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Why does it seem unsatisfying? Hanson makes the point that what makes us today, our X billion cells, all are not a part of us 20 years later. We are constantly
by reducesuffering 5y ago
Why does it seem unsatisfying? Hanson makes the point that what makes us today, our X billion cells, all are not a part of us 20 years later. We are constantly replacing our individual components and yet still have the same stream of conscious. I suspect that over the next few decades, our understanding of biology and neuroscience will get much much better in explaining this phenomena and giving us the proper single-consciousness way of replacing our individual components likewise.
- beaconstudios 5y agoWe actually have no way to know that our stream of consciousness is continuous, because all we have of the past is memory, and memory is not consciousness. There's quite a few unnerving ideas in this space, like that we can't really know whether we wake up the same "us" after we sleep. The only thing we really experience is the present moment.
- reducesuffering 5y agoYes that's a good point but that doesn't distinguish natural cells/neurons from artificial.
- beaconstudios 5y agoTrue - I suspect that if you were to gradually replace human neurons with artificial ones that you could potentially achieve continuity of experience, but it would be impossible to prove one way or the other so doing it on somebody who wasn't dying might be unethical.