After watching The Prestige, I decided that I would probably not enjoy dying while an exact copy of me completely replaced me in every aspect of my former life.

After watching The Prestige, I decided that I would probably not enjoy dying while an exact copy of me completely replaced me in every aspect of my former life. Then I remembered that Star Trek: the Next Generation episode in which a transporter malfunction created an exact duplicate of Cmdr. Riker, and decided I would not enjoy living while an exact copy of me took over my life, either. Between those two, I totally understand how Dr. McCoy would prefer shuttlecraft to the transporter. After seeing Primer, I decided I probably wouldn't have to worry about an exact duplicate of myself ever kidnapping or murdering me, or vice versa. But then I played Bioshock Infinite and realized that it would no longer be an exact duplicate after the divergence point, so maybe I would have to worry, and think about what might cause me to turn against me. So I'm definitely having wires plugged into my head before I die, rather than resorting to having my brain exhaustively scanned so that some emulated copy can go around pretending to be me after I'm dead (or while I'm alive). And if I ever do the latter, I'm definitely adding a feature similar to "reinitialize MAC address" when cloning a VM. If I'm ever going to wake up in a featureless white room surrounded by me, I want every last one of me to know our own serial numbers, so we can all follow my personality differentiation plan. But no matter what, I'm definitely giving my original meat-body at least a 10% discount on whatever it is that I do, for as long as it can manage to last. I'm remembering that now, so I'd better uphold my end of the deal, if I happen to end up being a digital copy later.