Player choice and The End.

[Cranky Old Man]

Well, he both lost and won that toss though, since it has no real meaning. The coin toss is just a way for them to comfort themselves with the situation. Simon did arrive at the ark, but he also didn't. So Ark-Simon won the "toss", and he gets to live on. Herber-Simon did not.

Well, Herber Simon gets to live on too. With a bit of luck and engineering, the volcanic vents and the gel, could sustain him indefinitely.
...but I think I just realized what you mean by not being ABLE to copy yourself IF you are a memory. If you ARE acting to copy yourself, then you're not a memory. ...so there's no use hoping to do that, even if you remember past transfers working out just fine (since ALL past transfers MUST have worked out with you being where you are). NOW I understand why "Simon was a moron". ...but that's hard to realize, especially if you've just got chewed on by a giant worm fish, and may have had your left hand chewed off.
This is confusing.

I see what you mean by the memory thing, but these are both only speculations, are they not? I don't think either is cannon, so can't really say one is more correct than the other.

Yeah, the after credit ending was confusing. I think that they actually DID switch protagonist after the credits, to please the players.
However, I wish that they would have split it up into two endings. You made a bunch of choices testing whether you believed in artificial life or not. If you showed that you didn't, by "killing" more robots than you saved, then you shouldn't believe that you would get transfered over either. I didn't WANT to go in the ARK. I sat around waiting to die of old age when I was supposed to launch the ARK. I did everything concievable to destroy the ARK. That last test that you take, I actually answered that I wanted to die on the last question. ...just because I don't believe in computer memories being actually conscious. I didn't want to be a weaponized social engineering program for aliens to fall victim to.