If a person were running on a inefficiently designed computer with transistors and wires much larger than they needed to be, it would be possible to peel away and discard (perhaps) half of the atoms in the computer without affecting it’s operation or the person. This would be much like ebborian reproduction, but merely a shedding of atoms.
In any sufficiently large information processing device, there are two or more sets of atoms (or whatever its made of) processing the same information, such they they could operate independently of each other if they weren’t spatially intertwined.
Why are they one person when spatially intertwined, but two people when they are apart? That they ‘could have’ gone on independently is a counterfactual in the situation that they are both receiving the same inputs. You ‘could’ be peeled apart into two people, but both halves of your parts are currently still making up 1 person.
Personhood is in the pattern. Not the atoms or memory or whatever. There’s only another person when there is another sufficiently different pattern.
merge is equivalent to ‘spatially or logically reintegrate, then shed atoms or memory allocation as desired’
If a person were running on a inefficiently designed computer with transistors and wires much larger than they needed to be, it would be possible to peel away and discard (perhaps) half of the atoms in the computer without affecting it’s operation or the person. This would be much like ebborian reproduction, but merely a shedding of atoms.
In any sufficiently large information processing device, there are two or more sets of atoms (or whatever its made of) processing the same information, such they they could operate independently of each other if they weren’t spatially intertwined.
Why are they one person when spatially intertwined, but two people when they are apart? That they ‘could have’ gone on independently is a counterfactual in the situation that they are both receiving the same inputs. You ‘could’ be peeled apart into two people, but both halves of your parts are currently still making up 1 person.
Personhood is in the pattern. Not the atoms or memory or whatever. There’s only another person when there is another sufficiently different pattern.
merge is equivalent to ‘spatially or logically reintegrate, then shed atoms or memory allocation as desired’