Cryonics and personal identity
Some people think that they could achieve immortality by “uploading” their consciousness to a computer. Roughly, the intuition is that a computer could execute the same function as the brain yielding an entity with the same memories and the same basic personality and other psychological characteristics.
Bryan Caplan thinks that’s crazy, and I doubt he’s alone in having that reaction. It just so happens that I’ve been spending some time reading about the philosophy of personal identity recently, and it turns out that some of our best ideas about what matters for survival are consistent with the belief that “uploading” is a way of surviving.
Locke thought two people were the same if and only if one had the memories and experiences of the other. There’s been a lot of development of the idea. One modern version is the so called Psychological Criterion according to which two people are the same person if they have overlapping memories, beliefs, goals, character traits or intentions.
The issue is challenging and really important. If survival is possible in this way, then that’s going to have huge implications for how we organize society.
