And in the I-Have-No-Mouth-And-I-Must-Scream Dept. | Scientists Connect 16 Mini Brains Made of Human Tissue to Create a "Living Computer"

Listen if we're going to comprehend the man-made horrors we need to build a captive mind transfixed in agony to clarify its tortured sight

lovecraftian horror setting where humanity reacts to the elder god problem by using genetic modification and cloning technology to engineer a brain capable of comprehending all of the laws of reality and therefore using them, but in constant suffering due to the mental stress of understanding it all
- This is warhammer 40k
- just build a giant bong to supply it with weed, and an apparatus capable of eating and digesting beans and sausage and cheap beer
we have to build the agony machine to know the true depths of agony

if this had been the site of the oakland meat spill we'd all be speaking meatese right now

They would've fused into the perfect organism.

Good thing there is a recognized and measurable definition of consciousness, because otherwise there would be no way to know if these thousands of little brains were being tortured with every computation.

Jk nobody knows what is the threshold or activity associated with consciousness so nobody has any clue what messing with brain organoids is doing ethically.

How does one genuinely do an experiment like this without being way too uncomfortable to continue?
- There was an experiment at my uni that involved opening up live kitten skulls and attaching electrodes to their open brains. They got PhD student applications.
  
  Trust me there's always someone whose marks are low enough and who's desire to be a scientist is high enough.
  
  I don't think this is a particularly problematic experiment if proper ethics procedures are taken, we do shit to brain tissue all the time.
  
  Of course proper procedures were not taken.
- It blows my mind that these types of studies are being approved by Research Ethics Boards at Universities. I get that start ups aren't accountable, but these REBs are people that have the power to shut down this kind of research and just don't.
- Same way they eat lunch I imagine. They don't consider them important enough to be able to suffer.
I honestly can't tell if people are misunderstanding how these so-called "brains" were created due to how sensationalist the media titles have been. They're highly specialized stem cells and they're similarity to actual brain tissue is minimal.

Edit: Since some people can't read, what I meant is that these scientists aren't taking brain tissue from actual people.
- So, neuronal stem cells, induced into neurons that group together into 3D groupings of about 10,000 cells, which transmit neuronal impulses, and create connections between neighbouring cells -- and are created specifically because they are capable of taking inputs and processing them into outputs...are not like neuronal tissue?
  
  They are human neurons, made specifically to act like neurons.
  
  My point is that nobody knows what a thought is, or what drives consciousness. Does the transmission of signals across neuronal tissue create consciousness? I don't know, and nobody else does either.

they used 1000 brain organoids the size of an electrode (fairly large) for this what-the-hell

also the study was done by the swiss and italians

creating a thousand tormented souls for "progress"
- they want to use it in datacenters to reduce carbon emissions
- If this is conscious then every computer in the world is conscious

Can we stop startups please

No one should be starting businesses, especially involving technology. Deeply unhinged and immoral behavior to do so.

Listen, if those businesses involve feeding and clothing people, putting them in free or super-affordable housing, or transiting the masses to and from work, then I don't want to hear about them, Jack!

this should definitely be illegal wtf

A German guy (Helmut Kentler) was allowed by his government to rehouse orphans with known pedophiles to encourage what he claimed would be sexually fulfilling relationships(????) for both "participants".

The European brainpan that would allow that wouldn't even flinch at this so I'm not at all surprised.
- what the FUCK
  
  he justified his program to the senate with cw ableism
  
  spoiler
  
  "These people only endured these moronic boys because they were in love and infatuated with them."
  
  Imagine being considered so unlovable as a child by your government that they willingly hand you off to pedophiles. DEATH TO GERMANY.
- "The benefits are obvious, though some misguided species may view the transmutation of individuals into computing chips as morally questionable."
The only way I could see this being ethical is if they know for sure these lumps of neurons aren't conscious, which I don't think you can really claim with any certainty right now.
could be ok, too bad it's done by capitalists; remember, in the west the prevailing attitude to stuff like stem research is also "ew gross" and china is beating our ass in that area
- there is no fucking way this would be ethical. we still don't know how consciousness even works so this could be creating beings, tormenting them, and then killing them hundreds of times a second for all we know. i think your average Chinese scientist would be disgusted that you'd even imply they would do this kind of thing. I am not approaching this from the perspective that technology is scary because I don't know what it is- I'm approaching from the perspective that this technology is scary because nobody knows what it is.
  
  in the west the prevailing attitude to stuff like stem research is also "ew gross"
  
  less because of China Bad propaganda and mostly because people like Elon Musk suck and people are realizing it. Also as someone who used to want to go into stem it IS gross, at least capitalist stem is, which is the only kind US citizens are exposed to. You don't understand the depravity of US Stem until you take an engineering class and they start cheerfully talking about Lockheed-Martin.
  
  this is some "cannibalism is ok because anti-cannibalism was spread by colonial England" level take. i'm sorry, i don't mean to be harsh, its just wild to me

One day an ethics department will be able to tell for sure if this cluster is conscious. When it hits that threshold we will make it sign a contract stating it has no rights to wages and then work it harder.

They will simply define consciousness to exclude the cluster and save HR some hassle.

no-mouth-must-scream

Would love to see the ethics committee report on this one.

I'm pretty doubtful that this specific brain tissue is conscious, but I'm pretty certain this will be iterated for a couple decades until it's veeeery conscious and veeeery fucked up

The thing is, nobody knows what is and isn't conscious. Are bees conscious? They have very few brain cells but still communicate.

I am confused how anyone in this field can be so confident that something isnt conscious when nobody knows what consiousness really is.
- Yeah I guess I just mean I doubt at this early stage that it's gonna be more aware than an insect or something.
  
  I just managed to find a quote that the ganglia in this experiment have 10,000 cells each, and are pretty separate from one another. And an ant brain is 250,000 neurons, so even if these 16 brains were folded into one, it would still be around half an ant's brain. If some science experiment out there is torturing one really stupid ant, I don't think that has any interesting ethical implications.
  
  But yeah, this is literally some venture capital research entity, they're obviously gonna look for more and more power until this shit gets real, real dark. There's gonna be whistleblowers and shit in like 10 years.