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SickMoo1 t1_j1padv4 wrote

Reply to comment by michaeleid811 in Is it possible to Live Forever? by gg2ezpzlemonsqz

True but what is me?

Am I the same person I was yesterday, before going to sleep? How can I be certain of that? If I'm not aware I was dead and woke up in clone, am I still a copy?

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SaukPuhpet t1_j1phuhl wrote

I've thought about this a fair bit, as the idea that the clone is me never sat right with me. It always intuitively seemed it wasn't me and was instead a copy of me, that they were somehow distinct. Going off that initial gut feeling I tried to figure out why it was that I felt that way and arrived at what I think is reason for it.

I am NOT SaukPuhpet and neither is the clone. SaukPuhpet is information. SaukPuhpet isn't a physical thing, but more a collection of memories and genetics and other traits that describe a human being, but not the human being itself.

I am an Instance of the entity class of SaukPuhpet, as is the identical clone. It is not the concept of SaukPuhpet that I am attached to, but rather the specific instance of that concept, call it SaukPuhpet Alpha. In that sense the clone is not me, because I am SaukPuhpet Alpha and it is SaukPuhpet Beta. Even if Identical, we are both discrete instances of the SaukPuhpet entity class and therefore distinct.

I don't care if SaukPuhpet Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so on get to keep the greater concept of SaukPuhpet alive indefinitely, as I am entirely unattached to them. It is SaukPuhpet Alpha that I want to exist forever. SaukPuhpet Alpha is what I identify as being myself, greater concept be damned.

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Qowegishomo t1_j1qjhtf wrote

>Am I the same person I was yesterday, before going to sleep? How can I be certain of that? If I'm not aware I was dead and woke up in clone, am I still a copy?

This is all just paranoid.

>Am I the same person I was yesterday, before going to sleep

Yes. What happened is that your brain went into a sleep mode. There's still continuity of the neurological processes and physical continuity of your neurons.

>How can I be certain of that

How can you be certain of anything? You could be a brain without body connected to a machine. You could be a completely different life form connected to a computer that simulates your life as a human. These discussions are pointless.

>If I'm not aware I was dead and woke up in clone, am I still a copy?

Yes because you lost the continuity. The neurons that are you died. You are dead. There's a copy of you living.

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LostN3ko t1_j1r13cc wrote

I love how you dismiss the ship of theseus as pointless and act like we have any idea of the true nature of the self. In order to have any discussion of mind transfer, teleportation or the brain in general there are age old unsolved philosophical questions that must be answered to have any sort of emperical proof of concept. You obviously know the topic as you point to continuity but continuity is not enough.

You are not the same person you were 10 years ago. If I replace every cell in your body one by one with a nano machine that replicated the cells function you would maintain continuity but would you call 100% flesh you the same person as 100% nanobot you? How could you test that question? How can you prove any being is a specific person or not? Continuity can solve the legal problem but not the metaphysical one.

Consciousness has a lot of complicated gotchas in it for existing technology. Was phineas gage the same person before and after or people with retrograde amnesia. How much of the personality is just memories and how much is an emergent property?

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Qowegishomo t1_j1r8vo5 wrote

Questions you raised in this comment are much more valid. Ship of Theseus, for one, is when this conversation starts getting increasingly interesting and difficult.

I was responding only to the particular things I quoted, which all have clear answers.

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[deleted] t1_j1r1pz1 wrote

[deleted]

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LostN3ko t1_j1r8uwk wrote

It is doing some heavy lifting. 2000 year old question about the fundamental nature of the self with no solution in sight, a mere speedbump in the road to immortality.

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