About the "who is me" problem, my belief is that the one being copied continues to be "him" and the copy is just a new person with his own separate consciousness.

About the "who is me" problem, my belief is that the one being copied continues to be "him" and the copy is just a new person with his own separate consciousness.

And how about ctr+x / ctr+v?
Or better, storing the "state" but killing the donor (immediately when/by storing the "state"), then uploading the "state" to two bodies. Who will be me then? Neither? Random? Both with split screen? Pointless question?

Neither. You destroyed the original. Why would you destroy the original in the first place? :\

Neither. You destroyed the original. Why would you destroy the original in the first place? :\

Pretty much the same as transferring. Like in Stargate. What if there's a bug in the system, and after the transfer two persons appear (and the original is destroyed in a sense)?

Who will be me then? Neither? Random? Both with split screen? Pointless question?

Who will be me then? Neither? Random? Both with split screen? Pointless question?

In what sense do you mean? Morally? It's like identical twins, two roughly identical yet distinctly separate autonomous entities. Legally? That's arbitrary, so in that sense it may be a less useful question.

I think that the capacity to actually do this would force us to re-evaluate our standards of personhood, which have been with us as long as we've existed as a species, more or less. So we probably can't predict our attitudes about such a situation because we haven't encountered it and probably never will.

But for what it's worth, I'd say neither. There's a continuity of consciousness from the original through to both copies, but when the original ceases to exist the remaining copies are forced to modify that consciousness in a fundamental way that the original never would (dealing with an identical, instantaneous copy). It's an identity crisis that the original could never have dealt with, and I imagine that it would be a pretty fundamental issue for each copy to grapple with.

[quote name='szecs' timestamp='1304009082' post='4804025']
Who will be me then? Neither? Random? Both with split screen? Pointless question?

In what sense do you mean? Morally? It's like identical twins, two roughly identical yet distinctly separate autonomous entities. Legally? That's arbitrary, so in that sense it may be a less useful question.

[/quote]

That is the exact reason why I have chosen to stick my head into the sand instead. Those very questions and saying my questions are pointless imply that I am really the only existing "soul" (no offence here).

Sure, it doesn't make the slightest difference to me if that happens with another person, but it should make a hell of a difference for me if it happens to me.

The other horrifying thing is the total incapability/impossibility to express what I mean by "me/soul".

*covers his ears and sings lalalalala really loud*

The sense of "self" is really an very mind boggling one if you try to think about it... The most tractable way i have found to make my poor brain do some reasoning about it is to treat it as any other sense like for example the sense of "red". All senses arise from parts of the state of our brain right? Red is related to the state of the optical part of our brain. Self could be related to, say, the memories we have. Because if you think about it, we could say that the only thing that make me say and feel that I am D_Tr and not szecs are my memories right? The memory that i just typed this post, and at the same time the lack of the memory that i typed szecs' last post? Doesn't this sound logical?

The sense of "self" is really an very mind boggling one if you try to think about it... The only way I have found to make my poor brain do some reasoning about it is to treat it as any other sense like for example the sense of "red". All senses arise from parts of the state of our brain right? Red is related to the state of the optical part of our brain. Self could be related to, say, the memories we have. Because if you think about it, couldn't we say that the only thing that make me say and feel that I am D_Tr and not szecs are my memories? The memory that i just typed this post, and at the same time the lack of the memory that i typed szecs' last post? Doesn't this sound logical? At least this puts the sense of self to the same category with other senses, so we now have one less intractable thing to deal with!

To me, the *only * real and only absolute thing is this "me sense". Impossible for me to explain it (English is a bit poor here, by sense I mean the input information).

Awesome movie which describes how to handle the duplication problem.

Don't click if you haven't seen "The Prestige".

[spoiler]To me that guy just killed himself and afterwards a new copy with the exact same memories would pick up where he left off. He still died everytime he performed the trick because his copy was a completely seperate conciousness imo.

But those guys were some dedicated magicians though...lol[/spoiler]