A friend and I had a tangent in a conversation about Frank Tipler's book The Physics of Immortality that related to this.
In grossly oversimplified terms, the thesis of the book is that religion is real, because we (or other intelligent entities in the universe) will turn the entire universe into a supercomputer, and resurrection will happen when exact duplicates with our exact memories are generated. (I read the thing thirty years ago, details are likely off, though not super far off.) I objected that an intelligent being with my memories won't be me. And he responded that it's a real ship of Theseus problem.
Which reminds me that Greg Egan's novella "Learning to be Me" takes the premise, and shows what a horror story it really is.
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A friend and I had a tangent in a conversation about Frank Tipler's book The Physics of Immortality that related to this.
In grossly oversimplified terms, the thesis of the book is that religion is real, because we (or other intelligent entities in the universe) will turn the entire universe into a supercomputer, and resurrection will happen when exact duplicates with our exact memories are generated. (I read the thing thirty years ago, details are likely off, though not super far off.) I objected that an intelligent being with my memories won't be me. And he responded that it's a real ship of Theseus problem.
Which reminds me that Greg Egan's novella "Learning to be Me" takes the premise, and shows what a horror story it really is.