= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
DataPacRat comments on Open Thread, Jun. 8 - Jun. 14, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (153)
How much data for an uploaded mind?
What are your confidence levels that any resolution of brain-scans will be enough to create an emulated human mind? Or, put another way, how much RAM do you think an emulated mind would require to be run?
Partially relatedly, do you know of any more useful trend-lines on how fast brain-scanning technology is improving over the decades than http://www.singularity.com/charts/page159.html and https://imgur.com/cJWmOd1 ?
What's your success criterion? Do you mean a human mind that the unuploaded copy will accept as a successful upload? Or that the relatives will accept? Or that some panel of expert judges will accept? In the latter cases, will it have to be unanimous?
Some people with particularly detailed Facebook timelines can conceivably be emulated well enough to fool the very gullible without any uploading taking place at all. Very senile people would also be easy to emulate. Babies would be easier than people with complex memories. Very rational people would be easier than those with idiosyncratic patterns of reasoning. People who do work that is hard to characterize (like architecture) would be easier to emulate than those who do work we find easy to characterize (like fiction writing). And so on.
I imagine, on the one hand, a brain scan and emulation system that convinces a couple of aging relatives that granny is now in the computer. And on the other hand, a system that allows a team of expert scientists to keep working together after the demise of one of them. Where on this spectrum is what you mean?
Because I wouldn't be surprised if the former took a million times less memory and computational power than the latter.
How about, "Able to be employed at the same jobs as the original, and (if run at realtime speeds) able to perform as well as the original on any task not involving physical labour", with 'same jobs' including anything from light office work to original academic research?
(I'm hoping to learn something in this thread which I can apply to economics once ems exist, and the above seems to closely correspond with the economic impact of the existence of an em.)
Ahem X-D
When very small shell scripts can be used to replace the researchers who are coming up with ways to keep computer improvements resembling Moore's Law coming, then that'll be a bit more relevant. :)
"Computer" used to be a job for humans. As Marc Andreessen pointed out long time ago, software is eating the world -- note the present tense, no need to wait for AIs or uploads.
And some jobs are more amenable to replacement than others. (Eg, "Manna", by Marshall Brain, at http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm .) It seems safe to say that being able to create ems would be a significant step in replacing jobs currently held by biological humans; but there are all sorts of details involved which change the economic equations, such as how much RAM an em requires, and when the first em comes online. I'm afraid that your statement doesn't seem to offer anything that I can use to improve my current estimates on any of these matters.
True. Sorry for the derailing onto a side track :-)
No worries; thread drift happens.
Now, is there any chance I can get you to offer any answers to my questions in my original comment..? ;)
I am still not going to be particularly useful :-/
With respect to uploads/ems my position is hardcore Knightian uncertainty: not only I don't have any estimates of the timing, I will disbelieve any estimates other people produce as well.
In fact, I don't know if one can generate an upload by brain scanning at all. I certainly don't think it's an inevitability only delayed by the need to develop appropriate tech.
I bet some architects are doing fairly routine work. I'm sure that some writers do work which is hard to characterize. Stephen King does gore by the yard, but every now and then he writes a story which is different from his usual, and that's the part which would be hard for an em to get right.
Considering Scott Alexander, I don't think it's adequate to contrast very rational people against people with idiosyncratic patterns of reasoning.
More generally, there are computer programs which compose music by using patterns from major composers, and result is "sounds like what Bach would write on an off day". The hard challenge is to get the next "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".
I think we are committing some fallacy here. The same fallacy that leads to people to judge things simple once they are understood.
The real complexity of real life lies in interdependencies that are hard to capture and make precise. That doesn't mean that anything humans do can't be made precise and understood in principle. It just means that the things we understand seem simple.
Well, if you haven't bothered to form a genuine theory of how the brain works that compresses out the biological noise... I'd guess something along lines of the last estimate I heard: multiple petabytes.
How many is 'multiple'? A dozen? A hundred?
Where did you hear this estimate from?
As a fermi estimate, the human brain has on the order of 10^11 neurons, each of which has on the order of 10^4 synapses. If we're able to compress the information about each synapse - its location, chemical environment, connections, action potentials, etc. - into a kilobyte (10^3 bytes) (wild guess), this gives us 10^18 bytes for a human brain. Or, about 1 exabyte (1000 petabytes).
It's not clear that it's possible to nondestructively scan a human brain to the necessary precision.
Is that remark intended to invalidate DataPacRat's question somehow? (It seems to me a reasonable question even if it turns out that emulating specific human brains is infeasible for some entirely different reason.)
I haven't argued that emulating specific human brains is unfeasible just that it likely takes destructive scanning.
All the less reason why that suggestion is a reasonable response to DataPacRat's question, surely?
I'm not worried about 'nondestructive' scanning; I'm curious when LWers believe /any/ form of em can arrive. (I simply haven't been able to find any numbers on destructive scanning resolution, so the nondestructive scanning numbers are the most relevant ones I could include in my comment.) If a brain has to be vitrified, or chemically fixated, or undergo some other irreversible process, and then microtomed, but the result is data that would allow the creation of an em - then that would be included in my question.