ocr-fork comments on Is cryonics necessary?: Writing yourself into the future - Less Wrong

6 Post author: gworley 23 June 2010 02:33PM

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Comment author: ocr-fork 24 June 2010 04:35:24PM 5 points [-]

They remember being themselves, so they'd say "yes."

I think the OP thinks being cryogenically frozen is like taking a long nap, and being reconstructed from your writings is like being replaced. This is true, but only because the reconstruction would be very inaccurate, not because a lump of cold fat in a jar is intrinsically more conscious than a book. A perfect reconstruction would be just as good as being frozen. When I asked if a vitrified brain was conscious I meant "why do you think a vitrified brain is conscious if a book isn't."

Comment author: cousin_it 25 June 2010 12:55:49PM *  1 point [-]

They remember being themselves

You don't know that until you've actually done the experiment. Some parts of memory may be "passive" - encoded in the configuration of neurons and synapses - while other parts may be "active", dynamically encoded in the electrical stuff and requiring constant maintenance by a living brain. To take an example we understand well, turning a computer off and on again loses all sorts of information, including its "thread of consciousness".

EDIT: I just looked it up and it seems this comment has a high chance of being wrong. People have been known to come to life after having a (mostly) flat EEG for hours, e.g. during deep anaesthesia. Sorry.