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Would you use teleporter technology if it existed? Why or Why not?

You know those sci-fi teleporters like in Star Trek where you disappear from one location then instantaneously reappear in another location? Do you trust that they are safe to use?

To fully understand my question, you need to understand the safety concerns regarding teleporters as explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI

spoiler

I wouldn't, because the person that reappears aint me, its a fucking clone. Teleporters are murder machines. Star Trek is a silent massacre!

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  • I don't buy the idea that disintegrating my molecules and reconstructing new ones is tantamount to murder or suicide.

    If all I experience is being one place one moment and another place the next, then it's me. It's isn't some fucking clone, it's me. You're just being turned into some other form (energy, if we're using Star Trek rules) and then being turned back.

    I'm pretty sure that at 26, I'm already a completely different person than the baby I was born as, literally. My cells have all died and been replaced. The horror. ./s

    • I don’t buy the idea that disintegrating my molecules and reconstructing new ones is tantamount to murder or suicide.

      I definitely don't think teleportation in science fiction is meant to be killing the person using it and making a clone of them. Like unless a story is specifically about that, I don't think any given sci-fi author is trying to set up some sinister background plot where everyone is unknowingly killing themselves all the time.

      But I do still have to wonder if that's how it would end up working out in real life. Sure all our cells have died and been replaced since we were born, but that typically doesn't happen with all your cells at the same time lol. imo it's probably less about cells and more about like... Consciousness or "the soul" or whatever, I don't know. Whatever it is, I accept that teleporters in fiction have some way to store and transport it, whether it's stated in the narrative or not. But in real life I have no idea how we'd be able to tell if such a thing could even work.

      • In real life, I think we'd probably glean some insights to the soul in the development process. Like say, if one of the first human test subjects goes through it, only to have their personality irrevocably changed, and no one can identify any external reasons why, then that would warrant further research before billions of humans start using it and it becomes an actual problem.

        I think part of my "resistance" to this question is that by default, I'm approaching it from the assumption that I'm living in some hypothetical world where a teleporter is as common and everyday as a car or train, and extrapolating from there, so a lot of the hypotheticals don't exist for me because I'm imagining public use. "What if someone puts the version of you that didn't teleport in their basement" well then they would have to coerce me out of the presumably public location for teleports between cities or wherever, because if I step on a pad expecting to be halfway across the globe in two seconds and instead I'm still in the same room, I'm not gonna leave until it's explained to me what went wrong and I'm given assurances for future service and compensation for the failure that already happened.

        "oh well what if it only created copies of you" well then it probably wouldn't supplant any existing forms of transportation :), and of course then I wouldn't use it to get around.

    • If all I experience is being one place one moment and another place the next, then it’s me

      If I make an exact molecular copy of you and set that copy free into the world thinking it had just successfully transported, but then I take the original you that entered the transporter and lock them up in a basement somewhere, how is that any different? From the perspective of the conscious being that came out the other end their continuity is uninterrupted. They will think they are the only version of themselves to have ever existed and that they simply moved from one place to another, as opposed to being a duplicate of the original entity, and that the original entity may be dead or in this case locked in a basement.

    • Death is information-theoretic, fight me OP. /s

      I'll add the caveat that it's entirely possible I still couldn't afford teleportation.

    • What if the original wasn't destroyed? Wouldn't it be a clone then? Which one would feel like it was really you?

    • Alright, but now instead of disintegrating and reconstructing, consider if a similar machine just duplicated your body atom for atom. Is that "you", or a clone?

      • A clone. As far as I know, there's nothing in our established understanding of the world to suggest that merely copying the physical materials of my atoms would reproduce my memories and personality.

      • Let's assume the machine works one of two ways. It either destroys the original as it's read into the machine and reconstructing on the other end, or it's not destroying the original and simply reading and copying simultaneously.

        In the first case there are zero complete copies of you in existence as you're undergoing a phase of removing information from place and reconstructing it in another, I'd call that death and cloning.

        In the second case there are two identical copies of you in existence until they destroy the original, I'd call that a clone.

        • Yes, and in neither case would you experience your consciousness being moved to a new body (which is what the commenter above seems to suggest). Your current "you" would be annihilated or just continue to exist in your old body.

          • Is the subjective experience the thing that defines what is the most palatable form of this?

            If that's the case then as someone else suggested they could simply remove the memory of the experience up until right before you walk out the other end. For all you knew it was incredibly excruciating but you're none the wiser. Would the lack of that memory negate the experience?

            • To me the issue lies with the person who steps into a teleporter and stops existing, not the one that walks out on the other side. If anything, if the cloned person retained their memory it would probably make them feel better about this whole thing.

              As for the original person, they would lose consciousness as their bodies are being disassembled... and then what exactly? It feels like there's a missing step between Person A losing consciousness and Person A' waking up.

              Though I guess you experience something similar every time you fall asleep, and personally it doesn't feel much like dying.

        • I think what matters is are you conscious the whole time. In my view, I feel like if I stepped onto a pad at Point A and walked off a similar part in Point B, and was awake for the whole experience, or at the very least experience no gap in memory, then it's not death. I think that if there's a break in consciousness, then sure, it opens things up to the death/cloning question, but I've never seen a depiction of teleportation that knocks the user out each time.

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