[richardw]

Those mechanisms are good enough to have brought us to this point, but that has no bearing on what kind of future we choose to create for ourselves.

Metals rust and seep into the ground, but we dig them up and build spacecraft from them. Metals aren't _meant_ to do that, but we have some influence over our environment. We might end up having a similar influence over our cells.

[erelde]

This, to me, brings up the question of "where does myself ends and where does my environment begins?". I could change parts of my brain like I'm changing the environment around me, what would I be changing, the environment around me or myself directly? Both?

Classic greek Boaty McBoatface question I know. (cf Ship of Theseus)

[dualogy]

> This, to me, brings up the question of "where does myself ends and where does my environment begins?".

Good question this! Until you find a conclusive answer, ie. until you clearly define/delineate "myself" & "env", you can ignore your follow-up question as irrelevant sophistry:

> I could change parts of my brain like I'm changing the environment around me, what would I be changing, the environment around me or myself directly

[erelde]

That question is exactly what I'm asking, what is "myself" and what is "the environment as defined around myself".

And I'm pretty sure there's no clear answer, but the question and reasonings ensuing are interesting.

By one definition, my possessions, my experiences, my social network would be part of myself. So changing my brain wouldn't be changing myself per se if those remained the same.

Another definition would be the strictly biological body, and of course changing the body would be changing the self.

But there's a fuzzier definition where something in the brain brings up "consciousness" and a sense of self, if I change something in the brain that isn't that particular part, the sense of self, have I changed the self or not?

(I can see my French high school teaching re-surging here...)

[Retric]

Self has no universal meaning robbing the question of any real value. You could include or exclude gut bacteria from you just as easily as you include or exclude identical clones, but that's just an outgrowth of your definition and says nothing about reality.

[ZeroFries]

All abstractions leak eventually. You can't separate anything in the universe from everything else. To clone yourself perfectly (for all time-slices going forward), you'd have to clone the entire universe.