You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Dagon comments on Consciousness and Sleep - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: casebash 07 January 2016 12:04PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (35)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Dagon 07 January 2016 06:56:06PM 7 points [-]

You need to more formally define consciousness and "continuity of consciousness" in order for this to be a worthwhile topic.

Whether it's a period of deep/no-dream sleep, a freeze and thaw cycle, emulation, or a copy operation, you're trying to answer the question of "what relationship do these two distinct-but-very-similar configurations of data (brain or electronic model) have to each other". Your brain at 2016-01-07T18:54:26,922604088 is different from your brain at 2016-01-07T18:54:55,035292477, but in many ways, you want to treat them as "the same".

Define the critera for identity, and this question will dissolve.

Comment author: Brillyant 07 January 2016 07:30:53PM 0 points [-]

This is the answer.