Comment by krisoft
12 days ago
> You’d be consigning yourself to (potential? Inevitable?) ego death, in the long term.
I have some bad news for you. We are all consigned for inevitable death in the long term. That also involves ego death.
> I’m not sure I could think of a closer technological parallel to “selling one’s soul to the devil”
You are projecting your values here. There is nothing inherently "selling" or "devil" about a procedure like that. It is a tool. Can be seriously evil, can be beneficial. What matters is how it is used, who is in control of it and whose goals it serves.
Well said, but I stand by the sentiment knowing that I'm communicating one of my moral values. I think it's a natural one, even if it's not unanimous! Kant says that our lives -- and by necessity those of all rational creatures -- are built on three lies (paralogisms): spacetime is bounded and continuous, I am a unified persistent person, and I am freely-motivated actor. These aren't empirical moral arguments, based in testing the best ways to organize society, but rather based in the very nature of what it means to play the role of "human being". Seriously and intentionally eroding one of those pillars is, I would say, an evil occurrence in-and-of itself.
Sure, the risks might be minimal and countless people will try, I have no doubt. Presumably you could use something like this to massively enhance your computational abilities/speed, given the right tech. But you run an unknowable risk of total and complete personal ruin, like a frog in boiling water that doesn't even know if it's died yet or not. Worth the risk? Maybe. But you're selling your soul to entropy, at the very least!