Agreed, it's hard for me to imagine a situation where you don't get a copy -- in which case the consciousness "forks", and the loss of either one is still a dea

Agreed, it's hard for me to imagine a situation where you don't get a copy -- in which case the consciousness "forks", and the loss of either one is still a death. It's like that movie The Prestige. The only case I can see otherwise is one where a person "melds" with a machine, and over time the balance shifts, like the Ship of Theseus. Perhaps it's really all about communication bandwidth. I got this idea from Vernor Vinge, I think, but it's also just in the air. That idea can be tested somewhat by considering the opposite case: Not parts combined into a whole, but wholes severed into parts: People with brain injuries, so that they seem to e.g. understand different things depending on which eye sees a thing.