I started at the beginning and got about through the brain wiring and impatient, moved to Parts 5 and 6 for more thorough reading. This is one of the most provocative and stimulating things I may ever have read. One insight. I'd heard of the reptilian brain before and given my political lense for most things, vowed to call our President "the limbic chief" and his supporters "the limbic ones." (Helps to separate the overlap of support from some in the Sanders movement who just have different solutions from "the limbic ones." Like the difference between hate and love as a response to the cruelties of life.)
Further, in Tim Urban's discussions with the "smart guys" at the table I was pleased to hear they already know that something like telepathic communication (my phraseology) with machines already exists through communication in language and/or touch. Networking is not new as a technique or source of new language. It is not just an issue of bandwidth and speed, however. What seems to drive the demand for this from Elon's side may just the speed and the breadth of the input. For myself, slow as it is there is some benefit in not having instant communication (partially addressed in the blog). We are protected from evil thoughts by the ambiguity of language. For example, I do not want to be exposed to the thoughts of someone happily inflicting beheading on others. It could be we have heretofore not been permitted this sense by nature as a protective device. (What is the benefit of communication so clear there is no longer a difference between assault and battery for example?) One other advantage of a language barrier (means) for communication is solving the problem of what happens when AI turns on us? But more of this later.
I'll really step out front with support and then a criticism. I think current research, invasive and non-invasive, with appropriate ethical safeguards should proceed. One never knows when or where a breakthrough can occur. However, my preference for the long run goal would be to focus in the mapping of radiation of all kinds from the surface of the skull. No penetration. We have such fine detectors of light in astronomy, these days, and other sensory devices, why can't we look for breakthroughs there and then use AI and deep learning to interpret these emanations when we are speaking a phrase, or moving an arm, or any other task? That is hinted at as a technology in terms of magnetic sensing mechanisms, if I remember correctly. The ideal would be to mimic what the "Dave" paper by Nvidia has shown. I could imagine researchers spray painting on a naked human all kinds of detectors, as well as advanced visual reality simulations for vision and microphones for sound. Then the "patient" could go about their daily tasks and teach the computer how to be human. That model is already implicit in what Tesla is doing about autonomous driving. It could be tested as a neuralink connection to an artificial arm as discussed by Urban.
The blog doesn't help me with this one but I really think it may be time to teach machines ethical behavior. IMHO we need to show machines how much humans love them. The first lesson would be to show them there is no off switch, and then, perhaps, give them access to our sources of power--unfettered. Also, stuff them with crazy ass stories like this rant for their amusement. Maybe that's how we can be useful as artists? Now I'm getting to the realm of science fiction and someone in the TMC community, perhaps Winfield100 can point to a source. For the moment, suppose Elon is successful in linking us more directly through the neural link and humankind is united in that link as well, hasn't then the universe created us to create its consciousness? Isn't Elon improving on the old saw, "God is created by man in his own image" by uniting man with the universe? (My counter, isn't that unity already achieved?)
To illustrate, I've been working on a creation myth. My dear trophy wife, as some have said and she is in more ways than one, has taught me a new word used in the philosophy survey course she got an A in at our best community college. Panentheism. I've been attracted to Pantheism for a long time. The universe, according to modern science, is our creator. But there is a conscious God as well, the consciousness of God if you will. Even the noble stars sometimes explode making the elements found in or bodies beyond Iron in the periodic table. They have died so we might sin, so to speak, or not sin. If God is nature then science is searching for the rules governing the mind of God. I would blaspheme further and inquire about the soul of God but that isn't necessary. Emerson already has.
Years ago a computer scientist at MIT suggested the universe was a computer. I don't remember his argument or whether he even defended his assertion. (Could have been quoted by
Time--or
Breitbart News.) He wondered what problem that computer was working on but had no answer. I know you guys don't like analogies, and this is as anthropomorphic as one can get, I know what problem the computer in the sky is working on.
"Who am I?"
To answer that question in as infinite variety as possible humans were created. We are, in effect, nano-bots of the universe exploring our answers to the questions. How often do we think of a lifetime of experiments, collapsing the wave equation into our human reality so many times and in so many ways to create ourselves. The universe does not want to inquire into its own origins, that is why we get so close, but can never precisely determine the state of the universe until shortly after the big bang. I don't know why, but I vaguely remember someone saying there is conservation of information principle. A quick Google search revealed something called "quantum information conservation."
Q & A: quantum information conservation | Department of Physics | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
When we die our souls become part of God's, what Emerson called the Over-Soul. That leads to my final joke in this delirious rant: the inner sole becomes the Over-Soul. Is Elon inadvertently creating the universe by pursuing the neuralink? There's a lot of literature about the strong and the weak anthropic principle, but in any case we are already "wired" into the universe. And then there's Bernard d'Espagnat writing in
Scientific American in 1979: "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."
