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Comment by FrustratedMonky

13 hours ago

Is this a reference to "Torment Nexus"?

While I'm sure that subconsciously influenced what I wrote, it was more a general jab at the sentiment that negative externalities can always be justified so long as a technology has users who prefer to use it.

  • Ah, I thought you were just referring to the decades-long use of the most massive supercomputers to simulate nuclear arsenal maintenance and explosions (maybe literally at the molecular/atomic/sub-atomic level).

  • Yeah. Did you see article that they made a brain organoid (actual brain neurons on a chip) play DOOM?. What are those neurons experiencing?

    • > What are those neurons experiencing?

      A reasonable explanation is that a few neurons probably don't have conscience so they can't really experience anything.

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    • I hadn't until you mentioned it but now I have! I expect one day they'll generate a language model on one and then we can just ask it, assuming they don't give it a special rule about never describing its experiences.

      3 replies →