this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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I was thinking about this as a deep philosophical question yesterday. Wondering, if that technology was available would I be totally unafraid of accidental death, knowing that I could simply be restored to a recent backup. I came to the conclusion that I would still feel, and act, the same as I do now. Which made me realise that I must believe there is something more to us than pure biology as the backup wouldn't be "me". I'm certainly not religious and have no concept of what this "more than biology" might be - it just came as a logical result of my feelings about my backup.
The Trouble with Transporters
If we had these back ups, are you sure they are you though? If you died, the 'you' that you feel you are right now would be gone, but a new one based on a saved state of the old you would be born with your memories. Unless there is another form of energy our consciousness takes then we would die just the same, but with a new clone that would feel like they are a continuation of the same person.
Yeah, they're you.
If my convoluted comment made sense, it would depend on how you define 'you'. Like say there is an afterlife, if I died and was replaced by this backup, 'I' would experience this life after death, being a ghost or whatever, while a new 'me' would come about thinking they were saved and living.
It's at least as likely that "afterlife" you is a copy as any backup.
Heck, you today aren't really the same you as yesterday. You identify with yesterday you because you share most of the same memories.
That is true, and the whole 'ship of Theseus' thing. I enjoyed the game Soma, this concept is a main theme of the game
Still a difference whether you turn into a different person through change and learning or whether you end. Period. While a different person does whatever, believing to be a continuation of you.
What is the difference? If somebody stops you then restarts you, are you the same person? If half your brain is destroyed doctors recreate it from a back up and merge it with the surviving half, are you still you, half you, someone completely new?
I don't think that anybody has enough knowledge on that matter to answer that question. From the outside, it may well look like the same entity boots up in both cases, because the new version may run on the same processes. However, we do not know whether there is person #1 who simply does not return and is survived by person #2 who is and feels identical. In today's technological situation, ripping someone apart with the caveat "don't worry, we'll build a puppet that is identical to you in all details somewhere else" would not fill me with confidence.
The transporter question, the "backup" question, are only difficult if you take the body to be the "vessel of the soul", but it isn't.
The body creates the soul, or even better, the soul is a normal process of the body.
You say that there's no way to tell which is you from the outside. There's also no way to tell from the inside.
Imagine a copy is made of you while you're sleeping. When you awake, how would you tell which you were? Your only chance would be to find out what happened to your two bodies while you were sleeping, to look for external clues.
I posit that there is a way of telling whether I am. And if I am no longer, that status would stop. Whether someone else someplace else thinks they are I at that point is irrelevant in that regard at that point if I have stopped being.
Read "Schild's Ladder" by Greg Egan. It's a hard sci-fi novel where "backups" play a significant role in people's lives.