If it’s jot you then the question becomes, are you willing to commit suicide so a reasonable facsimile of you can save some strangers.
It won’t be me and, unless I have some loved one there, I’m not thoughtlessly jumping into suicide.
If it’s a wormhole or Niven-style teleporter, it’s unarguably you coming through the process. Star Trek… I’ll grant that the conversation gets a little more complicated.
I think teleportation is a really interesting philosophical question. If life is deterministic and there is no soul, then there should be no problem with teleportation. From a deterministic atheist perspective it should not be a problem, I wouldn’t teleport myself though 😅
I think it’s mostly a semantic argument: nothing is being “teleported”, it’s a copy. That copy will surely be a perfect copy of me at time T, and after T we’ll drift and become different folks, but a copy of me is not me, and if you punch the copy it doesn’t hurt me. SOMA showcases it pretty well! Anything else cannot even be conceived, right? And even if matter could be “transported” FTL into a different place, wouldn’t the “zipping” process destroy me? The silver cord would be cut, and even if the person on the other side wakes up feeling like me, I would already be gone. It’s consciousness and the vessel for consciousness, not one or the other.
This is the same reason I feel like peoples ideas of being “uploaded to the Matrix” are just as flawed. All of the same talking points but with a digital output. Being uploaded means death because my consciousness will cease to exist and simply be emulated by a computer after.
The only one who gain the benefit of me uploading is everyone but myself.
That one I can almost see happening but not full ‘upload’ style. It would have to be gradual in like a Ship of Theseus’ style where the parts that make you ‘you’ are gradually replaced with digital equivalents.
Well the person being teleported would cease to exist. If life is deterministic then there is no consciousness, just a predetermined path. So my argument is basically that you don’t exist anyways, and by that extension teleportation is not a problem, because the copy is not alive either.
Doesn’t matter because your original brain was destroyed. You would be dead and a copy of you would remain.
What is death? If everything is deterministic, then there is no consciousness. If there is no consciousness, then no death and a copy is pretty much exactly the same
Depends if teleportation uses TCP or UDP
UDP teleportation sounds pretty questionable.
The Trolly Problem of Thesius
The traveling salesmans trolley problem of Theseus if you try to find out first how to get everywhere efficiently.
You’ve shed and replaced every atom that you were made of when you were born and many times over since then, are you still that same entity?
Yeah, but you didn’t shed them all at once. If the ship of Theseus exploded, and then they built a new one, the question wouldn’t be, “Which is the true ship of Theseus?” it would be, “Hey, did you guys see Theseus’ new ship?”
It’s all just abstract philosophy on a non-reality scenario, I’m just having fun with it.
On a heavily relative note, though, has anyone watched Space Dandy? The show about a dandy guy in space?
I did, and I remember enjoying it, but that was 10 years ago and I don’t remember it that well. Did they have a teleporter?
They had one, but it was never existential. They had warp, though, and it put them in the same but different dimension when they used it, so Space Dandy’s cosmic energy warped every time he used it, essentially changing him at a material and energy level but not a conscious one. He has a relationship with an energy entity that decides they can’t be with him because he’s literally not the man they fell in love with, and because he’s used the warp so much his energy is essentially changing the fundamental make-up of the universe.
Yeah, I do remember that the series ended with him being given the opportunity to become God (AKA the narrator of the show), and him turning it down, creating a universe without God, which appeared to make everything the same but without narration. I assume that was related to the cosmic energy? Fun idea, but, to bring it back to Theseus, his continued consciousness despite his physical transformation into energy implies the existence of an intangible part of his being (AKA a soul) that continues beyond his human brain. If we ever prove that transporters are teleporting our souls, I’ll happily use one. Otherwise, they are 100% suicide booths.
Meh, I don’t think we have souls, I’d take the suicide booth, it would be cathartic. Especially if it does the fix your health issues thing like the Star Trek teleporters do (except the times it would get in the way of the plot, so it just doesn’t. Because.) maybe I could get a functioning thyroid out of it.
Uh, you OK? That was a borderline SI statement.
My concern would be less about whether it sends the original or creates a perfect copy, but more about how reliable it is. Getting Riker’d/Boimler’d would be okay, but having more than a negligible chance of any other sort of transporter accident would definitely give me pause.
Do you want tuvix? Because this is how you get tuvix.
Easiest one ever, ship of thesius here I come!
Bahahaha.
Nah, I’ll send Tom Riker.
And then you wake up. It was a dream
And YOU’RE DRIVING THE TRAIN!
Technically it’s cloning too. Just materialize in different teleporters at the same time.
The trolley problem but the only way to pull the lever is to take a nap first.
Since your consciousness stopped and then a new was started from the same meat is it still you?
If it is, then surely a new consciousness constructed from a pile of meat identical to your brain would also be you?
Use a stick.
Define ‘you’.
