I think the term "vortex" is apt simply because it demonstrate you're aware it sounds silly, but in a world where intent is more readily apparent, I would simply just use the standard term: Soul. (Bearing in mind that there are mortal as well as immortal models of the soul. (Although, if the soul does resemble a vortex, then it may be well possible that it keeps spinning in absence of the initial physical cause. Perhaps some form of "excitation in the quantum soul field" that can only be destroyed by meeting a "particle" (identity/soul, in this case) of the perfect waveform necessary to cancel it out.))
As in my previous comment, if the soul exists, then we will need to discover that as a matter of researching physical preservation/cryonics. Then the debate begins anew about whether or not we've discovered all the parts we need to affirm that the simulation is the same thing as the natural physical expression.
Personally, I am more a fan of Eliezer_Yudkowsky's active continuing process interpretation. I think the identity arises from the process itself, rather than any specific momentary configuration. If I can find no difference between the digital and the physical versions of myself, I won't be able to assume there are any.
In June 2012, Robin Hanson wrote a post promoting plastination as a superior to cryopreservation as an approach to preserving people for later uploading. His post included a paragraph which said:
This left me with the impression that the chances of the average cryopreserved person today of being later revived aren't great, even when you conditionalize on no existential catastrophe. More recently, I did a systematic read-through of the sequences for the first time (about a month 1/2 ago), and Eliezer's post You Only Live Twice convinced me to finally sign up for cryonics for three reasons:
I don't find that terribly encouraging. So now I'm back to being pessimistic about current cryopreservation techniques (though I'm still signing up for cryonics because the cost is low enough even given my current estimate of my chances). But I'd very much be curious to know if anyone knows what, say, Nick Bostrom or Anders Sandberg think about the issue. Anyone?
Edit: I'm aware of estimates given by LessWrong folks in the census of the chances of revival, but I don't know how much of that is people taking things like existential risk into account. There are lots of different ways you could arrive at a ~10% chance of revival overall:
is one way. But:
is a very similar conclusion from very different premises. Gwern has more on this sort of reasoning in Plastination versus cryonics, but I don't know who most of the people he links to are so I'm not sure whether to trust them. He does link to a breakdown of probabilities by Robin, but I don't fully understand the way Robin is breaking the issue down.