Singularities and Simulacra

I was just reading this article...

[Uploading the Mind for Extended Space Exploration - Is It Possible?]

And it brought to my mind a thought that I have never really heard mentioned when discussing the dilemma of going from a biological substrate to a more technological one. For those that are unfamiliar with this issue I'll go through a quick refresher..

Think of porting your brain into a computer as being exactly like moving a file from one computer to another. The illusion is in the movement, in reality what is actually occurring is that the file is being copied to another location and the original is destroyed.

This is also known as a simulacrum (A copy without an original) - [Fun movie trivia! : In the Original Matrix Movie, the book that Neo pulls off the bookshelf is called, "Simulacra and Simulacrum" by Jean Baudrillard]

It's a very interesting book if anyone I know wants to borrow it, just let me know!

Anyways, so the issue at hand is that what fun is it being the original brain when it's your duplicate that gets to run around and do all the exciting things.

But there is a solution that I have yet to hear from anyone... Within the first two paragraphs of that article we find the fault in the argument that leads us down the path of being limited by the necessity to duplicate, but also we find the solution.

"Athena Andreadis recently wrote an article on why we can't be uploaded, explaining how any ghosts in the machine would just be copies. But we ask the more important question: is that a problem?"

"...the mind isn't a program that can be copied out onto upgraded hardware. It's an emergent effect of a hundred billion neurons, uncountable connections, a bath of chemicals and all sorts of input from our body. Besides, the very word "copy" shows that even if you could do it, you wouldn't benefit - since the copy can exist at the same time, it has to be someone else."

The solution is that instead of simply copying the mind and destroying the original, we supply the current brain with the means of interacting with an electronic brain, and then slowly over time we would begin to add more to the electronic brain and use the electronic brain for things we would have originally used our biological brain for.

Think of it as slowly moving into a new home.

Some people might argue that this is simply copying at a slower rate, thus we are still left with the same problem of loosing the original, but I don't believe this is the case.

The differences between your brain now and your brain a year ago is the memories that have been created over that time. So if the rate of transition into your digital brain is slow enough, you would have the experience of that change within your memory.

Anyways, I'm trying to rush writing this because I'm about to go swimming, so I hope anyone that's found this interesting and has questions or ideas will post in the comments and maybe we can get a nice healthy discussion going!