Have you really never seen this before? I actually find that I myself struggle with it. When you define yourself as the plucky outsider it's difficult and almost unsatisfying when you conclusively win the argument. It ruins your self-identity because you're now just a mainstream thinker.

I've heard of similar stories when people are cured of various terminal diseases. The disease becomes so central to their definition of self that to be cured makes them feel slightly lost.

Actually, I'm worried he's having some kind of breakdown.

No you’re not, you’re not worried about that at all; you’re trying to be amusing, and doing a damn poor job of it too.

Him now talking like he's the only one who ever believed that deconstruction and reconstruction using "different atoms" preserves identity, may indicate that the Personal Identity Wars really literally did send him off the edge.

I am a man capable of getting into details, I like details and if truth be told I’m rather good at it, I think details are important; so name one person who agreed with me other than superficially? Come on, name one! Certainly not you, you believe in the childish friendly AI idea. And the only hope of salvaging that is some ugly mutation of the soul ides.

And Eliezer although I’ve said you were wrong and even (perhaps going too far) implied that you were stupid (you have faults but stupidity is not among them) I never in my life said that you were insane as you just said about me.

Would it help if I said I'd happily sign up to be uploaded now, if I knew I could look forward to a similarly rich experience in a mainframe, and perhaps the ability to engineer a body to walk about in from time to time, when the whim took me?

Yes I’d have to say that would help, If you did say it.