If I'm going to identify with some future entity that's very different from me it might as well be something newly arisen, not something having a copy of some of my memories somewhere.
I guess those archived memories are the ultimate time capsule.
Death is a feature not a bug.
Oh they'll still need them, but only to stomp on their human faces.
You have fun with that.
> dictators that live forever
The world is more free than it has ever been, and it's getting better.
Preserved maybe, but never viewed by anyone. They might as well be gone.
Life, and consciousness, is absurd enough (yet certainly real) that I'm fully open to the possibility of further absurdities happening once we die, but I think it's an absolute certainty that we're all going to die. And accepting this is quite important because it rather dramatically influences one's life philosophy.
A digital copy of a mind is no less alive than your children. They are, after all, nothing more than lossy copies of yourself.
I find I'm actually happier accepting a little nihilism in my life, knowing that at some point, I will die, and within a couple generations of my death, I will be completely forgotten.
This isn't depressing, it's freeing. It means there are no long term expectations of me, so I should I just spend as much time as I can doing the things I enjoy.
One fudamentally cannot know the mind of another. Your opinion is based on incomplete observation and assumptions. Your insistence that a digital copy isn't me holds as much weight as the assertion that you aren't real because you exist only as text on my screen.
That's the part I directly dispute.
I don't dispute that a computer could become conscious, but I'm not convinced you could transfer your consciousness to a machine. If a brain scan copied your brain, that would not be the same consciousness that you have now. It would be like having a twin, and twins don't share a consciousness.
For a technical issue I'd also add that this entire thing becoming increasingly absurd given advances in understanding of human biology. Discoveries like the gut-brain axis emphasize that the concept of brains in a shell is mostly naive. Your body and your brain are completely interdependent to create 'you'.
But again I think the objections around consciousness or possibility are completely inconsequential (if not also strong arguments in their own right). Even if we accept every single point and desired outcome, you still die.
Machine-you would no doubt be thrilled. How does bio-you cope with not being made immortal? If your answer is "It doesn't matter, throw the original in the trash" is that murder or suicide?
Maybe the future will reverse the light cone and revisit everyone and everything that has ever lived. Maybe we're in their simulation.