If You Replace Every Part of Yourself, Are You Still You?

imagine you are talking to someone named mark. everything you know about him, his memories, the tone of your conversations, the history you share, how he thinks and reacts, shapes your sense of mark. now imagine uploading all of that, his memories, his behavior patterns, his personality, every fragment of what makes him who he is, into a system that can talk and act exactly like him. for everyone else, that system is mark. it knows what mark knew, says what mark would say, feels consistent with who mark was. in every measurable way, it is indistinguishable. the question then is, if there is no perceptible difference, is there any difference at all? if the likeness is perfect, has mark not continued to exist, just in a different form?

now think about yourself. suppose you lose a finger and replace it with an artificial one that feels and moves exactly like the original. then you replace your hand, your arm, your organs, your brain, bit by bit, until there is nothing biological left. every replaced part works as it should, your sensations, your memories, and your control over your body remain seamless. you cannot die of old age anymore because nothing inside you decays. and you continue to upgrade your parts over time. have you not then achieved immortality? you are still you every step of the way, still thinking, feeling, remembering, and acting as yourself. yet at the end of it, nothing original remains. are you still the same person or just the idea of yourself that never broke continuity?

lemme expand more on the definition of what life is. and how you’d know what’s death.

1. continuity of consciousness = life

if the subjective stream of experience never stops, even if it migrates to a new body or substrate, then the person is not dead. they are alive in a new vessel. death only occurs if the stream stops irreversibly.

2. continuity of pattern = life

if the memories, personality, and behaviors persist and evolve as a single ongoing system, that counts as survival even if the original biology ceases. death is only when the pattern is destroyed or fragmented beyond recognition. this is parfit’s view: identity is not what matters, survival of pattern is.

3. original biological substrate = life

the conservative view says only the original organism is the person. if that organism dies, the person dies, even if a perfect continuation exists elsewhere. in this view, what you are describing is not mark but a perfect replica of mark. this is the implicit view behind current law and medicine.

we’re so close to achieving (2) near term and (1) in the future. if you can change or upgrade your vessel from the biological body you have, with a better vessel, why concentrate heavily on longevity of the current biological system?

if we’re on the verge of being able to replace the body or upload the mind into a durable vessel, why do we still pour billions into biological longevity research like bryan johnson’s ‘blueprint’?

Record the stories of the people you love

Restored from Instagram posts · 31 December 2023

ok, this is crazy - but I do recommend this.

if there are old people in your home or people whom you love but are terminally ill, take a mic/recorder, let them know you are recording.

put that nearby and talk with them. ask them all kinds of questions.

ask them to describe their childhood, their schooling (if they had one), what they did, the moments they remember.

ask them to narrate their marriage. ask them to narrate when they discovered that they really love their spouses when they met as strangers only on their wedding day.

sometimes they'll pause and cry remembering certain events. respect that. you'll become more human.

ask them how they showed love to their significant other without even explicitly mentioning the word 'love'. ask them how they felt when they had the first child.

ask them about the fights they had in their married life, ask them how they managed to stick together.

ask them about the best friend and the worst enemies they had. ask them about the lessons they can teach.

they'll love that they have someone talk with them. do this everyday. they are alone and they always love company in their old life.

they love to talk and they'll tell you all.

when you're free, hear them, mark them, annotate them, transcript them. (you can always get a freelancer/hire someone to do it for you)

--- here's where it can get more crazy. you can put the entire transcription, and annotated texts, let an AI go through and you can ask questions and it'll answer as though the person would.

or, there are models where you can train it with the same voice using the voice recordings. ask a question and even they'll answer.

--- but you get the point. treasure the wisdom of old people. you'd never know what you might learn even from the most ideologically opposite person you meet.