I have no exposure to connectomes - or really anything quite like this (as opposed to good ol’ fashioned perceptrons) - so forgive my following uninformed question:

Can someone explain if this software is ethical?

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jephs 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If your circle of empathy includes fruit flies, fuck no, we murdered so many of those guys to figure out how their tiny brains work.

If you do not think of fruit flies as moral patients, sure, yeah, who cares, they're like just fruit flies you know?

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janalsncm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Can someone explain if this software is ethical?

Probably not. People have been coming up with ethical frameworks for thousands of years and we have yet to come to a consensus.

So it’s very unlikely that someone can say conclusively whether this is ethical or not, because that would require us to either 1) prove a single ethical framework is correct and then apply that framework to this software or 2) prove that under all possible ethical frameworks this software is either ethical or not ethical.

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_def 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Genuinely curious, is there like a simple list of competing ethical frameworks?

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janalsncm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There’s a list here, not sure if it’s the best one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics

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jasonjayr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not to drop any spoilers (hide this comment before reading further ....)

But "The Amazing Digital Circus" explores this concept relating to human brain scans, and how the 'simulated' brains would react under simulation.

	▲	SamBam 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Similarly, the story Lena by qntm.[1] It describes in part how some volunteer brain scans are actually quite agreeable to work with until they work for too many hours, and then they get fussy, but it's cool, you can always reboot them. But you need to hide from them the fact that it's been decades since they were scanned and uploaded, or they'll realize how long they've been slaves for. 1. https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

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viccis 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Honestly pretty funny that you gave a (fairly useless) metaethical answer instead of responding to the actual meaning, which was clearly soliciting ethical judgments about it.

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lp4v4n an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How could this be anti-ethical? You're just running a very complex algorithm in your machine.

	▲	j16sdiz 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		When one truly believes: 0) Subjecting fruitfly life to this kind of treatment is unethical. 1) Life is just physics in action. 2) Physics are just algorithm (or our physical world is a simulation) It is not hard to understand why they think it is unethical. My question are 1) is all life equal? 2) is all suffering unethical? 3) is this world materialistic or are there something out there? 4) should a list of items begin with 0 or 1?

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hellohello2 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes I can, no problem. First figure out how consciousness works and tell me, then I'll be able to explain if the software is ethical or not. Its simple really.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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ramraj07 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do you think it wont be?

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twothreeone 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, one obvious question is if the simulated brain experiences pain, or more generally can it suffer? And if so, how would we tell.

	▲	fluoridation an hour ago \| parent [-]
		What does "suffering" mean? Define your boolean function, apply it to the state of the program, and you'll know if the program is currently suffering.