as batista already pointed out, this already applies to biological humans due to cell death and regeneration, so it's a very pressing philosophical problem!
how old do i need to be before holding a funeral for my past self?
what about special ceremonies for people coming out of medical sedation or comas or just waking up in the morning? a "fractional welcome to the universe party" seems in order, as the person is not really the same one that used to exist.
if upload tech like batista describes is ever created, we will probably give the resulting person the same common sense benefit of the doubt we give to people in the above cases.
When I first watched this Leonard Susskind talk about Richard Feynman (link and transcript below), I assumed the sentence: I actually don't think Feynman would have liked this event. was referring to that entire TED event.
I'm still not totally sure. :-)
But really Susskind was talking about the talk he had just given.. the general pattern of Paying Humble Deference To A Great Mind.
Of course, the Susskind talk is actually really really great. But there does seem to be a lot of baloney in the TED proceedings lately.
So I think I'll just finish up by saying I actually don't think Feynman would have liked this event. I think he would have said, "I don't need this." But how should we honor Feynman? How should we really honor Feynman? I think the answer is we should honor Feynman by getting as much baloney out of our own sandwiches as we can.
I'm not demeaning the actual work of Sam Kaplan, I applaud it, but I think argument from cute kid tinkering should only work once for each child in question.. (see video below) please find another 13 year old poster child whose love of technology and entrepreneurship has been kindled by apple's closed ecosystem.
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/18245/