Further Reading: Gods Tomorrow

After posting that last one, I ended up clicking through several links on various comments pages, to one that was extremely critical of Kurzweil. (He is often called nothing more than a mystical kook by the hard science types.)

But in the process of reading many pages of comments, I came upon this discussing the nature of consciousness, the concept of "self," and the transfer of that from a biological body into a machine:

Tulse said most of what I was going to say. If a reasonable duplicate of me can be created (which is a big 'if' I'll grant) then that will be me, by any test that you can bring to bear. He will love the same people I do, he will hate the same as I do, he will find the same things funny or annoying that I do. He will know the number of my Swiss bank account and all my passwords. If the process leaves a dead me behind, then the duplicate will probably owe the same money that I do, and be guilty of the same crimes that I am. (In such a world, just try using death as an excuse to get out of debts and criminal sentences. The law-makers will close that escape route very firmly, I'm sure.)

That the new me will not be the same as the old me by philosphical hair-splitting is an interesting point, or not interesting at all, depending on your temperament. But it would be irrelevent to both of us, one being dead, and the other demonstrably me. Why would I worry about it?

Is it the break in continuity of consciousness I should be worried about? That breaks every day when I sleep. It's been broken once in my life when I was anesthetised for an operation. One more break won't make a lot of difference.

Is it the silent scream of my genes being snuffed out if I am copied into a shiny carbon-fibre and metal body that should worry me? I am more than my genes.

Is it the worry that during the process some little part of me may get copied wrong, or left out? I suffer greater losses of memory everyday. In five minutes' time I won't remember very much about this moment, the immediacy of the experience of tapping the keys, the sound of the rain falling outside, the creation of the words being typed; all of it will be gone, except for a very vague, fuzzy little seed which I might use to recreate the memory using bits of other memories. A day or two, and I'll vaguely remember this comment. A week might pass and I might forget it altogether. This moment that was so bright and clear, gone.

This me isn't the me of five minutes ago, and the me that will awake in eight hours or so will be even less like the me now. Why should I care if one day I might awake in a new body?