From: Jason Joel Thompson (jasonjthompson@home.com)
Date: Wed Dec 13 2000 - 14:50:49 MST
Hi Robert.
I'd love to engage your post at length, but, well, we've been going around
in circles here for quite some time, so I'm just going to make a brief
comment regarding a portion of your post:
Do we -really- "remember" who we are each morning? I doubt we functionally
'reboot' every morning as our OS consults the memory banks to reload our
identity. I think the computer analogy is being spread rather thin in this
debate. I'm probably an advocate of Minsky's model-- we are an amalgamation
of processes-- some of which become quiescent during sleep, others of which
remain active. Further, we -are- also currently our hardware: not only the
electrochemical processes that take place there. My personal belief
regarding the consistency of our intellect is that the process is very
robust, it is distributed, it maintains continuity across down-time, some of
it is solid-state, and it is a dynamic process that moves through time, and
requires a state of emergence in which to operate.
Personally, I think we're going to find that as we make computers that
become capable of being conscious, they'll have to start to behave in robust
new ways that will represent a total paradigm shift in how we think about
computing. They will probably need to stay on, for instance, all the time.
Despite the fact that this debate has swerved in this direction, I'm
actually talking about a concept somewhat wider than the term
"consciousness," which is why I used the phrase "reality experiencer." I do
not think that it is necessary to be having thoughts all the time to be
considered alive, rather it is sufficient to merely "be." Sleep is a state
of "be"ing. The pilot light is on. I disagree that we need to be aware of
our on"ness" to be, truly, "on."
> Since I'm partial to the perspective that sleep is a
> very altered state of consciousness, it seems that
> waking up is really a warm reboot. If so, I'd suggest
> that every day we are living as copies of ourselves.
If this were true (and this would be the last day for this particular
iteration of "me.") it means only that I'd need to find a way to be always
"on." That would suck, because I don't have a lot of time...
Of course, it would be hard for me to rationally refuse a teleportation
event, for instance, given that the results would be identical to "just
going to sleep."
Fortunately, however, I don't happen to think it quite works that way.
--
::jason.joel.thompson::
::founder::
www.wildghost.com
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