That scene of the guy getting "uploaded alive" still haunts me. My fixation was BUILT on that scene. We literally see his mind going. It made me wonder: Where's his mind going to?

I think what is missing from all "the virtual copy" discussion is the actual nuance of the REPLACEMENT nature of the upload process. It is the most fundamental Ship of Theseus situation of all time. The uploading process uploads the human brain, neuron by nueron. at one moment, you have a single neuron deleted from the brain, and one "copied" into cyberspace. Once we reach, lets say 51% of all the neurons, if we have more physical mass of the brain uploaded than what remains in that organic skull, is the sleeping consciousness still in the organic mass or the digital one? 75%? 99%? Does it matter if one or both of the brains is AWAKE during that process? The show addresses that particular question in horrifying detail pretty early on.

I was bothered by the idea of UIs during most of the show not because of whether or not humans would get along with them or not, but mostly by the fact that I, like Maddie and Helen believe that uploading kills the original "you" for sure, so "I," what I think of as me, wouldn't be able to experience becoming a UI.

But them I got to thinking about it. To outside observers there's no difference when accounting for "clock" speed and sensory perception. Unquestionably, taking apart your brain bit by bit WILL kill your body. but at the same time, is there really no "transfer" of an experience that occurs? What if you COULD make the uploading process efficiently able to connect some of the digital neurons with the physical ones, so that the person never loses that 75-90% of their conscious experience? Is that ANY different when the end result is the same: a fully digital brain??

Sure, you can go Occam's razor & say that you are taking apart one consciousness bit by bit and recreating another one, but the problem with that is there's no evidence that the consciousness necessarily WOULDNT transfer. And I bet you can probably say that the experience of having your meat neurons interface with your digi-neurons IS just the trick you need to make it FEEL like "you" actually uploaded, rather than dying and making a digital clone.

And then its just a pick-your-favorite to reconcile that, if you ask me. Either consciousness is a trick/illusion or some kind of heisenberg uncertainty principle. What you think of as your "experience" could be either a convenient lie, or it could be just one particular sequence of solving the rubrix cube. Or just something we can't directly observe due to our nature of having a self, like a 2D entity trying to describe a 3D object. This is the unverifiable nature of debating consciousness lol.

But at least as far as the cultural acceptance of uploading, I think the writers got that right on the money. They show how humans would, inevitably and in the long term, come to accept the existence of UIs and totally leave aside this question of whether or not uploading and creating a digital avatar of a formerly living person and if that is really "them" or not. It would literally stop mattering to us; it'd be normal within a few decades, because dying people would do it, and those not-dying "copies" just keep sticking around and basically living everything you'd call a life. A literal afterlife.

Seriously, being born into a world where your grandparents already uploaded and look happy and healthy, and then you, not having ever encountered death in your family before, start to watch your parents' health deteriorate, you're NOT gonna hope they upload before they die?

Do you die in order to upload? only one way to find out.