The age of em
by Robin Hanson · first published 2016
41% recommend53% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Careful, detailed economic analysis of a possible future where brain emulations (ems) work as software, with physical constraints and emergent effects like time differences; suits readers who enjoy speculative futurism.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2010–2026The Quantum Thief
Hannu Rajaniemi
Recommended by 44 · mentioned by 7144 recommend · 71 mention44 recommend · 7144 recommend
2010–2026Ubik
Philip K. Dick
Recommended by 41 · mentioned by 10041 recommend · 100 mention41 recommend · 10041 recommend
2014–2026Exhalation
Ted Chiang
Recommended by 86 · mentioned by 11186 recommend · 111 mention86 recommend · 11186 recommend
2009–2026Blindsight
Peter Watts
Recommended by 214 · mentioned by 294214 recommend · 294 mention214 recommend · 294214 recommend
2019–2026Fall; or, Dodge in Hell
Neal Stephenson, Malcolm Hillgartner
Recommended by 44 · mentioned by 13244 recommend · 132 mention44 recommend · 13244 recommend
2008–2026Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick
Recommended by 66 · mentioned by 19566 recommend · 195 mention66 recommend · 19566 recommend
2014–2026Superintelligence
Nick Bostrom
Recommended by 92 · mentioned by 17892 recommend · 178 mention92 recommend · 17892 recommend
2015–2026Seveneves
Neal Stephenson
Recommended by 182 · mentioned by 417182 recommend · 417 mention182 recommend · 417182 recommend
If you liked this you might also like Age of Em by Robin Hanson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em "Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps…
on “Lena (MMAcevedo, the earliest executable image of a human brain)” ↗…you like the anime) Land of Lisp (only recommended if you want a fun sort of scheme-ish style approach to seeing some of the features of common lisp in a simple mostly text based games setting) The Age of Em (recommend if you want a careful and detailed analysis of what a possible future looks like should humans get mind uploading technology) A Critique of Democracy (recommended if you want to have a chance…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/Reports/2008-3.pdf The Age of Em https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198754620/
on “Mind Emulation Foundation” ↗My favorite writer wrote a great book review of Robin Hanson's seminal work 'Age of Em" here http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/
on “Is This Economist Too Far Ahead of His Time?” ↗Thumbs up for "The Age of Em". A nice example of how to assume a technology and work out economic consequences. Hanson goes into some good detail and includes physical constraints, emergent properties like relative time elapsed for…
on “Mind Emulation Foundation” ↗Assuming that you give credence to the idea that brain emulation technology will emerge before AGI you may be interested in the 2016 book The Age of Em. The author has a pretty vivid imagination about the commercial applications of brain emulation technologies in similar forms to that which the OP article and it's links describe but the book seemed to…
on “Make Up a Guy” ↗…that it's more or less worked out, and there are enough generalists, but when you see a specialist in one forced to do the other not nearly as well, it feels like a waste.) You might enjoy reading The Age of Em. Imagine in 90 years you could literally spin up a copy of the em who wrote the code that's having issues, archived at a time with context full in mind, have them fix the issues or add some new related…
on “GitHub to Layoff 10%” ↗…(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nRSRWbAqtC48rPv5NG6kzggL...), which is also about mind uploading, and "Basilisk collection" (https://suricrasia.online/unfiction/basilisk/), which is a fictional Wikipedia article about SHA-256. You may also enjoy the book The Age of Em; it is nonfiction futurism, albeit increasingly unlikely.
on “Ask HN: What is the most gripping thing you have read recently?” ↗…book will fix those (perceived) problems, it seems unlikely to contain better or more profound commentary regarding trends in changing humanity and emerging technology than books like Superintelligence, Age of Em, etc. At best perhaps a "lite" version of the same concepts sanitized for a broader audience. Of course I look forward to, upon publication, hopefully having been mistaken about it.
on “Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari – How data will destroy human freedom” ↗Remind me of Robin Hanson's Age of Em. Ems are human minds copied into computers and executable there. Being easy to copy, you can spin up as many Elon Musks as you need. And if you have the brain state stored, every day you can have those…
on “The growing science of memory manipulation” ↗…friendly. Or many other failure modes. (Though an interesting "most likely scenario" given certain assumptions and only looking at a span of 2 years which by itself doesn't look too terrible is Robin Hanson's Age of Em idea.) Just like approaches involving molecular nanotech to help us, there's reasons why it could be seen to help the best outcome along, but it also opens the door to a lot of other risks that aren't…
on “The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier” ↗I believe Robin Hanson's "Age of Em" takes this to its logical conclusion if we consider economics above everything else. http://ageofem.com/
on “Is full-time work bad for our brains?” ↗…been a ridiculous thing to try: they had electricity and classical economics. OTOH I wouldn't expect a look at a world with 'replicators' to look much like Star Trek, in the same way Robin Hanson's The Age of Em reads differently from Altered Carbon.
on “The Rise of Dismal Science Fiction” ↗From Robin Hanson's "The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth"(2016): > Today, people who are seen as “workaholics” tend to make more money, to be male, and to focus their socializing on scheduled times such as holidays.…
on “Caffeine: A vitamin-like nutrient, or adaptogen” ↗It's called The Age of Em by Robin Hanson. Here's the wikipedia[1] and a review by a popular blogger[2]. Interesting concept but not a realistic vision of the future. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/
on “A connectomic study of a petascale fragment of human cerebral cortex” ↗