Problems I Encountered, While Trying to Live Forever

I had this random reasoning with my brother Ling Zhong at 4 AM on the street for 90 minutes. I now don’t even remember where this topic came from.

I am a billionaire, and I want to live forever. But I am not generous enough to settle for an identical person living on in my place. I want my own first-person perspective to continue.

Part 0, Assumptions

Please assume the following, so as to isolate the problem.

1. Mental information is copyable.
   All memories, and other psychological information are encoded in brain structures that can be duplicated non-invasively.

2. Consciousness can be suspended completely.
   A brain can enter a state with no experience and later be reactivated. Here, “coma” refers to this idealized suspension.

3. A copy in coma can be synchronized.
   The original’s experiences continuously update the copy’s mental information, without copying fatal damage.

Part 1, Intuition.

What’s intuitively considered immortality is reviving my brain after my death, because my first-person perspective continues into the next life.

However, a copy of me is usually not considered me, because the copy and the original me are two distinct centers of experience, and my first-person perspective cannot be transferred to it.

Here, I present two idealized scenarios, to demonstrate that there is not much of a difference between the two.

Part 2, Scenarios.

1. Recovery of the Original Brain
   I had a serious car accident and became completely comatose. Two years later, I regained consciousness, and I resumed life with my prior memories, personality, and other psychological information.

2. Continuation Through a Copy in Coma
   My lizard secretly copied my brain one day after lunch. It wrote some automation scripts, and hid the copy in its incubator. Until I died, the copy remained unconscious but was continuously synchronized with my memories, personality, and other psychological information. One year later, I died from a serious car accident. Synchronization was stopped and the copy was activated. The waking copy possesses my prior memories, personality, and other psychological information.

There is an obvious physical difference: one retains the original brain; the other replaces it. Yet under these assumptions, either way, they genuinely believe they have just woken up. They cannot even tell which scenario they have been through based on their internal status.

I guess it is starting to be somewhat confusing already.

Part 3, Analysis.

From the waking subject’s perspective, the internal status in both scenarios is identical. From the living original’s perspective, there is no experience during the unconscious interval in either scenario. If the original brain never recovers, no awareness remains in that brain to report a failure. What, then, is the loss behind the fear that “I did not make it across”?

My tentative thought is that complete psychological continuation is adequate for immortality. Requiring the original brain may add a condition whose significance still needs explaining.

Part 4, Further.

1. Is there a first-person difference?
   What is the first-person difference between “I woke up” and “I died and another subject woke up with my mental life preserved in full, believing they are me”?

2. Why might an unexperienced failure still matter?
   Even without being able to report failure afterward, can the original subject reasonably anticipate losing their future?

3. What is the “me” that must be preserved?
   Strict identity of the subject, or a complete and continuing mental life? If these are different, what is at stake in that difference?

Please contact me if you have any insight. That would be very helpful when I really become a billionaire who does not like to hear about dying.