The connection to analog audio seems obvious to me: a digitized audio file contains no music, it contains only discrete samples taken at various times, samples which when played out properly generate music. An upload file containing the recording of a digital brain contains no conciousness, but is concious when run, one cycle at a time.

A sample is a snapshot of an instant of music; an upload is a snapshot of conciousness. Playing out a large number of samples creates music; running an upload forward in time creates conciousness. In the same way that a frozen brain isn't concious but an unfrozen, running brain is - an uploaded copy isn't concious, but a running, uploaded copy is.

That's the point I was trying to get across. The discussion of samples and states is important because you seem to have this need for transitions to be 'continuous' for conciousness to be preserved - but the sampling theorem explicitly says that's not necessary. There's no 'continuous' transition between two samples in a wave file, yet the original can still be reconstructed perfectly. There may not be a continous transition between a brain and its destructively uploaded copy - but the original and 'continuous transition' can still be reconstructed perfectly. It's simple math.

As a direct result of this, it seems pretty obvious to me that conciousness doesn't go away because there's a time gap between states or because the states happen to be recorded on different media, any more than breaking a wave file into five thousand non-contiguous sectors on a hard disk platter destroys the music in the recording. Pretty much the only escape from this is to use a mangled definition of conciousness which requires 'continuous transition' for no obvious good reason.