[Udo]

As software people, we have a unique advantage over other humans when it comes to understanding the process of copying information. I invite you to look at it from that perspective.

> But would a duplicate of me feel like I live forever?

Your duplicate is you, it doesn't even matter how many of you there are at the end. Unless the initial brain upload is a destructive scan, this pertains to your biological "original" as well. How things feel like in that situation would be pretty much down to your state of mind, so no difference there to how things are now.

Also, this doesn't mean you'll live forever. Nothing is forever. It's just another form of existence, albeit there is reason to be hopeful it will be longer and individually better than a biological existence.

> Won't I just feel it's my duplicate that lives on when my biological self dies?

Again, that depends on the tech level at the time. Most likely, the first forays into this territory will be made by dead people who have their brains scanned. There will be no biological self left in that case. Once technology moves further, it may become possible to do a non-destructive scan of the brain. In that case, people will most likely opt for this technology as a backup plan (though some - including myself - may not and choose to literally fork themselves).

> Maybe a little more satisfying than having a pyramid "live on" but still.

The difference, as I said, is that it is you who lives on.

Even if you could somehow confer upon a pyramid a portion of yourself, it's still just a static monument. Transferring your mind onto a virtual machine is not just a matter of preserving it for posterity, the point is to continue living and thereby changing. The concept of you is not a static thing.

[coldtea]

>As software people, we have a unique advantage over other humans when it comes to understanding the process of copying information. I invite you to look at it from that perspective.

Still small relief compared to the existencial angst of dying to see your copy survive.

>The difference, as I said, is that it is you who lives on.

So, if I have managed to offload a complete and working copy of your brain and memories, you'd be OK with me killing you, right?

[Udo]

> So, if I have managed to offload a complete and working copy of your brain and memories, you'd be OK with me killing you, right?

I already talked about that. You're the second commenter who wants to kill me, by the way. It's not just a matter of "offloading", it's about continuing my existence on another substrate. Just sitting on a hard drive somewhere doesn't mean anything.

Anyway, actually killing me would entail erasing both instances of me, so I'm against that. And like I said, from the moment of creation every instance will continue to live (if you let them) and make their own way through life, becoming an entity in its own right. So, again, no killing please.

I want you to let go of the notion of a "copy", this seems to be the major psychological hurdle here. Think of it as a fork, or rapidly diverging instances.

[coldtea]

>I want you to let go of the notion of a "copy", this seems to be the major psychological hurdle here. Think of it as a fork, or rapidly diverging instances.

I think the main psychological hurdle here is your belief that the notion of self is a mere personal issue to be overcome by changing one's ideas about "copies".

In essense, you claim victory not by solving a very real issue (the fact that we identify with the notion of our self and its continuity) but by declaring it a "non problem".

It's not about "letting go"; can you solve the ACTUAL problem of our identification with our continuity of self?

A gradual process of replacement of our body/brain ("ship of Theseus" style) could be a valid answer to this.

Your "just accept that copies of you are just as you as you are" is not. For one, I could not give a flying fuck for my copies -- I'd only care for them as a means to save my memories externally, e.g like a more evolved hard disk.

[k__]

Maybe the problem here is consciousness?

If I get "duplicated" then there are 2 consciousnesses of me.

They maybe an illusion, which gets created every moment in time, but it still feels like they exist.

[Udo]

I'm very sure you're right. But that's what I meant when I said that physical reality does not bend to our everyday intuitions. Physics doesn't care whether people think something should be prohibited from working. ;)

> If I get "duplicated" then there are 2 consciousnesses of me.

They're both based on you. There is nothing in principle preventing multiple instances of yourself from existing at the same time. Of course, as already said, those instances diverge over time in the same way that you're not the same person as today when you wake up tomorrow.

>They maybe an illusion, which gets created every moment in time, but it still feels like they exist.

Consciousness doesn't have to be an illusion. It's just the sensation of existing, of being alive, of processing information. It is in a very real sense the feeling of being yourself. There is no contradiction here with the ability to fork it.

[StavrosK]

I have an inkling that, when we finally have the means to live forever, we will realize that we actually are just a program running on a brain, and it won't matter if we die.

[Udo]

Again, there is no "forever" in this universe. But this technology certainly holds the promise of a drastically prolonged existence, which may be unappealing to some.

> we will realize that we actually are just a program running on a brain

I think a lot of people realized this quite some time ago already, and they're fine with it :)

> it won't matter if we die.

That's a personal decision to make. It depends on your definition of importance, and whether you think that a mind can have value in of itself.