> can a human likewise be abstracted away to some substrate-independent program such that we lose nothing by deleting some running copies Oh. Well, assuming ou

> can a human likewise be abstracted away to some substrate-independent program such that we lose nothing by deleting some running copies Oh. Well, assuming our current model of computation, I think a "substrate-independent" human program is essentially non-human by definition (that is to say, lacking the particular qualities of 'consciousness' that we commonly ascribe to humans), so I'd conclude that "nothing is lost" insomuch as "nothing existed" in the first place. In theory, it seems plausible that we could create a program that could consistently pass a "Bill Gates" Turing test, but it is easy for a programmer to imagine how such a program could exist without actually being conscious.