Meh, I don’t change that much from month to month. It may not be the exact same “me” but hell, close enough. You guys are such nitpickers. Gotta be the EXACT same person, BFD!
Besides, I want to see those C-beams glittering off the shoulders of Orion some day.
Well unlike James Bond I believe you only live once 
Anyway, serious and non-snarky question for those on the ‘sure’ side of the debate. If the technology was available and a couple of weeks ago you had your backup made, then for (insert reasons) you were told that unfortunately you’re going to have to be killed would you be OK with that knowing you had had the backup recently made? That after being shot (or whatever method of choice) you’re going to wake up in hospital in a new body being no worse off than suffering a loss of two-weeks of memories? Or is your position on the matter something else?
I’d feel a lot better about it knowing that some value of “me” would survive.
Yeah, I’d certainly feel a lot better about it than if there was no backup. Would I saunter up to the gallows with all the nonchalance of someone visiting a hairdresser? Probably not – if nothing else, I’d be scared that there might be some pain involved in the dying process, and even apart from that, I’m still human and while I would rationally believe that dying would not be a very big deal under these circumstances, my lower-level survival instincts might start generating some doubts at the moment of truth.
(Likewise, if I had a terminal disease and was offered a treatment that would erase the last few weeks of my memory, that would be quite a bummer and I would not think lightly about taking it. But I also wouldn’t consider taking that medicine to be equivalent to suicide, which appears to be the logical conclusion of the position which y’all are taking.)
But even if I knew in advance that I’d be crying and screaming and begging for my life, that still wouldn’t be an argument against taking the insurance policy. (It would, however, be an argument against taking risks with your life that you otherwise wouldn’t, just because you have a backup.) After all, at the moment when you are considering taking out the insurance policy, you are equally the predecessor of both future versions of you – the one that will die young, and the one that will go on living thanks to the backup.
Sure, for the version that is about to die, the fact that there will be another copy walking around may be cold comfort. But from your point of view today, as you are filling out the insurance form, that other copy is just as much “you” as the one that dies. (Since, in a world where clone bodies are cheap and consciousness can be moved across bodies as easily as files can be copied between computers, there’s no reason why it should matter much which of the two copies of your consciousness was inhabiting the original body.)
So what matters in the end is that, if you fill out that insurance policy, then one day you will be saying “whew, I’m really happy I did that, because otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here today, looking at this beautiful sunset with my loving spouse standing next to me! Best decision I ever made! I just hope I didn’t suffer too much when my original body got hit by that truck.”
I’m not going to be “OK” with the idea. It’s an imposition and an inconvenience. Also, it might hurt.
When I wake up in the hospital with my week-old memories, and they tell me what happened, I’m gonna be cheesed. I’ll fuss over how much my other self may have suffered. How did they kill him? Why?
But, as Evil Captor notes, it’s a darn sight better this way than the old-fashioned way where I’d be dead, dead, dead.
Here, I’m alive. I can catch up on that week of work, and start legal proceedings against whomever killed me.
I haven’t lost everything. Under Death, rev. 1.0, I do lose everything.
Not worthwhile to me. The clone with my memories isn’t me; it’s a copy of me. I won’t have true continuity with it. I say this because, as I read the OP, the clone could have my memories impressed at any time and coexist with me. If that were to happen I would not be existing in two places at once; there’d be an initially very-similar-to-me copy walking around. Its continuing to exist would change my death.
In short: death is always the final emperor.
A perfect copy of me is me, and if that would make my family and friends happy, then sure!
Okay. Let’s say you’ve signed up for that service, and your last memory upload was this morning. By some misstep your clone has been activated before your death and the last memory upload saved in its brain. Are you okay with me chopping your head off, as long as the clone is still around?
I can imagine a good story in which your clone is awakened while you are still alive.
Iain M Banks pointed out in one of his books that such an ability makes political assassination pretty much pointless.
So let me ask a question for the thread-of-consciousness people (actually, re-ask what Walton already did): Would you feel the same opposition if there was no brain-imprint transfer, but instead your entire brain & spinal cord was transplanted to the new cloned body. Would the result of that procedure still be you?
If, no, explain why not (and why this is different from, say getting a prosthetic leg).
If yes, what if only 51% of your actual brain was transplanted, while the other 49% was constructed in the clone based from a scan done after you were anesthitized for the surgery (and that 49% of your original brain was discarded)? Would that be you? Would your answer change if 49% of your brain was transplanted and 51% built from a scan?
And how does that answer square with the undeniable scientific fact that the vast majority of atoms in your body are regularly replaced with different atoms?
I would be a lot more OK with it than if you threatened to chop my head off when there was no clone and no backup. I could even see myself being relatively nonchalant about it under those circumstances. (As long as I trust you not to botch the first strokes of that axe!)
Anyway, having multiple copies of the same person running around simultaenously, would definitely complicate matters, especially once they’ve had some to diverge and have different experiences. Especially if the original person was in a monogamous relationship and/or had kids!
But that’s getting a bit far away from the OP’s question, in which it was assumed that the clone would not be activated until the original was confirmed dead. (Yes, I get that the point of the hypothetical was to illustrate that the clone would be a separate person. I get that point, I just don’t think it’s of crucial importance in itself. I have a “discontinuity of consciousness” every time I go to sleep, but I’m fine with that as long as the person who wakes up in the morning is sufficiently similar to myself.)
Also, for the “continuity of consciousness” people: what about my hypothetical where you have a terminal illness and you are offered a cure which will, as an unintended but unavoidable side effect, erase the last three days of your memory? Would you accept that if there was no other cure available, or would you consider it no better than suicide?
What if we lower the memory erasure time to three hours, or three minutes? That’s not a sci-fi hypothetical; it is quite normal for anaesthesia to cause some memory loss. In fact, some surgeries cannot be performed under ordinary anaesthesia, so then the patient is given something which does not prevent them from feeling pain, but will block the formation of permanent memories during the operation.
If unbroken continuity of consciousness is what matters, then wouldn’t three hours of memory loss also be equivalent to death? Yet I doubt that many of you would refuse anaesthesia during life-saving surgery for that reason.
Why is the rebuttal argument always, “Would you be okay with me doing something shitty?”
No, I wouldn’t. What does that prove?
In my view, if the clone is awakened early, there are now two of me. Me one and Me two. Why would that make me “okay” with the pointless wanton murder of either one?
And given that, I’m pretty sure I can find something better to spend my money on, while I’m still around to enjoy it.
I checked the caveats option because I would want some pretty profound guarantees over the actual technology and its implementation thus, mainly that the copy cannot be flawed or altered in any way, and that no state or authority can access data about my brain patterns. I feel these are actually massive caveats, since I cannot see a modern government willing to keep their grubby hands out of such technomagic. Oh I would also mandate that the copy of me has a shelf life of a few months or a year before painlessly dying (hopefully like the first).
I personally consider the new clone to be figuratively dead as much as the original. As in, the first had his chance and now the second is only there to clear things up for him - the ‘living will’ as mentioned upthread. The clones duty is to say goodbye properly to loved ones (motorcycle accidents, say, don’t let you do this since you just go splat and die), to oversee ones estate being administered properly, to tidy up ones debts and affairs. Since I would share these beliefs with my copy, he won’t having any problems boarding the magic ship to the undying lands after his duties are performed and its time to go. Again.
I might be willing to allow the deceased a perfect recovery if their death was murder or on account of somebody elses extreme negligence. I’d have to think more about that. But if it turned out that the wire was live after all and I did touch it, well then I feel that should be that. My loved ones get to sing kumbaya with me one last time, I or him gets to take a posthumous shit on parliament lawn like I’ve always wanted (legal immunity for clones re lawn shitting would be nice!), mother nature is sated that I’m still dead, and the world keeps on spinning.
At very least, this is a superb compromise, and a big step ahead of where we are today.
The clone wouldn’t be “me” but my “relict,” and would only exist for specific purposes.
(It also allows one to attend his own funeral!)
Yes, I can see the Hollywood movie already. “Living Will”, with Will Smith (or maybe Bruce Willis). With the clock ticking down, he has accepted his fate and is ready to go out with dignity. Legally he is already dead, but then a mysterious woman gives him a new reason to live – and not only his second chance at happiness, but the fate of the world hangs in the balance…
The moment the perfect copy of me “comes online” so to speak, our existences diverge and he is no longer a perfect copy of me. He’s a new being, albeit very similar to me in almost every way imaginable. So no, if he were awakened early and Skald says “Oops we need to balance the equation” and wanted to kill me, I’d argue that there is no equation to balance because there are now two unique people, not two copies of the same person.
However, if the copy came online at the same instance you chopped off my head then I see no problem with it.
[Evil!Skald]
I would not say, “Oops, we need to balance the equation,” and then kill you. I’d kill you and then say, “Whaddaya expect? It’s Tuesday.”
[/evil!Skald]
This is just another example of the duplicator/transporter.
I don’t want to die. That a perfect copy of me would carry on after I die is nice and all, but it still doesn’t make up for dying.
As has been pointed out, if you wake up the clone before I die, it’s not me, it’s a copy of me. Or, we’re both instances of me, but we’re not the same instance. If I wake up in a tub of goo tomorrow, and they tell me I’m a recovered clone of myself, I still want to not die, because I’m the type of person who doesn’t want to die. I’m not going to kill myself just because there’s a previous or future copy of myself.
Not wanting to die is different than wanting a copy of myself to live on after I die. I mean, if a copy of myself lives on after I die, that’s fine with me, as long as he doesn’t turn out evil. Anyway it will probably turn out that I was the evil one all along, and he turns out to be the good copy. How you like your twist ending now, bitch?
How is creating a copy of myself different than the regular imperfect sort of reproduction that I’ve already done? OK, my kids don’t share my memories. So what? What makes the memories so important? Would creating a regular-style clone of yourself give you immortality? Like you implant your nuclear DNA in a donated ovum, it develops into an embryo, gets implanted in a womb, and grows into a baby. There’s your copy of yourself, only it’s a baby and doesn’t have your memories. What makes your memories of being you what makes you YOU?
Like, if you got hit on the head and got Hollywood-style amnesia and couldn’t remember your name or who you were, did you really die?
Your memories aren’t you. Your body isn’t you. Your brain isn’t you. The pattern of atoms that persists over time isn’t you. That’s because there is no “you”. The self is an illusion. We act as if there’s a “real me”, but that’s only because we’re creatures that evolved in a particular way with particular sorts of brains and bodies. Which clone is the “real me” is a red herring. Neither are, both are, it doesn’t matter. It still doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to die, because I’m a type of animal that doesn’t want to die, because all my ancestors were the same way and those that didn’t care if they lived or died didn’t find their way into my ancestral gene pool.
Of course there are people today who don’t care if they live or die, and if the use of duplication becomes common over the future decades and centuries it seems likely that there will be more and more people who want to be duplicated, because people who don’t want to be duplicated won’t be duplicated as often, and the traits that lead people to want to be duplicated will become more and more common.