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Why must be that "link" there? If you make a exact copy of you (forget chips, memristors, electronic, just focus on the copy part) will be 2 "you" around, with experiences that will start to diverge at that point. There is no universal "you", will be 2 entities that will think that each one is the real one, and the other the copy, and even could arge which is the one that got the soul, and with a bit of luck decide that or there are free souls around for anyone wanting one, or that never were one to start with.

Of course, if such "duplication" of people can be done (in real or virtual world) it could cause big legal troubles, and having only one copy "active" will solve most of it. But killing one of them will be for him dying, no matter what will or is happening at the same time to a completely separate entity that could look or think like you.

In this scenario, suiciding is not a good scape pod. You still dying, and you are forcing the "other you", someone that knows and feel exactly like you, to keep with the problem (so probably he will suicide too, because will have to add to the original problem realizing how retard was his former self).

Don't give so much value to your concience, could be just a meme.

Susan Blackmore has written more than a bit around it, and her TED talk about this and the future is pretty interesting.

While fighting my way out of a cult, I read many books on cults and how they work, but perhaps the most influentual work I read was on parapsychology, a subject in which I had only a minor interest. The book was Susan Blackmore's "In Search of the Light: The Adventures of a Parapsychologist" where she starts out believing in many things, and like so many studying parapsychology, believed that hard evidence was "just around the corner," waiting to be found. Perhaps her biggest downfall was her own honesty and scientific rigor, something her colleagues didn't seem to have. All her psi experiments were well designed, but failed to find anything. When she investigated others' experiments which appeared to be giving positive results, she found faults in their methods. After being corrected, the experiments no longer gave positive results. She was labeled "psi negative" because of this.

I never heard of so many people strongly believing in something, and having strong incentives to show it exists (would not the person who rigorously demonstrates PSI be justifiably rich and famous?), and find no evidence whatsoever, yet after years CONTINUE TO BELIEVE it exists! By the end of the book the author did not claim to no longer believe, but was certainly disillusioned, and just said "I don't know."

Years after having written the book, she finally did "give up" searching for PSI:
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/NS2000. html

I was in a group where I had believed things with no evidence other than everyone around me also believed them and said they were true. Looking back, I thought I had independently come to the same conclusions as everyone else in the group! It was my own investigations outside the group and reading "outside material" that led me out. They told me not to quit a minute before the miracle happens, and that being happy, joyous and free was "just around the corner" if I kept doing what they told me. Despite the "spiritual not religious" claim, it was indeed a religious experience, and it is as much a religion as is fundamentalist Christianity.

Parapsychology is perhaps where religion and science come closest to overlapping, but like a Venn diagram showing two non-touching circles, there is no overlap. But at least parapsychologists try. "Creation scientists" do not do any actual science that I've heard of in attempts to show that their beliefs are true.

There is more evidence for cold fusion (the fusing of atoms at moderate temperature, not the programming system) than for ESP, and there's virtually NO evidence for cold fusion.

That's because a lot of people want to use buzzwords and catchphrases like memes to give authority to their claims. That said, I've been reading Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine and, even though it was written 5 years ago, I rate it very highly as a wide ranging and popular introduction to the subject. If you read it, you should be able to see for yourself, for instance, why any conflict between Western civilization and fundamentalism (Islamic or otherwise) cannot be won purely by force of arms (and in fact why an attempt at the latter may be a severe detriment to long term peace since it plays to the fundamentalists' strengths).

Actually, based on her past history, I'm extremely impressed with Susan Blackmore as a person and if she wasn't nearly 10 years older, with kids, a long-term life partner, and with occasional questionable behaviour, I might make a fool of myself in writing a letter of admiration. :-)

My biggest problem with Penrose's "consciousness stems from quantum uncertainty" theory is that it makes no sense from an evolutionary biology point of view. Nearly all of molecular biology is about using protein machinery to provide repeatability and the minimization of quantum uncertainty including, as far as we can tell, the function of nerve cells in lower animals. All of a sudden, in the homo genus, this is supposed to have been reversed so that quantum uncertainty becomes the source of consciousness? I don't buy it in the least bit. If it did turn out to be true it would be one hell of an argument in favour of intelligent design, but I'll need extraordinary proof before I believe that extraordinary claim. More probable, to me, is the idea that at least one necessary ingredient for the development of consciousness is a certain level of complexity and capacity in the brain to allow it to hold competing and complementary functions and concepts.

A much more interesting book on a related subject is Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine exploring the idea that memes are the second type of replicator (competing with genes in) driving human evolution and forcing the increasing complexity and capacity of the human brain. Check out her tittilating collection of articles on her web site. I've got Susan Blackmore's book on Consciousness on order and am looking forward to reading it when I get it. A different, but complementary, volume is Andrew NewBerg, Eugene d'Aquili, and Vincent Rause's Why God won't go away: Brain Science and the biology of belief - highly recommended.

Still, Penrose is extraordinary when he sticks to his bailiwick of physics and mathematics and I look forward to picking up a copy and reading his latest on modern physics, even if I find his opinions on consciousness and neurology worthless.

This is leading us to the theory about memes and that coevolution between genes and memes has controlled the human development ever since our brains were able to carry and copy ideas and thoughts.

Since the ecology on earth is now to a high degree controlled by humans, the memes are now also a big factor in the evolution of other species, too.

Have you ever tried lucid dreaming? The images you see are often just as detailed as real life. Unless you're saying that 'real life' uses this compression too? That would be close to what Dr Susan Blackmore says...

Hey Shwag!

Check out Susan Blackmore's article "The Power of Memes" which was originally published in Scientific American. She's a little out there but it will at least get you started. She is also an editor at the online Journal of Memetics.

You're welcome,
gcondon

p.s. I think Dan Gillmor's answer was a cop-out.

Hey Shwag!

Check out Susan Blackmore's article "The Power of Memes" which was originally published in Scientific American. She's a little out there but it will at least get you started. She is also an editor at the online Journal of Memetics.

You're welcome,
gcondon

p.s. I think Dan Gillmor's answer was a cop-out.