But I don't think it will ever happen, because if Quantum Physics is true, a mind cannot be completely duplicated, even in principle. The situation of sending confidential unbreakable information using quantum principles is analogous.
I pondered the question, "Assuming that you could be copied in an allegedly foolproof manner into another newly created instance of yourself, and that your original body had to be destroyed in the process, would you do it?"
Not I.
A colleague tipped me off to a movie on this theme that came out a few years ago: The Prestige.
Good movie.
David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla in the film...and is well cast.
On the one hand yes, it would be a different “person” but IF it could be done, as Erasmus wrote, the new version would not know that. Let's say that in your sleep someone came in, drugged you so that you did not wake up in the process, downloaded your memories, and then uploaded them into an identical body that had whatever was in it's brain wiped clean. This new “you” was placed, sleeping, in an identical bedroom built in lab elsewhere, with curtains drawn exactly the same, etc. For sake of argument “you” sleep alone, without spouse, pet, or roommate in the house. The lab personnel then provide an identical stimulus to wake both versions of “you” at the same time, say a car alarm going off outside. At that time would not both entities feel exactly the same, until such time as the copied “you” found out the bedroom was located in a lab somewhere?
As for Quantum Physics, why does that prohibit copying a mind? If our memories are bits of code in electrical impulses in brain cells, why could they not some day be replicated?
I saw The Prestige, by the way.