I wouldn't say you've "effortlessly proven it false", as there are a lot of variables here and you've just presented one side, and it's all just philosophical wank in the end, but I agree that there was never even much of an argument from their side in the first place. Ignoring Roko's Basilisk (did they just steal the idea from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream?), the idea that a copy of a person is the same as the person is logically and patently false and they can't "prove" it otherwise without stretching the definitions of "you", "copy", and "real" to the degree that there's no point in having the debate in the first place. You don't need a soul or spirit for that to be true either.
It's why I didn't fully appreciate the themes of HBO's Westworld, thought Black Mirror was just funny, and didn't understand the hype around "Soma". People talk about it's story like it's somehow meaningful and surprising, while I only thought the main character was a dumbass for not realizing what was happening sooner. At least Soma handled the situation somewhat realistically despite the unrealistic beliefs of it's characters. I remember idiots on the Westworld subreddit seriously debating whether the digital copies of people would really be them or not.
This is all a separate question of whether an AI that's simulating a former mind would "think" it's that person or not, which would determine if you're torturing "someone" at all or if it's just a very good simulation of a person being tortured. It's not the person who provided the mind copy either way.
It did indeed give too much credence to the idea of "artificial life" having rights, but Star Trek promoted sanctity of the individual being to an extreme, to the point that even data (holograms) couldn't be copied. Everything was a one-time-transfer.
The only exception being when a transporter+weather accident made a copy of Riker, but it still treated them as two different people.
Sir, this is a Wendy's
Pascal's Wager for redditors that still think The Matrix is smart.
I wouldn't say you've "effortlessly proven it false", as there are a lot of variables here and you've just presented one side, and it's all just philosophical wank in the end, but I agree that there was never even much of an argument from their side in the first place. Ignoring Roko's Basilisk (did they just steal the idea from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream?), the idea that a copy of a person is the same as the person is logically and patently false and they can't "prove" it otherwise without stretching the definitions of "you", "copy", and "real" to the degree that there's no point in having the debate in the first place. You don't need a soul or spirit for that to be true either.
It's why I didn't fully appreciate the themes of HBO's Westworld, thought Black Mirror was just funny, and didn't understand the hype around "Soma". People talk about it's story like it's somehow meaningful and surprising, while I only thought the main character was a dumbass for not realizing what was happening sooner. At least Soma handled the situation somewhat realistically despite the unrealistic beliefs of it's characters. I remember idiots on the Westworld subreddit seriously debating whether the digital copies of people would really be them or not.
This is all a separate question of whether an AI that's simulating a former mind would "think" it's that person or not, which would determine if you're torturing "someone" at all or if it's just a very good simulation of a person being tortured. It's not the person who provided the mind copy either way.
It did indeed give too much credence to the idea of "artificial life" having rights, but Star Trek promoted sanctity of the individual being to an extreme, to the point that even data (holograms) couldn't be copied. Everything was a one-time-transfer.
The only exception being when a transporter+weather accident made a copy of Riker, but it still treated them as two different people.