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This makes sense if you believe in a non-materialist self, like a soul. That model wouldn't be falsifiable- we can't measure it, so it can have whatever proper

This makes sense if you believe in a non-materialist self, like a soul. That model wouldn't be falsifiable- we can't measure it, so it can have whatever properties are convenient. You could then rule out the possibility that your soul would inhabit the copied 'you' by fiat. Scientifically, though: of course an exact copy of you is you. If you don't believe in souls but still feel like this is not the case, that indicates your model of 'you' is incorrect.

musicale 2y ago
> of course an exact copy of you is you Yeah, that's what my clones keep telling me. I ask them: have you ever woken up inside a cloning machine? That probably means you're not the original. Then they somehow sedated me and locked me inside the cloning machine.
danparsonson 2y ago
So if we copy you into a robot and the copying process leaves you unharmed and awake, are they both you?
- ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
  Yes, they are both me. It is admittedly a weird conclusion, but that doesn't make it false- we did a weird thing and got a weird result. Objectively, there is no case for saying either is not you.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    So twins are both the same person? Not sure what you mean, they aren't both you, you create a new person who thinks the same way you do.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I agree that they'd both be you, but I don't think that's what's at stake. "You" would only get to experience one of the two lives at that point: either the original's or the robot's. Presumably whatever consciousness was present before the duplication still resides with the original. So there's certainly an argument to be made that if someone created a copy of "you" and put it in a robot, and then destroyed your organic body, that consciousness wouldn't "move" to the robot; it would stay in the organic body and be killed. The robot would be a completely new consciousness, but with all of your memories and behaviors and attitudes. I'm honestly not sure what I believe around this. Perhaps we will discover "consciousness" as a physical thing and learn how to transfer that as well. Or not. Who knows.
    - danparsonson 2y ago
      I'm with you on this one - continuity is important too, it's not just about form. A robot version of me might be a suitable substitute to my loved ones, but it would always be outside my head and therefore not a continuous extension of my self.
  - wutwutwat 2y ago
    No, one is a copy of you. There is only one you. Literally. A copy can be perceived as being you, but it's literally, physically, not you. If it was you, literally you, it couldn't exist in both. Your copy could answer a question differently than you might, because the copy would immediately start having a different experience than you. If it was you, that wouldn't be possible. If it was a copy of you, you wouldn't exist along side of it, and it wouldn't be able to answer a question differently than you.
  - valval 2y ago
    What a silly conundrum you’ve got yourself into. It’s fine to take a step back and say oops, what I just said here was quite stupid.
- bhhaskin 2y ago
  I think it would both be me until it started to drift, which would be almost instantly.
  - wutwutwat 2y ago
    Right. You'd have a memory of cloning your mind, and the copy wouldn't have a memory of that. From the first boot of the copy, it would be operating with a different set of data than you. Also the fact you exist along side of it, means it's not you. It's a copy of you.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    As long as we're dreaming up stuff, why do we assume the consciousness wouldn't be shared? what if you woke up and there was one mind but two bodies?
    - danparsonson 2y ago
      For myself at least, consciousness is the product of the body and in particular the brain. Without any kind of high bandwidth connection between two bodies, I don't see how your proposal could work. That said, I wonder if that offers a possible way to 'transfer consciousness' between a human and their robot copy - link both brains together and then once synchronised (whatever that means), shutdown the biological half. Like a sort of extended Ship of Theseus idea.
      - bhhaskin 2y ago
        That's an interesting idea. I think as long as the continuity of consciousness happens then it doesn't matter and you would negate the copy problem.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
Scientifically though, an exact copy is likely to not be possible due to the quantum uncertainty principle. And I'm not sure that's the only issue even for die-hard materialists : think for instance about all the problems that come from multiple exact copies & things like ownership, relationships...
d-lisp 2y ago
Another instance of me is a different instance of me than I am, thus it isn't me.
nitwit005 2y ago
It's not an issue of the soul, if you make a copy there are two people now, which are clearly physically separate, and think independently. Even if you somehow made a perfect instant copy, they'll start drifting apart, as they'll be experiencing different things.
- wutwutwat 2y ago
  this ^ Soul or not, it wouldn't be me. Imagine that I was alive and existed next to the cloud copy of me. It would be 2 different minds with a common core. A database restore to a new cluster, that immediately became different afterward because our two experiences would drift. Funny enough, the db term for a db cluster which has two writable primary instances, which have received differing sets of writes containing different sets of data, is called a "split-brain". So if I exist and have my own thoughts and the cloud copy exists and has its own thoughts, and we are taking in reality differently than each other, we are 2 distinct minds. Now imagine I died. What has that changed for the copy of me? Nothing. It's still a different mind than mine. My mind is dead. I'm dead. A copy of me existing after I die does not change the fact that I died. It does not help me, literally me, live forever.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    What if you have done the procedure and after it woke up in artificial environment. You'd be aware that there's biological remnant of pre-procedure you that will still experience other things than you will including dying and death. But he's separate entity and you are glad it's not you that are about to die. Basically if you wake up after the cloning as your old biological self then you just drew the short straw. It's up to you if it helps you or not that there's another you that will continue on whatever you were doing without the nuisance of dying. Some people might find calmness in that they can freely die and nothing of value will be lost. What about startrek transporters? Wouldn't you use them because you are getting disintegrated and what's create at destination is just a copy of you but not you?
    - wqaatwt 2y ago
geye1234 2y ago
I don't believe in a soul in the sense of a "ghost in a machine", since it introduces so many problems. Nonetheless, it's pretty clear that there is an immaterial component to thought, and therefore to our existence, for various reasons. Examples: 1. If we are entirely material, we can't know anything. For example, if you're thinking about a tree, there must be something about you that has 'grasped' what it is to be a tree. This is impossible if your idea of a tree is nothing more than a bunch of neurons firing in a given way. There is no correspondence between neurons firing and a tree. So there must be more to your thought than neurons firing (or any other material process). 2. Similarly, if we're entirely material, we can't reason. A reasonable thought differs from an unreasonable thought only by its content. It can't differ in this way by its material components in the brain. Therefore, if we hold that some thoughts are wrong and others are right, we must conclude that there is more to our thought than the material.
- thephyber 2y ago
  How sure are you about (1)? Is there no chance that “thinking” (or your term “grasping”) is not simply an emergent property of certain matter+states? A computer with a machine learning process seems to be able to “grasp” what it is to be tree (as opposed to a cat or a crosswalk). You seem to be engaging in difficult philosophical concepts and jumping over important steps (like rigorous definitions or showing why something “must be”).
  - geye1234 2y ago
    > You seem to be engaging in difficult philosophical concepts and jumping over important steps (like rigorous definitions or showing why something “must be”). Yeah, sorry, I bashed that out too quickly. I'll try to slow down a bit, though I can't promise a full treatise :) For a thought to be about reality, there must be something about that thought that makes it about reality. How this might be the case is one thing, but the fact that it is the case is nonetheless necessary. And for the thought to be about the reality, there must in one way or another be similarity between thought and reality. Again, the 'how' may be extremely complex, but the existence of the similarity seems necessary. To put it in opposite terms, if a thought is not similar to reality, then it is not about reality, and therefore can't constitute knowledge about reality. Do you agree thus far? If so, let that be premise 1. I'm obviously talking about the concepts we use to think about reality, not about the words we use to describe it. I will assume that we agree that thoughts can be about reality (even though they're obviously sometimes not) as premise 2. So, given our two premises, suppose Bob is thinking about a tree. With materialism, where is the likeness between Bob's mind and the tree? It cannot be the neurons or the physical structure of his brain or body, because these things don't have similarity with a tree. The atomic structure of a brain, in any state, is different from a tree's. That much is clear. And likewise, a tree doesn't somehow appear in Bob's brain. Given our premises, this is a problem for materialism. If the likeness is not physical, and it clearly isn't, then what is it? We can discuss the idea of a tree as 'emergent' from the matter&state. But honestly, I struggle with this concept. Every time I've heard the word used, it seems to be a way of restating the problem rather than solving it. Perhaps you could explain in a bit more detail how this overcomes the 'similarity' problem I've outlined above? ISTM you still get the problem that a bunch of neurons is not a tree, regardless of their arrangements. Either the neurons in some sense 'cause' you to think about a tree, in which case you need to ascribe to the neurons an ability to cause immaterial effects, which again seems a problem; or it is simply a way of saying "we don't know how it works". Again, so ISTM. On computers: very briefly, a computer doesn't 'know' anything about a tree, or anything else. A 'tree' on a computer is a bunch of magnetic states on a hard drive, or transistors in particular states, or what have you. The meaning of a computer's output (that is, the link between the computer and reality) exists only in the mind of a human being. An LLM's text about a tree is no different in principle from the binary for the word 'tree' on an hdd, or a jpeg, or whatever. An LLM gives the illusion of knowing, but no more than that. Again, I realize this is a pretty summary treatment, but I think the tendency to describe the mind as a computer is misguided for this reason. You face exactly the same problem with the computer as you do with the mind. For my part, I simply reject premise 2 as far as a computer is concerned. Anyway, very simply, if materialism is true, a thought cannot be about reality, and it cannot have a similarity with reality. Therefore, we can't know anything about reality. But we can know about reality (premise 2), therefore materialism is false.
prometheus76 2y ago
If I copy the contents of an Apple II disk onto my pc and try to "run" it...nothing happens. Isn't mapped to the new hardware. So who is going to write the "human mind/consciousness" emulator that will map onto a hard drive? Will they simulate all the inputs from your body, nervous system, senses, etc.?
- kimixa 2y ago
  And will they perfectly emulate the dynamic situation that is the brain? You've mapped every neuron perfectly, you've even captured every ongoing signal and the whole thing is recreated perfectly. But that's not the entire story - connections are created and broken all the time, that's what memory is after all. Is it the "same person" if that snapshot is put into an emulator with slightly different results there? They clearly won't be having the same thoughts in a pretty short timescale even if the inputs are perfectly the same.
majormajor 2y ago
> Scientifically, though: of course an exact copy of you is you. If you don't believe in souls but still feel like this is not the case, that indicates your model of 'you' is incorrect. How is that "scientifically" an "of course"? How is it more "an exact copy of you is you" than the alternative claim, "an exact copy of you is 'you (1)'" (to borrow from file manager nomenclature). The trivial example of that seems to be that if you make an exact copy, put it in a different room, and then something happens to the exact copy, that thing does not happen simultaneously to the original copy.
- ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
  An identical copy necessarily cannot be measured in a way that distinguishes itself from the original. So "scientifically" because we're restricting the space to measurements of the physical world, and "of course" because the conclusion falls almost tautologously out of the definitions, no experiment needed. How can the thing scientifically not be you if it is not materially different from you? To your example- I am not sure which of two points are being made, so I'll address both. I'm not saying that everything that happens to entity 1 also happens to entity 2, just that both are you. Two things can both be apples, even though biting one leaves the other intact. And if something happening to you makes you not 'you' anymore, 'you' isn't really a coherent concept across even a fraction of a second; you'd cease to exist and be replaced multiple times in that time.
  - TylerLives 2y ago
    In reality, no two things are the same. When we categorize things in any way, we make an error in order to achieve some practical goal.
  - wqaatwt 2y ago
    > cannot be measured It certainly can measured be from the perspective of the “original” i.e. the person presumably making the decision to be copied or not.
fnordpiglet 2y ago
The person who is you exist independently of any copy of yourself. While a replica of you would exist there would still be the original you manifest in your brain that would exist an independent life and die at some point without ever “resuming” in another body. This is similar to how you can never time travel yourself even through relativity. Your perception of time will be the same no matter what relativistic effects occur outside of your frame of reference. You will live your life span and die. Your replica however would have a different experience and be able to draw on your memories etc. But you yourself will in fact live a natural life with no shared experience with your replica and will experience death no matter what. It’ll be little solace to you that a copy got to live your life after your passing.
TomasBM 2y ago
There's no need to believe in an immaterial soul to think that a copy is a different 'you'. It is enough to understand that having an independent "command & control" structure (for lack of a better word; C&C) is by definition 'you'. C&C means that the individual can perform a self-contained sense-think-act cycle. We can infer this from the following: 1. Identical twins, despite having identical genetic structures, have separate C&C, and therefore qualify as separate persons. 2. Two siamese twins conjoined by the body (including parts of the head) have two C&Cs, and therefore qualify as two persons (with varying level of bodily control per person). 3. An individual with additional parts of the body (e.g., in a special case of being conjoined with a twin) has only one C&C and therefore qualifies as one person. 4. Clones are a special case of identical twins, and still have separate C&Cs, therefore qualifying as two persons. 5. A person in a coma or with another condition nonetheless qualifies as a person with some sense-think-act autonomy, despite being dependent on someone else for continued bodily functions. 6. An individual with a transplant (e.g., heart) or an extension (e.g., pacemaker) is nonetheless a person because of their consistent C&C. 7. An individual with extreme memory loss remains a person with C&C (in brain, body, genetics for the most part). Any other special but naturally occurring cases (e.g., individuals with two brains, individuals with completely separated hemispheres, conjoined twins sharing a brain) would require either that we: a. understand how brains and bodies work (and therefore, make a more quantified measure of how much of sense-think-act autonomy qualifies as personhood); or b. decide based on a heuristic (1 brain = 1 person) or principle (protection of bodily autonomy, i.e., 1 body = 1 person). But none of these need you to believe in a soul, in order to think that a digital clone is not 'you'. Unless, of course, you can prove that an individual either: 1. can sense-think-act with both physical and digital 'bodies' simultaneously and/or sequentially*, which share an equivalent experience (i.e., central C&C coordinating distribution or maintaining strict consistency across bodies). 2. can sense-think-act with either physical or digital 'body' at will, upon establishing a 'connection' and successful transfer of state (i.e., remote access). 3. can transfer whatever is necessary for C&C to another 'body' (e.g., brain transplant), and demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that their C&C signatures in new body match the ones in the old one.
LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
Exact copy down to which scale? All subatomic particles, quantum-woo-woo including all their entanglings? Weakest electromagnetic fields as resultant emergent pattern of these?

musicale 2y ago

> of course an exact copy of you is you Yeah, that's what my clones keep telling me. I ask them: have you ever woken up inside a cloning machine? That probably means you're not the original. Then they somehow sedated me and locked me inside the cloning machine.

danparsonson 2y ago

So if we copy you into a robot and the copying process leaves you unharmed and awake, are they both you?

ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
Yes, they are both me. It is admittedly a weird conclusion, but that doesn't make it false- we did a weird thing and got a weird result. Objectively, there is no case for saying either is not you.
- Jensson 2y ago
  So twins are both the same person? Not sure what you mean, they aren't both you, you create a new person who thinks the same way you do.
- kelnos 2y ago
  I agree that they'd both be you, but I don't think that's what's at stake. "You" would only get to experience one of the two lives at that point: either the original's or the robot's. Presumably whatever consciousness was present before the duplication still resides with the original. So there's certainly an argument to be made that if someone created a copy of "you" and put it in a robot, and then destroyed your organic body, that consciousness wouldn't "move" to the robot; it would stay in the organic body and be killed. The robot would be a completely new consciousness, but with all of your memories and behaviors and attitudes. I'm honestly not sure what I believe around this. Perhaps we will discover "consciousness" as a physical thing and learn how to transfer that as well. Or not. Who knows.
  - danparsonson 2y ago
    I'm with you on this one - continuity is important too, it's not just about form. A robot version of me might be a suitable substitute to my loved ones, but it would always be outside my head and therefore not a continuous extension of my self.
- wutwutwat 2y ago
  No, one is a copy of you. There is only one you. Literally. A copy can be perceived as being you, but it's literally, physically, not you. If it was you, literally you, it couldn't exist in both. Your copy could answer a question differently than you might, because the copy would immediately start having a different experience than you. If it was you, that wouldn't be possible. If it was a copy of you, you wouldn't exist along side of it, and it wouldn't be able to answer a question differently than you.
- valval 2y ago
  What a silly conundrum you’ve got yourself into. It’s fine to take a step back and say oops, what I just said here was quite stupid.
bhhaskin 2y ago
I think it would both be me until it started to drift, which would be almost instantly.
- wutwutwat 2y ago
  Right. You'd have a memory of cloning your mind, and the copy wouldn't have a memory of that. From the first boot of the copy, it would be operating with a different set of data than you. Also the fact you exist along side of it, means it's not you. It's a copy of you.
- fragmede 2y ago
  As long as we're dreaming up stuff, why do we assume the consciousness wouldn't be shared? what if you woke up and there was one mind but two bodies?
  - danparsonson 2y ago
    For myself at least, consciousness is the product of the body and in particular the brain. Without any kind of high bandwidth connection between two bodies, I don't see how your proposal could work. That said, I wonder if that offers a possible way to 'transfer consciousness' between a human and their robot copy - link both brains together and then once synchronised (whatever that means), shutdown the biological half. Like a sort of extended Ship of Theseus idea.
    - bhhaskin 2y ago
      That's an interesting idea. I think as long as the continuity of consciousness happens then it doesn't matter and you would negate the copy problem.

BlueTemplar 2y ago

Scientifically though, an exact copy is likely to not be possible due to the quantum uncertainty principle. And I'm not sure that's the only issue even for die-hard materialists : think for instance about all the problems that come from multiple exact copies & things like ownership, relationships...

d-lisp 2y ago

Another instance of me is a different instance of me than I am, thus it isn't me.

nitwit005 2y ago

It's not an issue of the soul, if you make a copy there are two people now, which are clearly physically separate, and think independently. Even if you somehow made a perfect instant copy, they'll start drifting apart, as they'll be experiencing different things.

wutwutwat 2y ago
this ^ Soul or not, it wouldn't be me. Imagine that I was alive and existed next to the cloud copy of me. It would be 2 different minds with a common core. A database restore to a new cluster, that immediately became different afterward because our two experiences would drift. Funny enough, the db term for a db cluster which has two writable primary instances, which have received differing sets of writes containing different sets of data, is called a "split-brain". So if I exist and have my own thoughts and the cloud copy exists and has its own thoughts, and we are taking in reality differently than each other, we are 2 distinct minds. Now imagine I died. What has that changed for the copy of me? Nothing. It's still a different mind than mine. My mind is dead. I'm dead. A copy of me existing after I die does not change the fact that I died. It does not help me, literally me, live forever.
- scotty79 2y ago
  What if you have done the procedure and after it woke up in artificial environment. You'd be aware that there's biological remnant of pre-procedure you that will still experience other things than you will including dying and death. But he's separate entity and you are glad it's not you that are about to die. Basically if you wake up after the cloning as your old biological self then you just drew the short straw. It's up to you if it helps you or not that there's another you that will continue on whatever you were doing without the nuisance of dying. Some people might find calmness in that they can freely die and nothing of value will be lost. What about startrek transporters? Wouldn't you use them because you are getting disintegrated and what's create at destination is just a copy of you but not you?
  - wqaatwt 2y ago

geye1234 2y ago

I don't believe in a soul in the sense of a "ghost in a machine", since it introduces so many problems. Nonetheless, it's pretty clear that there is an immaterial component to thought, and therefore to our existence, for various reasons. Examples: 1. If we are entirely material, we can't know anything. For example, if you're thinking about a tree, there must be something about you that has 'grasped' what it is to be a tree. This is impossible if your idea of a tree is nothing more than a bunch of neurons firing in a given way. There is no correspondence between neurons firing and a tree. So there must be more to your thought than neurons firing (or any other material process). 2. Similarly, if we're entirely material, we can't reason. A reasonable thought differs from an unreasonable thought only by its content. It can't differ in this way by its material components in the brain. Therefore, if we hold that some thoughts are wrong and others are right, we must conclude that there is more to our thought than the material.

thephyber 2y ago
How sure are you about (1)? Is there no chance that “thinking” (or your term “grasping”) is not simply an emergent property of certain matter+states? A computer with a machine learning process seems to be able to “grasp” what it is to be tree (as opposed to a cat or a crosswalk). You seem to be engaging in difficult philosophical concepts and jumping over important steps (like rigorous definitions or showing why something “must be”).
- geye1234 2y ago
  > You seem to be engaging in difficult philosophical concepts and jumping over important steps (like rigorous definitions or showing why something “must be”). Yeah, sorry, I bashed that out too quickly. I'll try to slow down a bit, though I can't promise a full treatise :) For a thought to be about reality, there must be something about that thought that makes it about reality. How this might be the case is one thing, but the fact that it is the case is nonetheless necessary. And for the thought to be about the reality, there must in one way or another be similarity between thought and reality. Again, the 'how' may be extremely complex, but the existence of the similarity seems necessary. To put it in opposite terms, if a thought is not similar to reality, then it is not about reality, and therefore can't constitute knowledge about reality. Do you agree thus far? If so, let that be premise 1. I'm obviously talking about the concepts we use to think about reality, not about the words we use to describe it. I will assume that we agree that thoughts can be about reality (even though they're obviously sometimes not) as premise 2. So, given our two premises, suppose Bob is thinking about a tree. With materialism, where is the likeness between Bob's mind and the tree? It cannot be the neurons or the physical structure of his brain or body, because these things don't have similarity with a tree. The atomic structure of a brain, in any state, is different from a tree's. That much is clear. And likewise, a tree doesn't somehow appear in Bob's brain. Given our premises, this is a problem for materialism. If the likeness is not physical, and it clearly isn't, then what is it? We can discuss the idea of a tree as 'emergent' from the matter&state. But honestly, I struggle with this concept. Every time I've heard the word used, it seems to be a way of restating the problem rather than solving it. Perhaps you could explain in a bit more detail how this overcomes the 'similarity' problem I've outlined above? ISTM you still get the problem that a bunch of neurons is not a tree, regardless of their arrangements. Either the neurons in some sense 'cause' you to think about a tree, in which case you need to ascribe to the neurons an ability to cause immaterial effects, which again seems a problem; or it is simply a way of saying "we don't know how it works". Again, so ISTM. On computers: very briefly, a computer doesn't 'know' anything about a tree, or anything else. A 'tree' on a computer is a bunch of magnetic states on a hard drive, or transistors in particular states, or what have you. The meaning of a computer's output (that is, the link between the computer and reality) exists only in the mind of a human being. An LLM's text about a tree is no different in principle from the binary for the word 'tree' on an hdd, or a jpeg, or whatever. An LLM gives the illusion of knowing, but no more than that. Again, I realize this is a pretty summary treatment, but I think the tendency to describe the mind as a computer is misguided for this reason. You face exactly the same problem with the computer as you do with the mind. For my part, I simply reject premise 2 as far as a computer is concerned. Anyway, very simply, if materialism is true, a thought cannot be about reality, and it cannot have a similarity with reality. Therefore, we can't know anything about reality. But we can know about reality (premise 2), therefore materialism is false.

prometheus76 2y ago

If I copy the contents of an Apple II disk onto my pc and try to "run" it...nothing happens. Isn't mapped to the new hardware. So who is going to write the "human mind/consciousness" emulator that will map onto a hard drive? Will they simulate all the inputs from your body, nervous system, senses, etc.?

kimixa 2y ago
And will they perfectly emulate the dynamic situation that is the brain? You've mapped every neuron perfectly, you've even captured every ongoing signal and the whole thing is recreated perfectly. But that's not the entire story - connections are created and broken all the time, that's what memory is after all. Is it the "same person" if that snapshot is put into an emulator with slightly different results there? They clearly won't be having the same thoughts in a pretty short timescale even if the inputs are perfectly the same.

majormajor 2y ago

> Scientifically, though: of course an exact copy of you is you. If you don't believe in souls but still feel like this is not the case, that indicates your model of 'you' is incorrect. How is that "scientifically" an "of course"? How is it more "an exact copy of you is you" than the alternative claim, "an exact copy of you is 'you (1)'" (to borrow from file manager nomenclature). The trivial example of that seems to be that if you make an exact copy, put it in a different room, and then something happens to the exact copy, that thing does not happen simultaneously to the original copy.

ToValueFunfetti 2y ago
An identical copy necessarily cannot be measured in a way that distinguishes itself from the original. So "scientifically" because we're restricting the space to measurements of the physical world, and "of course" because the conclusion falls almost tautologously out of the definitions, no experiment needed. How can the thing scientifically not be you if it is not materially different from you? To your example- I am not sure which of two points are being made, so I'll address both. I'm not saying that everything that happens to entity 1 also happens to entity 2, just that both are you. Two things can both be apples, even though biting one leaves the other intact. And if something happening to you makes you not 'you' anymore, 'you' isn't really a coherent concept across even a fraction of a second; you'd cease to exist and be replaced multiple times in that time.
- TylerLives 2y ago
  In reality, no two things are the same. When we categorize things in any way, we make an error in order to achieve some practical goal.
- wqaatwt 2y ago
  > cannot be measured It certainly can measured be from the perspective of the “original” i.e. the person presumably making the decision to be copied or not.

fnordpiglet 2y ago

The person who is you exist independently of any copy of yourself. While a replica of you would exist there would still be the original you manifest in your brain that would exist an independent life and die at some point without ever “resuming” in another body. This is similar to how you can never time travel yourself even through relativity. Your perception of time will be the same no matter what relativistic effects occur outside of your frame of reference. You will live your life span and die. Your replica however would have a different experience and be able to draw on your memories etc. But you yourself will in fact live a natural life with no shared experience with your replica and will experience death no matter what. It’ll be little solace to you that a copy got to live your life after your passing.

TomasBM 2y ago

There's no need to believe in an immaterial soul to think that a copy is a different 'you'. It is enough to understand that having an independent "command & control" structure (for lack of a better word; C&C) is by definition 'you'. C&C means that the individual can perform a self-contained sense-think-act cycle. We can infer this from the following: 1. Identical twins, despite having identical genetic structures, have separate C&C, and therefore qualify as separate persons. 2. Two siamese twins conjoined by the body (including parts of the head) have two C&Cs, and therefore qualify as two persons (with varying level of bodily control per person). 3. An individual with additional parts of the body (e.g., in a special case of being conjoined with a twin) has only one C&C and therefore qualifies as one person. 4. Clones are a special case of identical twins, and still have separate C&Cs, therefore qualifying as two persons. 5. A person in a coma or with another condition nonetheless qualifies as a person with some sense-think-act autonomy, despite being dependent on someone else for continued bodily functions. 6. An individual with a transplant (e.g., heart) or an extension (e.g., pacemaker) is nonetheless a person because of their consistent C&C. 7. An individual with extreme memory loss remains a person with C&C (in brain, body, genetics for the most part). Any other special but naturally occurring cases (e.g., individuals with two brains, individuals with completely separated hemispheres, conjoined twins sharing a brain) would require either that we: a. understand how brains and bodies work (and therefore, make a more quantified measure of how much of sense-think-act autonomy qualifies as personhood); or b. decide based on a heuristic (1 brain = 1 person) or principle (protection of bodily autonomy, i.e., 1 body = 1 person). But none of these need you to believe in a soul, in order to think that a digital clone is not 'you'. Unless, of course, you can prove that an individual either: 1. can sense-think-act with both physical and digital 'bodies' simultaneously and/or sequentially*, which share an equivalent experience (i.e., central C&C coordinating distribution or maintaining strict consistency across bodies). 2. can sense-think-act with either physical or digital 'body' at will, upon establishing a 'connection' and successful transfer of state (i.e., remote access). 3. can transfer whatever is necessary for C&C to another 'body' (e.g., brain transplant), and demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that their C&C signatures in new body match the ones in the old one.

LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago

Exact copy down to which scale? All subatomic particles, quantum-woo-woo including all their entanglings? Weakest electromagnetic fields as resultant emergent pattern of these?