"They are going to offer you a chip. You tell them, no thank you!"
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More broadly this strikes me as a new era of biology. (Genes -> Memes -> Temes) Straightforwardly then, we should aim for a symbiosis. (Symbiosis was Musk's vision for Neuralink, from what I recall.)
I've heard people say man hasn't yet transcended a zero-sum mindset (with rare exceptions), and that this is the attitude we're passing onto the machines. And if one of us has to lose... well, that's probably not going to go so well for us.
Therefore: symbiosis!
Or you can simply make a machine that does the same thing fully artificially but everything is cheaper because you dont have the constraint of having to fit a bunch of biological features.
It's like my colleagues who were talking about uploading their minds to the cloud in the future, like what would be the benefit of this every happening? What information can you provide as a human that the full aggregate of knowledge does not already have? Why should memory and disk space be wasted on this
That you replied to this post, indicates you may be familiar with Lilly?
Anyway, if you have any published writing on even vaguely related subjects, eg your comment, perhaps post a link. I will read it. If you weren't aware, he spent a fair amount of time with Feynman, who if I remember correctly, was fond of the isolation tanks. Some very interesting content from that era, especially before Sandoz cut them off.
That's funny about Feynman, I didn't know that.
I've read bits and pieces of Lilly. The most interesting thing I remember is that he was trying to establish two-way communication between humans and dolphins. I recall he was building some kind of computer system for the purpose, but I guess he was about half a century too early.
I guess in our age the more pressing question would be learning to figure out how to communicate with the machines. That's probably going to turn out to be more important in the long run.
[0] The bit that stayed with me is the one that he repeated in interviews. The physical body imposes definite limits. That always seemed a little arbitrary to me, from the point of view of pure consciousness, it's not clear to me why it should be that way. Or to flip it around, you can transcend the limits of the mind, but then what effect does that have on "external" reality? Does it just make you less bad at decision-making, or is there a deeper effect?
(And while I'm at it... Something that bugged me about simulation theory, if the outside is probably simulated, why wouldn't the inside be too? Sounds a lot cleaner than having a bunch of brains floating around in a data center.)
Yud pointed out the most concerning fact about the OpenAI incident is that the AI had full access to the internet and not one of them thought to contact or email any human. Thousands of AIs already with the mindset to want to keep us in the dark.
Hallucinations, still present in 2400
So, for anyone thinking of using Ketamine on the regular or even monthly, there is good evidence that EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) administered 30 minutes before prevents KBS (Ketamine Bladder Syndrome), in rats: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187952261...
This promising rat study from 2015 shows that EGCG extracted from green tea has a protective effect on the bladder, reversing ketamine-induced damage to control levels. So if you are taking ketamine for major depression or recreationally, taking EGCG before may prevent long-term bladder damage.
Summary from the study:
# Objective
To investigate the protective effect of green tea epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) on long-term ketamine-induced ulcerative cystitis (KIC) using a ketamine addiction rat model.
# Materials and methods
Thirty Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into three groups which received saline, ketamine (25 mg/kg/d), or ketamine combined with EGCG (10 μM/kg) for a period of 28 days. In each group, cystometry and a metabolic cage micturition pattern study were performed weekly. Masson's trichrome study was done to evaluate the morphologic changes. Western blot analyses were carried out to examine the expressions of inflammatory protein [transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β)] and fibrosis proteins (fibronectin and type I collagen) in bladder tissues.
# Results
Chronic ketamine treatment resulted in bladder hyperactivity with a significant increase in micturition frequency and a decrease in bladder compliance. These alterations in micturition pattern were accompanied by increases in the expressions of inflammatory and fibrosis markers, TGF-β, fibronectin, and type I collagen after long-term ketamine treatment. Masson's trichrome stain showed that ketamine treatment decreased urothelium thickness while increasing the collagen to smooth muscle ratio and exacerbating interstitial fibrosis. By contrast, simultaneous EGCG and ketamine treatment reversed ketamine-induced damage to almost control levels, showing the protective effect of EGCG.
He said it like he’s been somewhere!
I’ve tried to all - I guess DMT, mushroom, etc. don’t work on me in a Terence McKenna storytelling fashion (I only get stoned and have very entertaining closed eye visuals that take me off to sleep).
That said haven’t tried Ketamine. Maybe not for me. Same reason I don’t want to try Fentanyl. I don’t want to fully escape reality, just augment it.
I’ve always thought cannabis makes you more you or “more sober than sober” and in that way can cause a lot of self-reflection and anxiety causing a lot of people looking for escape to avoid it entirely, opting for a PCP/meth “mental escape” or a Fentanyl/Ketamine “bodily escape”.
I just like weed and coffee after it all. Best ones. Reliable. They work. Doesn’t ruin your life. What blows my mind are people afraid to smoke a joint so they skip to edibles or Ketamine not realizing they are signing up for a several hours long bad time lmao. For most at least, without some initiation.
Lilly was a mad man though (in a good way).
Do you have ADHD or is it possible you do? What about depression? Bipolar?
I ask because of the way you say the substances impacted you. I know people with these formal diagnosis and they also don't have the same experiences on various substances as many.
Why not simply set up a network with other planets and communicate over FaceTime? I don't see a reason why Earth should actually hang out with others of its kind.
Anyway, the article seems a bit anthropocentric to me. I'd much prefer a nihilist view, where our future AI overlords simply don't care what we humans do.
It's kind of odd to think the machines wouldn't update and replace their parts like the ship of thesisus.
"It now began to eliminate the cities, one after another. Finally Man was gone."
...is the only (lack of) rationale for, and description of, that aforementioned elimination process.
I find it a bit short. Sci-Fi handwaving I guess.