Comment by jstanley
9 days ago
> You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you.
If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life, if the virtual version shares all your memories, hopes, fears, thought patterns... Then in what way is it not you?
Do you also think that "reconstructive teleporting" would build another person but that person would not be you?
>If there's a continuity of experience from your present day life to your virtual life
There cannot be. There isn't even a continuity of experience for when you go to sleep.
It doesn't matter at all how perfect the copy is, because I STILL AM ME.
Brain uploading has never made sense because, well, I can't fit in the wires.
It doesn't matter that some digital simulation of my brain activity happens, and that the simulation feels like it was me and now is an immortal simulation, because I still die. My consciousness cannot be transported to software.
> There isn't even a continuity of experience for when you go to sleep.
But you remember having lived the previous day. Why is it any different if you remember having lived as a human a second ago and are a computer program now?
> My consciousness cannot be transported to software.
You perhaps don't notice that your entire argument hinges on this claim. This is the central point of disagreement.
I'm saying "if your consciousness was uploaded to a computer you would still experience being yourself", and you're saying "no, if my consciousness were uploaded to a computer I wouldn't experience it as being myself, because uploading a consciousness to a computer is not possible".
I don't like teleportation that much either. But at least there is meat on the other end. Uploading is an entirely different mode of existence.