this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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For all I know I've been cut and and pasted 20 times in the last 5 minutes. There'd be no practical difference and I'd feel the same. This is only an issue if you think there's something like a "soul".
You wouldn't feel anything. A copy of you would be the one not feeling the difference.
That copy is me though.
You have absolutely no reason to believe that.
What happens if there's a malfunction in the machine and the copy is made at the other end without the original version being destroyed? Do you think you would experience both perspectives simultaneously?
My original answer does indeed include "assuming everything works as intended".
Right, but even if everything did work as intended there is still the possibility that it might not have done, and that possibility helps us understand what is actually happening, which is that you are killed and a copy of you is created somewhere else. There is absolutely no reason to believe that your experience would magically transfer over to that copy.
What do you mean by "your experience"?
There is nothing magic about this. I am what my brain does. My physical brain and its physical contents are cut and pasted.
Edit: "cut and pasted" is used here like with digital files, to avoid saying "copypasted" because I'm actively avoiding that can of worms of creating copies.
Again, you have no evidence for any of that.
For what?
For claiming that you are what your brain does, and the (implied) correlation that another identical brain would therefore continue to manifest an identical experience. All of this is entirely conjectural, we have no evidence one way or another.
Your caveat that you must be cut and pasted and not copied doesn't help your argument, in fact it does the opposite, because it is not theoretically impossible that two identical versions of "you" could exist concurrently.
That is afaik our current best guess at what consciousness is. If you don't accept that model as true at least for the moment, I don't know what we're talking about.
We don't know what consciousness is, that's my point. It's called 'the hard problem of consciousness' for a reason, there is no consensus.
That's why I said current best guess. If we have no idea at all, this entire discussion is useless and OP should delete.