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Comment by olewhalehunter | Hacker News Reader

if this thing is "running" this is horrendously unethical

Oh I agree - but I don't think that's likely. At 5 weeks a human fetus isn't viable in any way shape or form; this 'model' has even less of a case for, well, being considered alive seeing as it lacks a vascular system.

Reading the article again, this model seems less of a 'hey we have a brain in a jar lets poke it' and more of a platform for studying neurological diseases/ethically generating brain tissue structure, as opposed to cells. This seems more like raw material, rather than harvesting life.

I would not be comfortable with an alien of superior intelligence prodding my brain on the grounds that it had the functioning capacity of one of their 5 week old foetuses.

Neither me, but you and I have agency and free will. This model has neither of those things.

I think the crucial question is does this 'model' have the capacity to develop those things. If it does, that creates a serious problem for continuing research along these lines. If not, then I don't really see them problem - in that case I would compare this to growing and running test on kidney or liver.

>Neither me, but you and I have agency and free will.

"These humans, they might have agency and free will, but they don't have fuqismatk or missildrigg like we do and so it's ethical"

There's a difference between prodding your brain or prodding a brain modeled after your brain, which doesn't have a way to sense things prodding it.

let me help you take your example further:

"These humans, they might have agency and free will, but they don't have fuqismatk and missildrigg, so us gakimiking and monikiking their brain should be ok."

Morality we know is encoded in human brains anyway. We may not like it, but that doesn't mean it's not moral from alien's POV. And yes, in such case, tough luck for us.

If there were actually a reasonable case for why fuqismatk or missildrigg were necessary rather than arbitrary criteria for the thing to be bad, they might have a point. If I found out an alien had been doing something to me that is imperceptible and harmless from my perspective because I lack fuqismatk or missildrigg, I wouldn't feel any ill will toward that alien.

> you and I have agency and free will.

I don't buy this argument, I only feel like I have free will, as a model of my brain would. How could you convince me otherwise?

What do you mean by free will?

Under what conditions would you say an entity would (hypothetically) have "free will"?

And it has a retina. When they're allowed to mature further they'll have sensory input.... and output? This is screwing with my imagination.

Recommended reading: Permutation City by Greg Egan. The storyline meanders a bit but there are so many ideas packed into that book that I still think about.

It's unclear how a brain would run without blood.

Diffusion. Oxygen levels in tissue are about 3%, compared to 20% in the atmosphere. In fact, that was quite a finding back in ... the late 80s I think: they could coax fibroblasts to divide many more generations simply by incubating them in a low oxygen environment. Free radicals are brutal.

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