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Comment by jjk166 | Hacker News Reader

When you reboot a computer, is it the same program running or is it a new program that simply has access to the previous program's stored memory?

When you wake up in the morning, are you the same person who went to sleep, or merely a person with access to that past person's memories?

Indeed, besides your memory, which could just as easily have been created from a copy of you, is there any evidence of your conscious existence before this infinitesimal moment? Who is to say that a new iteration of you isn't created with every cascade of firing neurons and immediately destroyed with the next?

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The transporter is basically fork() followed immediately by SIGKILL.

Not really, as fork() involves COW so nothing is really copied, and subsequent SIGKILL will only remove process structures, not data itself.

I think that opens a whole new can of worms for philosophical debates but the paradox still stands.

How would a sentient AI feel about executing `if (fork() > 0) { exit(0); }` in its own process?

If the sleep is used to retrain your neural network with data accumulated during the day and clear this short term memory then you're clearly a new person every day.

But assuming the new data set is consistent with previous experiences then you are probably converging to some local maxima or oscilating around some point and you change less and less every night as you get older.

In that sense decompensation or PTSD would be symptoms of some retraining with some inconsistent data and having the network diverging.

LSD and other psychadelics: after use, very few people feel as if they are the same. /anecdata

Indeed. Some may realize they are more than the sum of their parts. Not a popular position here on HN where most find us comparable to CPU memory architecture.

The assumption is that all memory is stored in the brain and body, for where else could it be stored?

The materialists do not believe in a ghost in the machine. /anecdata

I don't understand. How does “more than the sum of their parts” lead to “a ghost in the machine”?

The answer is in your question.

It means if you take us apart and put us back together again the ghost will have left. It will be a huge disappointment for cryogenics.

If people want longer lives the body will have to be kept alive in an induced coma state and heart rate slowed. Or use some novel regenerative therapy.

Otherwise that machine (body) is never coming back to life once its ghost has left.

It means an entirely different type of neuroscience that most scientists are uncomfortable with. Having to do with Consciousness

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