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.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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I'm willing to die to save people, so if some version of me actually gets to survive it, with there being a chance that it is me, then there's no reason for me not to do it.
Are you willing to die to save any people?
People dumb enough to nap on a trolley trail? No. rich people? Also no.
Actually this would be faster the other way around.
Orphans with chronic diseases who, should they be saved stand a reasonable chance at a cure and a long, prosperous and happy life?
Also no.
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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.
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Doesn't that make it even more selfless?
Depends if teleportation uses TCP or UDP
And what compression algorithm are they using?
Quantum mechanic wavelengths in mp3. So you might arrive a bit off.
UDP teleportation sounds pretty questionable.
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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.
I tend to think what "you" are is the pattern formed by the various electrical and chemical signals in your brain and whatever other parts of your body are involved in cognition, and since patterns are ultimately information, and a completely identical copy of some information is the same information with nothing to distinguish it, that a sufficiently perfect copy of you literally is you, and as such, if the teleporter works the way fictional teleporters are generally described as working, then yes, it is you.
For everyone else, yes. But the you you are now will cease to exist. Your consciousness won’t transfer.
I don't believe continuity of consciousness is actually required to maintain the identity of consciousness, is the thing. I think that, if you died, and then were brought back some how, you wouldn't have some "new" consciousness that merely think it's the first one, but literally would have the first one again, to the degree that such a thing can be called the same from moment to moment even under normal circumstances anyway.
so if i copy myself perfectly while still alive, my consciousness would span both bodies like The Multiple Man?
This is where this idea breaks down for me personally.
No, because you also change with time. You from today are slightly different than what you are yesterday, and you from a second from now will be slightly different from you from right now, because your thinking requires the patterns in your brain to change, just a little. If you copy yourself, both of you will experience different things, and dont have a means to sync those different inputs between you, and so you immediately diverge into two separate if similar entities. Youre both equally a progression of the original and so both are that original person in the same way that you as an adult and you as a kid are the same person, but once diverged youre no longer the same person as eachother. If the teleporter destroys the original while scanning them and then recreates them, theres only ever one of you at once. You only get an issue if you make the copy before destroying the original, because then there are experiences formed after the scanning process, and that new version of the identity is lost.
A bit like how theres a notion you sometimes get in sci-fi or some hypothesis about quantum stuff, that any event where more than one outcome is possible creates a different branching universe for each of the outcomes, and if you could somehow travel to one of those places, you'd find someone that was you up to the point of that event, but now has been shaped by different experiences since.
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Doesn't it depend if the teleporter open a up a wormhole or used replication?
Shit like this always remind me of the videogame SOMA.
That game has the best story and atmosphere I've ever seen in my life (maybe except for HL2)
I kinda wish SOMA hit for me but I was already well-aware of the "teleportation problem" and have an established position, so instead I was frustrated at the slow pace of much of the game and annoyed that the protagonist didn't understand. It felt like "Bioshock at home".
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Define "you." An identical collection and pattern of atoms and subatomic particles? Then yes. A continuous consciousness as experienced by the "me" on the entry side of the teleporter? No.
Would I kill myself to save five lives and create one? Yes
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But if I don't do it, I'm not who I think I am.
If you teleport the people off the tracks then you can kill them all while still taking credit for saving them.
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?"
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If we’re talking about atom-by-atom reconstruction, then the question is about philosophical zombies.
I don’t put much stock in any philosophies that say ~~you~~ the constructed being definitely would be a zombie. But I do believe in the possibility that ~~you~~ the constructed being could be a zombie.
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ok, i'm too stupid for this picture...why are commenters implying you die when you use the transporter? it's next to the rails isn't it?
A common conundrum with science-fiction teleporters is that they're often described as breaking down, and then recreating, matter.
With a human being (or other sentient life form), this brings up the philosophical question of whether the 'recreated' you is really you? If you were taken apart in chunks, and then someone put an exact copy of you back together from those chunks, would it still be the same 'you' that was taken apart? Or would it be a new 'you', some copy or clone with all of your memories?
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It depends on how it works. The most popular form of transporter works by scanning your body down to the subatomic level, deconstructing the original body, and creating a perfect replica somewhere else. Imagine for a moment that it didn't deconstruct the original body (as seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Second Chances). The original and the copy are two separate entities.
A transporter doesn't move you, it kills and reincarnates you. Unless it uses some kinda space bending wormhole tech to physically move the atoms from one spot to another, of course—then it doesn't kill you, and you're safe to pull the lever
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And then you wake up. It was a dream
And YOU’RE DRIVING THE TRAIN!
Clone myself.
Send clone through teleporter to pull lever.
360 no scope snipe the imposter clone motherfucker.
Claim credit for saving people.
Leaving the top track empty is clever
Nah, I'll send Tom Riker.
No. Not because teleporter but because no need for multi track drifting if other path clear.
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Technically it's cloning too. Just materialize in different teleporters at the same time.
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