Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by RangerScience 3369 days ago
Eh. Brain stem, reptile brain, mammal brain, primate brain, neocortex, cybercortex.

Half my mind is already in cyberspace, why not make it half my brain, too?

Edit: Dystopias don't come from technologies, they come from people being shitty.
2 comments
mysterydip 3369 days ago
I am fine with using computers, mobile devices, VR/AR, etc. as long as I have the ability to disconnect and walk away, fix or replace.

What happens with the equivalent of drive-by ransomware on your brain? Send bitcoin to this address or we permanently give you a migraine?

link
RangerScience 3369 days ago
Make the part that can interact with the outside world removable. Only keep the mesh and the external connection, which could (maybe?) be stateless, since (maybe) it would just be all the mesh connection points. Nothing to "hack" (without physical access), nothing to persist the hack.
link
baq 3369 days ago
we can invent new technologies, but we can't stop people from being shitty.

(OTOH we're talking about a technology that could potentially directly modify human psyche, so even that isn't clear anymore :))

link
kybernetikos 3369 days ago
> we can invent new technologies, but we can't stop people from being shitty.

Since it's this that is the primary reason that all of the next generation of technologies are incredibly dangerous existential risks, and is related to why other mitigations for existential risks are underfunded compared to the grand projects of being shitty to each other, it seems to me that fixing this should be the main priority of human research.

It involves coming up with at least workable answers to a lot of difficult questions and is a bit of an ethical minefield, but if you believe, as I am inclined to that the alternative is extinction, it seems pretty important to at least make a stab at it.

link