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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

"Absent is the plot twist of Pandora’s box that made it philosophically useful: the box also contained hope and opportunity that new knowledge brings."

Yes, add that and it might be something interesting but sure not the Black Mirror I want to watch. I mean it is called Black Mirror for a reason.

And it is not even true. Take the episode "San Junipro" for example? Isn't there some hope and opportunity in it? And yet, this episode (one of the best in my opinion) only works because the hope can shine against a black background.

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> Take the episode "San Junipro" for example? Isn't there some hope and opportunity in it? And yet, this episode (one of the best in my opinion) only works because the hope can shine against a black background.

Arguably though that episode is a bit of an outlier. I think its the most hopeful (relatively speaking) of all the black mirror episodes i've seen.

I dunno about you, but I don't care about a computer program that believes it's me living on after I die. You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you. If anything, living a life in a way that you put off doing the fun things until the after life, spiritual or digital, sounds awful.

The end shows us the entirety of anything real happening: it’s a modern day pharaoh’s tomb. Nothing’s alive, just pantomiming at life. Hieroglyphs and organs in jars, but even less human.

What you see is the only real thing. Caretaker machines swapping hard drives or whatever it is they were doing (it’s been a while since I watched it)

That’s why it shows us that, when it does.

i think it's both, and more. i didn't read the ending as particularly opinionated about how 'real' the depicted emulation was, though i do think it had a decidedly hopeful tinge. the idea that we might somehow, in some way get the opportunity to do it over, to do it right, even if weird/contingent/incomplete, has i think a mythic resonance that transcends strict bounds of realism. even in a fully fantastic utopian afterlife unmediated by technology there would still be the question of whether this is 'really real': ontological, psychologically, etc. nonetheless, there are levels of unreality many seem willing to accept, the ending of 'inception' being another paradigmatic film example. i guess my perspective is that many aspects of 'real life' also abut artifice and pantomime (a phenomena not unrelated to the feelings of regret inspiring desire for strictly-impossible second chances), and the decision to accept anything as 'real' is always contains an element of tenuousness, uncertainty, and faith.

It ends with the song "Heaven on Earth" with no distortions or long fade out.

The final scene has, imo, no inherent negative connotation. It seems intended as an hopeful outcome.

I disagree, because they show the characters inside the computer simulation experiencing the world. They're conscious beings, and there's a big fight between the two main characters related to that existence, with both deciding to mind upload at the end for starting a new life together. You might disagree that simulated characters can ever be conscious in the real world, but there's plenty of fictional stories where the simulated characters are conscious, this being one of them.

As such, it doesn't matter what the substrate is for this story. The technology allows a kind of conscious life after death where people can choose to live life differently than they previously did.

> I dunno about you, but I don't care about a computer program that believes it's me living on after I die.

1% of your cells are replaced daily. Presumably you still believe you're you even though much of you is constantly being replaced. If it were an option would you really deny your future self an arbitrarily long happy life because you got hung up on Theseus's Paradox?

I don't remember the part of that scenario where a scan is taken of the ship and uploaded to a server.

I long ago accepted that my image of self is a sort of illusion. That things I consider other, like microbes in my gut, constitute a large portion of me. And I change over time. Even the memories I have are copies of copies.

But all that happens in a continuity. Being uploaded is a stark difference and a disconnect that I cannot philosophically reconcile.

You lose consciousness for a few hours every night. If you've ever been put out for surgery the effect is even stronger. If someone could copy you when you were out, are you sure you'd have any idea it occurred? Could you prove you're not the copy? What if we're in that uploaded world now, would you be able to tell?

> You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you.

If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life, if the virtual version shares all your memories, hopes, fears, thought patterns... Then in what way is it not you?

Do you also think that "reconstructive teleporting" would build another person but that person would not be you?

I don't like teleportation that much either. But at least there is meat on the other end. Uploading is an entirely different mode of existence.

>If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life

There cannot be. There isn't even a continuity of experience for when you go to sleep.

It doesn't matter at all how perfect the copy is, because I STILL AM ME.

Brain uploading has never made sense because, well, I can't fit in the wires.

It doesn't matter that some digital simulation of my brain activity happens, and that the simulation feels like it was me and now is an immortal simulation, because I still die. My consciousness cannot be transported to software.

> There isn't even a continuity of experience for when you go to sleep.

But you remember having lived the previous day. Why is it any different if you remember having lived as a human a second ago and are a computer program now?

> My consciousness cannot be transported to software.

You perhaps don't notice that your entire argument hinges on this claim. This is the central point of disagreement.

I'm saying "if your consciousness was uploaded to a computer you would still experience being yourself", and you're saying "no, if my consciousness were uploaded to a computer I wouldn't experience it as being myself, because uploading a consciousness to a computer is not possible".

Arguably the only "you" that exists is the "you" right now. For how can you show that you are not in vat? Prove that yesterday was real? Even if a second ago was real?

Of course the only me that exists is right now. In no feasible reality would I ever shake hands with me from yesterday or me in the vat. Nor would I ever shake hands with me in a robot, just a robot that thinks it's me. Even if those other entities exist they are not me.

Except you don't treat them that way. You feel sorry about your old self. You feel sorry for other people, even though you cannot prove that they even "exist". You care about future you even though it doesn't exist.

Unless you don't.

I agree with your conclusion that because that is the reality of life, the only time worth spending is right now.

>computer program that believes it's me

So, a computer program can believe?

Iirc Pandora’s Box explicitly contained the opposite of hope. The last demon which she kept trapped inside it was “foreknowledge” and the only reason humanity was able to continue was that without knowing the future, we were able to have hope.

A friend of mine curated Black Mirror for me. I've got a lot tolerance for horror.

She showed me San Junipero and Hang the DJ. And then we were done.

Eh, Black Mirror is basically just a 21st century version of The Twilight Zone only with the Cold War fears replaced with modern ones. But still, TZ wasn't all doom and gloom but found the time to be optimistic now and then.

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