Typing speed is very much a bottleneck when I'm washing dishes, at least.
talk then
Readit Newslennxa commented on Alterego: Thought to Text alterego.io/... · Posted by u/oldfuture
lennxa commented on Launch HN: Embedder (YC S25) – Claude code for embedded software · Posted by u/bobwei1
how are you going about this? do you intend to train/finetune your own models, or scaffold frontier models with prompts+tools?
lennxa commented on We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains asteriskmag.com/issues/09... · Posted by u/l1n
Isn't it the goal of https://openworm.org/ ?
please skim the article. or paste it into an llm and ask the same question.
lennxa commented on We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains asteriskmag.com/issues/09... · Posted by u/l1n
I sympathise with you, but I'd take a much more optimistic view on this. If death is oblivion, then you won't be able to feel sad that you don't exist since there won't be a consciousness to interpret these feelings.
If there's consciousness after death (in whatever form), then it is clearly not the end, just a part of a much longer - possibly infinite - journey. Even better!
In either case: it's better to stop worrying about what may come after and enjoy the journey to the fullest!
Hi short_sells_poo, in Hinduism, afaict you - your soul (Ātman [1]) is stuck in a loop of birth-death-rebirth (Saṃsāra [2]). and this is not good, and you live your life in the best way (Dharma [3], Karma [4]) to attain liberation (Moksha [5]), to be one with the God (Brahman [6]), to end the cycle of rebirths.
Thought you might find it interesting.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80tman_(Hinduism) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%81ra [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Hinduism [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman
lennxa commented on We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains asteriskmag.com/issues/09... · Posted by u/l1n
Many spiritual and philosophical traditions claim the immortality of the soul. Socrates argues forcefully for it in Phaedo.
Nearly all mystics (and many if not most neuroscientists) also come to the conclusion that our world of the senses is an illusion. This doesn't mean that the illusion doesn't have rigid laws, but it does challenge the materialistic assumption that the soul, or consciousness, becomes nothing at the time of physical/biological death.
If that is too fuzzy and mystical, I'd also suggest reflecting more deeply on the concept of technologically facilitated immortality of physical life on earth. For me, it is clearly a dead end. It can only lead to a complete annihilation of every human value.
> For me, it is clearly a dead end. It can only lead to a complete annihilation of every human value.
could you please elaborate on this? why is it clearly a dead end and why would human values clearly end? any resources you can point to would be great. thank you.
lennxa commented on We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains asteriskmag.com/issues/09... · Posted by u/l1n
Mortality possibly defines plenty of our behaviour and development: while people usually take the default assumption that we'd go in a positive direction without that constraint, I do not think it's a given.
Just like we can't really predict weather (as another complex system) too far ahead, we can't really predict how something this significant changes brain development — IMHO at least.
Say the lifespan doesn't become infinity, but rather 10x ~ 800years. How do you imagine things to change? It would certainly mean that people can take up much more ambitious projects instead of the usual ~30 year constraint.
I do share your view that positive direction is not a given, but what evidence do we have that it would be worse than right now. Maybe we should be cautious of the risks.
lennxa commented on We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains asteriskmag.com/issues/09... · Posted by u/l1n
> If humanity has only one goal, and that goal was to achieve immortality for all humans henceforth [1], that would be a noble cause for our species.
Except that's not the goal and never will be the goal. If some immortality technology is ever created, it won't be for all. The Elon Musks, Sam Altmans, and Donald Trumps of the world will live forever. You will die.
> I hate that those I care about will cease to exist.
> Fuck death.
There's a much simpler and more achievable solution to that problem: change your belief system.
Could you elaborate on the belief system?
Are you saying the gp needs to rethink their ideas on death? Wouldn't that be like accepting defeat because the problem is hard?
lennxa commented on We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains asteriskmag.com/issues/09... · Posted by u/l1n
>I hate that those I care about will cease to exist.
I need to croak so that there's room in the world for my great-grandchildren.
>If humanity has only one goal,
Humanity pursues, best that I can tell, extinction instead of immortality. It has this really weird premature transcendence hangup.
AGI might end up being misaligned. But the first alignment problem:
Humans are misaligned
lennxa commented on We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains asteriskmag.com/issues/09... · Posted by u/l1n
Just wire neurons (human or otherwise) to computers, and see what happens.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-03-05/cortical-labs...
create a brain... and make it play doom?
lennxa commented on We can, must, and will simulate nematode brains asteriskmag.com/issues/09... · Posted by u/l1n
What makes you claim that? I have not seen proof of that (on the contrary, we don't have smooth emulation of animal like movement yet, which brains figure out pretty fast)
i would rather ask one to think, what evidence is there that we cannot do brain on non-gooey stuff?
If i take every atom/molecule from one brain (assume a snapshot in time) and replicate it one by one at a different location, and replicate the external IO (stimulus, glucose...), what evidence do we have that this won't work? likely not much
Now instead of replicating ALL the atoms/molecules exactly, I replace one of the higher level entities like a single neuron with a computational equivalent - a tiny computer of sorts that perfectly replaces a neuron within the error bars of the biological neuron. Will this not work? I mean, will it not behave in the same exact way as the original biological brain with consciousness? (We have some evidence that we can replace certain circuits in the brain with man-made equivalents and it continues to work.)
You know where I'm going with this... FindAll, ReplaceAll. Why would it be any different?
---
If i had to argue that it wouldn't be the same, here's a quick braindump off the top of my head:
- some entities like neurons literally cannot be replicated without the goo. physics limitation? but the existence of the goo is a proof of existence. but still, maybe the goo has properties that cannot be replicated with other substances
- our model of the physical world has serious limitations. on the order of pre-knowing-speed-of-light-limitation. maybe putting the building blocks together does not create the full thing. maybe building blocks + magic is needed to create the whole.
- other fun limitation of our physical model