Don't read this...

So I wrote this to a friend Monday morning:

"Thought about the question you posed while I got dresssed today (no relationship to the activity). The question was around if I were split who would I be. I answered something like neither. To refine that answer: I believe we change all the time, nothing is permanent. Who I was yesterday is not who I am today, etc. So if you split me, I am neither but there are parts of me in both. Something along the lines of the Buddist.

So to get back to my energy = soul comment, my soul continues in both and when they are destroyed, they will unify, split, merge or whatever souls do only to be returned in some way. Not necessarily to earth or humans, that is WAY to egocentric, but to the universe in some way. I’d like to believe I join a cool ass near supernova and get dispersed all over the place only to get mostly slurped into an event horizon and emerge out the end and then…..Whoa, a bit too much for Monday morning.

Had fun and let’s get together soon, hopefully when we’ve both had more sleep!"

He wrote back:

"I think your answer is somewhat similar to mine, but I have a slightly more technical interpretation:

I am a pattern / algorithm that takes data from the outside world / environment and processes it. I locally reverse entropy and exist to process information according to my core set of algorithms. My algorithms update constantly based on environmental input. Just as you posit, who I am changes constantly as my algorithms and environmental data change.

I don't believe in the soul unless the soul is a pattern. In that sense, parts of my pattern are constantly being implanted elsewhere, and only the unsuccessful memes fail to replicate, and therefore, die. But the patterns live on.

Just like any algorithm / pattern, I can be cloned. However, the clones are not the same since they are in a different physical location and therefore processing a different dataset. Therefore they are not me and I would not accept being shut down to activate one of those. It's the same distinction as between two executing copies of the same self-modifying program. They are running the same algorithm, but because they are executing in different parts of the machine, they are immediately divergent as they modify themselves.

I hate Mondays."