Would it make a difference if the laws of physics prevent or allow a machine from operating in ‘duplicate’ mode?
Fuck it, lets teleport. Who cares if death is the means of transport if continuity is maintained
How do you guarantee maintenance of continuity? It would be impossible to prove.
Depends on whether they would work by actually moving me through space (using a wormhole or something) or by disintegrating me at point A and creating a copy at point B. In the latter case, I probably wouldn’t use them.
Yeah, I’d risk it walking through a Stargate, but the Enterprise transporter can fuck all the way off.
Only Stargate canonically disintegrates and then reintehrates you.
trek did too and by the most strict canonical definitions there ever have been in star trek too.
Like a solid 4th of trek episodes involve some sort of transporter malfunction. I’m not getting in one either.
We see their perspective though in an episode. It transports and preserves your consciousness somehow. You apparently even see lights.
I am thinking of a case where it is ‘disintegration’ and ‘re-integration’, but making use of some physics that prevent making a copy. For example, let’s say that the mechanism relies on a step for which the ‘no-cloning theorem’ applies. In this hypothetical scenario, a commonly held belief is that the inability to make a copy retains the person’s identity. It is a similar logic to how a person remains who they are from childhood and through adulthood despite the atoms that compose them changing over time.
There’s no difference. The universe could be destroying you and recreating you every Planck second, and it’s indistinguishable from continuous existence.
The problem with that line of thought is that even if it is true, it doesn’t apply here, because when you create a perfect copy of yourself, you don’t magically get a shared continuity where you experience the continuity of both the original and the copy. There would now be two independent chains of experience, and even if every chain of experience is endless destruction with continuity just being a trick of memory, there would still be two divergent continuities now, and one of those would end.
True but that’s already happening in theory. All copies would argue they are the original even if their futures diverge. None would think otherwise or have an experience any different than our moment to moment continuity as it stands now. That’s only apparent to a 3rd party.
From the perspective of a 3rd party, it’s a technicality. From the perspective of the original continued consciousness, it’s not.
They would both have the exact same continued consciousness, that only diverges later. Only an outside party can tell there are 2 separate lineages.
Except in the case of teleportation, one of them is stopped after the other has started. For ease of making my point clearer, lets say it takes a few seconds after teleportation to destroy the original.
For those few seconds, there would be two divergent consciousnesses. The original consciousness would not experience the consciousness stream of the copy. It would be left experiencing the inside of the teleporter, and then it would be extinguished. The copy would have access to the memories of the original consciousness, and would infact experience itself as a continuation of that consciousness stream, as would anyone and everyone that interacted with the copy.
But the original consciousness, the one that was copied, briefly existed simultaneously with its copy, yet distinct from it, before being extinguished.
Even if you believe that every moment of life is some version of that, where our experience of continued consciousness is not real, where we are “reconstituted” continuously as new versions, with only shared access to memory letting us perceive it as continuous, the teleporter still creates a second stream simultaneously with the first, before ending the first. You have a sense of self that is consistent and continuous. Even if you are recreated constantly, that is not how its experienced. You still fear death, injury, sickness etc, because you perceive those things as impacting you and your future experiences. You place value on your perceived continuation. And the teleporter breaks that, because there is no longer a perceived continuation for the original, only for the copy. And unless the act of copying spreads perceived consciousness across both streams simultaneously, one stream is going to experience its end.
So confident about something we aren’t even remotely close to understanding
Relevant Mini Fantasy Theater
I imagine even if there is a strong philosophical argument that it’s a “you die and it’s a copy/clone that comes out” in this scenario that people would still use it just from social and economic pressures. It would become normalized to work on the other side of the planet and just teleport there, your friends might be scattered across the globe, and not using the tech would put you at a massive disadvantage to everyone.
It’s a fun one to think about though - our consciousness is interrupted at different levels all the time (Sleep, injury, anesthesia etc), would a teeny tiny interruption from being rebuilt, make you any less you? Perhaps the scary thought is “you” aren’t something continuous, and that teleporting (dying/being rebuilt) isn’t really that different than just normal living.
All that said - I’d probably grow up with the technology and use it while trying my best to never ever think about the details!
I think similarly…
Hypothetically: I spent my childhood and early teens using teleportation machines and I never had an issue. As a teenager, I learn about people who are strongly opposed to teleportation. People around me talk negatively about these people, and are perhaps annoyed at the laws that are made to accommodate those who choose not to teleport. They are seen as a nuisance because they complicate workplace dynamics because they don’t want to do something simple and convenient that most in society do. The belief they hold makes most people uncomfortable because of the philosophical implication.
So, as a teenager, I realize that to become a ‘non-teleporter’ I need to accept that I have already chosen to destroy myself multiple times, and that my family and friends who leave are not the same that come back. It would be so difficult to make this philosophical mind-shift and stop teleporting so that copy #4,242 gets to live.
If teleportation machines were mainstream, I don’t think they’d be optional for participating in society.
Of course. Fastest travel = best travel.
And the whole “you might die” sounds like big oil propaganda to me. I bet car accident deaths are way more likely.
hmmm, I have to disagree there. Some of my best memories ever were made on trains and boats, during long hauls (at least a day, most often several days).
But it’s not really the same kind of calculation as the car accident though. It’d be impossible to know if anyone using it ever had died from doing so, so impossible to compare the statistics and the concern is about whether the act of being teleported constitutes dying so depending on the answer to that the odds are either 100% or 0 (unless they have some kind of safety issue with more traditional, visible death or injury that bumps that up to something above 0% but below 100).
Might die?
Depending on the method of teleportation, you have to die as part of the process. Star Trek style deconstruction/reconstruction teleportation is death and relife at the destination.
Longer, animated explanation - https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI
I would encourage everyone else to use it. So roads will be less crowded and I can enjoy nature in its true beauty. Assuming of course Big Corpos haven’t completely ruined it.
ITT: People who haven’t seen The Prestige
For me, yes. I like the duplicator transporter thought problem, but I’ve always come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter. If what comes out doesn’t know the difference, and the version left behind just stops existing, what’s the difference? Maybe if the old version suffered from it I wouldn’t, but if they just cease to exist then what’s the functional difference between the two? If you believe there’s a soul then maybe there’s an issue, but I don’t.
Instantaneous Ship of Theseus
That’s an excellent Ska band name.
Get out of bed (written from bed)
Is this before or after the great oil and transportation war has taken its casualties?
It is still possible to use regular transportation at a similar cost as today
I would be scared that the person on the other side is just a clone rather than me.
There’s nothing to guarantee that every night you go to sleep that doesn’t happen.
Thank you, came here to say this. People like the phrase “continuity of consciousness” but the problem of persistent identity is much more fundamental than this thought experiment lets on
What if:
- It is physically impossible to make a copy
- Your family and friends use it daily
Different person but:
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I am concerned about continuity of consciousness, not about copies. From an earlier comment posted, you mention disintegration and reintegration. If we’re just transcribing the data into new atoms on the other side, continuity of consciousness will not transfer over. Well, to be more precise, the individual on the other side will believe it has, and to the rest of the world I will be functionally the exact same being. This doesn’t matter to me though, because my specific consciousness no longer exists. If we’re actually using the exact same atoms after disintegration, I couldn’t tell you if that would work. I sure as shit wouldn’t be trying it though.
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My family and friends do things daily I am not interested in, including things which they find to be convenient or important to their daily lives. I’ll be fine, but I also wouldn’t bother stopping them either. From my perspective, their original continuity of consciousness is irrelevant to me. They will live, feel, and act the exact same regardless. It only matters to the self, and the new iteration will always feel as if their continuity is unbroken.
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“It’s eternity in there.”
– Rudy FoggiaSchlock Mercenary has a great story arc on this.
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/They use various teleport technologies over the years .thé trek version was used un a very troubling spying schème.
I remember watching a documentary about teleportation that said that the biggest issue doesn’t seem to be how to reconstruct the body rather than how you reconstruct the consciousness
