[extropy-chat] "Dead Time" of the Brain.

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Apr 27, 2006, at 3:58 PM, Heartland wrote:
> John Clark wrote:
>> Why? If the 2 copies are exact and running in parallel then there  
>> are 2
>> brains but only one mind. Mind is what a brain does so if 2 brains  
>> are doing
>> the exact same thing then there is only one mind.
>
> Forget about anything I said about dimensions and let's talk about  
> the most basic
> assumptions here. So, according to you, two brains produce a single  
> instance of
> mind?


Processes that are indistinguishable are equivalent, even wildly  
different representations of the same abstract information (see:  
Invariance Theorem).  Therefore, one could argue that in the above  
example there would be two instances of a single mind.  Unless, of  
course, a mind is defined by the substrate (e.g. brain) it is  
attached to rather than the information represented in the substrate.


> Really? So if I write 1 and then 1 (two ones are exactly the same)  
> you're
> saying that I wrote 1 once?


No.  What he is saying is that the first "1" is indistinguishable  
from the second "1".  You wrote "1" twice, but the fact that they  
show up in different places does not make those two instances  
fundamentally different.

A pattern that shows up in two places is still the same pattern it  
was when it showed up in one place.  Two different instances in  
isolation do not give you two different patterns.

So I guess you have to decide: is the mind defined by the brain or  
not?  Either way, it has consequences.

J. Andrew Rogers