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DanielLC comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong
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Only if you're death-averse. I figure intelligence for a little bit is better than no intelligence at all.
Besides, you cease to be intelligent every time you fall asleep. People never seem to worry about the moral implications of that.
I admit Harry is death-averse. I suppose he just never thought about sleep.
Comparing sleep to death for intelligence is like comparing a screensaver to dismantling for a computer. The brain is still very active during sleep, external stimuli can still be recognized, and sleep isn't a permanent condition. I don't see how such a comparison is meaningful for discussing intelligence.
All those things except permanence are true of animals, or for that matter, a computer.
Permanence causes a lot of paradoxes. For example, if you "kill" someone in their sleep, they never wake up, so it was permanent. That is, unless you start using counterfactuals, and talk about if they could have been woken up. In that case, they still can. It's not completely impossible, just really unlikely. But if you were dead set on killing them once they went to sleep, it would be really unlikely for them to wake up from that.
Also, if they stop being intelligent, it becomes impossible to follow what "them" is. Intelligence stops. Intelligence starts. Who's to say it's the same one?
hides face behind hands
reveals
PEEKABOO!
That's a weak use of permanence. Nothing about the process of sleep requires that it be permanent, so sleep does not have the inherent property of permanence. Sometimes, people incidentally never wake from sleep, but that's not permanence in the way that death is inherently permanent.
I don't agree that we stop being intelligent when we sleep. You continue to assert this, but without supporting it. Again:
Also, if intelligence "stops" and "starts" from the same physical generator, i.e. the brain, (which isn't what happens with sleep) then it is the same one.
(Edited to add article link.)
What makes it inherently permanent? The only difference between sleep, cryostasis, and being shot in the head is how likely you are to be revived. It's never certain, and it's never impossible. Death is permanent by definition, but that just means we're never quite certain anybody is dead.
Pretty much everyone's brain is made of the same quarks and leptons, so the same physical generator doesn't exactly narrow it down any. I would explain what I mean by that, but the link you have already does it.
Yes, it does. The link says, actually:
The physical generator includes the configuration of those quarks and leptons, which is what gives rise to the specific intelligence.
The configuration isn't the same when you wake up. It's similar, but how do you know how similar it has to be?
Again, there's nothing prevent a given configuration from ever occuring again, so you can't tell if someone dies. Also, the configuration I had when I was little no longer exists. Wouldn't that mean that as I live, each earlier instance of me is slowly dying?
When the butterfly emerges, is the caterpillar dead? I don't think so. Life still exists, and though its form changes, there is continuity from one moment to the next. The same is true for intelligence. To say otherwise is to stretch the meaning of "death" beyond relevance.
If they have the same memories and the same personality then its still them.
But then you're not the same person "you" were a year ago, and it's possible for you to be two people at once.
Also, that means that it's impossible to ever tell if you're dead. Even without some way of working out who you were, another you could start by complete coincidence.
The Sorting Hat disagreed. It seemed pretty pissed at Harry for accidentally making it sentient, which then meant Harry would be forced to kill it by removing the source if the hat's sentience.