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Comment by knome | Hacker News Reader

The only part of the flesh which is "you" is the nervous system. Everything else can be hacked off or replaced without a loss of identity.

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So if somebody has a limb amputation, losing a lot of nerves, are they a different person? Is somebody a different person when they're drunk? I've heard both of these thrown around colloquially. It's not obvious or straightforward to answer.

You could imagine a Ship of Theseus style replacement of all the neurons in your head with artificial ones. At what point would you stop being you?

My thoughts are that 'you' as a person change constantly, year to year, and who you are now is not the same as 5, 10, more years ago. I don't think it's so much that you are a different person because you lost a limb or are drunk, it's the change in personality and mind that accompany those that makes that person different. You could absolutely lose a limb and be 'the same' person, but you could also change significantly.

Sure but my past selves are also part of who I am. Without them I would not be me, and so I think they are more me than not me.

Never. "I" am a pattern of self awareness. The constituent parts are irrelevant. So long as the parts support the self awareness, "I" am.

So you would have no qualms about stepping into a Star Trek-style transporter, having your pattern scanned, your matter destroyed and recreated at the destination? If so, I would ask: what if the destroy step malfunctioned? There would be two of you. Which one would you be?

Both would consider themselves to be me, as both would be a legitimate continuation of the pattern of consciousness that is me. The divergence would create something of an ethical dilemma in the case of marriage, property ownership, rank, etc. Would both be granted the rank of the original, seeing as they are both a direct continuation of that being?

Seeing as at least one episode of Star Trek dealt with such a thing, I wonder if any ever dealt with the possibility of a single individual with access to a transporter creating a continuous set of copies from the original scan, perhaps saving at intervals and allowing the instantiation of variously youthful or experienced copies to be made. The divergences over time in such a branching consciousness would make for an interesting sci-fi thought experiment, I think.

Without instant loss of identity, I would add. It is widely known how semipathological states are cause of character, mood, life style, etc. There is no strict line between 'you' and your body (and internal-external environment); cutting or hacking non-utility parts of it will change you in short period of time, compared to original, as it happens with less radical change of climate, country, job, gender, food.

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