The ‘wake-up as a rebooted self’ problem is also insuperable, IMO. Short of staying awake forever, there is no way to be certain that “my” existence didn’t begin this morning and won’t end when I next fall asleep. Maybe an explanation for my frequent insomnia?

While Francis Crick & Company have been doing a great job with delving into specific brain function models and showing how much of an automaton each of us is when it comes to “free will” (how much of our “free will” is biophysical reaction), I think they are quite wrong in asserting that the observed phenomena are all there is to the problem of consciousness. Crick & Co. fail to account for “experience.” I may not have free will, but “I” certainly experience the effects of my will, whether or not my “will” is simply a complex biophysical response to changes in environmental states.

A playback mechanism may be created for our high-fidelity brain backup system, and it may certainly appear that the playback mechanism is faithfully doing its job to the point where any observer cannot tell the difference between the “will” of the mechanism and the “will” of the original biological entity associated with that backup, but there is currently no way for us to know whether or not the doppleganger is actually “experiencing” anything at all.

Excellent point. If memory implants were available now, I would get them immediately. When eventually, all my memory is mecha, would I still be me? Will souls stick to crystal?

Tob

You would want the chrystal to contain a digital copy of your complete genome – just in case there was nothing left of your physical body to clone. A homing beacon would be a good idea too.

“how different is it from just loading the contents of the crystal onto a computer and running an emulation of me?”

Continuity. Well…only if the chrystal was doing more than data storage. If, after installation, the chrystal became actively involved in your thought processes or slowly compensated for those areas of your brain that wear out, this would become a part of the mind rather than just a backup. That continuity could allow you to make the trip to a new body or to virtual reality.

Any other backup scheme, including a destructive scan backup, leaves me wondering whether its live or Memorex.

At the risk of getting excessively trekkie, isn’t that the ‘transporter’ problem. That creature produced at the remote location isn’t you however much he may think he is. He’s just a point-in-time copy. Existence or the semblence thereof seem to rely exclusively on the perception of continuity. For all I know, every time I go to sleep ‘I’ cease to exist. When ‘I’ wake, the semblence is restored. Sort of like a computer program paged out. How would I know the difference.

Tobias