Hacker News Reader

It means you think you just spent $500m on your 'upload' when in reality you just committed some elaborate suicide, launching some other (very similar) chap into immortality.

Selfless, but unintentional.

View on HN

This isn't responsive. You've only answered my question to the extent of defining "same" as the opposite of "other", which is not a lot of progress. So again, what makes this "other" chap "other", and why should anyone care about satisfying that criterion?

Since the process isn't necessarily destructive to the 'original', both entities could subsequently exist simultaneously and lead separate lives. They're now two separate individuals, with an identical memory up to a certain moment. The original will never experience what it is like to be the reproduction after that point, and the reproduction will never know what it is like to be the original after they were branched. It doesn't make the reproduction any less 'legitimate' as a consciousness, but they're definitely not the same.

It'd be another thing entirely if you could join the 'threads' back together, though. Imagine forking yourself into 12 different entities, each living a separate life for 100 years, then reintegrating.

From the "other chap"'s point of view, he just spent $500m to kill a doppelganger.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com