[nynx]

Some people do think that. There are whole fields of philosophy about it.

> Even adhering to materialism, the problem...

If you don’t require continuous experience, then this issue goes away. You certainly didn’t experience living before you were conceived. My view is that consciousness is an emergent property of informational and processing structure of the brain (and possible other systems as well)—-I don’t see any physical issues with copies (other than that it might result in confusion and social problems).

[hungryforcodes]

This seems naive. If you have a brain and you make a digital copy of it...you now have two copies (assuming you can even make a perfect digital copy, which seems doubtful). What does that mean for continuous experience? Who are you at that point? WHICH one are you? Then you kill the first one...effectively murder. Philosophers have never been credited with their practical abilities...only theoretical.

[nynx]

Uh, you're both. After that, the two copies would diverge, so they'd eventually have different experiences and personalities, but with a common past.

And yeah, killing one of them would be murder, if they've had a chance to diverge.