One review criticized my post for being inadequate at world modeling—readers who wish to learn more about predictions are better served by other books and posts (but also praised me for being willing to update its content after new information arrived). I don’t disagree, but I felt it was necessary to clarify my background of writing it.
First and foremost, this post was meant specifically as (1) a review of the research progress on Whole Brain Emulation of C. elegans, and (2) a request for more information from the community. I became aware of this research project since 10 years ago on Wikipedia, and like everyone else, I thought it would be a milestone of transhumanism. At the beginning of 2020 I remembered it again—it seemed to stuck in development hell forever, without clear reasons. Frustrated, I decided to find out why.
I knew transhumanism has always been an active topic on LessWrong so naturally I came here and searched the posts. It was both disappointing and encouraging. There was no up-to-date post beyond the original one in 2010, but I found some researchers are LW members, and it was likely that I would be able to learn more by asking it here, perhaps with an “insider” answer.
Thus, I made the original post. It was not, at all, intended as an exercise of forecasting or world modeling. Then, I was completely surprised by the post’s reception. Despite being the first post I’ve ever made, it received a hundred upvotes within days, and later, it was selected by the editors as a “Curated” homepage post. It even became the reading material at offline meetups! It was completely unexpected. As a result, jefftk—the lead researcher of one project, personally answered my questions. I updated my post to incorporate new information as they arrived.
In conclusion, this post completely served its purpose of gathering new information about the research progress in this field. However, the research I did in the original post (before update) was incomplete. I totally missed the 2014 review and a 2020 mention, both were literally on LW. If I knew the post would be selected as Curated and widely read by a large audience as an exercise of world modeling (and winning a prize), I would have used more patience during my initial research before sending the original version.
One review criticized my post for being inadequate at world modeling—readers who wish to learn more about predictions are better served by other books and posts (but also praised me for being willing to update its content after new information arrived). I don’t disagree, but I felt it was necessary to clarify my background of writing it.
First and foremost, this post was meant specifically as (1) a review of the research progress on Whole Brain Emulation of C. elegans, and (2) a request for more information from the community. I became aware of this research project since 10 years ago on Wikipedia, and like everyone else, I thought it would be a milestone of transhumanism. At the beginning of 2020 I remembered it again—it seemed to stuck in development hell forever, without clear reasons. Frustrated, I decided to find out why.
I knew transhumanism has always been an active topic on LessWrong so naturally I came here and searched the posts. It was both disappointing and encouraging. There was no up-to-date post beyond the original one in 2010, but I found some researchers are LW members, and it was likely that I would be able to learn more by asking it here, perhaps with an “insider” answer.
Thus, I made the original post. It was not, at all, intended as an exercise of forecasting or world modeling. Then, I was completely surprised by the post’s reception. Despite being the first post I’ve ever made, it received a hundred upvotes within days, and later, it was selected by the editors as a “Curated” homepage post. It even became the reading material at offline meetups! It was completely unexpected. As a result, jefftk—the lead researcher of one project, personally answered my questions. I updated my post to incorporate new information as they arrived.
In conclusion, this post completely served its purpose of gathering new information about the research progress in this field. However, the research I did in the original post (before update) was incomplete. I totally missed the 2014 review and a 2020 mention, both were literally on LW. If I knew the post would be selected as Curated and widely read by a large audience as an exercise of world modeling (and winning a prize), I would have used more patience during my initial research before sending the original version.