[ExI] Is a copy of you really you?

[William Flynn Wallace]

 Effectively, you(a) and you(b) are now just a normal set of twins.  SR
Ballard

Not so.  Identical twins are not identical.  And we are pretending that a
perfect copy can be made, and that is wrong too.  So we are dealing
hypothetically just for fun.
bill w

On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 8:33 AM SR Ballard via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> My opinion is as follows:
>
> The amoeba question is just the Ship of Theseus. It has whatever answer
> you would like it to have. The “daughter” amoebas are simultaneously the
> same as the “mother” amoeba without actually being the mother amoeba.
>
> If you were to copy yourself instantly with exactly duplicate memories,
> then you(a), as an agent would be unable to tell if it was you(a) or you(b)
> that was the mother-copy or the daughter-copy. Effectively, you(a) and
> you(b) are now just a normal set of twins.
>
> From now on, any question about copies can be answered using the logic of
> twins.
>
> If I (twin-a) am killed, do I continue to live on through them (twin-b)?
> No.
>
> Assuming that the mother-copy is marked in some way, and we can know that
> twin-a is the mother-copy, then clearly twin-b has no claim to twin-a’s
> property, wife, children, etc just as in a normal twin relationship.
>
> However, because twin-a is here the mother-copy, they might be obliged to
> some kind of “parental duty” in the form of money or lodging to ensure
> twin-b can start off well in the world.
>
> The only way we could consider twin-a and twin-b to be one “you” (one
> coherent identity instead of twins) is if there was continuous
> bidirectional uploading. For example, you(a) and you(b) go about your daily
> experiences as normal. When you sleep your “consciousness file” is synced.
> After sleeping you will have some form of “shared” memory with your other
> self. That is the only way that “you” could exist in two bodies: if you
> were able to, in some way, share consciousness between the two.
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