[Hortinstein]

I remember this being an incredible book when I read it back on my moto droid phone in 2009ish on Kindle app...time to listen to it on audible. The biggest thing I remember is it invoked some deep thoughts from me on what is conscious and whether transferring consciousness to another medium would still the same person. Seemed (and still seems) to me that continuity would be broken...but isn't that true when we go to sleep and wake up? I loved this book because it provoked a lot of questions like this. Been meaning to revisit it for years.

[Filligree]

A lot has been said about uploading.

A whole lot.

Multiple libraries worth.

I’m not going to replicate all that in this comment box. However, as far as sleep is concerned: No, your brain doesn’t shut off during sleep. Everything keeps running except for some interconnects, mostly it’s a mode switch.

The same isn’t true for concussions, and concussions usually come with short term memory loss. One might imagine that’s because you lose information that only exists as ongoing electrical patterns.

[shadowgovt]

Yes, this. It's hard to express how disconcerting this is to someone who hasn't experienced a concussion or neurological fainting spell.

I passed out one night alone after an undiagnosed neurological condition resulted in what was, as best we can tell, a seizure. Hit the floor and stayed there for an unknown length of time, because I didn't have a clock handy. The experience of, for want of a better term, "recohering" to find oneself awake and covered in one's own cold urine is very different from the experience of waking up. There's a distinct discontinuity of self that you don't get from waking from a dream.

I still have the distinct sensation that for some undetermined length of time, I simply wasn't there. It was a spiritually and epistemologically haunting experience.

[flir]

Also worth considering anaesthetics in this context, because nobody's totally sure what's going on there.

> One might imagine that’s because you lose information that only exists as ongoing electrical patterns.

Cue Exhalation

[mrguyorama]

>One might imagine that’s because you lose information that only exists as ongoing electrical patterns.

Or you know, the literal physical damage to your brain cells from impacting the inside of your skull.

[Filligree]

There’s some of that, no doubt, but other events that cause electrical shutdown and reset—even without the trauma—still cause amnesia.