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The question goes to consciousness, and our special identification with our own perspective.

We can posit that our "consciousness", as we experience it, resides entirely in our physical bodies, and that exact duplication of some subset of those bodies can create a consciousness exactly the same as ours. So any observer outside our body will be indifferent to whether they deal with the original or the copy.

But unless there is some communication between the two consciousnesses, you will experience the copy as something outside yourself. You won't have its memories after the moment of duplication, and you won't experience continuation. If your body dies, your consciousness dies. So while the world can have endless copies of you, and perhaps each copy feels like you, you still experience mortality. Your consciousness ends with the particular physical construct sustaining it.

At least, in the posited model.

The gholas of Dune are aware of this, and don't imagine themselves immortal though they know copies of themselves will be made after their departure.



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