Digital People

In the process of applying for the Atlas Fellowship, they had us read this article [1] and provide a counterargument to the author's claim. In my response I tried to point out a mistake in their reasoning, but I've got my own thoughts about it.

The gist of the article is that the development of the "singularity", or digitizing people's minds, will revolutionize the intellectual economy, social sciences, and the ability of "mankind". Instead, I think that digital people will most revolutionize communication.

If we're able to upload our minds to computers, then what is preventing us from simply merging every mind? If our neural states are converted into digital bits, then whatever data structure they're stored as must be able to have more elements added. Thus brains should be able to merge. Thus we will be able to perform computer science data processing techniques on them. Imagine the power of machine learning with the pool as all human knowledge. The possbilities would be endless from decision making to encapsulating human nature. Just consider the incredible successes that ants have made due to their essentially pooled thinking: they've used agriculture, have societies and roles, and have an ability to self-sacrifice (suggesting some level of ethical reasoning). Furthermore, if we are able to qualitatively rank ideas/thoughts, imagine the homogeneity produced from AI realizing in full the extent of this and then having this taught to our children or simply used for our own lives (people realize the AI is right, they accept it into their lives). This could greatly cripple creativity, yet could lead to ant-like productivity out of humans. We could have world peace as everyone understands one another, we could have unity as a species, we could achieve incredible things at a scale and cooperation unheard of. This also brings into question the sense of self: if this amalgamation of brains has other brain in it, is it also us? Also consider the potential crisis if AI, in processing all our brains, finds major flaws and biases in our thinking and then relays that to us. Many, many people may then have to rethink their entire identities or be contradictory. Admittedly, this would be a good event as I value the truth, but it would cause a lot of suffering for those in the audience who value less suffering.

Furthermore the need for communication will be nonexistent as we could simply access what the other's brain is trying to communicate in this giant brain pool, or even just access their brain separately if there is sufficient open-source (although this is rather unlikely as enough open-source to do this allows individuals to make brain pools). Thus we can truly test whether Wittgenstein was right in Tractatus that all philosophical issues come from linguistic barriers. We can also test whether binary free-will really exists or not by running two uploads in the same environment and checking their development. Thus we would really be able to empirically prove philosophical statements. This would be a revolutionary change in how philosophy operates. This does present an issue though, and that is what happens when computers make errors. If the computers with digital people are running at the scales the author proposes, any level of mistake that occurs can possibly cause people to change. And if this occurs, what then? Are they are new person? It is reminiscent of the ship of Theseus in that as these mistakes occur, bits of your uploaded mind will be replaced with its opposite, slowly changing you. And these errors are inevitable too: whether it be effects from bit flips due to quantum effects or cosmic events like in Single Event Upsets [2]. These issues about the self would be brought to head, demand confrontation, and a revolution if digital people were to arise.

[1] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AKxKR4CeakyBsGFoH/digital-people-would-be-an-even-bigger-deal
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-event_upset