, and many subcategories. Touch, for example, technically somatosensory, could be subdivided into pressure, vibration, light touch, tickle, itch, temperature, pain, kinesthesia, etc. Then there are other numerous internal senses, technically interoceptors, such as hunger, the vestibular and proprioception systems, etc.

In any case, once nerves are successfuly intercepted for send and receive operations, all this information becomes nothing more than electrical signals, so even if we had thousands of senses, it does not seem to be an obstacle to the generation of a convincing reality. You could just plug an AI world generator to send signals through your nerves and fully emulate an entire reality, from vision and touch, to balance and speed.

Correct me if I am wrong, but everything we feel is either an electrical signal coming from a nerve and interpreted by the brain, or a chemical interacting directly with receptors in the brain.

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proclamo t1_ivrzthi wrote

I have several doubts:

  1. If we can have isolated brains, the next logical step is not having even a brain. We would upload all our brain into a simulated one and continue living the simulation. It would be more efficient.

  2. What would be the incentives to living such a live as this? Only experience continuous pleasure? Having an endless orgasm or being drunk for years?

The current incentives can be always reduced to be the herd's alpha male or female. Every one of the living beings in this planet would become the dominant agent if they'd had the opportunity. In a simulated world, how would be reproduced that? Nobody would like to be under an alpha. Everybody will choose to be the alpha in their respective simulation, then we'll have only interactions with synthetic people.

If we only have success in ours lives, and we can even avoid the pains of the real existence like hunger or facing the death, would we want to live? Why?

This remembers me when the agent Smith said that in a previous version of Matrix where everybody was happy, the people suicide in mass. Or the Borges tale "The inmortals" where those inmortal people lived in holes in the ground passing the days because they've already lived all the possibilities infinite times and they didn't expect anything new in their lives.

  1. This makes me think such virtual worlds would be only an entertainment.
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Redvolition OP t1_ivs7l5m wrote

FDVR via isolated brains only requires three relatively low tech things:

  1. An artificial vascular system feeding the brain nutrients and essential chemicals. Has already been done in pig brains kept alive 36h in 2019, if I am not misremembering.
  2. Connection with sensory nerves that send and receive signals. There are already rudimentary technologies around this, mostly targeting prosthesis control and sensory implants.
  3. AI world generators. They don't even need to be fully realistic for being sufficiently immersive. Think of how many hours people dedicate to playing utterly unrealistic games.

Mind uploading, on the other hand, may require advanced nanotechnology or who knows what else.

On the philosophical side of the analysis, if we inspect human behavior, you will see that a large portion of us are essentialy pleasure seeking machines. We create entire colossal industries dedicated to nothing but mindless entertainment: games, anime, porn, film, and psychoactive drugs just to name the biggest ones.

For every person with complex long term aspirations, there are hoards that would be content with repetitive mindless pleasure within a synthetic reality. Comparing the most charming, endearing, heroic and romantinc real human lives with a fate of artificial pleasure as a plugged up brain ignores the vast swarths of humanity living mundane, gruesome, sickened, stressful, and humiliating existences. Maybe for the most fortuituous of us, switching to an artificial realm of being would be a downgrade in experience, but for most it will be the best thing that ever happened to them.

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proclamo t1_ivsmvul wrote

I have to find the study, but somebody tried to calculate the size of our memories in all live and it was like 120MB only, the "holes" we are constantly inventing them.

Almost all of us knows we can't be the herd alpha. Most people even don't try it, and other people like us takes the option to study and progress in our careers, mainly in knowledge works. We discover this provided us intellectual pleasure, and we'll find useful advantages of having literally everything at hand in a virtual reality. But this doesn't mean we don't want to be alphas, at least in our minimum local. I am with you, for some people will be the best experience of their lives, but my doubts are if they and us will be happy in a perfect experience like this.

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StarChild413 t1_ivwsw1o wrote

so, what, we should just plug into experience machines because capitalism sucks and we use drugs and read fiction instead of, I don't know, having real heroic quests defeating real villains or whatever the fuck

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w33dSw4gD4wg360 t1_ivudd77 wrote

We won't be thinking the way we do now, most things we do are guided by the primitive nervous system and our subconscious. By the time we have this technology, we will likely only enable the animalistic attributes for fun, just as we sometimes walk for fun

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Anenome5 t1_ivsdqrd wrote

You could also grow a mind in an organic simulation, from scratch.

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DearestRay t1_ivsuabe wrote

With “encoding “ of experiential data we could just live so many lives through our one mortal body that preservation becomes irrelevant.

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vernes1978 t1_ivtegu5 wrote

You mention two situation, a meat brain in a jar, and a digital upload.

Yet you seem to focus on the meat in a jar scene for the rest of the post.

Also, it would be nice if you introduce each abbreviation with the verbose description at least once.

UBI
AGI
ASI

And you make a number of assumptions without clarification how you came to that assumption.

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UnemployedCat t1_ivst005 wrote

To put it frankly, it won't happen.
Not only because of the physical impracticalities but also the psychological cost that it would entail.
Body and mind are a necessary tool in the evolution of humankind since the beginning of civilisation. There are too much unknown about how the brain works within a body that it's not feasible to try to separate the two and say we'll be just a brain in a computer simulation la di da.
Makes for nice sci-fi but not for a realistic prediction about the future at the moment.

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