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[Zironic]

People talk about digitizing one's brain to live forever. But, the digitized version of yourself would be inherently a separate person. We can't move your conscious self. We could copy it, but the computer wouldn't be you.

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

I hope to live long enough for some kind of longevity treatment/serum to be invented, then to live long enough for immortality.

[ein]

Digitizing ≠ copying.
Copying is usually digital, but digitizing involves slowly replacing parts of the brain with digital components.

[Sean Mirrsen]

It's only a matter of how much do you value your own life. If it's your intents and beliefs that matter the most to you, then by digitizing your brain, you will achieve immortality. If you can't imagine your beliefs being carried on without your personal presence, you will likely want to refrain from digitizing.

There's also the probable teleporting technologies. If you are teleported, is the guy on the other end of the 'port you, or a person the same as you?

[Zironic]

Digitizing ≠ copying.
Copying is usually digital, but digitizing involves slowly replacing parts of the brain with digital components.

That's way farther off than making a computer capable of brain like functions and copying. To build body compatible computer parts (ones that aren't attack by white blood cells, deteriorate over time, don't poison the body) and make them fit into the space the size of a skull is a long ways off.

[Vester]

They are building quantum computers, so I'd give it about fifty years.

Also, don't forget - entropy > all things.

[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

Gravity sneers at your puny entropy.

[redacted123]

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[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

I'd say round about the time you replace the personality centers.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Consider this
If you replace someone's mind with a computer which exactly models brain activity, are they the same person?
If you replace different sections of someone's mind one at a time with computer components and they're the same all the way through and the end result is the same as above, are they the same person?
At what point does it stop being them and just starts being a computer simulation of them?

Hmm, isn't there is an interesting paradox like this?

"If you replace a ship it's parts one by one until the whole ship is renewed,

is it still the same ship?"

[redacted123]

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[Sean Mirrsen]

If it bears the same name and has the same history, then it's the same ship. Looks and performance are irrelevant.

You can only be sure that a human has remained the same after replacing all of his parts if he is conscious during all such replacing. Technically, a human that has the same memories can be considered the same human. Whether or not it's the same instance of his memories is irrelevant. It can, of course, lead to a clone problem - but my opinion on that is that BOTH clones are the same person. It's like defining a class, creating an instance, changing it, then creating another instance that is a copy of the original. They're functionally identical, but the code can tell them apart - therefore they're the same and not the same at the same time.

[redacted123]

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[Vester]

You can only be sure that a human has remained the same after replacing all of his parts if he is conscious during all such replacing.

Considering, if I recall correctly, people have to remain conscious during brain surgery to prevent too much blood loss then they would pretty much have to be conscious during these modifications. I'm unsure though, what if the switch over was so quick as to be not noticed, and this may be likely given the speed of the human mind, and the computer became the dominant part of the brain and the actual person's mind and, by extension, soul were rendered non-existent?  I'm not convinced with the clones being the same, if someone cloned me, somehow giving them my memories and scars and what-not to make them into an exact copy, I while I would feel that they were the same as me and I definitely wouldn't feel that I would live on if I died and they didn't. It's all well and good for someone who isn't me, as far as they're concerned I did live on, but from my perspective, I'm still dead. 

I'm not comfortable with using the word "soul" to refer to the combination of personality with consciousness. Everything has a "soul", since the definition of "soul" is "the formative principle of a thing".

That's why it's wrong to say that in an afterlife the soul lives on, since the soul is only what informs the body. It's the form to the matter, so to speak.

[redacted123]

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