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Comment by Smaug123 | Hacker News Reader

Here we go :)

Your fundamental misunderstanding of my viewpoint is that there can only ever be one of me. The "copy", as you put it, is also one of me. The two are different people by the time you come to threaten one of them with death, but at the instant of creation of the second, they were the same. They diverged since (just as identical twins would, immediately after their brains began to form in the womb). The question of "which one is me" is meaningless: they are both me, in the sense that they have a common "ancestor" (i.e in the sense that I am who I was five minutes ago), and they are both not me (in the sense that I am not who I was five minutes ago).

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Your "five minutes ago" consciousness would continue along in the original body, and would have the sense of being the same person. The copy would have that sense as well. If both copies are aware of the copying process and which one is the copy, then they could agree that the original is the original "you". But if the copying process destroys one and makes two, or in some other way makes it impossible to distinguish original from copy, then both people could legitimately claim to be the original, and to have a continuous conscious experience of being the original.

That'd be kind of messed up.

Basically right, yep :) although personally, my "descendants" wouldn't consider the question of "am I the original?" to be either meaningful or interesting. Both are the original (both descended from the same source through time) and both are not the original (both have diverged from the same source over time).

They might be concerned that one of 'you' had their consciousness terminated prematurely, if only for them wondering on the next transport if they get to continue experiencing life as 'you'.

You're just playing a semantic game with the word "me" and "self". Saying they are both me and they are both not me is saying nothing, it's a meaningless statement devoid if any value to communicate anything at all. Put the semantics aside, and try and address the actual underlying issue, identity. The second a clone exists, they are unique individuals, they cannot both be you anymore.

Fine. But it's not really a surprise that the language becomes inadequate when the situation becomes extraordinary: the verb "to be" was never built to cover situations where a single entity bifurcates into two identical copies of itself, and you want to track the relationship between the children and the parent.

> A copy of you is not you; one need only not destroy the original for you to quickly admit that the copy is not you.

We're not allowed to play semantics, so this statement is meaningless: you need to play semantics if you want to use the word "is" in this context.

> If I copy you, and ask you if the copy over there is you, you'll say no.

Correct. This is using the word "is" in the same sense as I would if I said that I am no longer who I was five years ago.

> If I then kill you, you have just been sentenced to death. To be precise, someone has just been sentenced to death who was once the Smaug123-who-is-typing-this-now. The one who was killed would say "I have been sentenced to death". The one who was not killed would say "someone else has been sentenced to death".

> The copy will live on feeling as if it is you, but it isn't you, it's a copy of you.

Now who's playing semantic games ;) this time, you're using the word "you" in a different sense to me. Again, "you" refers to two concepts here: the timeless "Smaug123 who is always the same person", and the individual "Smaug123 who can vary over time".

> We're not allowed to play semantics, so this statement is meaningless: you need to play semantics if you want to use the word "is" in this context.

That was not remotely a semantic game and I find this statement so absurdly intellectually dishonest that I'm done with this conversation.

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