Would you know that you are the backup when you walk out of MyBackup(TM) to see if you really can jump that canyon...

You'e be you, minus however long since your last backup.

(In Richard Morgan's books, your consciousness is stored on a hard drive that lives at the top of your spinal column, and is updated in real time. So after your body goes splat at the bottom of the canyon, the park rangers retrieve your hard drive and put it into a new body, assuming you're rich enough to afford one.)

[xpost with Shrift, sort of]

So you come to with the memory of dying each time? That's ... that makes things different.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.

If there are two of your consciousnesses, are they both you?

the park rangers retrieve your hard drive and put it into a new body, assuming you're rich enough to afford one.

Would it fit in a house cat? Or an emperor penguin?

If there are two of your consciousnesses, are they both you?

Ask John Crichton.

Seriously, "my consciousness" is the one that is making the decision to press Post. An identical copy made at this moment will no doubt believe it is also me, but it's not the one with the fingers on the keyboard.

An identical copy made at this moment will no doubt believe it is also me, but it's not the one with the fingers on the keyboard.

Okay -- I wasn't sure which side you were arguing. Having a clone won't do it for you, then?

What if you passed out, and then woke up twinned -- do you win then?

An identical copy made at this moment will no doubt believe it is also me, but it's not the one with the fingers on the keyboard.

It would suck if it had its fingers on the keyboard too, as you'd be posting everything twice.

At least until the two consciousnesses diverged.

Would it fit in a house cat? Or an emperor penguin?

From Morgan's books, the hard drive would, yes. I would think that having opposable thumbs would be more appealing, but then, if you're that rich, I suppose you have people who can do opposable-thumb-thingys for you.

What if you passed out, and then woke up twinned -- do you win then?

The Schrodinger's Betsy experiment.

What if you passed out, and then woke up twinned -- do you win then?

If I pass out and wake up twinned, we have a chick fight because each of us believes we're the real me.

If we were twenty years younger, we might go off and find our husband for a threesome, but candidly we're not that fond of our body right now. (My GOD, woman! Don't you EVER say "no" to a cookie?)

I suspect that it would be kind of like twins. If I were to be cloned right now, one of me would be the original. (I'd probably do something stupid like write O on my hand or something.) Anyhoo, at that point, the clone would begin to be its own person. However, it would be the same person to everyone but the orginial. if that makes any sense.