What I don’t understand is how either A or B is supposed to be you in the sense of being the same person as current you while the other is not?
A will probably call A the real you, and B will probably call B the real you. Other people might find them both the same as the current you, but might take sides on the labeling issue later if A or B does something they like or don’t like. It’d surely be most useful to call both A and B “the same person as current you” in the beginning, at least, because they’d both be extremely similar to the current you. A might change more than B as time goes on, leading some to prefer identifying B as the “real” you (possibly right away, to dissipate the weirdness of it all), but it’s all a matter of preference in labels. After all, even now the you that is reading this post is not the same as the you of 5 minutes ago. English simply isn’t well-equipped to deal with the situation where a person can have multiple future selves (at least, not yet).
William T. Riker was copied and his copy (hereafter “Thomas Riker”) was abandoned all alone on a planet. Will Riker had friends and a career history since the copy, so for convenience Thomas Riker took the name “Thomas” and continued his old career where he left off.
A will probably call A the real you, and B will probably call B the real you. Other people might find them both the same as the current you, but might take sides on the labeling issue later if A or B does something they like or don’t like. It’d surely be most useful to call both A and B “the same person as current you” in the beginning, at least, because they’d both be extremely similar to the current you. A might change more than B as time goes on, leading some to prefer identifying B as the “real” you (possibly right away, to dissipate the weirdness of it all), but it’s all a matter of preference in labels. After all, even now the you that is reading this post is not the same as the you of 5 minutes ago. English simply isn’t well-equipped to deal with the situation where a person can have multiple future selves (at least, not yet).
Good point. Fictional example:
William T. Riker was copied and his copy (hereafter “Thomas Riker”) was abandoned all alone on a planet. Will Riker had friends and a career history since the copy, so for convenience Thomas Riker took the name “Thomas” and continued his old career where he left off.