Bakkot comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong

25 Post author: orthonormal 26 December 2011 10:57PM

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Comment author: Bakkot 01 January 2012 09:36:09PM 2 points [-]

Yes - even while sleeping, your brain contains all the structure and information necessary for personhood, as is easily empirically demonstrated by waking you up.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 January 2012 09:43:52PM 3 points [-]

Cool. Would I still be a person while in a coma that I will naturally come out of in five years but not before? (I recognize that no observer could know that this was the case, I'm just asking whether in fact I would be, if it were. Put another way: after I woke up, would we conclude that I'd been a person all along?)

Comment author: Bakkot 01 January 2012 09:53:41PM 3 points [-]

Obviously this is a difficult question. I'd say you're very nearly a person while in a coma, because with very minor modifications to your brain you could have returned to being a person.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 January 2012 09:56:28PM 0 points [-]

OK, cool... that clarifies matters. Thanks.