It's an interesting idea but is it scary? Any such "consciousness" existing in a digital realm is a copy and so the real organic you would never experience these things
You could compare the process to how the cells of your body (in particular your brain) eventually all get replaced, yet the stream of consciousness flows uninterrupted through a number of these replacements.
Now, the physical consciousness may wish to live a separate life instead of fully "passing over" or ceasing to exist eventually (i.e. to die). But who will be considered "you" from that point? The physical "you" or the virtual "you"? Can the virtual "you" force the physical "you" to die?
I'm not a physicist, as you can guess, just a layman pondering.
I expect it would. Much of my experience has to do with the "hardware" (so to speak) of my body. It's difficult to imagine what it would be like if my brain was mechanical (physics-based) instead of biological (chemistry-based), for example. Abstract thought seems like the only thing that even could be the same.
(Also, continence -> consciousness. I'm literally pissing myself over that. :D)
PS: My god I have always known writing about this stuff is hard because language is inadequate for recursive thoughts, but I never thought I would see a day when it will practically affect my daily discourse. These were discussions I usually had under the influence of specific substances.
Better than current reality, where "no" is shoved on your throat and most people insist you better be grateful about it
You should reconsider that statement. I mean, this is literally "at gun point" kind of situation.
Right now you are already forced to pick 'no'. It's a button that lets things go the way so many people claim to be necessary and proper. They can own up to deliberately choosing our current reality if they think our current reality is so much better
In a world where immortality is a given, being able to off yourself is one of the most important things an individual should have a right to do
I’ve always thought the obvious result is that both the physical and the digital consciousness would wake up. Physical you would have some convincing personal experience of “I did not experience a transfer”, meanwhile digital you would have some equally convincing personal experience of “I did experience a transfer”.
> the real organic you
It’s part of the concept that there is no “real” you; they are both equally real.
A fascinating and complex concept there.
'You' is indeed a pretty complex concept. It's one of those things that works as long as you don't squint too hard at it, but if you do start to think through some of the cracks in the idea you quickly reach a point where the only reasonable response is existential horror.
Who would? Me? I'm dead at this point.
In contrast, animals don't seem to go through the same "mourning" process (in a way that we would recognize).
So the sense of "you" persists, yes, but it's a foundational change to the sense of "self" and it's definitely affected by amputation.
dd for a human amirite? Maybe one atom at a time, but you'd have to make sure you get all the bacteria that helps control your personality as well right?[1] Then you need to simulate the changes in that system, based on how you interact with the rest of a virtual world, including relationships with other people[2], so you'd have to have an accurate copy of that too. What do you do if your virtual self needs to interact with a still living, breathing human? How do you simulate the changes to your micro-biome that occur there? How do you simulate what your copied human "eats" and how it processes that food?[3] Having a copy of all your atoms is a start but you also need to simulate all of those processes accurately if you want it to be truly "you."
Then what you end up with is -- assuming we know everything that makes up a human being and how it behaves -- a perfect copy of you along with a perfect copy of your world.
[1] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rul...
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37298-9
[3] http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_intermetabolism/interme...
There is no 'you' - just an unbroken chain of chemical interactions stretching back to the first self-replicating molecule. 'You' is a concept that the pattern replicating event predictor engine that evolved to live in your skull is desperately clinging to. It has no real physical basis.
I probably should have just said that IMO we humans don't know the beginning of what consciousness is.