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by 4bpp on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @08:30PM
(#27125299)
Greg Egan's Permutation City is a story that takes a pretty interesting approach (and, trying to not give away too much, extreme perspective) to this question. I would stop short of glowingly recommending it because I found the storytelling itself to be only okay, but the core idea and take on this matter itself was one of the most memorable concepts I've seen in hard scifi.
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Permutation City is the most fresh and insightful view on consciousness I have ever read. Every page is mindblow after mindblow of ideas you thought you knew but have never seen them taken to those consequences. I look at computer science as a beautiful philosophical minefield of interesting takes on language, existence and consciousness, and Greg Egan is a huge part of that. I never found someone who writes like him.
IMO, Greg Egan is one of the greatest geniuses I've ever come across, and I strongly recommend his novels and stories ... but I think it's worth noting that he's said that he doesn't believe that the theory of consciousness that Permutation City is based on can be true.