You said pretty much what I was thinking. My (main) motivation for copying myself would be to make sure there is still a version of the matter/energy pattern wstrinz instantiated in the world in the event that one of us gets run over by a bus. If the copy has to stay completely separate from me, I don’t really care about it (and I imagine it doesn’t really care about me).
As with many uploading/anthropics problems, I find abusing Many Worlds to be a good way to get at this. Does it make me especially happy that there’s a huge number of other me’s in other universes? Not really. Would I give you anything, time or money, if you could credibly claim to be able to produce another universe with another me in it? probably not.
Man I wish I weren’t away at college, I’d love to come to a Less Wrong meetup in my hometown...