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An Organic Computer Using Four Wired-Together Rat Brains
Jason Koebler writes: The brains of four rats have been interconnected to create a "Brainet" capable of completing computational tasks better than any one of the rats would have been able to on its own. Explains Duke University's Dr. Miguel Nicolelis: "Recently, we proposed that Brainets, i.e. networks formed by multiple animal brains, cooperating and exchanging information in real time through direct brain-to-brain interfaces, could provide the core of a new type of computing device: an organic computer. Here, we describe the first experimental demonstration of such a Brainet, built by interconnecting four adult rat brains."
Really! What could possibly go wrong?
id make a comment about mice being input devices but this is just rediculos
+1, Creepy
Does it run Natalie ... I mean, Linux?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Anyfour.
Humor aside,there are serious ethical issues here.
If an alien race as much above us as we are above rats were to come here and began to use Humans in like manner, how would we react/feel/moralize?
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Isn't this how the Borg operate? Collective thought working towards a single goal. Interconnected minds sharing problem solving, which is how they quickly adapt.
I for one welcome our new rat overlords....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Well at least they didn't use human brains. Although I expect I should add Yet to the statement....
In Soviet Russia, rats' brains you!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We never were the dominant species. I'd say E. coli, or possibly some underground species of Archae are the dominant life on Earth.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well, they were completing tasks for rewards, so probably not that bad. Worst of it is the electrode implants, which aren't really that bad. Lots of humans have stuff like that.
The linkage is reversable too. Really not that bad. What will be interesting is the human applications once we get non invasive nerve gear. Brain node on an ASI might be an interesting job.
Experiments should require the informed consent of all subjects. Until we can communicate with rats, we should not use them in experiments. Get informed consent from humans. If you can't, then do a non-destructive experiment, a simulation. Do not use live creatures without their consent.
Well maybe they could also put our brains into a kind of simulation, so that we didn't know that they were using us in this way. Like we could be sitting in little pods, wired up to drive their computing power, while we think we're walking around in the world, living our lives. In that case, we wouldn't feel anything about it.
That is, we wouldn't feel anything about it until Keanu Reeves liberates us using magic kung fu.
I take it you won't be using any antibiotics or other medication anytime soon then. No one seemed to ask those poor bacteria or viruses if they consented. If you have an issue with that, why is your arbitrary line that covers rats any better than the one I've suggested?
How long will it take someone to port Doom on them/it? I'm sure nothing would go wrong with that.
Be seeing you...
Ahem, Beorat cluster.
The main problem with your argument is that you are granting greater capabilities to the rats than they have. I'm not talking about hypothetical souls, I'm talking about comprehensive power. The rats are not smart enough to understand any of what we are proposing doing to them.
Secondly, as below, as above fails many ways. It is not transitive. Just as humans ascribe greater rights to a intellectually challenged human than we do to mammals and greater rights to mammals than we do to bacteria (you don't hear about bacteria abuse cases), intelligent aliens should grant greater rights a talking, tool using humans than they do to non-talking, non-tool using mammals. If they don't, then they are no better than criminals that abuse animals.
Rights are not an all or nothing affair - they are granted based on various factors, including intelligence.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
is as dumb as ALL of us. Now the wisdom of crowds can generate tulip manias faster than *ever* before. What a great time to be alive....
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"What makes you think aliens aren't doing it already?"
A La the Matrix? Perhaps.
"If they are doing it, we wouldn't care."
Once we knew, we would care.
"Because we couldn't notice - anymore than the rats do."
They don't? How do you know?
"Those rats will definitely do a lot better than the rats that I called the exterminator on last week."
Not necessarily. Are they confused, frightened, in pain? Dead might be better.
"The main problem with your argument is that you are granting greater capabilities to the rats than they have. I'm not talking about hypothetical souls, I'm talking about comprehensive power. The rats are not smart enough to understand any of what we are proposing doing to them."
Smart is only part of the issue. What about what happens to them as these things are done to them? What do they experience? Are we right in doing it to them? Why is this needed?
"Secondly, as below, as above fails many ways. It is not transitive. Just as humans ascribe greater rights to a intellectually challenged human than we do to mammals and greater rights to mammals than we do to bacteria (you don't hear about bacteria abuse cases), intelligent aliens should grant greater rights a talking, tool using humans than they do to non-talking, non-tool using mammals. If they don't, then they are no better than criminals that abuse animals."
It succeeds in many ways. And why does it have to be transitive.
We do ascribe greater rights as creatures climb in intellectual capability.
Why should that allow us the right to tamper?
And are we being criminals that abuse animals in doing things like this?
"Rights are not an all or nothing affair - they are granted based on various factors, including intelligence."
I see your point. Pain and discomfort and utility to the species being so used should be part of those "various factors".
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I think they crossed the line. Just wee bit. I mean, I'm not a rat lover or anything. But if kept clean, as in a pet, they are pretty damn cute. Smart too. Not as smart as my dog IMHO -- HEY! Let's wire up four dog brains next! Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. How about a monkey? Why not!
These animals have a consciousness. You can't deny that. No, it is not at the human level, but a life none-the-less. How fucking freaky cruel is it to take a consciousness and tie it together with three others in some form to just see what happens? How freaked out were these rats in their little disembodied brains.
Cruel.
I for one welcome our hyper-intelligent synchronized-brain rat overlords!
Pinky and the Brain.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If an alien race as much above us as we are above rats were to come here and began to use Humans in like manner, how would we react/feel/moralize?
Well, there's one way to find out -- keep wiring rat brains together until they become smarter than us, give them instructions on human testing, and see what they come up with and how we feel about it.
Get your paws off me, you damn dirty multirat!
The line the OP suggested isn't arbitrary, it's pretty objective. Beings with a nervous system and a brain suffer more than beings with just a nervous system, which in turn suffer more than being with mere nociception, which in turn suffer something, compared to being with none of those, who suffer nothing.
Not harming being who can feel excruciating pain would cause our scientific research to stop? No, it'd just advance at a slight slower speed.
So, why then do we harm them? For most people, because we can. And if "might makes right" is what most go with, all the power to them. When the ethics of might eventually bites them back, it's nothing but their own fault.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Of course I haven't yet RTFA but it must be some really smart experimental setup:
1. Given the approximately logarithmic relationship between the number of neurons and capabilities, it's a wonder that scaling from 200 million cells to 800 million brain cells was even detectable... ... especially given that the interface must have been incredibly narrow band, noisy, and in general inferior interconnect among the brains.
2.
Suffering is rather subjective and considering that the outcome of a lot of research is the death of the subject, does it matter much whether it was a rat or a paramecium? Neither appear to have shown any sapience so pain is a useless metric unless someone is testing pain responses.
Let's turn the question around and ask how much suffering would you be willing to inflict to rats if it would yield a cure for cancer? Can you contemplate or measure the reduction in suffering that would reduce to humanity? What's 100 years of suffering in millions of rats against the rest of the life of the universe and trillions of humans of suffering prevented?
Obviously we can't know in advance the results of any experiment, but that's what review boards are for. Not every scientist is a Mengele and stopping progress until we have all of the answers is likely objectively worse from the point of amount of suffering inflicted than using animals in laboratory experiments.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it assumes a linear progression in research, when by all measures it seems to be exponential.
From a certain perspective this might seem like the argument works against my point, because the earlier we do something would mean its result would be multiplied by orders of magnitude later on. However, that'd be a stochastic reasoning, because there's a point at which the result was achieved. Therefore, the distinction is between a linear delay vs. an exponential growth.
In other words, if we wait 50 years because we don't want to cause excessive suffering to animals, the trillions of human beings in our future light cone would most probably "feel" it as a delay of seconds, if that much.
IMHO then, reasoning from the perspective of extremely future benefits isn't useful. At most, only the near future is actually affected. And even that might be just a minor delay, since computation and simulated models are themselves advanced so much that in a few years they'll outpace anything doable by directly manipulating living beings.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I understand your dilemma.
I think that part of the difference is
A, the harm they can do to you
B, the inability to have cooperation with them.
If you could negotiate with them ( stay away from the house, I'll refrain from killing you, maybe spend part of the money saved on traps and poisons on some food, left away from the house periodically ), maybe you would. I would. But, we cant. So, what are our alternatives? Kill them, drive them away, or put up with the damage they do, the harm they can do to us and our loved ones.
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