SoylentRox t1_iyz0miz wrote on December 5, 2022 at 5:58 AM

Reply to comment by Desperate_Donut8582 in bit of a call back ;) by GeneralZain

The FDVR problem is "find a way to make human beings sense things, with as much fidelity as their own body has, from arbitrary virtual environments. Interface with their brain in such a way that they cognitively do not have any deterioration, and keep their body maintained such that they live indefinitely".

That's a big huge problem but it devolves into obvious subproblems. "make these samples of human motor homunculus in the lab stay alive. Inject signals into them and ensure the signal quality is the same as their own internal connections..."

For keeping a human body alive, well obviously you need to be able to keep individual organs alive. And know which proteins in blood chemistry are bad news and what to do in each situation.

It's a tree of subproblems. The 2 top level statements end up probably being millions of separate research tasks.

And the 'doctor' who has to keep you alive needs to know the results of all the millions of separate tasks, and make multiple decisions about your care every second, and make no errors so that you can enjoy FDVR for thousands of years...

See the problem? it's impossible without AI, and AI makes the problem easy.

I don't give a shit which countries you name, there are many. All it takes is one country that lets you do advanced medical procedures.

Redvolition t1_iz30sko wrote on December 6, 2022 at 2:18 AM

Much simpler to just isolate the brain and discard the body. You only have one point of failure now. A pig brain has been kept alive for hours after death in 2019.

I believe the first FDVR implementations might be some brain implant that doesn't attempt to preserve your body in any particular way, maybe from Neuralink or one of its competitors.

The second implementation might be a ship of Theseus kind of thing, in which nanotechnology gradually replaces biological tissue throughout your whole body, including your brain. These new components might allow for controlling emotional states and sensorial imput.

If this second implementation fails to materialize in the next 10 to 20 years, then the brain isolation pathway might gain early adopters and start being explored in the meantime.

If the gradual replacement via nanotech proves to be particularly difficult, it might even be the case that entire generations of humans will exists as isolated brains, with artificial forms of reproduction to keep the population levels.

SoylentRox t1_iz38wf7 wrote on December 6, 2022 at 3:21 AM

Sure. I agree more or less. I mean the body wouldn't actually be discarded per say. Keeping a brain alive by itself is hard. You would realistically provide the functions of a body with living human cells in artificial scaffolding in separate containers from the body. So everything can be carefully monitored for problems because the walls of the containers are clear. Whole thing in a nitrogen filled sterile chamber only robots can access.