Interesting...but...
Thanks! I'm extremely excited about this place...I've been printing forums off all day.
You're right WellCookedFetus, I hadn't considered that. But I still question the process. Like you said, we are all dying slowly- our skin, our cells, all being replaced. The difference between that and this idea of copying a brain to a computer, I think, is that our natural growth doesn't happen all at once. We don't molt all of our cells every month and become someone new, it's a gradual process that is needed to move from one stage to another (that's why at 12 we don't grow 3 inches in a minute, it happens over the course of a year). But when transfered to a computer memories are transfered to another medium all at once.. They aren't 'grown' into a system. A person would instantly become someone new, not themselves. Would that actually be them since nothing of the original old stuff exists to work witht the new? Because the change is mental and not physical like my example with height, what are the consequences of such a leap? If the intergration was a slow process the human element would grow into it's new form, retaining the human quality, and without the damaging effects...and learn about it's change. the same as one might take a while to get adjusted to an artificial leg.
Thank you for brining that to my attention, I hadn't considered it. I understant the possibility now, and it seems more real to me than it had.