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points by Apocryphon 9 hours ago | 0 comments

> especially if you can download justdance.exe to your brain.

A lot of Singularity fiction was babbling about life extension technologies and mind uploads long before LLMs existed. I've always been skeptical - maybe there's just fundamental biological (and in the case of stuff like cheap fusion or FTL travel - physical) constraints that will keep even a superintelligence from inventing magical Clarketech.

[–] tarpitt 5 hours ago

I think you make a good point. If BCI is limited or impossible then then the future may be very intricate - perhaps Dune-like in the sense that natural human capability becomes the measuring stick for achievement. Humanity will become a beautiful anachronism like mechanical watches or bonsai trees or something. We will become dedicated to the art and science of our own self-cultivation.

On the other hand, If BCI is possible and useful, life will be miserable and we will borg ourselves just to keep up with the cost of living. We will be brains in jars on server racks solving captchas or something. We'll be the solution to AI hardware prices- the paperclip machine will be capitalism and nature itself.