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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

Any sufficiently advanced technology that is capable of resurrecting your brain/consciousness, is also capable of subjecting your digital consciousness to eternal torture worse than anything experienced by Man thus far. If you haven't already, check out Black Mirror's last episode: Black Museum. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, even if there's only an infinitesimal chance of it happening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Museum_(Black_Mirror)

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk

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This is a main element of DeLillo's latest book Zero K. A state-of-the-art secret facility is built in a middle of nowhere former Soviet bloc country. It's financed by ultra wealthy people whose bodies are disassembled and frozen with the hopes they will be reanimated in the future.

There is a short chapter that is narrated by the detached consciousness of one of the patrons. She has lost all sense of self and is trapped in a dim loop of pure thought, constantly questioning what she is. Probably one of the most quietly terrifying things I have ever read.

I had something similar happen to me once and didn't know how long it was going to last and it really was that terrifying, except instead of questioning what I was, I could remember everything I normally could. I just couldn't sense anything but my own thoughts and memories. Luckily I came out of it, but it would be an awful hell.

That is intense. I hope that's the only time you have to experience that. Speaking of hell, it's actually similar to what my Catholic school taught us hell would be like. No physical pain or brimstone... Just your mind, alone and separated from all for eternity.

Really? Interesting. People are social to an extent that they think isolation is hell?

Well it goes a bit deeper than socializing. I said separated from all, but that's including "grace", which if I remember correctly is a connection to god that is available to humans during life.

Yes, that's why solitary confinement is considered torture.

You're isolated from both other people and from the cool things you can do without other people.

This happened to me once in high school. I had fallen asleep on the couch in the basement (it was fully finished, and my siblings and I spent most of our days down there when we weren't outside, playing, watching TV, and playing video games) in the early evening. When my sister wanted to watch TV, she tried to wake me up, leaning over the back of the couch. For a solid 5 minutes my memory just did not work at all. My inner monologue was something like "What? What is all of this? What am I? What is that (my sister)? Where am i?" etc, repeatedly for a number of minutes.

Nothing like it has happened since.

Did you take any dissociatives or psychedelics?

I'm not sure why that would be terrifying. If we are able to upload and run brains on a computer, then we understand consciousness which is a mystery subject.

Be aware that running code on a computer is just the computation of numbers. So if computing a number makes a consciousness, then all possible states of your consciousness are happening. All the numbers are there.

I'm not sure why that would be terrifying

Because humans have now become overloards of your very conscience.

Imagine that I am a communist revolutionary and I take control of the governmental system and I don't like rich people, but I decide well all these virtual brains and their wealth they should be put to work for the state, to pay back their misdeeds and robbing of the earth of resources in their past life.

Maybe I am a Mengele and decide I have a wealth of experimental subjects. Difference is now I can bend and break you mind but you cant die, unless I delete you.

I see all kinds of ways this can go wrong and given time all possibilities will happen.

No thats not true. Running any numbers doesn't make a consiousiness. Specific numbers do that.

There's also a similar scene in Altered Carbon

Iain M Banks' Culture novel, Surface Detail, also deals with the idea of eternal digital heavens and hells.

Many of them are run by corporations. Some civilizations even send young sinners on day trips to hell to keep them on the 'right' path.

Scary stuff.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail

Back in 1965, Stanislaw Lem wrote in his Cyberiad about a sadistic king who was given a virtual world to rule over. The king gleefully proceeded to torture its virtual inhabitants. Lem has a lot to say on the ethics of this.

You can read this remarkable story and Douglas Hofstadter's and Daniel Dennett's commentary on it here:

https://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-18-seventh-sal...

"What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output."

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

It's rather a key theme of the Kovach trilogy. Envoys get reconstructed to resist digital torture. "Get to the next screen."

Edit: The novels are much better than the Netflix videos. They are, in my opinion, crude hacks. Randomized and simplified. The virtual torture sequence in Altered Carbon is vastly more horrible than the one in the video. Even if I didn't care about spoilers, I'd hesitate to describe it here.

And if you like Kovach, check out Stover's Caine novels. He also wrote the Star Wars novels, but don't hold that against him.

I watched the Netflix series and I really liked the premise but found the story and acting lacking in some areas.

However I really liked the noir protagonist and the scene you described was my favorite episode in the show. I am interested how the story continues.

Are the books much better than the show? How would you rate the trilogy among your favorite cyberpunk novels? Thanks.

I'd rate the second book (broken angels) as one of my favourite sci-fi books (which might include tiger,Tiger/the stars my destination, neuromancer, fire upon the deep, holy Fire... There are many great ones).

I started with that one though, and then read the other two.

I'd say overall as a triology, it rates alongside neuromancer /the sprawl triology. A little more pulp - but a similar serious take on technological evolution.

[ed: the netflix series is to ac, a little like the Johnny Mnemonic film is to the short story. Although the series is a bit closer to the books]

Broken Angels is also my favorite. Kovacs is an extremely complex character. He's been tweaked so much, in becoming an Envoy, that he's fundamentally an AI. He's somewhat like the vampires in Peter Watts' novels.

Also, I'm very impressed by Morgan's skill in writing action. Maybe that's what you mean by "pulp".

I also loved the "A Land Fit For Heroes" trilogy. I hadn't read fantasy for years. And from that, I discovered Joe Abercrombie and Matthew Woodring Stover.

Are the books much better than the show?

Significantly. I have read the trilogy several times, and the Netflix series, whilst cool, doesn't come close to the depth and pacing of the books.

By the way, Bruce Sterling's "Holy Fire" offers some thoughts on extended life, in a more near-future, no jumping bodies/sleeves setting.

In Hannu Rajaniemi's "Flower Prince" trilogy, the vast majority of digital consciousnesses become coding slaves.

It's a bit pretentious to think that any being would bother to spend precious free energy to torture a bunch of lowly humans don't you think. Hence not worried.

Reminds me a bit of Neuromancer, too.

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