Some folks in another thread suggested that I post this here for relevance.
Here you go...for whatever relevance and value it offers to this topic:
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I have an axe.
I use the axe.
I break the axe head on a piece of wood I chopped
I go to the store and buy the exact same axe head.
I use the axe again.
I break the axe handle on a piece of wood I chopped.
I go to the store and buy the exact same axe handle.
I use the axe.
Is this still the same axe as the one I originally had?
No.
It is an entirely different axe with the same components.
If you take and replace Brain A with Brain B, even bit by bit over time, then once you have completed the process what was Brain A and is now Brain B2 will not be Brain B1.
It will be a duplicate of Brain B1, but not Brain B1 itself.
Brain B2 will have the impression of being Brain B1, but it would not actually have been the same brain that was present during the growth and experiences in which it believes that it would have.
Just as I can download my current computer's entire contents and then go buy a brand new computer exactly the same and install everything I had into the new one and I will not magically have my old computer - I have a new computer made to resemble my previous computer exactly.
The two are vastly different.
Now here's the thing: your brain is not the same brain you had yesterday, nor the day before that, nor the year, decade, etc... before that.
You are not the same you day to day that you create for yourself to believe you to be.
That is called identity, and identity is what we make up - it is not actually reality.
So, really, asking if we can cheat death by moving our brain around is rather nullified.
The answer remains, no.
Because you can't even keep your 5 year old version of who you were alive.
He or she is already dead - bye bye.
You are only you as you are right now.
Tomorrow, your brain will have changed.
Typically, this is a slow process, so you won't notice the changes.
But when you get older, you won't even be the same person you are now - your brain won't be either.
The only way to "cheat" death would be if you could freeze life from having motion at all, and you can't do that because that would just be not-life; death.
You could suspend animation, but that just removes you from experiencing something, so that's not really life either - you are just looking at something which can perpetuate itself over a longer period of time by introducing intervals of suspension.
Would the Brain B2 consider its identity to be the same as Brain B1?
Most likely, yes. That's how we are able to age and still think we are the same person, or have brain damage and think the same in some capacity.
Now, is this even relevant?
Nope.
You can't actually duplicate an active brain as complex as the human brain, and by that I mean you can't create a copy of someone's brain.
The shear complexity is massive to the point of asking if we could only copy the solar system atomically would we have created the same solar system or a different one.
It's not actually something that you can do as the brain's formation is emergent, and not static.
It's not like a car, it's like a tree.
Even if you clone or copy it, the start up would be entirely different.
For instance, take the idea of moving one cell at a time until all cells were moved over as a solution in thought to migrating Brain B1 into Brain B2.
The reality is that as soon as you put the first cell from Brain B1 into Brain A (the receptor that will become Brain B2), you have changed Brain B1, the cell from Brain B1, and Brain A.
That cell from Brain B1 will now interact with Brain A's neurology and change itself accordingly within its parameters.
Equally, Brain B1 will now make adjustments for the absence of that cell now over in Brain A.
This will continue on.
Eventually Brain B1 will be severely retarded and cause neurological errors and damage cellular structures as a result while Brain A will equally have issues of treating introduced cells like tumors or will have augmented them in line with its own native neurology in the same manner in which we have tissue transplants already.
So you can't actually duplicate the human brain unless you can get one that isn't alive and moving; then you could hypothetically get one copied over.
But in so doing, you are working with a brain that is dead - not alive - and as such, that means the chemical markup of the brain will quickly deteriorate so even if you do somehow get the brain turned on, it would not be accurately functional due to natural brain damage.
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