Art by smbc-comics

Consciousness is often said to disappear in deep, dreamless sleep. We argue that this assumption is oversimplified. Unless dreamless sleep is defined as unconscious from the outset there are good empirical and theoretical reasons for saying that a range of different types of sleep experience, some of which are distinct from dreaming, can occur in all stages of sleep.

Pubmed Articles

Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep?

Sciencealert Article We Were Wrong About Consciousness Disappearing in Dreamless Sleep, Say Scientists

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Creating and destroying perfectly identical copies of the information that corresponds to a person neither creates nor destroys people unless the very last copy of that information is destroyed, in which case the person is killed.

    Small divergences aren’t a big deal. For example, if a person spends an hour under the effect of an anesthetic (or alcohol) which prevents the formation of new long-term memories, this person isn’t dying when he goes to sleep and wakes up without any memories of that last hour.

    Larger divergences are a big deal - losing a year of memories is pretty bad, losing a decade is even worse, and having one’s mind returned to the blank slate of an infant is very close to the same thing as dying.

    So what I’m saying is that the two copies start out as the same person and then gradually become different people.