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[redacted123]

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[blah28722]

The copy should possess the exact same rights as the real version.

Realistically, only the rich/influential would be able to afford being transferred. Their social status alone would warrant the retention of rights.

When everyone can have a copy, it'd be a different case. I'm guessing it'd be the same though.

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[blah28722]

I don't see why not.

Like I said, once enough people do it, it'll eventually happen.

Not in America though. Too many Christians would go "They have no soul, they get no rights!"

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[Jude]

Unless there is a spiritual 'you' that maintains a connection to your physical body and does not attain a connection to the computerised copy.

OK, give me even a remote reason to assume such a thing exists, and then we'll talk.

Given the lack of decisive proof on the topic it seems to be a valid argument...

You're not familiar with the flying spaghetti monster, are you?

And of course, the 'you' isn't completely random, it is a progressive process that is the result of a series of comparatively mild events, a sufficiently violent alteration could be perceived as severing the progress and creating a new series.

Copying your consciousness onto a computer (one that could also simulate all the hormonal and perceptual processes of your body) would change your consciousness less than, say, having a stroke that wipes out half your personality, or a bout of amnesia. But while nobody would argue the stroke or the amnesia change "you," lots of people think copying the consciousness would.

It's essentialism. It's a part of the way people inherently see the universe, and is fine for that purpose, but when investigating things scientifically, it has to be discarded.

Of course the real killer is the fact that the copy and the original could co-exist, it isn't easy to persuade someone that the person they are looking at is themselves...

The person isn't "themself," but not any less so than "themself" from a year ago is not themself.

[Zironic]

If you scan your brain into a computer, you still exist. You are not in the computer.

[blah28722]

If you scan your brain into a computer, you still exist. You are not in the computer.

What if you scan your brain, then physically put yourself into the computer?

[Phantom]

Let me say one thing. Shit happens.

[Psyco Jelly]

I'll worry about the afterlife as it comes. Life is for living. I suggest you focus on the current place in which you live.

My current belief system is based on what you leave behind, not how or why you do it. If you spent the time and energy to achieve greatness you deserve it. Everyone should try and make this world better rather than expend resource trying to make people happy in the next life. (Which is why I dislike evangelists, as they are focused entirely on the afterlife.)

I have some reason to believe there is an afterlife, but I won't count on it. After all, how can a beginning be worth anything when there is no end?

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[Psyco Jelly]

I am aware, I hope that when I die I can be reincarnated into a body more suited to understanding the universe around it. When I have become jaded with this world, I would hope to begin life in a far more complex reality, such as one with four spatial dimensions.

If this were true, I'd never run out of things to explore, as there could be an infinite number of extra spatial dimensions, and that's not even counting the number of variant 3-dimensional universes.

In the end, I find infinity to an extremely interesting subject.

If I am cursed to End I can die with the satisfaction that I will always have lived. That my death will inspire others, and they will inspire even more.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I believe in an afterlife, but I also don't believe that there needs to be one for life to have meaning.  Eighty years is plenty of time to do things that are meaningful.  Even five minutes, under the right circumstances, can do that.  And the house that's mentioned... to be a proper simile, people would still take pictures of the house, see the house, remember the house, write about the house.  That would make it plenty worth it, I think.

[Jude]

However, a common belief that is brought up is that if a person just fades into nothingness in the end and can't even think about what they did in their life, then what is the point? No matter what you do, however much you strive to better yourself you're still going to end up as nothing, not even a metaphorical nothing, literal nothing. It's like if someone asked you to build a house and invest all of your money and all of your time but told you it was going to be demolished when it was finished, would you even bother? I think an afterlife would be a nice thing to have, it would give purpose to life in my opinion.

But since we have every reason to believe there is no afterlife, wouldn't it be more productive to find reasons to value the life we do have?

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