[extropy-chat] identity and copies, yet again

[Slawomir Paliwoda]

> (Granted, it will tend to vanish once we have the opportunity to expand
our
> locus of identity beyond our skin, by running an interactive redundant
> backup on some other substrate. But for now, it seems to me absurd to be
> content or even eager to perish *now* on the off-chance that a
> near-perfect--or even repaired and enhanced--copy of you will be compiled
> elsewhere in the future. Good luck to him, I say, but his good fortune in
> existing, should that come about, has very little to do with *me*, here
and
> now, here inside.)

I agree with almost everything you say here. However, I'm not sure why you
think that identity will "vanish once we have the opportunity to expand our
locus of identity beyond our skin."  Even if a mind process becomes bigger,
more complex, or even stretched across planets, it will still depend on
matter that powers that process, and matter doesn't vanish. Location of that
matter in space-time can always be measured which makes personal identity
objectively verifiable.

Slawomir