[ExI] Is a copy of you really you?

[Dave Sill]

On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 3:51 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 12:37 PM Ben via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> If an entire person could be replicated in a similar way to how an
>>
> amoeba reproduces (every organelle in every cell is reproduced and
>> randomly assigned to one of two daughter cells, which then separate,
>> maintaining all the relationships with all the other cells in the
>> relevant daughter organism) how would you regard the two resultant people?
>>
>
> Personally, I would regard them starting out as the same person, but
> immediately becoming two distinct people who used to be the same person.
>

I agree. The analogy from the software development world is a fork: two
teams take a project in two different directions starting at exactly the
same point. If the starting point is Joe the two forks would have different
labels to identify them, e.g., Joe^1 and Joe^2. There's no longer just one
Joe. The analogy breaks when you look closer, though, because usually the
original developer or team maintains one of the branches, and that fork
often keeps the Joe label.

-Dave
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