Preservation of Relationships in Human Copying

by phil on Sunday Nov 18, 2012 3:29 AM

This is Part 2 of 4 in a series of posts sparked by the Kurzweil's You 2 thought experiment.

In the case of human copying, it's important to realize that not everything gets copied. For example, bank accounts aren't copied and would have to remain in the custody of the canonical version (c-version).

But a more important thing isn't copied: relationships. Knowing this leads to some potentially interesting social conventions. For example, it may become a faux pas for a d-version (discarded version) to try to re-approach the friends of the c-version. Doing so would create obvious confusion among your friends, at the very least, because they don't want to tell the same jokes twice, or your loved ones want security knowing that they're investing in one version of you, one that is legally recognized as canonical.

This could be bypassed, however, if a group of friends decided to copy themselves simultaneously.