Reddit reply Comment on Me-ness | IDENTITY | CONSCIOUSNESS

"I guess the question is would that be a copy or you"

good question. I think one can be in two or more places at once and still be the same person. At least one can conceive that would seem hypothetically possible with enough power. Note that even if being the same you wouldn't necessarily have to be aware the copies exist, the copies could be unaware of each other, yet be the same individual without shared memory. 

Take for example if you traveled to the past, which may or may not be possible, if you travel to the past. That was you in the past, and it is you also who are the time traveler, but the past you is unaware of the future you. In fact you could have amnesia and not be aware of past you while past you is not aware of future you. Could also work if you came from the future to the present, it would be you but you wouldn't know nor share working memory.

That said, more knowledge is needed of the nature of consciousness, because the idea of simultaneous copies being you leads down quite a deep rabbit hole.

Derren Brown - Person Swap

The more extreme changes, if actually true, and if they actually didn't notice, do bring to mind the possibility that some humans may actually lack consciousness.

Comment on consciousness.

Consciousness appears to be the result of neural activity, patterns of neural activity, whether the basis is digital or not is not known.  But at least in digital terms we know that all finite patterns are parts of larger patterns, and those parts of larger patterns still.  There exist infinite non-repeating digital patterns that are believed to contain all finite patterns of lesser extent, so at least with regards to a particular sequence of patterns, it is conceivable that it is part of an infinite sequence.   The nature of the states preceding the present sequence and following it are unknown, but the likelihood that there exists preceding and subsequent sequences seems likely, I would say high.

Article on conscious perception

What this means is that the brain samples the world in rhythmic pulses, perhaps even discrete time chunks, much like the individual frames of a movie. From the brain’s perspective, experience is not continuous but quantized.

Another clue that led to this discovery was the so-called wagon-wheel illusion, in which the spokes on a wheel are sometimes perceived to reverse the direction of their rotation. This illusion is easy to induce with a strobe light if the rotation of the wheel is such that each strobe flash captures the spoke location slightly behind the location captured on the previous flash, leading to the perception of reverse motion. The illusion results from “sampling” the scene in discrete frames or time chunks.

 The telling fact, for perceptual scientists, is that this illusion can also occur during normal observation of a rotating wheel, in full daylight. This suggests that the brain itself, even in the absence of a strobe light, is sampling the world in discrete chunks...-nytimes

Interesting article on perception and likely discreteness of it.