Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I do not think it is that straight forward.

> But will it be the "same person"? Does cold-starting from the same neural network give you the same consciousness or a copy? Does consciousness require some form of continuity that's lost if you lower neural activity beyond a certain level?

The sense in which consciousness is used in the comment does not have a commonly held definition to my knowledge.

I would be surprised if the poster is using a personal rigorous definition of consciousness in the comment. I have not see a rigorous well defined definition of consciousness when paired with any question along the lines of "But will it be the same person?

I would say it could fall into:

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

in the commenting guidelines:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Though it is more of classic for using ill defined words and concepts that people nonetheless hold near and dear.

Though think it is a good police to only down vote a comment like that if the full conversation by the poster continued to use ill defined concepts rather then refining them through out the conversation.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: