I would say that Alice’s conscious experience is unlikely to suddenly disappear under this transformation, and that it could even be done in a way so that their experience was continuous.
However, Alice-memories would gradually fade out, Bob-memories would gradually fade in, and thought patterns would slowly shift from Alice-like to Bob-like. At the end, the person would just be Bob. Along the way, I would say that Alice gradually died (using an information-theoretic definition of death). The thing that is odd when imagining this is that Alice never experiences her consciousness fading.
The main thing I think your thought experiment demonstrates is that our sense of self is not solely defined by continuity of consciousness.
I would say that Alice’s conscious experience is unlikely to suddenly disappear under this transformation, and that it could even be done in a way so that their experience was continuous.
However, Alice-memories would gradually fade out, Bob-memories would gradually fade in, and thought patterns would slowly shift from Alice-like to Bob-like. At the end, the person would just be Bob. Along the way, I would say that Alice gradually died (using an information-theoretic definition of death). The thing that is odd when imagining this is that Alice never experiences her consciousness fading.
The main thing I think your thought experiment demonstrates is that our sense of self is not solely defined by continuity of consciousness.