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Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 13, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I disagree that it's better than nothing. Such a "copy" wouldn't be the person you love, it would be a simulacrum pretending to be them. Even if it's many times more convincing than what we could do now, it would still be nothing more than a doll. The original, the being with actual value, is lost forever. If I can't have my loved one back, I wouldn't want to piss on their memory by pretending that a cheap imitation is a reasonable substitute for having them around.

If that's how you see things, then you have the option of not creating such a simulacrum, and asking your family not to make one of you. If you're an EU citizen, you probably have stronger legal recourse, such as the people who successfully got ChatGPT to ignore their names.

I would be entirely fine with such a clone of me being around when I wasn't. I don't see it being any worse than people fondly looking back at pictures or videos of the deceased today, they're gone either way, and they're instantiating a replica in their brain to represent them.

Sure. But the fact that I may have legal recourse does not make the idea not horrifying. I was explaining to you why I find it horrifying, not saying that there's nothing to be done.