

What if we all become one big brain? - itry

Thinking about privacy, today it ocurred to me, that this concept might get completely abandoned in the future. What would happen, if we all become one big brain, where everybody has full access to everybody elses information? Apart from feeling weird at first, would there be any serious downsides?
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dragonbonheur
If there is only one big brain, "WE" won't exist anymore. There will only be
"I". In Richard Dawkins'book, The Selfish Gene, he explains how organisms are
only vehicles for the genomes within them and how genomes tend to compete for
resources and how they could be described as essentially "selfish". For that
reason alone, it is very unlikely that "we" could turn into an "I". On the
other hand, genomes are just another way to transmit information, and mankind
has created other kinds of information, entirely separate from biological
processes. Maybe it will be that information that may give rise to "One big
brain" but it will be a whole new species, if it is allowed to exist, unless
we learn to live along symbiotically. Even then, once an artificial species
emerges, others may emerge too (see Tom Ray's Tierra experiments) and those
may exist entirely separate lives from the symbiosis.

~~~
itry
> it is very unlikely that "we" could turn into an "I".

We share more and more every day. And the ones who participate in the sharing
benefit. I remember when some people said "i will never own a mobile phone. i
don't want to be reachable all the time.". They all have smartphones now.
Todays kids not only have mobile phones, they have internet connected phones
with cameras. And share their experiences online. Tomorrows kids will have
google glass or an antenna implemented in their head. Realtime streaming their
experiences into the heads of others.

What will stop this process in your opinion?

~~~
dragonbonheur
Humans just can't get along. There are wars and conflicts all the time. Racial
hatred, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, wars, misandry, misogyny, economic
inequality, religious fundamentalism, ideological fundamentalism, nationalism,
political fanaticism, etc... (Writing this list makes me very depressed.) All
of those can be explained by the selfish gene theory. Hate and greed are in
our DNA. People do share everything, but there are crackers who disclose
private information, people who disseminate revenge porn, fat-shamers,
"slut"-shamers, online bullies, critics and cynics. That is the world we have
today.

Sure, we have recently developed ways to transfer thoughts brain-to-brain, but
the issues that may arise in the short term if we were to link separate
consciences directly are more likely to be classified under the "disorder"
category than under the "superpower" category. What if you woke up and had
thoughts that weren't yours but from the other person you linked to. Imagine
having memories of their past trauma, their first kiss, memories from the pain
from the people they lost, memories from the abuses they suffered, the names
they were called, the shame they felt. Will you be mentally strong enough to
be able to compartmentalize those foreign memories as actually being not part
of your lifetime?

Try this: try to remember the last time you checked out a place on Google
street view. Have you ever tried clicking along a road so that you could get
to see what was in the surrounding area?

Now as you are remembering this, do you remember only the scenery or can you
also remember actually looking at a monitor and using your pointing device and
keyboard? I'm willing to bet that you only remember the scenery and that those
memories you have of those street views could be very similar to memories of
places you actually visited, minus the sounds and smells, but you do have to
make a conscious effort to differentiate between virtual memories of a scenery
and memories of the places that you last visited.

Just visit a few foreign cities (Taipei, Seoul, Akihabara, Lima in Peru ) on
Google Street view to try it out and think about what I wrote in a few days,
you'll see what I mean.

~~~
itry
> Imagine having memories of their past trauma, their first kiss, memories
> from the pain.

By that logic you would have predicted that the internet will not happen
because "who wants to read all that shit".

~~~
dragonbonheur
No. I read lots of stuff all the time. But would you really like to carry the
memories of someone whose limbs were blasted off by an IED, or someone who was
a subject of waterboarding in Guantanamo? How about living the experiences of
one of Ariel Castro's victims? Or feeling the thoughts of a lonely woman
trapped in a bus late at night with eight men in India? How would you emerge
from feeling every bit of pain, humiliation and despair that they went
through? Count me out.

~~~
qbrass
>How would you emerge from feeling every bit of pain, humiliation and despair
that they went through?

You'll probably avoid letting it happen again. You'll remember it before
raping, maiming, or torturing someone. You'll remember it before letting
someone else get away with it. You'll probably treat the victims a little
better as well.

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andrewchambers
I personally like to think of the human race as a giant super computer with
local caches in brains and quite slow information transfer. It even has
bad/malfunctioning cores.

