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Comment by rcme | Hacker News Reader

This is a problem that philosophy has long tried to tackle. Imagine your mother dies in a car accident on her way home from the store. A mad scientist finds her lifeless corpse on the side of the road and creates a perfect robotic replica, complete with an AI “brain” trained to act just like your mom. Would you feel differently about the robot compared to your real mom?

My answer is that yes, I would care. For the same reason I would prefer the original Mona Lisa compared to an atomically-perfect replica. There is something special about unique individuals and objects, and this is not something that can be replicated by a machine.

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> There is something special about unique individuals and objects, and this is not something that can be replicated by a machine.

of course. but what happens when you can replicate 1:1? would you still feel the same way? will the person that was replicated feel wrong for it? i don’t think things are as clear cut in this scenario.

It's the star trek teleporter problem. Every time anyone teleports, they aren't traveling through space. Their fleshy meat construct is destroyed, and a nearly identical construct is recreated at the other side. Is it still the same person?

What if replica mom was in your life for ten years before someone told you? I suspect you'd have a brief moment of shock and betrayal, and a few days/weeks later continue on as if nothing happened. (at least with respect to love for replica mom--i imagine you'll struggle with other issues forever)

I don't imagine you would get over such a shock or love them even near as much as you used to. That's practically a traumatic event, and would lead you to distrust everything else in your reality.

We can look to people who have been adopted and how they feel about the situation as examples, a lot of people will continue to yearn for knowing who their biological parents are. It creates almost two forms of love, not lesser just different.

Unless we get replica births!

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