Schlock:Reverend, if somebody copies themselves into a machine, can't they live forever?
Reverend:Well, they can, in a sense, but not in a sense that will make you any more comfortable with death.
Reverend:Suppose I cloned myself, and then copied all of my memories into the clone.
Schlock:You'd get arrested. Now what?
Reverend:Well, now suppose that I die, but my clone lives. From the clone's point of view, life continues. From my friends' point of view, i'm still around, and still basically the same, but from my own, personal point of view, i'm dead. There was no point in the exercise. This is the fundamental problem with memory-copy immortality. We call it the continuity flaw.
Schlock:That's bleak. Depressing, even.
Reverend:It's also good for business. This way the cloners aren't cutting in on my action.
Narrator:Well then you can just sing the rest of us to sleep tonight.
