X-Message-Number: 32530
References: <>
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 16:48:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Luke Parrish <>
Subject: Copies of "Me"

If I was in a room with 50 copies of myself, I would consider
myself to be a different individual from the rest of them.

However this feeling would not make me more important or more
closely connected to my past life (prior to the copying event)
than the rest of them. So why should the person prior to copying
identify more with the being that shares their atoms, as
opposed to sharing their memories?

People get spooked at the concept of trading their atoms around
for a simple reason: this is not something evolution has ever had
to cope with. Always in times past, keeping your information
pattern alive has coincided with keeping your atoms generally
intact. We shouldn't be surprised that this instinct remains.

Consider this: you lose consciousness every night. In other
words, you cease to exist as a conscious being, yet are able to
come back into existence as such in the morning. Information is
preserved, and that is how you know you still exist later on.

If you lost all memories of your previous life, you wouldn't
know that you had survived. The person you were before would
seem a stranger to you.

Getting your atoms replaced would be indistinguishible from
not getting them replaced.

* The person existing before the event can't tell the difference.
They can't see the future.
* The person existing after the event can't tell the difference.
They have the same exact memories, emotions, skills, etc.
* The person existing during the event can't tell the difference.
They are unconscious.
* Nobody around them can tell the difference either.

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