Ronald Bailey Comments on The Age of Em at Cato Tomorrow
Come by at 11 am Tuesday, June 7 to hear author Robin Hanson and me.
Tomorrow, June 7, at 11 a.m., at the Cato Institute in Washingon, D.C., George Mason University economist and transhumanist Robin Hanson will present insights from his new book, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth. I will be making some comments on the book and joining the discussion with the audience. From my Reason review of the book:
Move over, humans; the emulations are coming and our world is going to get really weird. That's the premise of the George Mason economist Robin Hanson's fascinating new book, The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth, a worthy addition to the growing canon of visionary literature about exponential technological progress. The book tries to discern how the world will change when it becomes possible to upload human minds into computational substrates.
Hanson argues that three supporting technologies are required to achieve this: fast, cheap computers; fast, cheap brain scanners; and detailed and effective models of brain cells. Once all three become available later this century, it will be possible to scan a human brain and emulate it on computer hardware. At that point we'll enter the Age of Emulation—or the Age of Em, for short. And then what?
Come and find out. Cato urges folks to register this morning for the event tomorrow. Go here to register. See you tomorrow.
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The book tries to discern how the world will change when it becomes possible to upload human minds into computational substrates.
I’m sure that is possible. Right after cold fusion, true AI, and practical electric cars.
s: Come on by and share your criticisms.
*gauntlet thrown*
Hinduism for the 21st century will include reincarnation life-redux’s such as coffeemaker, rice-cooker, and toilet-timer.
Butlerian Jihad in …3…2…1…
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. “
Two words Ron positional good.
Damn Kurzweil…
But when will Ronald Bailey comment on the 5th Dimension classic The Age of Aquarius?
A mind, something shared by all living creatures, in its minimal form differentiates between inside and outside, self and other. It doesn’t need a computational substrate, it doesn’t need even a single neuron.
That is some authentic frontier gibberish, right there.
If you need clarification, don’t be shy. Just ask. I’m happy to discuss this with you.
Is Timecube involved?
Nothing so special. Every living being, even single celled organisms, has the ability to distinguish between self and other. Neurons, even neural networks, aren’t required.
Every living being, even single celled organisms, has the ability to distinguish between self and other.
Do they?
“Do they?”
Those organisms that don’t eat themselves certainly do.
I dunno. Nature creating an organism that can sense other objects nearby hardly rises to the level of having a “sense of self”- at least in the philosophical sense.
That’s like saying oil and water have a sense of self in that they’re able to distinguish each other when placed in the same vessel.
“That’s like saying oil and water have a sense of self in that they’re able to distinguish each other when placed in the same vessel.”
We can use basic chemistry to explain the behaviour of oil and water. It’s well understood. How living beings do this is still an unsolved mystery. I admit the whole field of amoeba ontology isn’t going to take off soon, but I think that the sense of self/other at some level is shared by all living creatures and does not depend on a particular configuration of brain cells. Without such a sense a computer is just that, a device that performs computation.
“That’s like saying oil and water have a sense of self in that they’re able to distinguish each other when placed in the same vessel.”
There are those who have no problem with that. They are called vitalists, and they believe that all matter is infused with a life-force. But that’s beside my point though I do find the vitalist position attractive from a philosophical pov, but scientifically not persuasive.
That is some authentic frontier gibberish, right there.
+1 Rapture of the Nerds