Tbf a lot of the thought experiments around human consciousness hit the same exact conundrum - if your body and mind were spontaneously destroyed and then recreated with perfect precision (a'la Star Trek transporters) would you still be you? Unless you permit for the existence of a soul it's really hard to argue that our consciousness exists in anything but the current instant.
I don't know how a materialist could answer anything other than no - you are obliterated. And if, despite sharing every single one of your characteristics, that individual on the other side of the teleporter is not 'you' (since you died), then some aspect of what 'you' are must be the discrete episode of consciousness that you were experiencing up until that point.
Which also leads me to think that there's no real reason to believe that this discrete episode of consciousness would have been continuous since birth. For all we know, we may die little deaths every time we go to sleep, hit our heads or go under anesthesia.
> I don't know how a materialist could answer anything other than no
Well, I'm a materialist and I say yes. Materialism doesn't preclude the existence of information which can be represented by matter. Recreating matter in the same arrangement/configuration as before reproduces the information.
If I copy down an equation, is it now a different equation? Of course not. It consists of different material for sure, but it's the same equation.
Does't this just devolve into the boltzmann brain argument? It's more likely that all of us are just the random fluctuation of a universe having reached heat death.
The same goes for us living in a simulation. If there is only one universe and that universe is capable of simulating our universe, it follows we have a much higher probability of being within the simulation.
