Post by goldensandslash on Jun 6, 2017 23:03:37 GMT
So, if you read that title and wondered "What the hell is a SmartBrain?", don't worry, you're not alone. That's because I coined the term.
In today's world, we have devices called SmartPhones. You may have heard of them. Heck, you may be using one right now to read this. SmartPhones are devices that carry enormous amounts of data, enough to rival even computers, and they fit in your pocket. Close to 100% of the population in developed countries has them. They are everywhere. In the past five years alone, the number of smart phone users has doubled and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
A SmartPhone can do almost anything. They are phones, they are web browsers, they are word processors, they are photo cameras, they are video cameras, they are PDAs, they are watches, they are music players, they are calculators, they are video games. There is very little that you can't do with a SmartPhone. And what you can't do, you can always wait until someone makes an app for that.
Most people with SmartPhones are addicted. Go ahead and keep your phone in a drawer for a day and watch how much you miss it. Heck, look around and see every time someone else uses a phone. Maybe when you're out getting lunch with your co-workers, you'll be the only one without a phone in their hands. It's an eye-opening experience to do this. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't done it before.
But there's one thing that SmartPhones can never do: access information contained only inside your brain. And for that, we have SmartBrains. This is the next step after SmartPhones: a similar device that gets implanted into your brain that you can effortlessly use with direct synaptic controls. For now, this is something out of science fiction, but steps are being made to work on it: www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-computer-interface-ai-cyborgs
I have no doubt that SmartBrains will exist soon. It'll happen at some point during this century.
With a SmartBrain, the world opens to a wide variety of possibilities. Suppose that you're partying in Las Vegas one weekend, but need to get back to work in London on the following Monday. Don't worry about it. All you have to do is tell your SmartBrain to adjust your visual field to show you the office, and tell it to send a signal to everyone else's SmartBrains to photoshop their visual field to show you as being in the office. And similarly with auditory and tactile functions. Well, if you're doing that, then you effectively are in the office, even if your physical body is not. Well, congratulations! You just invented teleportation! You never have to move your physical body again. Aren't SmartBrains awesome?
Well, yes, but there are downsides. Very, very big downsides.
Let's talk about social networking. This is when you socialize with other people online, like WyvernIRC does. And then you get harassed by a bunch of trolls. Every freaking time. Either from real people who are just being trolls, or from spam-bots. Now, most places have a function to get rid of these users. On WyvernIRC, we try to kill any spam-bot that shows up. But most places are a lot bigger than WyvernIRC and can't afford to keep someone on watch 24/7 to see if any spam-bots show up. So instead, they incorporate a block function.
Essentially, if a user annoys you too much, you block them. This prevents you from seeing them and them from seeing you. WyvernIRC has a similar function in /ignore.
Here's how SmartBrains would do it: they'd photoshop your vision to hide them from you. And maybe it's not limited to just people. Maybe if there's an object you find offensive, such as, say, a flag with a swastika on it, you can block that image as well.
Eventually, your SmartBrain will learn what offends you and start blocking people and things automatically, the same way Facebook only shows you posts that are related to your interests.
And then we come to the next step: an idea. Let's say someone throws out an idea that you disagree with: I think that affordable health care is a good idea. Well, a SmartBrain may learn that you don't like that idea, and then block that person. Maybe someone invents something that you disagree with, and then that thing gets blocked. You keep blocking ideas.
Now, the closest equivalent that we have today is Facebook unfriending. If a friend doesn't like what you're saying, they unfriend you. But here's the kicker: Facebook never tells you that they did so. SmartBrains would likely function the same way. They block ideas without you even realizing it. Suppose the religious were able to find definitive proof that God exists. The atheists would be so offended by this that their SmartBrains would block the idea, and thus, they would never know that this discovery was made in the first place. Forever.
Right now, in 2017, we live in a world where the political divide between liberals and conservatives is at an all-time high. Neither side wants to even make an attempt to trust the other. With SmartBrains, each side could effectively live in their own world, separate from the other. Unaware that the other side's ideas even still exist at all. SmartBrains would be implanted at birth, and then you'd never know about the other world at all.
And so it would go on: humans living in two worlds, unable to interact with each other, despite living in the same space.
There is, of course, one more aspect to address. Some people may not be comfortable with the idea that what their senses seem to show around them isn't, in fact, the real world. In that case, your SmartBrain will simply block out the idea of SmartBrains, you'd forget that you ever had one installed in you. You'd forget that they ever existed. You'd assume they haven't been invented yet. You'd think that this is merely a fictional universe, or a distant future. You'd think it isn't the world we live in now. And if you attempt to do research to find out, any results that confirm your worst fears would be blocked from your brain so you wouldn't know you found them. To you, it would be as though SmartBrains don't exist.
Which then begs the question: do they exist now, and you simply blocked out the idea of them? It's impossible to know.
Sleep well tonight.
In today's world, we have devices called SmartPhones. You may have heard of them. Heck, you may be using one right now to read this. SmartPhones are devices that carry enormous amounts of data, enough to rival even computers, and they fit in your pocket. Close to 100% of the population in developed countries has them. They are everywhere. In the past five years alone, the number of smart phone users has doubled and it shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
A SmartPhone can do almost anything. They are phones, they are web browsers, they are word processors, they are photo cameras, they are video cameras, they are PDAs, they are watches, they are music players, they are calculators, they are video games. There is very little that you can't do with a SmartPhone. And what you can't do, you can always wait until someone makes an app for that.
Most people with SmartPhones are addicted. Go ahead and keep your phone in a drawer for a day and watch how much you miss it. Heck, look around and see every time someone else uses a phone. Maybe when you're out getting lunch with your co-workers, you'll be the only one without a phone in their hands. It's an eye-opening experience to do this. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't done it before.
But there's one thing that SmartPhones can never do: access information contained only inside your brain. And for that, we have SmartBrains. This is the next step after SmartPhones: a similar device that gets implanted into your brain that you can effortlessly use with direct synaptic controls. For now, this is something out of science fiction, but steps are being made to work on it: www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-computer-interface-ai-cyborgs
I have no doubt that SmartBrains will exist soon. It'll happen at some point during this century.
With a SmartBrain, the world opens to a wide variety of possibilities. Suppose that you're partying in Las Vegas one weekend, but need to get back to work in London on the following Monday. Don't worry about it. All you have to do is tell your SmartBrain to adjust your visual field to show you the office, and tell it to send a signal to everyone else's SmartBrains to photoshop their visual field to show you as being in the office. And similarly with auditory and tactile functions. Well, if you're doing that, then you effectively are in the office, even if your physical body is not. Well, congratulations! You just invented teleportation! You never have to move your physical body again. Aren't SmartBrains awesome?
Well, yes, but there are downsides. Very, very big downsides.
Let's talk about social networking. This is when you socialize with other people online, like WyvernIRC does. And then you get harassed by a bunch of trolls. Every freaking time. Either from real people who are just being trolls, or from spam-bots. Now, most places have a function to get rid of these users. On WyvernIRC, we try to kill any spam-bot that shows up. But most places are a lot bigger than WyvernIRC and can't afford to keep someone on watch 24/7 to see if any spam-bots show up. So instead, they incorporate a block function.
Essentially, if a user annoys you too much, you block them. This prevents you from seeing them and them from seeing you. WyvernIRC has a similar function in /ignore.
Here's how SmartBrains would do it: they'd photoshop your vision to hide them from you. And maybe it's not limited to just people. Maybe if there's an object you find offensive, such as, say, a flag with a swastika on it, you can block that image as well.
Eventually, your SmartBrain will learn what offends you and start blocking people and things automatically, the same way Facebook only shows you posts that are related to your interests.
And then we come to the next step: an idea. Let's say someone throws out an idea that you disagree with: I think that affordable health care is a good idea. Well, a SmartBrain may learn that you don't like that idea, and then block that person. Maybe someone invents something that you disagree with, and then that thing gets blocked. You keep blocking ideas.
Now, the closest equivalent that we have today is Facebook unfriending. If a friend doesn't like what you're saying, they unfriend you. But here's the kicker: Facebook never tells you that they did so. SmartBrains would likely function the same way. They block ideas without you even realizing it. Suppose the religious were able to find definitive proof that God exists. The atheists would be so offended by this that their SmartBrains would block the idea, and thus, they would never know that this discovery was made in the first place. Forever.
Right now, in 2017, we live in a world where the political divide between liberals and conservatives is at an all-time high. Neither side wants to even make an attempt to trust the other. With SmartBrains, each side could effectively live in their own world, separate from the other. Unaware that the other side's ideas even still exist at all. SmartBrains would be implanted at birth, and then you'd never know about the other world at all.
And so it would go on: humans living in two worlds, unable to interact with each other, despite living in the same space.
There is, of course, one more aspect to address. Some people may not be comfortable with the idea that what their senses seem to show around them isn't, in fact, the real world. In that case, your SmartBrain will simply block out the idea of SmartBrains, you'd forget that you ever had one installed in you. You'd forget that they ever existed. You'd assume they haven't been invented yet. You'd think that this is merely a fictional universe, or a distant future. You'd think it isn't the world we live in now. And if you attempt to do research to find out, any results that confirm your worst fears would be blocked from your brain so you wouldn't know you found them. To you, it would be as though SmartBrains don't exist.
Which then begs the question: do they exist now, and you simply blocked out the idea of them? It's impossible to know.
Sleep well tonight.