Existence: What the fuck is going on?

[Pyrrho]

The answer to what we are is not as simple as pointing to the atoms that make us up. Our bodies are recyclers that take in new atoms and discard others. What used to be us 5 years ago is not us now as every atom has been replaced.

So what are we? We are a pattern of thoughts that make up our consciousness. When we die we no longer have a vessel to house our consciousness so it is extinguished.

One day technology will be able to make possible the downloading of our consciousness. People can live eternally in a virtual reality or in a manufactured body.

The problem with this is we will most likely be dead before this immortalizing technology is invented.

I think your concept of what a person is, is flawed. You are not a soul inside a body that can be drained out into another container. You are your brain's processes. Without your brain, you are nothing.

If it were possible to copy your consciousness into something, that copy would not be you; it would be a copy. Even if it were a perfect copy of you, the moment it was created, it would start diverging from what you are, as it would have different experiences than you.

Believing that its continued existence extended your existence would be the same sort of mistake as supposing that an identical twin's continued existence extended your existence. You die when you die, regardless of how much longer your twin lives.

Additionally, not that this will be important to you, if the technology existed to create a copy of you, those creating the copy could likely change bits of the copy at will. Thus, they could make your copy just like you, except make it believe that Muhammad is the true prophet of God, or that Santa Claus is real, or that everything tastes better with Coke, or that Fox News told the truth. And being able to do things like that, people would do things like that. Of course, it will not matter for you, because you will be dead anyway. But it would matter to the copy of you.