Not even teleportation helps here really.
Teleportation destroys the original. The one who teleported dies. For him, the whole deal SUCKS.
Sure, the copy won't notice...the other won't notice. But the original will. And if the original is you, than that's the only thing that really matters.
Nope, there's no reason teleportation has to destroy the original.
And you undergo teleportation
hundreds of times throughout your life. The material that makes up your body now is not the same as the original one. By your argument, you've been destroyed!
But only the perspective of the one you who is You is important. What happens from the perspective of ANYONE else is irrelevenat.
If you are Bob1, then only what you see, feel and experience is important. When you die, you don't see, feel or experience what Bob2, or 3 or 57 does.
Each Bob copy is a SEPARATE ENTITY.
Sure, but ALL OF THEM ARE YOU. How do you know that 'you' won't end up being Bob2? Or Bob3? Or Bob57? Oh wait, you will! You'll be ALL OF THEM!
An easy way to untangle your misunderstanding is to say 'the copy is now BoB1', and the 'old you body' becomes BoB2, in the same way that 'you five years ago' is no longer TrashMan.
Which is where you are wrong. Bob1 does not become Bob2. Bob1 is Bob1 and Remaion Bob1 regardless of how many Bobs are out there.
Do you just assume that your concicness jumps into another body? But how can that be if two or more active bodeis exist at the same time? Each Bob has his own experience and regards himself as "self". Bob 1 isn't suddenly aware of what bob2 is doing or seeing. Each Bob looks at things trough his own eyes.
When Bob1 dies, he doesn't suddenly switch to look trough Bob2's eyes. He's done. Done for. Gone.
Bob2 might be perfectly healthy and happy, but Bob2's essence of self is not Bob1's essence of self. You can't have 2 different point of views that are the same point of view.
I really don't know to put it any simpler. It doesn't matter how perfect a copy the other me is. There is only ONE sense of "self" one has. Why should I care that the other me is still alvie and kicking? MY life experience has ended. *I* am dead. The other me is a seperate entity.
It really cannot be any simpler than this.
Look, mate, this is pretty ****ing elementary. Go back and read the example I posted with the 'backup brain'. (I take it you didn't.)
The easy thing you're missing is that
it's just as true that YOUR EXPERIENCE CONTINUES, and the other you, the copy, died. That's true no matter whether Bob1 or Bob2 dies. Because they're EQUALLY VALID YOU.
You're acting as if something precious and irreplaceable stays with the Original You. But your question has already been answered in the simplest ****ing way possible. Just look at it from TrashMan2's POV. "I'm alive, I'm alive...okay, the copying just happened...hey, look, there's my copy! I guess that's the original body, but I'm the real TrashMan. Oh, ****, he died! But it doesn't matter,
I'm still alive."
He's you! You wouldn't get all worried if the
copy died every time and the original persisted, would you? Yet the two are ****ing indistinguishable! When the copy dies,
that's you dying? And he doesn't care that you're still alive in your head, because he's dead! His life is over!
But I'm going to bet you're not worried, after all, because it's only the copy. But to the copy, the copy is
you, and you're the damn copy!
One of you is going to die and end forever, yes. Completely true. But you're falling into the trap of assuming that that's always going to be you - because, while it's always going to be you, it's also going to
always be not you.This is a true statement as well, see: "I really don't know to put it any simpler. It doesn't matter how perfect a copy the other me is. There is only ONE sense of "self" one has. Why should I care that the other me is dead? MY life experience has continued. *I* am ALIVE. The other me is a seperate entity."
Huh? What's the difference? Each 'fork' is complete.
I'd rather not have the original Kosh destroyed or allowed to die. I'm perfectly ok with making copies of myself but the original needs to go on somehow otherwise it is not true immortality. Even if Kosh1, Kosh2,.....,Koshn continue, me, Kosh prime, is still stuck in a meat based mind which is not something I find comforting. Personally I'd prefer moving to forking.
You don't get it. The original Kosh has been destroyed hundreds of thousands of times. You are now a copy.
There is absolutely no difference between moving and forking, except that in moving, the original you is destroyed.
You've got to realize that in one sense TrashMan is correct: after the moment of the scan there will be two divergent entities, and if Kosh Original dies, then yeah, he's dead. But that
doesn't matter. It's no different from simply destroying the original at the copy of the scan.
"Whoa," you're saying, "so the scan will kill me?"
You are again making TrashMan's error of always assuming that the 'dead' guy is the original. You will just as equally be the copy.
Again, you've done this millions, billions of times before. You're just hung up on the idea that there can somehow only be One Camera of Me. All of the resulting You will have a camera, and you'll all be You. You'll also be all the dead ones too. There isn't some Precious Fluid of Koshness that will only end up with one of them.
Go back to the example with the two brains in one head. One gets plucked out and moved to the replacement. Up until the moment of the move, however, the brains were in perfect synchrony. I think you'd agree that your brain was moved into a different body you'd still be you, the 'original You' wouldn't be dead...and yet the two brains are
identical, so whoever gets moved
is inarguably you.To think otherwise is a logical absurdity. We are what's in our brain. If there are two perfectly identical brains (plus relevant embodied cognitive elements), then it is us. The same person.
The essential thing to remember is that at the moment of copying
both resultant copies experience complete, continuous consciousness which leads them to believe that they are the original. If it's easier for you to handle, think of both of them as a new you, and imagine that the old you is gone...and then reverse that. They're
both the old you. The stream of continuous consciousness is clear.
I'll quote myself for TrashMan to read in case he's skimming the post:
Here, for Scotty and TrashMan: think of it this way to work yourself out of the logical trap.
You have two brains in your head. One's your backup brain, which just copies your real brain exactly. In fact, you can switch between them in real time if you like! It's great. Totally awesome, no difference at all.
One day, you die. As you've arranged, your brain gets pulled out of your head and put in a new body. You wake up. "Whoa!" you say. "Pretty ****ing weird. Lucky I got pulled out."
Remember, the two brains are interchangeable, now. Totally the same.
So you go on your way, confident that you're the real you. And you are. I don't think anybody would argue it. You live in your brain, right? And now your brain is just in a new head. It's all good.
But then, your other brain miraculously comes back to life! And now there are two you. You look back at your old body and you're like 'whoa, not me any more.' And meanwhile, you're looking at your new body and being like 'whoa, not me any more!'
Crazy, huh? And yet they're both equally you.
(You'll note that at no point did I specify which brain gets pulled out and transferred...because it doesn't matter! They're interchangeable.)
tl'dr version: TrashMan shouldn't be worried about something he's already done thousands of times. He thinks that he is the same person as TrashManFiveYearsAgo, even though he will never turn into TrashManFiveYearsAgo.
His brain right now is a copy of his brain five years ago, just a really bad synchronized one. If he got a brainscan at Moment A, he would immediately go flying into the brainscan and become TrashMan over there. He would then think of the original body as a copy which he had left, and be cool with it.
Meanwhile, he would
also sit in his original body and look suspiciously at his new copy.
Unless TrashMan believes in the Precious Fluid of Trashmanness - i.e. he believes that there is a soul separate from the purely physical body - then he simply has nothing to worry about. So long as the brain is replicated in perfect detail, it must, by necessity, be him.