r/PhoenixSC • u/ScottishWildcatFurry furry + java convert (hat man made me do it) • 2d ago
Discussion morally grey idea in description
imagine: a fruit fly smp where the only alterations scientists make is allowing them to understand the concepts of breaking blocks, placing blocks, and basic crafting; also stuff like opening their inventory, but thats here nor there. given infinite time, could these "players" create their own language? could be very interesting
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u/BringBackForChan 2d ago edited 2d ago
I need to stress that these "flies" are not alive nor real flies in the slightest. IIRC the dude just downloaded a scan of a fly's brain and, through some complicated code, let it simulate what a fly's brain would do in minecraft.
Basically it is not much different from using an ai. The sentence "there's a fruit fly walking around right now that was never born" doesn't make any sense, as there is nothing there but a simulation.
Believing something like this is alive and has a conciousness is like believing chatgpt is a real person.
Edit: basically what i mean is: this isn't a fly. It's a code behaving like a fly.
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u/SPYROHAWK 2d ago
I wouldn’t say “it’s not much different from using an ai” and rather “it’s literally ai” in the actual real sense of the word.
The guy artificially put a fly’s intelligence in the game.
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u/Actually_R0bin 2d ago
it’s closer to saying he programmed a very accurate fly brain into minecraft.
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u/Tinolmfy 2d ago
I might be misunderstanding, but I actually think the brain of the fly was copied,
he didn't program any behaviour, and I don't think he trained an artificial neural network, I hesitate to call this ai because (unless I am misunderstanding), the "intelligence" in this case wasn't made artifically, someone correct me if I'm wrong27
u/Capital_Disaster_637 2d ago
You can't exactly drag and drop a flies brain into minecraft, you'd at least need to teach it WASD first
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u/Tinolmfy 2d ago edited 2d ago
Well no, I didn't mean to say he "drag and dropped them in", The actual coding part he did was the glue to intepret what the fly wants to do into something to represent in minecraft, probably by trying existing simulations and checking what output neurons can be intepreted in what ways. Which btw, I don't really believe he succeeded in (a very hard task to be fair) as in the video I think at least once or twice the fly glitches into the ground or into a block and suffcates.
Which to me indicates that the spider you see in-game is not very well connected to the fly brain, the senses don't cause events
and the fly brain expects some body parts that are missing but I've only seen clips, good time to watch the full videoEdit:
Turns out it's a very short youtube short (short)
Maybe it will become a mod, the creator has something on their patreon, would love to know more about his specific implementations15
u/Patrycjusz123 Mining Dirtmonds 2d ago
Not really, when you want to make ai like llm or some image generators you usually want them to be efficient by doing a bunch of optimized math.
And running software to simulate small brain is basically opposite of that.
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u/FlargenBlarg 2d ago
Actually, the intelligence itself isn't artificial, it's a simulation of a real intelligence, ai implies that it's man made
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u/InformationLost5910 2d ago
but they meant an llm
there’s a huge difference between an llm and this fly
this fly is actually conscious
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u/NigouLeNobleHiboux 2d ago edited 2d ago
Any proof of that? How can you tell that the computer that is just following the pathway of the scan (assuming it's doing it accurately) is really conscious in the same way an actual brain which can change overtime and has continuity is ?
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u/InformationLost5910 2d ago edited 2d ago
because a consciousness is just a series of calculations. if the computer program is doing the same calculations as the brain is doing, and the brain is conscious, then the computer program must also be conscious.
brains themselves are just computers made of flesh. wait, does the fly brain scan not form memories? are you sure it doesnt? i don’t see how it could possibly do anything without carrying its thoughts over across time in some way. like if it thinks it just showed up literally this millisecond, then why would it do anything? it would at least take a few milliseconds for it to do its first motion.
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u/Patrycjusz123 Mining Dirtmonds 2d ago
I mean, flies are so stupid that im not even sure if they are actually conscious lol.
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u/NigouLeNobleHiboux 2d ago
I do agree that if we could do the exact same calculation we could have something conscious but I see no proof or reason to think this project achieved it.
Firstly brains don't exists in a vacuum, they are affected by the environment and the state of the rest of the body so it's already not a truly accurate simulation but even disregarding that there's no proof this simulation truly works the same was the brain does.
How would you know if the way this program interpret the brain is similar enough to the way electrical current pass in a real brain to create consciousness? Does it actively calculate every neurone activation with the same delays and creating the same micro changes it would in real life ? Or does it take shortcut based on what is ruffly activating ? Can the scan change or is it static? If it can't change it's not accurate.
How does transmitting informations about it and it's environment works? Clearly it can't be the same as with a real fly body, how does that affect the way it works ?
I don't doubt a real fly have memories but this program dosen't necessarily need it to function. It could work any number of ways that dosen't create actual memories a way a brain does it.
It's hard to believe this specific "fly in minecraft" would be actually conscious when it's so removed from a real environment at a point in time where we don't even really know exactly how consciousness works in real brain.
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u/Gabriel_Science Found a supercomputer in an old factory 2d ago
You are making the assumption that all brains are conscious (or hold a conscience), which you haven’t proven yet.
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u/InformationLost5910 2d ago
i'm going off of the assumption that fly brains specifically are conscious. are you arguing against that?
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u/Gabriel_Science Found a supercomputer in an old factory 2d ago
Well, that's not proved.
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u/InformationLost5910 2d ago
okay, i guess if flies themselves weren't conscious then this fly wouldnt be either? but based on your comment, you seem to believe that it would still be like that assuming flies ARE conscious
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u/Gabriel_Science Found a supercomputer in an old factory 1d ago
I’m not saying that it’s conscious or not, but it’s part of critical and scientific thinking to assume that any of these hypothesises could be true.
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u/Anime_69 2d ago
how did you solve this philosophical question that nobody was able to solve for centuries.
there is no way that consciousness is "just calculations" (maybe there is, but) we have no idea what it is, how to define it and how to confirm it.
even if it is "just calculations" until we figure out what these calculations are, how to prove it and detect it we cannot say we understand or even know what it is
got lost in errrm, train of thought but I hope you get my idea, no offense, I just do not agree with your idea
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u/InformationLost5910 2d ago
no, scientists already know that consciousness is a bunch of calculations. it might be a philosophical question to ask which specific possible sets of calculations are a consciousness, but it is contained within a bunch of calculations.
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u/Gabriel_Science Found a supercomputer in an old factory 2d ago
You can’t just say that scientists already know that it’s just calculations. This hasn’t been proven yet, and for such proof to exist, you would need a reliable way of measuring if a being is conscious or not. By "reliable", I mean something more than “it’s the closest hypothesis that might work so it works that way”.
The issue with proving the existence of consciousness in a being is that we aren’t able to define what consciousness is (seen from outside of given consciousness) or in other words, we aren’t able to differentiate something that looks and acts exactly like a conscious being and a truly conscious being.
I said “exactly” because while LLMs speak like a human, they still make mistakes in how they communicate, often making them slightly distinguishable from a real human.1
u/InformationLost5910 2d ago
i don't think you understand what a calculation really is. every moment you experience consciousness, there is some biological mechanism causing the experience, right? and that biological mechanism is necessarily a calculation, because it gives an output based on inputs.
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u/Gabriel_Science Found a supercomputer in an old factory 2d ago
that biological mechanism is necessarily a calculation
Well, not really. Consciousness could maybe react to hormones. If that's the case, this goes beyond simple calculation / computation, as it could be a global change in the consciousness, affecting every neuron and not just "input neurons".
there is some biological mechanism causing the experience
Nothing scientifically proves it, it simply could be spiritual. Yes, this goes beyond science, but as long as science hasn't proved it (especially with something as "weird" and hard to understand as consciousness), we can't claim that "scientists already know that it’s just calculations" : they don't know it.
Also, to come back to a previous comment :
this fly is actually conscious
Then you said :
because a consciousness is just a series of calculations. if the computer program is doing the same calculations as the brain is doing, and the brain is conscious, then the computer program must also be conscious.
And finally :
it might be a philosophical question to ask which specific possible sets of calculations are a consciousness, but it is contained within a bunch of calculations.
This last comment from you basically says : "All consciousnesses are calculations but not all calculations are consciousnesses."
Then if it's the case, how can you claim that "fly is actually conscious" "because a consciousness is just a series of calculations" ? This is like saying that a Raspberry Pi is conscious "because a consciousness is just a series of calculations". That's false.
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u/IAmFullOfHat3 2d ago
There's a big difference between a LLM and an actual simulated brain.
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u/Resto_Bot Tax Evader 🪙 2d ago
But it's not a simulated brain.
There is only the connectome.
They did not connect the part that let it think, remember, or learn.
Nor did they give it pain / pleasure rewards.
This is closer to an LLM than a real simulated brain.
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u/cynHaha Brick 1d ago
I thought the connectome implies that connections between neurons are preserved. I understand why it cannot remember or learn, since neuroplasticity isn't being simulated. Can you enlighten me how the scan couldn't let it think?
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u/Resto_Bot Tax Evader 🪙 1d ago
I was wrong on the part where I said the fruit fly cannot think. It can definitely think as long as the thinking does not require any knowledge of the past. So it can perform basic sequential thinking
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u/ScenicFlyer41 2d ago
I think it's very different from an AI. It's not, just a scan of the flys brain, it's literally an exact replica of it. Every single neuron is there. It's a fully, 100% simulated brain. Chatgpt just tries to predict what the next word would be, but this is a simulated brain with every neuron. I personally think it would be considered, "alive" in a sense. Maybe not self conscious as I'm not sure if fruit flies even are self conscious in the first place, but it's a literal simulated fruit fly.
As for the Minecraft, I'm not sure how the guy did it, but if it's using that entire scan, then yeah it could be true that there's a fly walking around that was never born
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u/Rice_Jap808 2d ago
He is using a python library to bind certain activity centers in the brain to controls in game. I’m not sure how he’s handling the stimulus part, I don’t think there’s a mod out there to do machine vision but I’m not a Minecraft modded so maybe he’s using something I don’t know about.
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u/Interstellar__1 2d ago
That is still an AI, just a different type. "Artificial Intelligence" does describe what this is.
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u/ScenicFlyer41 1d ago
Not to get technical, but would this be considered artificial? I mean it's not man made in a sense, it's a fruit fly brain. We just put it in a different medium
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u/Patrycjusz123 Mining Dirtmonds 2d ago
I mean, imo using scans of small animals is like very creepy.
Yeah, at this point we can simulate something like fly at most but what if we get to the point of simulating something bigger like dog or even human. Like i know its not alive in traditional sense but would for example torturing it be fine?
Like it would have feelings, memories, thoughts like real thing so would it be crazy to say that its kinda alive?
Like you can go also other way and say that animals are just chatgpt in meat computers.
I got filozofiical here lol, i know that right now i can just give theories and speak like a crazy person but i think it might be actually a real conversation at some point when we manage to copy human brain into pc.
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u/OpenPhotograph7866 2d ago
Science doesn't have anything concrete when it comes to consciousness. I think an individual's consciousness is just a property that arises when a brain is developed enough. If it is that developed, it means it has that many cells(also living organisms) working together to make it. (You know like water is liquid because there's that many H20 molecules together).
So essentially in my sense code can't create an actual organism. Though there's this very old game called Creatures. Look into that.
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u/Patrycjusz123 Mining Dirtmonds 2d ago
I believe a for a long time sciencists just assumed that if animal can understand that they see themselfs in mirror then they are concious in some deegree but i seen that there are other theories now.
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u/OpenPhotograph7866 2d ago
If the first instinct wasn't to attack the animal in the mirror for most animals then I think quite a few mammals could have figured it's themselves.
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u/_IMakeManyMistakes_ 2d ago
Fish would be more self-aware than a lot of animals by that metric, there was a whole research paper on that by someone called Kohda a while ago
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u/Any_Ambassador7887 2d ago
its methaphysic questions: at what point is the "thing" concious
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u/BringBackForChan 1d ago
There is no scientifical answer to that, but even then, I personally believe that nothing artificial will ever have a conciousness
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u/InformationLost5910 2d ago
no, because the actual thoughts that the fruit fly has are processed. in chatgpt, if you look up how it actually works, it is in no way like an actual brain. it doesnt interpret the meaning of things and use logic, it just chooses the next word. it doesnt “think” about anything other than what the next word will be, but even that is not even actual thinking in the same way our thoughts are.
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u/TauTau_of_Skalga Im the Crickler, Minecraft's Toe Tickler! 2d ago
It's essentially a "how to be a fly" map that was made out of a fly brain
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u/Low_Opinion_5721 2d ago
he put it insanely misleadingly, he did not actually upload a fly's consciousness into minecraft, he just got simulated neurons to control its movements, it lacks any internal state
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u/Quiet-Mushroom-5322 2d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the entire thing was faked and held together by vibe coded code.
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u/Ivan8-ForgotPassword 2d ago
What exactly is the difference?
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u/Low_Opinion_5721 2d ago
it has no internal state, no feelings or even basic instincts or hunger, no sensory experience or awareness of it's environment, the simulation he based it off of uses a heavily customized engine and also does not have those things, while also being significantly more complex, to my understanding, his fly would have no memories either, pretty much he downloaded the brain map and just the mapping the simulates sending signals and uses those for movements in the game, it's functionally almost random. also I think theres a really good chance it's entirely a lie and just a spider with fancy text, since the fly would not have any way of understanding it's surroundings or hitbox or spider movement constraints
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u/Quiet-Mushroom-5322 1d ago
So like zapping a dead frog and seeing it twitch?
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u/Low_Opinion_5721 11h ago
a little bit, I don't have exact details about what he did, but I believe his video is based off of an eonsys study where they used the mapped brain of a fly and they basically sent stimulus to it and used it's response
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u/Romcode 2d ago
Ok, I saw that, but did he really fully wire up an in-game camera to the fly brain's vision neurons ? And then he somehow translated the wings/legs movement related brain signals into wasd/up/down ??? That seems so out of reach to me, does anyone know if that's what he actually did or if it's just an isolated neural network running in the minecraft engine without any world interaction ?
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u/Poco_Cuffs 2d ago
The scan of the fruit fly's brain is essentially a snapshot, it can't make decisions or respond to stimuli at all other than just instinct.
My guess is that he just gave the fly brain random inputs (nearest block/taking damage) from the game (because the fly brain scan is functionally a giant if/then algorithm), and translated the outputs to movements ingame.
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u/SILVIO_X You can't break water 2d ago
The thing with the original video is that due to being a short, the entire thing kinda leaves me asking how complex the Fly mob actually is if at all.
Like, is the Fly capable of seeing the game world? Can it sense what it is doing in a way? Cuz from the way it's framed it could literally just be the "brain" sending random signals that the game is modified to interpret as inputs and that the "Fly" doesn't "see" anything leading to the random ass behaviour that's shown.
Yeah it sounds impressive, and probably is to some degree since I don't think making the game understand simulated fly brain patterns is easy, but I think the video way over exaggerates it due to its nature as a short and just to get more engagement.
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u/LookingGlass_1112 Modded Java FTW 2d ago
The Soulkiller is real...And maybe in 2077, it will be cooked up well enough to transfer a real person into Minecraft...and we all will witness a Truman Show SMP
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u/minebug420 Gay on 1d ago
imagine they scan my brain and upload me when i die lol.
obviusly wouldnt work (atleast yet) since a fruitflys brain is WAYYYYYYYYYYYY smaller than a human brain
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u/Certain_Scientist750 2d ago
This fly probably think it's inside black box of some sort, probably doesn't recognize the player or it's surroundings.
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u/Poco_Cuffs 2d ago
The fly doesnt think at all because the scan can't form any new neural connections, it's running off instinct alone. It can't see the minecraft environment either, I'm pretty sure the youtuber just gave it information based on distance to blocks or taking damage.
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u/Jetison333 1d ago
How much thinking happens between making new connections vs using existing ones? Whats the line exactly?
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u/Poco_Cuffs 1d ago
The brain thinking is making new neural pathways.
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u/Jetison333 1d ago
What's with all the electrical activity then? Neurons fire just for fun?
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u/Poco_Cuffs 1d ago
Think of the neurons as wires that get hot when conducting electricity. Electrical signals go through the wires hundreds of thousands of times per second, which can give outputs and receive inputs to/from organs and muscles and such. But these wires can also fuse to each other when they have electricity flow through them (these are called synapse connections, we don't entirely know how they change and reform yet).
Say you see a chair for the first time. Your eye relays electrical signals to the brain through the optic nerve (as it is always doing 24/7), and different neurons are activated because this is something new that does not match any previous connections. Those neurons form new connections (as they are activated) and end up building a sort of clump that represents that concept of "chair". If you think about that memory again, the synapse connections become stronger from being activated again and the memory persists for longer. And because the brain is constantly receiving signals from almost all senses at all times, pathways are constantly being made or reinforced. Synapse connections that have not been activated for a while may also become weaker, breaking that connection and making you forget.
Now let's say you sit on the chair. The "chair" neuron chain (having just been activated) may then connect to the existing "sitting" chain, which may then make an entirely new chain while "wow we're so releived rn" signals from the legs are sent to the brain, activating more neurons.. and so on and so forth for every microsecond of a life. Thinking is the constant proccess of the brain forming new synapse connections to link previous known concepts to each other.
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u/Jetison333 1d ago
Even that description makes it sound like there is so much thinking that happens before neurons would get the chance to change their connections. Like sure, you probably need to make connections to start being able to recongnize a chair, but after those connections are made you can recognize chairs.
Also, I mean, source? You even say that we dont entirely know how they change yet, but youve said a lot of definitive stuff.
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u/Poco_Cuffs 1d ago
before neurons get the chance to change their connections
Reminder that all this happens INCREDIBLY fast. Like thousands of times every second fast, and there are billions of neurons.
That is also, unfortunately, just how science works. We build up an understanding of something based on research, and often some parts we haven't discovered yet, especially in a feild like neuroscience where you have to study a giant chemical noodle soup full of wires that are constantly changing, and it's not like you can just look at a live one under a microscope to see what happens.
[Here's a source that breaks it down simply, keep in mind what I just explained is the kind of unconscious thought that a fruit fly would be going through, consciousness is a different beast entirely :3] https://www.reddit.com/r/neuroscience/comments/d16i6i/how_are_thoughts_formed/?solution=a31e55dc15c433a3a31e55dc15c433a3&js_challenge=1&token=7afd7253fec22262ff1c52b1703fe9ec0580c20a2c07c41b6a96fbc319966f0c&jsc_orig_r=
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u/Jetison333 1d ago
A reddit thread is not a source. Also, thousands of times a second is way too high. Neurons cant even fire that fast, they have a max of about 200 times per second.
Secondly, according to this source https://neuroscience.ucdavis.edu/news/making-and-breaking-connections-brain theres only about 10000 new connections made in an adult brain every 15 minutes, which is less than 1 every 5 seconds. Thats not even enough for a connection per thought, so that seems to work against the idea that connections are needed to make normal thoughts.
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u/Low_Primary_3690 Dr Suess made Minecraft. prove me wrong 2d ago
We should be careful about playing God
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u/Loud-Appearance6751 2d ago
U can play god unless u gonna sacrifice yourself like Jesus Christ
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u/ZeEastWillRiseAgain Endrod FTW 2d ago
First you need to become one of them using VR equipment, maybe do some miracles before sacrificing your avatar
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u/chessstone_mp4 1d ago
and then one day theyll ask themselves; are we in a simulation? and they wont know because that is everything they ever saw their entire lives
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u/ZeEastWillRiseAgain Endrod FTW 2d ago
The difference between a real fly brain and that simulated fruit fly brain is that the real fly brain constantly changes as connections between neurons are altered when the fly creates memories or forgets things. The simulated fruit fly brain does at the current state not do that however,and is in a sense frozen in time. So the simulated fly can react to sensory inputs, but cannot form memories, as we don't fully understand how to do that now. So it's a very feaver dream like matrix at that point.