Item — HN Reader

It's kinda intuitive, but I'm pretty sure it's wrong.

Imagine you fall in coma and sleep long enough that all your body cells have been changed. Do you wake up a different person? I don't think so.

What you perceive as yourself is the experience of being aware of everything you have learned in the world. An identical brain, whether created by teleport or running in simulation, is you just as much.

So yes, both simulations will be sure they are you (and in a sense, both will be you—if we allow the simulations, we must abandon the idea of there being only one “you” at the moment). The funny thing, these simulations will immediately diverge by obtaining different experiences, and thus can be thought of “forks” of you.

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Imagine you fall in coma and sleep long enough that all your body cells have been changed. Do you wake up a different person?

I believe you do. In fact I believe you are a different person moment-to-moment. The concept of 'you' is simply a mental convenience. This is exactly why Buddhists deny the 'self.' It's not that you don't exist- it's just that there is no single thing that remains unchanging, and the idea of a 'you' that exists through time is illusory.

I occasionally find myself wondering whether it is the same "me" that wakes up in the morning as falls asleep the night before. So is it really the same instance of my consciousness that boots up in the morning as was shut down the night before?

Not the most productive thing to think about as you fall asleep :-)

Yep. It's a consequence of information entropy. Both start receiving different stimuli or have other subtle differences that make each different like twins. The ethics seem to be that each should have rights equal to exist (run) as egalitarian as any other, regardless of origin. Stopping is deleting is killing.