Considering Identity

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Philosophy determines strategy - it matters greatly which of the answers to the fundamental existential questions you subscribe to. Consider questions of identity, for example: do you identify with the pattern that is you, or do you identify with the present slowly changing collection of physical structure that is you? If the former, you might consider destructively uploading the data of your mind to a robust computing system to be a fine strategy for the defeat of aging. If the latter, destructive uploading looks like an expensive and ornate suicide method - you are not your copy, and you will not survive the procedure. Doors to the future open or close depending on your philosophical inclinations. Here's a piece that reviews some of the spectrum of philosophical thinking on identity, which has been going on for a good deal longer than modern ideas and technologies have been around: "Star Trek-style teleportation may one day become a reality. You step into the transporter, which instantly scans your body and brain, vaporizing them in the process. The information is transmitted to Mars, where it is used by the receiving station to reconstitute your body and brain exactly as they were on Earth. You then step out of the receiving station, slightly dizzy, but pleased to arrive on Mars in a few minutes, as opposed to the year it takes by old-fashioned spacecraft. But wait. Do you really step out of the receiving station on Mars? Someone just like you steps out, someone who apparently remembers stepping into the transporter on Earth a few minutes before. But perhaps this person is merely your replica - a kind of clone or copy. That would not make this person you: in Las Vegas there is a replica of the Eiffel Tower, but the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, not in Las Vegas. If the Eiffel Tower were vaporized and a replica instantly erected in Las Vegas, the Eiffel Tower would not have been transported to Las Vegas. It would have ceased to exist. And if teleportation were like that, stepping into the transporter would essentially be a covert way of committing suicide."

Link: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/alex_byrne_philosophy_personal_identity_afterlife.php