this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I don't understand everybody worrying about whether their consciousness moves with us. We literally don't even know what it is, we have no provable theory or idea of what it is. As far as I can tell, your consciousness is something your brain does, not something that exists external to your body, otherwise that's basically believing in spirits.
If you're comfortable being vaporised and then a single identical clone being created elsewhere then good for you, I guess.
Why should it be a clone and not the original you? This is all theoretical
If the mechanism is that you are broken down in to your constituent matter and then that template is used to reconstruct you elsewhere, then how could it be anything other than a clone? Even if "the same matter" is used to reconstruct you, a copy is just being precisely pieced together based on your template. Surely?
If you were just scanned to build your pattern and then a transporter just spat out another you using that pattern, what would that other you be?
If it is using the same matter then how could it possibly be a copy?
If I take a Lego set, deconstruct here and reconstruct it over there, is the one over there now a copy/clone? Or is it the same thing?
I would explicitly say that it was a copy of what I originally built, but that it is not my original build. What I consider to be me is the consistently maintained configuration of matter, primarily my brain, rather than the constituent matter. If I am unconfigured then I would consider myself dead, and then any further reconfiguration of me I would consider to be a replica of my original configuration.
As a wise philosopher once said:
Raises the interesting question.
If you perfectly recreate a persons brain, Will they be the same person? Or will something totally new and different emerge from the replicated brain?