DanielLC comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Unnamed 14 January 2011 06:49AM

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Comment author: DanielLC 17 January 2011 10:05:37PM 1 point [-]

Nothing about the process of sleep requires that it be permanent, so sleep does not have the inherent property of permanence.

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.

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.

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.

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 18 January 2011 12:13:58AM -1 points [-]

Yes, it does. The link says, actually:

You will even be able to see, I hope, that if your brain were non-destructively frozen (e.g. by vitrification in liquid nitrogen); and a computer model of the synapses, neural states, and other brain behaviors were constructed a hundred years later; then it would preserve exactly everything about you that was preserved by going to sleep one night and waking up the next morning.

The physical generator includes the configuration of those quarks and leptons, which is what gives rise to the specific intelligence.

Comment author: DanielLC 18 January 2011 10:21:10PM -1 points [-]

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?

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 18 January 2011 10:47:40PM -1 points [-]

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.

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