[QUOTE=Eudoxia;31889212]To be honest I don't care about the whole "It's just a copy"/"It wouldn't be you". I could just upload, and leave a note saying the guy under the electrodes doesn't get to wake up. Like I care that the thing in the computer is 'just a copy'.
To begin with, 'you' is not a perfect, static Platonic image of the current flesher guy. 'You' is a dynamic, constantly-changing thing. In an entropic universe there is no such thing as constants. (inb4 physical laws you know what I mean)
But, people still assume the person 20 years before was the same person they are now. They keep their names and identities, even if what defines them has changed. Even if the whole of them has changed. Even if the only thing that brings an illusion of continuity is a common thread of memories and the idea of having the same subjective experience.
Action potentials change every time a neuron fires. The atoms in your whole body will probably get wholly renewed after a couple decades, at most.
So, where does one draw the line? At a specific number of 'changes per minute'? Below that number you're still the same person, and beyond that, you need to get a new name? Moreover, where do we draw the line? At the body? At the Central Nervous System? Or simply the brain -- Where do we slice off this brain, at the level of the brainstem? At the level of the mesencephalon or the diencephalon? Why draw the line at the brain when only a few regions are active at a time, and only a few contribute to consciousness? And if you were to slice up the brain, and explode it until it's large enough to drive a truck through, until you can see every individual neuron and neuroglia, where would you find consciousness? The neurons don't understand. The neurons are nothing, mean nothing. Why draw a line at all? A copy, an original, ten copies, ten perfect copies, a thousand randomly-modified copies, does it even matter?[/QUOTE]
I was going to use the argument, "yeah, but I'm still the same consciousness even if my personality has changed over the last 'x' years." But the flaw in that argument is that... maybe I'm NOT the same consciousness. You can only ever really know that you're really you at every individual present point of time. If I go, "I remember being the same me 10 years ago," or, "I remember being the same me 20 minutes ago," it could well just be a very deceptive memory. I REMEMBER being the same me 20 minutes ago, but was I? All I have now is a memory of it.
While it is a relatively large philosophical question I think I feel comfortable saying that I'm fairly sure that I AM the same 'me' that I've always been (in terms of the conscious observer looking out of my eyes and experiencing the universe - my personality has, of course, changed over time). I believe I'm the same me as I was 10 years ago. Do I think I'd be the same me if I uploaded myself to a computer? Hell no. Unless the process was potentially drawn out and 'thinking' was never actually interrupted (kind of like how your brain doesn't just 'turn off' at night, it's still working while you're asleep).
I DEFINITELY wouldn't be the consciousness within the computer if a copy of me was made (and not a direct transfer); I'd be me, the computerised version would be itself, there's no way you could confuse yourself as the computer. When you die you wouldn't magically suddenly take over the computer or anything, you'd just be dead and the computer version would be like, "well that sucks."
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