I would like to ask you to re-read the story. The earring doesn’t destroy the brain, it just magically offers the right course of action, which in turn causes the brain’s parts related to complex thinking to atrophy:
“When Kadmi Rachumion came to Til Iosophrang, he took an unusual interest in the case of the earring. First, he confirmed from the records and the testimony of all living wearers that the earring’s first suggestion was always that the earring itself be removed. Second, he spent some time questioning the Priests of Beauty, who eventually admitted that when the corpses of the wearers were being prepared for burial, it was noted that their brains were curiously deformed: the neocortexes had wasted away, and the bulk of their mass was an abnormally hypertrophied mid- and lower-brain, especially the parts associated with reflexive action (italics mine—S.K.)”
What we don’t know is what the earring actually does with the brain in order to achieve the effect. As you remark in the postscriptum, the ring likely models the brain’s reward function and achieves precisely it.
The earring doesn’t just model the reward function.
>It is not a taskmaster, telling you what to do in order to achieve some foreign goal. It always tells you what will make you happiest. If it would make you happiest to succeed at your work, it will tell you how best to complete it. If it would make you happiest to do a half-assed job at your work and then go home and spend the rest of the day in bed having vague sexual fantasies, the earring will tell you to do that. The earring is never wrong.
and
>At this point no further change occurs in the behavior of the earring. The wearer lives an abnormally successful life, usually ending out as a rich and much-beloved pillar of the community with a large and happy family.
If, for the typical user and at the time of demise from natural causes, the earring is able to model their personality, desires, beliefs, ambitions and memory while :
>the neocortexes had wasted away, and the bulk of their mass was an abnormally hypertrophied mid- and lower-brain, especially the parts associated with reflexive action.
Then where exactly is that information still stored? The only viable option is within the earring itself.
That is why I think it is consistent (or at least not obviously incorrect) for me to claim that the earring both transfers and augments your consciousness/mind instead of simply following your reward function while not preserving anything else that matters.
If we want to reference real neuroscience:
Age related atrophy of the brain is normal/inevitable.
In longterm comatose patients, there is little evidence of disuse atrophy, the atrophic changes are usually explained as occurring due to secondary pathology or as a consequence of the insult that lead to the coma in the first place.
In-universe, the changes are described as gross and remarkable. This is not normal. Even if a person is remarkably given to not thinking about things or just going with the flow, such a change wouldn’t arise. Is that an unexplained conceit of the story? Probably. Is it strong evidence of something nefarious? Not in my opinion. The people who wear the earring remain psychologically normal and behave in a manner consistent with their previous selves (other than the general improvements in performance and goal achievement I’ve noted). That information must be in the earring.
I would like to ask you to re-read the story. The earring doesn’t destroy the brain, it just magically offers the right course of action, which in turn causes the brain’s parts related to complex thinking to atrophy:
“When Kadmi Rachumion came to Til Iosophrang, he took an unusual interest in the case of the earring. First, he confirmed from the records and the testimony of all living wearers that the earring’s first suggestion was always that the earring itself be removed. Second, he spent some time questioning the Priests of Beauty, who eventually admitted that when the corpses of the wearers were being prepared for burial, it was noted that their brains were curiously deformed: the neocortexes had wasted away, and the bulk of their mass was an abnormally hypertrophied mid- and lower-brain, especially the parts associated with reflexive action (italics mine—S.K.)”
What we don’t know is what the earring actually does with the brain in order to achieve the effect. As you remark in the postscriptum, the ring likely models the brain’s reward function and achieves precisely it.
I think the point was that the earring effectively destroys the brain by letting it atrophy.
The earring doesn’t just model the reward function.
>It is not a taskmaster, telling you what to do in order to achieve some foreign goal. It always tells you what will make you happiest. If it would make you happiest to succeed at your work, it will tell you how best to complete it. If it would make you happiest to do a half-assed job at your work and then go home and spend the rest of the day in bed having vague sexual fantasies, the earring will tell you to do that. The earring is never wrong.
and
>At this point no further change occurs in the behavior of the earring. The wearer lives an abnormally successful life, usually ending out as a rich and much-beloved pillar of the community with a large and happy family.
If, for the typical user and at the time of demise from natural causes, the earring is able to model their personality, desires, beliefs, ambitions and memory while :
>the neocortexes had wasted away, and the bulk of their mass was an abnormally hypertrophied mid- and lower-brain, especially the parts associated with reflexive action.
Then where exactly is that information still stored? The only viable option is within the earring itself.
That is why I think it is consistent (or at least not obviously incorrect) for me to claim that the earring both transfers and augments your consciousness/mind instead of simply following your reward function while not preserving anything else that matters.
If we want to reference real neuroscience:
Age related atrophy of the brain is normal/inevitable.
In longterm comatose patients, there is little evidence of disuse atrophy, the atrophic changes are usually explained as occurring due to secondary pathology or as a consequence of the insult that lead to the coma in the first place.
In-universe, the changes are described as gross and remarkable. This is not normal. Even if a person is remarkably given to not thinking about things or just going with the flow, such a change wouldn’t arise. Is that an unexplained conceit of the story? Probably. Is it strong evidence of something nefarious? Not in my opinion. The people who wear the earring remain psychologically normal and behave in a manner consistent with their previous selves (other than the general improvements in performance and goal achievement I’ve noted). That information must be in the earring.
I think Scott was pointing at the fact that taxi drivers have enlarged hippocampi, and drawing an analogy to people who follow the earring all day