(February 22, 2021 at 9:22 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Even a perfect copy is only a copy until it's had it's very first very own experience - which we assume..since it's conscious, will be immediately upon coming into existence. Then it's no longer even a copy of you. It's on the same footing as everyone else you know. Broadly similar, but possessing different life experiences.
Not to be morbid, but for example only, if one could take a time machine back to 1932 Germany, get Hitler's DNA, bring it back to the modern world, with the same outcome of the war happening back then, use artificial insemination to make a baby from that DNA today, that baby would not grow up with the same life experiences. It would be a completely separate copy with it's own different personality consciousness.
I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade here. There is lots of promising science humans are working on. But some things simply will never be a reality. I remember a few years ago when NASA put out the article about the "warp drive" depicted in Star Trek saying it was "plausible". Si fi fans went ape shit with joy thinking it would be a future reality. They ignored the part of the article where NASA said, "ON PAPER ONLY". They said it would be hardly pragmatic in reality because of the sheer amount of energy it would require to achieve.
Can we extend life? Most certainly. Will new medical technology cure things we once thought we could not? Sure. But there will never be a "forever" for our individual consciousness. Humans would do far better focusing on fixing what we can while we exist than chasing utopias that will never exist. I am fine accepting my finite life. I certainly want to live as long as possible, but I will never fool myself into thinking my consciousness is capable of surviving the death of my brain.
