Since actual consciousness is, as far as we know, tied to the human body, how could uploading be anything other than a copy?
It seems we've been told that we can decide to have an out-of-body experience. So, I think we've gotten an answer, just not an affirmative one.
OoBE's are not the mind literally leaving the body, at least one study has had those who claim to have them in a room with objects placed on top of high furniture without being told beforehand it was there, came "back again" and where clueless still to those items having claimed they "saw everything from above". So...yeah, lucid dreaming.
I'd upload my brain to a computer if the option was available. Even if it is a copy, a part of me will survive. That's far better than death being the end. If digital me can get a robot body and go around being awesome, that's just bonus points.
I'd be wary of a digital copy of my mind running about. I know my mind; I can be tricky. I have enough things to worry about without having to worry about what kind of trouble my copy is getting up to -- I know it'd want to play jokes on me. Maybe if I could see my death coming I'd be okay with it, and only if the copy promised not to get into any mischief until after I was off the mortal coil.
I like to believe that my mind is too complex for a computer. It'd blow up the CPU. Kidding aside: imagine a complex feeling like love sickness for example. There are so many sub-feelings involved in this one and so many complicated twists and turns (not to mention an utter lack of logical thinking) - How could anyone possibly program something that complex into a software? How could you code something you yourself don't fully understand?
In their own way, theres still no indication that our physical forms are compatible that they could not only be hooked up, but have ourselves uploaded, or what that even means. We don't have files in our brain you can ctrl-c/ctrl-v onto a HDD, there's still been absolutely no description of how the information, awareness, memories would leave the cells in our brain and be turned magically into a series of files on a computer that would somehow still be us.
^I think a terabyte for each neuron should be able to at least simulate thought (100 billion terabytes). In turn, I assume a machine capable of copying each neuron could flare those parts of the brain to simulate a memory. I imagine something like that would be used to upload yourself to an online virtual realm (from games to chat rooms to surfing) and you could experience the five senses too. The upload would control the program and the brain would be the processor. The upload wouldn't really be you though. It'll just respond the way you will to certain stimuli.
Well that's my point. The machine will mimic this information and stimuli responce as if it was you, eventually acting almost identically. But you're own brain is still wired to your body and working away, so you're still "in it". I still see no transfer of the original sentience from the organic body to the mechnical one.
Even if I had the possibility I very likely wouldn't want to do so. Everyone has some dark points in their life they want to forget. Terrible mistakes, painful losses, things we are ashamed for. We do our best to wipe them out of our memories but they are stored in our brains and will inevitably come forward at the most inappropriate of times. I want them to die with me and not to live on for eons. And the same goes for some very intimate memories I wouldn't make public even if it cost my life.
And there are a dozen reasons why I would want to have a copy of myself in a supercomputer. There are a lot of things I want to see happen in the world and having a digital version of myself would allow the meat-version of me to focus on more personal issues while super-me explores my loftier ambitions. Also: I'm not a religious person or anything, but I feel it might be good idea to save my soul.
I can actually say, without qualifiers and without equivocation, THERE HAVE BEEN NO BREAKTHROUGHS ON MIND-UPLOADING TECHNOLOGY. Not recently. Not in the past. Not ever. Brain mapping, functional neurology and neural topography do not have practical applications for brain uploading, as none of these technologies can actually emulate the processes they are used to analyze (IOW: you can take a recording of what a brain does, but you can't reproduce it independently). It is not something that is even remotely possible now because we do not even have a CONCEPT for a modeling technique that would make that work. We're actually closer to developing FTL propulsion than we are to mind-uploading. Actually it's pretty well reflected in twin studies. Two people with completely identical genetics will develop slightly different personalities simply due to their stimuli being slightly different. Their personalities WILL diverge since they cannot exchange and synchronize data between the two of them. The same would be true of a hypothetical digitized brain. Since the original brain isn't destroyed in the process (why would it be?) then it's obvious that the uploaded copy is no more "you" than if you made a clone and gave it all of your memories. It's not you, it's a duplicate. Nor can you share the perspective of your duplicate, because your mind is still being generated by your brain while your duplicate's mind is generated by computer (and the duplicate can't share your perspective either). Mind-uploading is potentially a way of creating very humanlike AIs or, at most, a way of imbuing computers with human drives and moral imperatives (see "The Ultimate Computer" or "Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society") but it won't change the condition of the uploaders directly.
They DID. They're against it because the project is using a huge amount of money for nebulous, abstract goals that may or may not actually benefit real scientists. Not that I can know this for sure, but this is something scientists have been complaining about transhumanists for years. The lofty predictions of the Kurzweilian crowd usually involve drawing tenuous connections between completely unrelated technologies or discoveries, connections which never have any practical applications in the here-and-now. The scientists wouldn't be complaining if this was an explicitly trans-humanist project drawing its funds strictly from trans-humanists. But it's dressed up like a genuine scientific project and therefore it should have genuine scientific applications. If it can't (or won't) be used for legitimate research into neurology, neuropathology, psychology or practical medical fields, the neurologists don't want to be a part of it and, more importantly, don't want Europe spending billions of dollars funding it.
With that rationale, no one should have sailed from Europe to the Americas. Science back then said the earth was flat. Trying to sail around the world would be a waste of money, right?
It wouldn't be "super you". It would be "super copy of you at the time of transfer". That copy may achieve those loftier goals, but you'd just be living vicariously through the achievements of that copy.