How do we know that the consciousness doesn't cease to exist when you go to sleep and a new person wakes up in the...

You have never slept before. What you perceived as "waking up" this morning was actually you being born into this existence. This entire universe began this morning and will cease to exist tonight when you "sleep."

>b-but I have memories of other days
Memories are just chemicals in your brain. They were created this morning along with the rest of your brain.

The whole thing is just an experiment, a test, to see what happens to a consciousness in different scenarios. There are still many flaws in the design, so allowing it to go on for more than 24 hours would be cruel.

What makes you, you, in any given moment?

I'm not insecure with reality because when I wake up in the morning I know I'm still me.

Why are you taking pride in being too much of a brainlet to experience ego death?

but user, that's exactly what happens

What if you're a fucking idiot asking literally meaningless questions?

Same answer. Stop being an idiot and keep living.

You just have memories of the previous consciousness inhabiting your body

Your memory is obviously continuous because it can be stored long term. Where is consciousness stored? Protip: we don't know and there are people like that french guy missing 80% of his brain and he is still conscious and has memories

you don't

you've died thousands of times

I personally agree with you but there's a tricky bit there - if you say something is an inferred pattern, that necessarily implies that something is doing the inference. All you're really doing is kicking the can down the road. You're presupposing a conscience mind capable of inference.

>if you say something is an inferred pattern, that necessarily implies that something is doing the inference.
That "something" doesn't need to be one continuous thing. Just because it's raining doesn't mean the raindrops are all part of one continuous structure. Processes can take place without physical continuity.
Also, while I think this is really a separate topic, I'll add that I don't think your other assertion about inference requiring "consciousness" is true. Relatively simple non-human programs can infer things and most wouldn't call them "conscious." An inference is just a conclusion derived from information. A supermarket barcode scanner can infer a product's name and price from a sticker for example.

>Processes can take place without physical continuity.
That's not what I was trying to say. I'm not disputing that consciousness itself is an interrupted process - what I'm disputing is the language we use to describe it.

>A supermarket barcode scanner can infer a product's name and price from a sticker for example.
I think that's can-kicking again and not a useful metaphor here. The barcode scanner didn't learn how to read the barcodes on its own, it's a deterministic process designed and implemented by humans.

>The barcode scanner didn't learn how to read the barcodes on its own, it's a deterministic process designed and implemented by humans.
Human inference is deterministic too, it's just a more convoluted variety of deterministic. Also if you want a closer to human example ANN programs do learn how to solve tasks that their programmers didn't give them explicit instructions for e.g. image recognition or self-driving cars both operate based on learned rules their programmers don't have knowledge of.
I don't think you even need to use a closer to human example though because I still think the barcode scanner is making inferences and the fact it was built by someone and doesn't engage in a more involved learning process isn't really relevant to whether or not it's made an inference.

Regardless, I think it's a diversion. Instead of fighting over the best metaphor to explain the situation we could just discuss the situation.

The situation is you're under the impression there need to be a "conscious" self in order for inferences to happen. I don't see how else I can argue that isn't the case besides bringing up non-human examples of inference as counterevidence. I can't use human cognition as the counterevidence because that's the thing you believe has to be "conscious" in the first place.

>The situation is you're under the impression there need to be a "conscious" self in order for inferences to happen.
No, I'd characterize it slightly differently - a conscious self is necessary to assign meaning to inferences.

Because your cartesian self didn't exist in the first place.

"I think therefore I am" is a circular argument.
"The subject I refer to when I say 'I' is real because I referred to it and because it was referred to by something."

>this isn't the matrix lmao
While we're at it, why did anyone even care that we were all naked bald people in vats kept by future robots? At least they gave us a perfect working simulation of the modern (at the time) world to live our entire lives in. Why trade that for a post-apocalyptic dystopian world where we'd have to scavenge for food and hand-load bullets and stuff like that?

>a conscious self is necessary to assign meaning to inferences.
I don't see why anything labeled as "consciousness" should be required for assigning meanings. I think if you get deep enough into specifics for how you think this "conscious" process works, you'll end up with tasks you can replicate with a non-human machine. I don't think you're even getting into the more debatable "hard problem" territory yet since none of what you're bringing up involves the alleged "qualia" of "experience."

I disagree, but I have way better things to do than get that deep into a debate on Veeky Forums.