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Re:Billions’ worth of high-tech research seeking to make dea... by pugio on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @11:16AM (#13977282)
Agreed. Responding to the replies, regarding the fidelity of a copy: Yes, the copy would have a great claim to being you. Assuming the physiology of the copy is also (nearly) identical (behavior and personality is not a pure function of the brain), the world at large would also identify it as you.

But I'm not interested in legacy style immortality. I don't care at all if a separate version of me continues to exist – I want to be continuous with the physical substrate I now occupy. In other words, we are all Ship's of Theseus, and that's fine, but a perfect replica of the Ship breaks my internal narrative of continuity.

To distinguish: If a form of "immortality" supports the possibility of another copy of me existing simultaneously with the current incarnation, then it is not the immortality I'd desire.

Responding to the parent, I would much prefer slowly replacing my neural hardware with circuitry to wholesale scanning and instantiation in another substrate.

Summarize: Identity is (partially) a function of substrate. Change the substrate in a discontinuous fashion, and identity itself becomes discontinuous. I call that discontinuity (one form of) "Death".

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