I don't think that's quite what I meant.
It's like an extension of the swampman experiment. An exact copy of me isn't me, even if it's exactly the same, with all the same memories and experiences. As soon as I die, I stop experiencing things, even if my clone keeps experiencing things.
My question is, where is that line? If I remove my brain and replace it with an exact copy, then I die, even though my body is still alive. Another version of my with all my memories and experiences is now living my life, and no one will be able to tell the difference, because for all intents and purposes, there isn't.
But if I slowly replace my brain cell by cell (like the regular cells in the body do) with the new brain, then will my consciousness remain intact and transfer to the new brain? Is the answer the same if it's an artificial brain?
Speaking from a psychological point of view, people will start noticing a change when the frontal lobe has been swapped, as that is the part of the brain which houses the personality. The left side of your brain houses logic and the ability to speak and do complicated math. The right side houses your emotions, and your emotional attachments and relationships.
Since your brain is you, you would effectively die. Specifically the frontal lobe, which as I say has personality, which is what makes you unique, if lost would strip you of your identity. A frontal lobotomy destroys nerve endings which connect the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain, which if you have seen documentaries etc you will know makes the person "a zombie."
A computer is by all intents and purposes, an extremely fast calculator. It could never replace a human brain no matter what for a simple reason: reasoning itself. Reasoning is a human quality and, although computers can have algorithms and the such which give probabilities and tell them what the "best" thing is to do, it will never be comparable to a human's reasoning. Think of a computer as being two dimensional, and the human brain being three or even four dimensional in comparison.
The human brain has billions of cells, and is by far the most intricate thing humans have discovered thus far in the universe. Each cell is capable of making approximately 500,000 links to other cells, and the total possible number of links in the brain, in written form with the numbers written side-by-side, would take a wall of 10,300,000km (6,400,123 miles) long to fit.
A computer will never compete with that. A robotic brain would be programmed, not organic. So to answer your question bluntly, people would notice that you are not you no matter which way you acquired the robotic brain, in a one-time replacement or over time, because only a blue print of who you are would be left behind.
How come women seem like such a different species to men even though we are only different genders?
