If every sense can fool me, then what is that 'me' that gets fooled?
It is still 'you' who is sensing the 'illusion', there's no way around it.
Reality being "nothing more than our interpretation of the senses" still has the word 'our' in it. It still is a subjective sentence. It is OUR interpretation. We can call it an illusion as much as we want but it still is OUR interpretation, it is still interpreted by a self. My interpretation is made by only me and no-one else. Your interpretation is made by only you and no-one else. I am sensed by only myself. You are sensed by only yourself.
In a hypothetical situation where there's a copy of me, would you say it's more likely that the copy would sense itself apart from me sensing myself, or that both would sense each other as their self at the same time? I would think that these two people would more likely be their own selves apart from each other than both sensing their own being in two different places at the same time. It would be logically more sound choice.
I'm not buying into the illusion-misdirection and I'm not buying into the "but we're not special" misdirection either. To me, calling the sense of self an illusion is like saying a wood getting chopped is not really wood that's getting chopped, that it's just particles moving around in space. The sense of self is what every single one of us experiences and calling it an illusion serves no purpose in explaining what that experience is like.
And what "giving us too much credit" even really means? First of all, what's the problem with that? Secondly, whatever credit we give to ourselves shouldn't have anything to do with what the reality of our existence is. It is what it is. It's not as if the truth of our existence must become to the conclusion that we're not that important. If we are important we are important. If we aren't we aren't. We all still have this experience of self, regardless of our importance. That experience either is fully the result of our physical body or it isn't. Whether or not we're important shouldn't have any say in what the result to the question of self is.
There are much more evidence for the self being authentic than there is evidence for it not being authentic. Sure, the self can experience all kinds of hallucinations and craziness, but it's still that one single person who is experiencing all those things. If you believe you can rely on scientific calculations, even if a lot of time they are wrong and they are corrected, wouldn't you also have to rely on the reality of the person who is observing those calculations? If you can say the experience of self is an illusion, how can you say any scientific calculations are nothing more than illusions either? I mean, you probably are ready to make assumptions about the universe based on scientific calculations, but the experience of the self that's doing the calculations and observing the calculations is somehow not really real. On one hand we should always question perception but on the other hand we should just call the very thing every single one of us feels and senses an illusion and accept it as that.
I don't think it's impossible to make a clone of our bodies. But I think it's impossible to clone the sense of self. I can't see me sensing both myself and my clone at the same time, or my clone sensing himself and me at the same time. If the sense of self can't be copied into the clone, then the sense of self doesn't come from our physical bodies but there is something else to it. To think about this we don't even have to think about making a clone of our bodies, but we could just think of a possibility of every single cell being the same in two different persons. If there would, for some reason, be a person who has every single cell the same way than I have and it would be 100% identical to me, then if our sense of self is based on what we physically are both of us would have to sense being both of us at the same time. If we wouldn't sense being in two places at the same time, then there would be only two possibilities: 1) the sense of self comes from something else than what we physically are, or 2) the sense of self is not real. I would think the first option would be the correct option and I think the second option is impossible, and we can prove that impossibility daily by just existing and even pondering this question. Again, you can question your perception all you want but it's still that specific you who is doing the questioning.
What is it that makes you feel you are that specific body instead of some other body? I certainly don't feel being you and you certainly don't feel being me. What's the mechanism that has made me feel this body instead of me feeling your body and not this body at all? Why am I this body instead of a body somewhere in Africa, while this body would be experienced by someone else? Could this body exist without it being experiencing by some self? I don't think there's a physical mechanism for that, but I think the experience comes from some another system. The only other way to explain this would be to claim that self doesn't really exist and I think that's the most unscientific thing a person could ever say. Our scientific researches depend on us being the observers and interpreters of it and we are ready to accept we observe them and believe in them, but now the experience of self isn't what we first hand experience it to be but it's some sort of an illusion that doesn't really experience whatever automatic reactions the body constantly does.
Sure maybe
that angle has been beaten to death in science fiction, especially in cyberpunk, but that tells more about the people who write them than the actual reality. In philosophy, yeah maybe it's beaten to death too, but I think you have failed to recognize what the corpse is