Mar 172026
I admit I find this… fascinating but more than a bit unsettling.
Imagine the brain of a fly, fully mapped, and then placed in a simulation in charge of a virtual fly body.
Yes. That’s precisely what these folks claim to have been able to do.
Granted, it’s just a fly. Not a mouse, not a cat, not a human. But what is possible in principle with the brain of a fly is certainly possible in principle with larger brains, too.
What it means, however… They speak of ghosts in the machine and the Matrix, but I admit I am left wondering if genie in a bottle may be a more appropriate metaphor.
> is certainly possible in principle with larger brains, too.
If I get you right, story resembles the one given by S.Lem in “Further reminiscences of Ijon Tichy: professor Corcoran” – here mr Tichy visits scientist who have created a number of devices simulating brains of human beings, which are attached to some complicated “memory drum” which feeds them with input data simulating all the senses they receive. He further explains which of the devices contains which personality (one is for the young girl, another for old scientist who starts musing whether his perceived world could be really a simulation).
This idea has many variations on the other hand. Lovecraft in his “Whisperer in Darkness” has extraterrestrial beings who isolate human brains into some kind of containers, supporting further functioning but as usually with most things for reader to invent on his own.
Ah, however all this is reiterated in “the Matrix” also. And the thing I don’t quite get is the parallel with genie in a bottle. As far as we know genies, they are aware of their bottle and hence are somewhat unhappy about their restricted state of existence. With the matrix-like simulations we properly should be not able to figure out the world is actually “simulated”.
Well, perhaps quantum effects (especially quantization itself) may be the evidence… if we only know :)
The genie in a bottle comment is allegorical, not literal: we (humans) are letting the genie (of copying, ultimately, a human brain) out of the bottle without being fully aware of the consequences of such technology.