Support NeoGAF

[DragoonKain]

I was watching some Black Mirror episodes again the other day(don't worry, no spoilers) and since a lot of episodes deal with the mind and futuristic tech concepts, I was thinking of potential technology that would obviously be many years away if it is even possible at all where you could edit the brain of a bad human being to "take away" their bad or their evil nature.

Say you have a serial killer, and when he's apprehended, you can just use this technology to go into his brain and remove the things that make him bad, thus turning him into a good person.

I know your response is going to be "How do you know it will actually work and they aren't just faking it?" Obviously, this is a science fiction concept, so just play with me here a little bit and just assume for the sake of the concept that whatever technology they use to take the bad away from a person can also prove that it works and they are indeed "fixed."

Would you support this technology? If so, to what end? Would a person who did something really bad who was "cured" of the bad in them still deserve to go to prison if they were no longer bad? One could argue yes they still deserve to go because they committed the crime, while another could argue that they are no longer the same person who committed the crime, that person is gone, so keep them in society, allow them to be productive members of society.

If you are a believer in this technology, it could potentially eliminate prisons altogether if it were ever come to exist. But you'd also have human rights debates on whether someone has the right to alter the human mind. Maybe only if you commit violent crimes, just like they have the right to put you to death, you could be sentenced in a court of law to have your mind altered and the "evil" taken away.

Again, I'm just spitballing here, but it's just something I thought of. In 100 years, I wouldn't be surprised if some form of this existed with the rapid rise of technology, and I just wanted your general thoughts on this. If you'd support it and what you think it would do for society.

 

[SoulUnison]

Anything that can measurably and mechanically alter a person's personality with no theoretical upper limit is going to have a hell of a time convincing people it isn't just straight-up mind control/lobotomization.

I have no real idea how you market that sort of thing positively or convincingly argue its ethics, and if you use it clandestinely, you're kind of just creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

[highrider]

Welp, putting them in violent environments with extended periods of isolation sure works great. I was already a dangerous person before prison, considerably more so when I was released, but I’m old now

 

[hecatomb]

Theres a lot of sci-fi fi movies or books about taking away peoples freedoms, like the giver or clockwork orange. You are basically lobotomizing people, and giving them no freedom or choice.

 

[ULTROS!]

I dunno, it could be a double-edged sword:

1. Of course removing things that can cause danger to other humans is a good thing but what if it can get conditional such as self-defense killing, euthanasia, abortion (to save the mother's life), etc. This will make things more difficult if we are reprogrammed to "not kill human beings" at all.

2. If by removing the minor faults of other people (clumsiness, tactlessness, explosive anger), this too can be double-edged. Inherently it's a good thing because we'll be human beings without faults but it's our faults that make us individuals stand out and continuously make us better people (by improving on these faults).

 

[llien]

Anything that can measurably and mechanically alter a person's personality with no theoretical upper limit is going to have a hell of a time convincing people it isn't just straight-up mind control/lobotomization.

Just a reminder, that we actually castrate people.

 

[Tesseract]

we already do this with chemicals, the logical next step is technology

 

[Torrent of Pork]

A horrifying idea with all the ways it can lead to every Orwelian nightmare imaginable.

 

[Razorback]

This thought experiment clearly states that there are no unforeseen side-effects. This would be an amazingly positive invention. The benefits for individuals and society as a whole would be immeasurable. I would take it in an instant if it made me a better person.

But if we're being utilitarian and going for the maximum positive outcome then it would be best if everyone had to take the thing, whether they want it or not. Because in game theory, if you have a bunch of selfless agents interacting in a population with selfish agents, eventually the selfish agents would screw over the selfless and drive them to extinction, or at least they wouldn't get very far in a society.

I guess I'm oversimplifying given that the vast majority of humans aren't 100% selfish. That's why it's hard to model human interactions with game theory. I'm not sure what would happen, but I still lean towards it being positive. I have no issue with it being voluntary. And if someone commits a violent crime, if you're already fine with stepping over their freedom to put them in jail, then it shouldn't be too much of a moral issue to force them to take the treatment instead.

 

[AV]

You'd then have a group of people deciding what constitutes "the bad" in people, which could very easily be twisted politically. Too far left/right leaning? Bad. Suck it out. Don't like your government? Bad, suck it out. Each and every one of us has a bad side, it's what makes us who we are. Very cool idea for science fiction, unspeakably Orwellian and evil in practice.

This also springs to mind as an example of the concept not working (unless you want to take the bad epilogue from the novel into account):

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

This concept goes all the way back to Dr. Frankenstein and The Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, the very roots of sci-fi. The idea that science can remove and replace (or at least temper) human behavior has always fascinated us. I think one could make the case that it is inherently wrong. Instead of engaging with our "natural" ability to socialize and reason with one another (the highest ideal of the Western Enlightenment era), we engage with our ability to make tools and to manipulate and use those against one another.

Maybe it would be okay if it was elective and the person decides for themselves which behaviors/thoughts they'd like to remove? Even then, it's doomed to failure. As a general rule, people are not insightful or introspective. We are quite dense, especially about our own shortcomings (ego). So we'd more likely use the technology to remove undesirable traits (shyness, hesitancy, addictiveness, depression) instead of traits that lead to "evil" behavior (narcissism, greed, lust, etc).

 

[TheShadowLord]

there an episode about this in star trek the original series(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_of_the_Mind). Of course, the treatment was widely abused for the criminally insane because it allowed the people controlled to gain of their patients.

 

[lock2k]

I would never support this. Some of the most beautiful creations come from dark minds.

 

[Airola]

Who decides what's bad?
Would pro-life people become pro-choice? Or would pro-choice people become pro-life?
Would people become more sexually active or less sexually active?
Would polygamous people become monogamous or would monogamous people become polygamous?
Would drugs become more legal or less legal.

Or would this "bad things in brains" be a thing that even the people who make bad things go away don't know what the bad things are? Are the bad things something that the scientists decide or does the brain have an evil part to it that the scientists know cause evil things to happen but they don't quite know what the evil things are. Would they be surprised that their will to do something they didn't think was bad went away when they did the procedure?

 

[infinitys_7th]

I would never support this. Some of the most beautiful creations come from dark minds.

Yeah. I think practically everything in the world has roots in both good and evil. If you get rid of evil, you get rid of motivation, creativity, ingenuity, passion, and a host of other very positive aspects of humanity.

 

[jolof96]

who defines what is bad though?

 

[infinitys_7th]

who defines what is bad though?

You have this as well.

For example, certain SJWs believe that straight men who wouldn't date or sleep with pre-op transwomen are evil. Would they pull out the lack of interest in penises to fix the evil?

 

[TheShadowLord]

You have this as well.

For example, certain SJWs believe that straight men who wouldn't date or sleep with pre-op transwomen are evil. Would they pull out the lack of interest in penises to fix the evil?

Or vice versa to cure trans/non straight people.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

This is horrible and scary and verging on eugenics

People are not by nature good or evil. It is the things they do that are good or bad. Thinking otherwise is some science trying to play god bs and it’s already been attempted by the 20th centuries biggest monsters

 

[Razorback]

Play by the rules people!

Obviously, this is a science fiction concept, so just play with me here a little bit and just assume for the sake of the concept that whatever technology they use to take the bad away from a person can also prove that it works and they are indeed "fixed."

Nyeaa, but what if the bad is not actually bad though?

Also, a bunch of caveman science fiction up in here.

 

[MC Safety]

This technology, presumably, would not only correct deviant behaviors but eliminate dangerous thoughts.

In other words, it's a big plate of creepy.

 

[iconmaster]

We don't understand all the ways in which those tendencies toward evil are also bound up with our tendencies toward good.

For example, aggression. It can lead to violence, but it can also be an impetus toward constructive action. You get wound up about a wrong you perceive in the world and you pour that energy -- even angry energy! -- into correcting it.

You can reduce a person's aggression even today. Those receiving such treatments may be less prone to what you'd call evil, but are they also less prone to unusual good?

 

[DragoonKain]

who defines what is bad though?

The government/law makers already decide what constitutes "bad" already. Age limits for sexual contact, what constitutes unacceptable violence, pretty much every law is someone deciding what is right and wrong, what is good and bad.

I'm not saying I support this technology, I'm just playing devil's advocate.

For the example I gave in the OP, we'd basically use the same laws that put people away for violent crimes, but instead of say sentencing them to death. they are sentenced to a mind alteration. Is taking away their mind worse than taking away their life? Rhetorical question, not sure I know the answer.

And like a previous poster said, this tech would be different than a lobotomy. They wouldn't be emotionless sheep, it's just that the desire to do bad things to people would be gone in this concept.

People have made very good cases as to why it would be bad, and I can't disagree with those arguments. The human mind is the one thing no one right now can touch, and if we allow people to have the opportunity to do that it could lead to bad things. So not saying I support it or not, just weighing if the positive outcomes it (could) bring to society would outweigh the negatives. If, say, crime in the US drops dramatically because of it, and less innocents are taken away from their loved ones for violent crime, is it worth sacrificing freedoms we hold dear? Many would argue no.

 

[infinitys_7th]

Play by the rules people!



Nyeaa, but what if the bad is not actually bad though?

Also, a bunch of caveman science fiction up in here.

Love has roots in selfishness. If you love someone, then you have an inherent selfish interest in them over other people because they give you something.

So what happens if you remove selfishness?

 

[Razorback]

Love has roots in selfishness. If you love someone, then you have an inherent selfish interest in them over other people because they give you something.

So what happens if you remove selfishness?

That's not a useful definition of the word selfish.

 

[jolof96]

The government/law makers already decide what constitutes "bad" already. Age limits for sexual contact, what constitutes unacceptable violence, pretty much every law is someone deciding what is right and wrong, what is good and bad.

I'm not saying I support this technology, I'm just playing devil's advocate.

For the example I gave in the OP, we'd basically use the same laws that put people away for violent crimes, but instead of say sentencing them to death. they are sentenced to a mind alteration. Is taking away their mind worse than taking away their life? Rhetorical question, not sure I know the answer.

And like a previous poster said, this tech would be different than a lobotomy. They wouldn't be emotionless sheep, it's just that the desire to do bad things to people would be gone in this concept.

People have made very good cases as to why it would be bad, and I can't disagree with those arguments. The human mind is the one thing no one right now can touch, and if we allow people to have the opportunity to do that it could lead to bad things. So not saying I support it or not, just weighing if the positive outcomes it (could) bring to society would outweigh the negatives. If, say, crime in the US drops dramatically because of it, and less innocents are taken away from their loved ones for violent crime, is it worth sacrificing freedoms we hold dear? Many would argue no.

The issue is though not all goverments/laws are spot on and something like this I feel could be used for sinister motives, but it is an interesting theory

 

[Domisto]

The issue is though not all goverments/laws are spot on and something like this I feel could be used for sinister motives, but it is an interesting theory

Yeah, this 'Do Better Machine' is going to need a regional switch. Just imagine the differences between the US setting and Saudi Arabia.

 

[Dontero]

You arrive at Ying/Yang problem

We can only say something is good with bad in context. So for example if you will remove murder then something else will become the evil, you remove that too, then you remove something else and whole thing just spirals.

And this is where crux of the problem is: There is no empirical morality. Morality is only based on culture/religion/usedbehavior not on fundamental facts of nature.

For example in muslim world stoning cheating woman is "good" by our definition it is evil.

 

[Razorback]

You arrive at Ying/Yang problem

We can only say something is good with bad in context. So for example if you will remove murder then something else will become the evil, you remove that too, then you remove something else and whole thing just spirals.

And this is where crux of the problem is: There is no empirical morality. Morality is only based on culture/religion/usedbehavior not on fundamental facts of nature.

For example in muslim world stoning cheating woman is "good" by our definition it is evil.

I see this opinion around a lot. It kind of sounds like wisdom, but is it really?

There's an argument Sam Harris uses a lot that I agree with in favor of morality not being subjective. It goes something like this;

Imagine the worst possible universe. Where in it everyone lives in the worst possible misery for as long as possible. Hell basically. Is there any way you could argue that that isn't bad?
The worst possible misery for everyone. If you agree that it's bad, then its just a matter of navigating in the other direction. The best possible world for everyone. You now have two poles, a spectrum. You can be all the way to one side with the worst misery possible, or maybe in the middle where life is just barely worth living or all the way to the other extreme, the maximum amount of wellbeing possible.

So stoning woman for cheating, or for being raped doesn't in anyway increase the wellbeing of the system. It's clearly doing nothing but harm.

 

[Dontero]

I see this opinion around a lot. It kind of sounds like wisdom, but is it really?

There's an argument Sam Harris uses a lot that I agree with in favor of morality not being subjective. It goes something like this;

Imagine the worst possible universe. Where in it everyone lives in the worst possible misery for as long as possible. Hell basically. Is there any way you could argue that that isn't bad?

Compared to what ? Harris argument doesn't fly because he assumes from get go you know the difference between worse and much worse let alone good. There is no biological scale of worse/better. Even very painful situations could be treated as normal as long as you don't know better. When you are born you are not born with morality.

Take for example rape. If you are born as slave girl then rape has no any emotional impact because it is just part of life since you were born. Yet modern woman would probably hang herself if she was raped every day. That is definition of hell Sam used and yet one girl can be completely fine other don't.

 

[Razorback]

Compared to what ? Harris argument doesn't fly because he assumes from get go you know the difference between worse and much worse let alone good. There is no biological scale of worse/better. Even very painful situations could be treated as normal as long as you don't know better. When you are born you are not born with morality.

Take for example rape. If you are born as slave girl then rape has no any emotional impact because it is just part of life since you were born. Yet modern woman would probably hang herself if she was raped every day. That is definition of hell Sam used and yet one girl can be completely fine other don't.

There is a biological scale for worse\better, it's called pain and pleasure. I find it very hard to believe you really think a slave girl does not find rape traumatic because she's used to it.

 

[Dontero]

There is a biological scale for worse\better, it's called pain and pleasure. I find it very hard to believe you really think a slave girl does not find rape traumatic because she's used to it.

Point i am making is that you need to first feel difference. If you are born and from that day every single day someone would go to you and hit you in face, you would treat it as normal, especially if you would set it up in a way you can't avoid or fight with it.

I find it very hard to believe you really think a slave girl does not find rape traumatic because she's used to it.

Read how people behaved in Auschwitz. How they arrived, were broken and later on they didn't even feel anything when their families were put to death in their view and behaved like zombies living through the day without much of a psychological pain because they simply got used to fact that they will die and they can't do nothing about it.

People can get used to absolutely anything, even mentioned by Harris hell as long as they don't die in process.

Again with Harris argument there is no ability to get used to anything. Because by his definiton morals are set in stone. Which directly contradicts any empirical data we have. If you put modern man back 2000 years ago that life would be hell for him. Yes people lived there and a lot of them were quite happy.

 

[Shifty]

I feel like we'd need to understand more about the human mind before I could get behind such a thing.

Also, define bad on a scientific level. Serial murder is easy to agree on as being bad, but there are so many shades of grey in this world that you'd start creeping into subjective and worrisome territory when trying to set the limits around such a technology.

 

[Razorback]

Point i am making is that you need to first feel difference. If you are born and from that day every single day someone would go to you and hit you in face, you would treat it as normal, especially if you would set it up in a way you can't avoid or fight with it.



Read how people behaved in Auschwitz. How they arrived, were broken and later on they didn't even feel anything when their families were put to death in their view and behaved like zombies living through the day without much of a psychological pain because they simply got used to fact that they will die and they can't do nothing about it.

People can get used to absolutely anything, even mentioned by Harris hell as long as they don't die in process.

Again with Harris argument there is no ability to get used to anything. Because by his definiton morals are set in stone. Which directly contradicts any empirical data we have. If you put modern man back 2000 years ago that life would be hell for him. Yes people lived there and a lot of them were quite happy.

I don't buy any of that. If you're familiar with Harris' arguments about this and remained unconvinced then I doubt I'll be able to explain it any better.

 

[Ke0]

First huge issue would be who is determining what is "bad"

 

[TheSadRanger]

This really isn't anything new considering it was done in early 20th century in most asylums with lobotomies using various methods in the United States and some western European nations.

It seems like has kind of been making been come back again the past decade or so in different forms with prescription drugs. Which is a shame because it seemed like psychoanalysis and the teachings of Sigmund Freud were starting to make a come back again but I guess some people just want to be evil doctors.

It's kind of a downer really.

edit: I'm not talking about murderers but people who were sometimes "depressed" or considered "feeble minded" or whatever and lobotomized.

 

[Unknown Quantity]

Wouldn't it be too late at that point, I'm guessing once your brain has formed memories and thoughts and everything else then you're "programmed" to operate in that way.

Wouldnt it be easier to install something at birth and it can take care of the bad when and if it arises, then we're building a future with safeguards.

 

[Patrick S.]

Would it look somewhat like this?

 

[Breakage]

I doubt many people would be comfortable being around a child rapist even if it were possible to "edit" out the bad with technology.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

Theres a lot of sci-fi fi movies or books about taking away peoples freedoms, like the giver or clockwork orange. You are basically lobotomizing people, and giving them no freedom or choice.

It isn't. The result of action or inaction, of immoral or moral action, or moral agency is the result of competing populations of neurons. The circuitry is damaged, or miswired and it will causally lead to wrongful action with high probability.

Fixing people so they act more moral, as pertains most of the innate morality present in humans, not the bias of some particular individual but what is written in the species genes, can be done by modifying the brain circuitry such that it increases the probability of moral action and decreases the probability of immoral action.

Should it be done? It should at least be offered as an option in lieu of imprisonment or rehabilitation.

But this is like the genetic changes of domestication, something that can easily be abused if applied to humans, and will be abused in totalitarian regimes.

in favor of morality not being subjective. It goes something like this;

Imagine the worst possible universe. Where in it everyone lives in the worst possible misery for as long as possible. Hell basically. Is there any way you could argue that that isn't bad?
The worst possible misery for everyone. If you agree that it's bad, then its just a matter of navigating in the other direction. The best possible world for everyone. You now have two poles, a spectrum. You can be all the way to one side with the worst misery possible, or maybe in the middle where life is just barely worth living or all the way to the other extreme, the maximum amount of wellbeing possible.

The problem with Harris, is that he ignores the possibility of things like the block time universe, suggested by relativity, in which each moment exist and has existed eternally and is immutable, potentially even all fates eternally existing.

Also Moravec has commented, iirc, on the possibility that the same exact underlying reality could actually have different levels of interpretations or represent wholly different things all at the same time, multiple realities coexistent. This is due to the flexibility of coding or symbolic representation, wherein any bit pattern can be assigned to represent arbitrary things, thus having the same exact pattern potentially representing a practical infinity of things.

It is possible the same exact actions causing pleasure or suffering create the opposite at the same time. There are an infinity of skins and animations that can be applied to a game, the same gameplay, yet alter it to where it is unrecognizable, yet it is still representing the same event. Potentially such modifications extend even to the aspects that represent consciousness, potentially yielding multiple observers or multiple different conscious sensations towards the same event.

...
What does it mean for a process to implement, or encode, a simulation? Something is palpably an encoding if there is a way of decoding or translating it into a recognizable form. Programs that produce pictures of evolving cloud cover from weather simulations, or cockpit views from flight simulations, are examples of such decodings. As the relationship between the elements inside the simulator and the external representation becomes more complicated, the decoding process may become impractically expensive. Yet there is no obvious cutoff point. A translation that is impractical today may be possible tomorrow given more powerful computers, some yet undiscovered mathematical approach, or perhaps an alien translator. Like people who dismiss speech and signs in unfamiliar foreign languages as meaningless gibberish, we are likely to be rudely surprised if we dismiss possible interpretations simply because we can't achieve them at the moment. Why not accept all mathematically possible decodings, regardless of present or future practicality? This seems a safe, open-minded approach, but it leads into strange territory.

An interpretation of a simulation is just a mathematical mapping between states of the simulation process and views of the simulation meaningful to a particular observer. A small, fast program to do this makes the interpretation practical. Mathematically, however, the job can also be done by a huge theoretical lookup table that contains an observer's view for every possible state of the simulation.

The observation is disturbing because there is always a table that takes any particular situation---for instance, the idle passage of time---into any sequence of views. Not just hard-working computers, but anything at all can theoretically be viewed as a simulation of any possible world! We are unlikely to experience more than an infinitesimal fraction of the infinity of possible worlds, yet, as our ability to process data increases, more and more of them will become potentially viewable. Our ever-more superintelligent progeny will be able to make increasingly huge interpretive leaps, far beyond anything now imaginable. But whether or not they are ever seen from outside, all the possible worlds are as physically real to any conscious inhabitants they may contain as our world is to us.

This line of thought, growing out of the premises and techniques of physical science, has the unexpected consequence of demoting physical existence to a derivative role. A possible world is as real, and only as real, as conscious observers, especially inside the world, think it is!...
Moravec on simulation consciousness existence

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

It isn't. The result of action or inaction, of immoral or moral action, or moral agency is the result of competing populations of neurons. The circuitry is damaged, or miswired and it will causally lead to wrongful action with high probability.

Fixing people so they act more moral, as pertains most of the innate morality present in humans, not the bias of some particular individual but what is written in the species genes, can be done by modifying the brain circuitry such that it increases the probability of moral action and decreases the probability of immoral action.

Should it be done? It should at least be offered as an option in lieu of imprisonment or rehabilitation.

But this is like the genetic changes of domestication, something that can easily be abused if applied to humans, and will be abused in totalitarian regimes.



The problem with Harris, is that he ignores the possibility of things like the block time universe, suggested by relativity, in which each moment exist and has existed eternally and is immutable, potentially even all fates eternally existing.

Also Moravec has commented, iirc, on the possibility that the same exact underlying reality could actually have different levels of interpretations or represent wholly different things all at the same time, multiple realities coexistent. This is due to the flexibility of coding or symbolic representation, wherein any bit pattern can be assigned to represent arbitrary things, thus having the same exact pattern potentially representing a practical infinity of things.

It is possible the same exact actions causing pleasure or suffering create the opposite at the same time. There are an infinity of skins and animations that can be applied to a game, the same gameplay, yet alter it to where it is unrecognizable, yet it is still representing the same event. Potentially such modifications extend even to the aspects that represent consciousness, potentially yielding multiple observers or multiple different conscious sensations towards the same event.

Your materialistic view of the world has one fatal flaw: what are you doing on this message board?

Absolute materialism -- which you seem to adhere to -- means nihilism and denial of self. There is no you. There is no me. We're just bags of flesh full of electrical signals clacking our fingers on a keyboard. Nothing special about the keyboard. Just an assembly of particles, no different than a rock. Nothing special about the signals being sent across wires to communicate these ideas. Y'know, just electrical signals.

One of the fundamentals of science is that things are knowable. There is such a thing as abstracts and absolutes. Quantum mechanics have confirmed that the Self exists, that the Subject exists (on the merit of how the result can change based on whether or not the quantum exchange was observed). Even the fundamental mechanics of the universe acknowledges that I -- an Observer -- am here, yet you're trying to insist that... nope... just some arcs of electricity. Nothing special. Just some good ol' chemical sleight of hand.

Your standpoint is dogmatic, not scientific.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

Your materialistic view of the world has one fatal flaw: what are you doing on this message board?

Absolute materialism -- which you seem to adhere to -- means nihilism and denial of self. There is no you. There is no me. We're just bags of flesh full of electrical signals clacking our fingers on a keyboard. Nothing special about the keyboard. Just an assembly of particles, no different than a rock. Nothing special about the signals being sent across wires to communicate these ideas. Y'know, just electrical signals.

One of the fundamentals of science is that things are knowable. There is such a thing as abstracts and absolutes. Quantum mechanics have confirmed that the Self exists, that the Subject exists (on the merit of how the result can change based on whether or not the quantum exchange was observed). Even the fundamental mechanics of the universe acknowledges that I -- an Observer -- am here, yet you're trying to insist that... nope... just some arcs of electricity. Nothing special. Just some good ol' chemical sleight of hand.

Your standpoint is dogmatic, not scientific.

Flesh? Matter? Electricity? these concepts attempt to describe aspects of reality, but I'm a subscriber of digital physics, which suggests the fundamental nature is information, and information processing

In physics and cosmology, digital physics is a collection of theoretical perspectives based on the premise that the universe is describable by information. It is a form of digital ontology about the physical reality. According to this theory, the universe can be conceived of as either the output of a deterministic or probabilistic computer program, a vast, digital computation device, or mathematically isomorphic to such a device-wiki

And also subscribe to patternism.

The Hidden Pattern(Ben Goertzel book) presents a novel philosophy of mind, intended to form a coherent conceptual framework within which it is possible to understand the diverse aspects of mind and intelligence in a unified way. The central concept of the philosophy presented is the concept of "pattern" minds and the world they live in and co-create are viewed as patterned systems of patterns, evolving over time, and various aspects of subjective experience and individual and social intelligence are analyzed in detail in this light. Many of the ideas presented are motivated by recent research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, and the author's own AI research is discussed in moderate detail in one chapter. However, the scope of the book is broader than this, incorporating insights from sources as diverse as Vedantic philosophy, psychedelic psychotherapy, Nietzschean and Peircean metaphysics and quantum theory. One of the unique aspects of the patternist approach is the way it seamlessly fuses the mechanistic, engineering-oriented approach to intelligence and the introspective, experiential approach to intelligence.

Think about the heart of quantum mechanics:

In this chapter we shall tackle immediately the basic element of the mysterious behavior in its most strange form. We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery. We cannot make the mystery go away by “explaining” how it works. -Richard Feynmann quantum behavior

The experiment has been explained in a classical way now.

Quantum physicists believe that true randomness exist. But when you think about true randomness you realize it is a nonsensical thing, it is belief in magic. All randomness is pseudorandomness, from what mechanism could spawn true randomness? Any mechanism or pattern that produced it and it would no longer be true randomness!

Determinism, which is really the same thing as super determinism, is compatible with known quantum physics.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Flesh? Matter? Electricity? these concepts attempt to describe aspects of reality, but I'm a subscriber of digital physics, which suggests the fundamental nature is information, and information processing


And also subscribe to patternism.

Yeah, it's Monism. All is One. There were also religions and schools of philosophy that believed reality was just a mere projection from all the Ideal Forms. It's not a new concept, it has been iterated upon many times, and it's just as unprovable now as it was when Plato proposed the Theory of Forms.

I mean, it's a fascinating belief, but it's no more scientific than a belief in the Bible.

The notion that information has to exist (after all, it's the foundation of everything we experience in our physical reality) is an a priori assumption. Why does information have to exist?

 

[hecatomb]

It isn't. The result of action or inaction, of immoral or moral action, or moral agency is the result of competing populations of neurons. The circuitry is damaged, or miswired and it will causally lead to wrongful action with high probability.

Fixing people so they act more moral, as pertains most of the innate morality present in humans, not the bias of some particular individual but what is written in the species genes, can be done by modifying the brain circuitry such that it increases the probability of moral action and decreases the probability of immoral action.

Should it be done? It should at least be offered as an option in lieu of imprisonment or rehabilitation.

But this is like the genetic changes of domestication, something that can easily be abused if applied to humans, and will be abused in totalitarian regimes.



The problem with Harris, is that he ignores the possibility of things like the block time universe, suggested by relativity, in which each moment exist and has existed eternally and is immutable, potentially even all fates eternally existing.

Also Moravec has commented, iirc, on the possibility that the same exact underlying reality could actually have different levels of interpretations or represent wholly different things all at the same time, multiple realities coexistent. This is due to the flexibility of coding or symbolic representation, wherein any bit pattern can be assigned to represent arbitrary things, thus having the same exact pattern potentially representing a practical infinity of things.

It is possible the same exact actions causing pleasure or suffering create the opposite at the same time. There are an infinity of skins and animations that can be applied to a game, the same gameplay, yet alter it to where it is unrecognizable, yet it is still representing the same event. Potentially such modifications extend even to the aspects that represent consciousness, potentially yielding multiple observers or multiple different conscious sensations towards the same event.

If you remove someones choices, they don't have free will. Plain and simple.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

Yeah, it's Monism. All is One. There were also religions and schools of philosophy that believed reality was just a mere projection from all the Ideal Forms. It's not a new concept, it has been iterated upon many times, and it's just as unprovable now as it was when Plato proposed the Theory of Forms.

I mean, it's a fascinating belief, but it's no more scientific than a belief in the Bible.

The notion that information has to exist (after all, it's the foundation of everything we experience in our physical reality) is an a priori assumption. Why does information have to exist?

It is know that information transcends physical substrate. A pattern contains the same information as it is copied or moved from one location to another, perhaps it is represented as gaps in a medium, nothingness, or magnetic charge, or the presence of atoms or electrons. It matters not, the pattern is distinct and independent of substrate.

To say that it begins to exist is nonsensical, a potential configuration does not begin to exist when it manifests, it precedes manifestation.

Einstein's relativity gave the idea of the relativity of simultaneity, or eternalism, the block time universe. If that view suggested by scientific evidence is correct, then information is eternal and exists along whatever the universe is made of. But given that a simulation can be indistinguishable from reality for a conscious observer. It may be simpler to say that rather than some stuff existing along information, only information exists.

Regardless even if some sort of medium existed, so long as there were simulations running on it, it would be indistinguishable from our present day experiences.

I mean when you boil it down, you just have to ask yourself a question does truth begin to exist? or is truth eternal? sure you could say does truth even exist? But most would say that it does exist, and it is eternal. From the statement that truth exists and is eternal follows, given that simulations are potentially indistinguishable from the present world, from it follows that the present world can exist potentially solely as information.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

It is know that information transcends physical substrate. A pattern contains the same information as it is copied or moved from one location to another, perhaps it is represented as gaps in a medium, nothingness, or magnetic charge, or the presence of atoms or electrons. It matters not, the pattern is distinct and independent of substrate.

To say that it begins to exist is nonsensical, a potential configuration does not begin to exist when it manifests, it precedes manifestation.

Einstein's relativity gave the idea of the relativity of simultaneity, or eternalism, the block time universe. If that view suggested by scientific evidence is correct, than information is eternal and exists along whatever the universe is made of. But given that a simulation can be indistinguishable from reality for a conscious observer. It may be simpler to say that rather than some stuff existing along information, only information exists.

Regardless even if some sort of medium existed, so long as there were simulations running on it, it would be indistinguishable from our present day experiences.

I mean when you boil it down, you just have to ask yourself a question does truth begin to exist? or is truth eternal? sure you could say does truth even exist? But most would say that it does exist, and it is eternal. From the statement that truth exists and is eternal follows, given that simulations are potentially indistinguishable from the present world, from it follows that the present world can exist potentially solely as information.

Information -- or Order -- is not a given. You are making an a priori assumption about the nature of the universe that is entirely unprovable and then dressing it up as science. In fact, you are making an assumption that goes against the existence of You, the Subject making the claim.

You can modernize the terms being used like "information" and "digital physics" instead of "shadow" and "Mind" and "oneness", but at its core its nothing more than Monism. Your claims are dogmatic, not scientific.

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

If you remove someones choices, they don't have free will. Plain and simple.

They are constantly losing neurons, more importantly the wires in their brain are constantly changing as is right now, gaining and losing connections.
Rewiring the brain to behave more morally in terms of choice is no different than the natural state in terms of influencing choice, wherein changes beyond a person's control radically alter their choices, their decisions. If I choose to educate myself, and as a result of being informed my future choices radically change as a result of said rewiring? How are my choices removed? In a sense they are, perhaps I won't consume a poisonous substance, or invest in a scam, but realistically my ability to choose is unaffected. If I willingly choose more radical rewiring, that gives me that education "matrix" style, or alters the circuitry involved in moral decisions, my ability to choose is as free as it ever was prior as it is after the procedure.

Also as many have stated neither determinism nor randomness allow for free choice, nor any degree or combination of the two. Not to mention if something is divisible rather than indivisible and the inner components causally determine choice, how is that a free choice?

 

[Omega Supreme Holopsicon]

Information -- or Order -- is not a given. You are making an a priori assumption about the nature of the universe that is entirely unprovable and then dressing it up as science. In fact, you are making an assumption that goes against the existence of You, the Subject making the claim.

You can modernize the terms being used like "information" and "digital physics" instead of "shadow" and "Mind" and "oneness", but at its core its nothing more than Monism. Your claims are dogmatic, not scientific.

Again, the question I ask. Do true statements exist? Do they begin to exist?

It has been hypothesized that within the number pi exists all possible sequences, pi is a part of the infinite body of mathematical truth like many others. Potentially a pattern equivalent to all we've typed exists within it's sequence of digits, potentially a pattern equivalent to all the states and transitions of a simulation of your brain and your entire life history exists within it as well as everybody elses.

Within a few decades the brain may be known, perhaps not, but sooner or later it will prove mysterious beyond a doubt or be explained. If in the decades to come it is proven to be algorithms and computation not beyond digital computation what goes on in the brain, it will constitute evidence that given the equivalent simulation state exists as part of truth, it is eternal.

Already some say the theory of relativity suggests an eternalist worldview, which is compatible with all I've stated.

Conventionally, time is divided into three distinct regions; the "past", the "present", and the "future". Using that representational model, the past is generally seen as being immutably fixed, and the future as at least partly undefined. As time passes, the moment that was once the present becomes part of the past; and part of the future, in turn, becomes the new present. In this way time is said to pass, with a distinct present moment "moving" forward into the future and leaving the past behind. Within this intuitive understanding of time is the philosophy of presentism, which argues that only the present exists. It does not travel forward through an environment of time, moving from a real point in the past and toward a real point in the future. Instead, the present simply changes. The past and future do not exist and are only concepts used to describe the real, isolated, and changing present. This conventional model presents a number of difficult philosophical problems, and seems difficult to reconcile with currently accepted scientific theories such as the theory of relativity.[4]

Special relativity eliminates the concept of absolute simultaneity and a universal present: according to the relativity of simultaneity, observers in different frames of reference can have different measurements of whether a given pair of events happened at the same time or at different times, with there being no physical basis for preferring one frame's judgments over another's. However, there are events that may be non-simultaneous in all frames of reference: when one event is within the light cone of another—its causal past or causal future—then observers in all frames of reference show that one event preceded the other. The causal past and causal future are consistent within all frames of reference, but any other time is "elsewhere", and within it there is no present, past, or future. There is no physical basis for a set of events that represents the present- from wiki article on eternalism

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Again, the question I ask. Do true statements exist? Do they begin to exist?

It has been hypothesized that within the number pi exists all possible sequences, pi is a part of the infinite body of mathematical truth like many others. Potentially a pattern equivalent to all we've typed exists within it's sequence of digits, potentially a pattern equivalent to all the states and transitions of a simulation of your brain and your entire life history exists within it as well as everybody elses.

Within a few decades the brain may be known, perhaps not, but sooner or later it will prove mysterious beyond a doubt or be explained. If in the decades to come it is proven to be algorithms and computation not beyond digital computation what goes on in the brain, it will constitute evidence that given the equivalent simulation state exists as part of truth, it is eternal.

Already some say the theory of relativity suggests an eternalist worldview, which is compatible with all I've stated.

You are still just explaining your axiom a different way, but you're not proving it.

You are offering compelling hypothesis and "maybes" and "some suggest" but you aren't giving me a single proof.

Which doesn't really matter, because every Monistic viewpoint is built on at least one a priori axiom that cannot be proved.

 

[hecatomb]

They are constantly losing neurons, more importantly the wires in their brain are constantly changing as is right now, gaining and losing connections.
Rewiring the brain to behave more morally in terms of choice is no different than the natural state in terms of influencing choice, wherein changes beyond a person's control radically alter their choices, their decisions. If I choose to educate myself, and as a result of being informed my future choices radically change as a result of said rewiring? How are my choices removed? In a sense they are, perhaps I won't consume a poisonous substance, or invest in a scam, but realistically my ability to choose is unaffected. If I willingly choose more radical rewiring, that gives me that education "matrix" style, or alters the circuitry involved in moral decisions, my ability to choose is as free as it ever was prior as it is after the procedure.

Also as many have stated neither determinism nor randomness allow for free choice, nor any degree or combination of the two. Not to mention if something is divisible rather than indivisible and the inner components causally determine choice, how is that a free choice?

Heres how it could go wrong, lets say it removes any and all thoughts of doing anything wrong. So someone is thinking about getting married, but then he thinks he might kill his wife if she ever cheats on him. Then he never gets married ever, cause he knows he might kill her. Then you have other people who think about killing their boss at work, then they just quit their job on a dime with no other thoughts what so ever. Then you have someone who thinks drugs are bad, so they never take their medication. Then you have people who think they might accidentally hit someone or run over someone while driving, then they will never drive again. I mean these are just a few examples of what could go wrong.

People would just turn into robots, with no choice at all, cause any time they thought of something wrong they would never do it. A lot of people actually think of doing things wrong all the time, and everyday, but they don't do it. The world also would be a very boring place if you removed all violence, cause movies and video games, and a lot of shows would be completely boring.