I bet if you phrase the question as “your brain is destroyed and recreated 5 minutes later”, most people outside LW answer no. I guess this might be another instance of brain functions inactive vs lack of ability to have experiences.
Yes, I agree (except that I’m not sure whether most people outside LW would really answer no; for sure a lot would, but I don’t have a strong intuition about whether it would be a majority). My point is just that even if sleep never turns off experiences altogether, the intuition people appeal to when saying “experience stops every night when you sleep” isn’t actually dependent on that.
I interpret them as meaning something like “disassemble” and “reassemble in the same configuration as before, with the same component parts”
That’s not how I interpret the descriptions of the destructive teleportation, uploading, and forking scenarios.
The only arguments I can presently think of that really make me doubt my response to the “do you survive destructive uploading/teleportation/copying?” questions are more on the lines of the Ship of Theseus. My computer remains my computer if I turn it off and on again. “My files” can refer to specific instances, versions, copies, whatever, whether they’re on “my computer” or copied to an external device. If my computer falls apart and is put back together again, it’s still my computer. If my computer is taken apart, and an identical computer with my files on its hard drive is built (with different parts), it’s a different computer. If my computer slowly has all its parts replaced, one at a time, I don’t really know what I’d think; I want to say it’s no longer the same computer at some point, but I don’t know which point. Maybe when the hard drive is replaced, but that’s a bad example because replacing individual chunks of atoms in the hard drive is a weird concept. Actually, I’d probably think of the new chunks as “the new chunks”, and more or less treat it as portions of two separate disks acting as one. (And if files are modified, deleted, copied, etc, then they are modified, deleted, copied, etc, and this does not make it stop being “my computer”.)
So what does that mean for the brain? The brain changes a lot; does its component parts get replaced all that often? A huge portion of the cells in the body get replaced at varying rates; do they play into this at all? How would my conclusions change if the brain replaces its cells frequently and I was just that bad at understanding neurology? I’m not really sure about the answers to these. It’s possible that the answers could change my mind. It’s possible that I would just stay in the same boat and remain existentially horrified forever or something.
But flipping the switch from on to off to on is more or less irrelevant. I feel like we are using the same words to describe completely different phenomena, then debating as though everyone is using the words in the same way. (Compare “Congress” to “the 75th congress” to “the 76th congress”. The first is defined by an enduring pattern with interchangeable components, such that it describes the both of the other two; the second refers to a specific configuration of components and behaviors; the third is as specific as the second, but it’s entirely possible that only a few members from the 75th congress were replaced for the 76th. If someone was particularly attached to the 75th congress, and by the 80th congress, the last member from the 75th was replaced, what would we take from such a person’s reaction? Keeping in mind that people tend to write dramatic articles whenever an enduring group loses or replaces all of its original members, or all of the members present for particularly charished events, etc. What if a band breaks up, then most of its members form a new band?)
I bet if you phrase the question as “your brain is destroyed and recreated 5 minutes later”, most people outside LW answer no. I guess this might be another instance of brain functions inactive vs lack of ability to have experiences.
Yes, I agree (except that I’m not sure whether most people outside LW would really answer no; for sure a lot would, but I don’t have a strong intuition about whether it would be a majority). My point is just that even if sleep never turns off experiences altogether, the intuition people appeal to when saying “experience stops every night when you sleep” isn’t actually dependent on that.
What do “destroy” and “recreate” mean?
I interpret them as meaning something like “disassemble” and “reassemble in the same configuration as before, with the same component parts”
That’s not how I interpret the descriptions of the destructive teleportation, uploading, and forking scenarios.
The only arguments I can presently think of that really make me doubt my response to the “do you survive destructive uploading/teleportation/copying?” questions are more on the lines of the Ship of Theseus. My computer remains my computer if I turn it off and on again. “My files” can refer to specific instances, versions, copies, whatever, whether they’re on “my computer” or copied to an external device. If my computer falls apart and is put back together again, it’s still my computer. If my computer is taken apart, and an identical computer with my files on its hard drive is built (with different parts), it’s a different computer. If my computer slowly has all its parts replaced, one at a time, I don’t really know what I’d think; I want to say it’s no longer the same computer at some point, but I don’t know which point. Maybe when the hard drive is replaced, but that’s a bad example because replacing individual chunks of atoms in the hard drive is a weird concept. Actually, I’d probably think of the new chunks as “the new chunks”, and more or less treat it as portions of two separate disks acting as one. (And if files are modified, deleted, copied, etc, then they are modified, deleted, copied, etc, and this does not make it stop being “my computer”.)
So what does that mean for the brain? The brain changes a lot; does its component parts get replaced all that often? A huge portion of the cells in the body get replaced at varying rates; do they play into this at all? How would my conclusions change if the brain replaces its cells frequently and I was just that bad at understanding neurology? I’m not really sure about the answers to these. It’s possible that the answers could change my mind. It’s possible that I would just stay in the same boat and remain existentially horrified forever or something.
But flipping the switch from on to off to on is more or less irrelevant. I feel like we are using the same words to describe completely different phenomena, then debating as though everyone is using the words in the same way. (Compare “Congress” to “the 75th congress” to “the 76th congress”. The first is defined by an enduring pattern with interchangeable components, such that it describes the both of the other two; the second refers to a specific configuration of components and behaviors; the third is as specific as the second, but it’s entirely possible that only a few members from the 75th congress were replaced for the 76th. If someone was particularly attached to the 75th congress, and by the 80th congress, the last member from the 75th was replaced, what would we take from such a person’s reaction? Keeping in mind that people tend to write dramatic articles whenever an enduring group loses or replaces all of its original members, or all of the members present for particularly charished events, etc. What if a band breaks up, then most of its members form a new band?)