Would you use teleporter technology if it existed? Why or Why not?
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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It's a literal suicide booth.
Sure, you can go on all day about changing out broom handles and whatever other metaphor you like, but I don't need my body to be a point of interaction with any consciousness and the world, i need it to be a point of interaction between my consciousness and the world.
I have a lot of feelings about the emptiness of identity and the ultimate unity of the universe, but that doesn't mean I'm going to off myself for the sake of convenience.
If I make a copy of myself, I'm still myself. I don't become the copy. I have no reason to believe that a genetically identical clone that's somehow got a copy of my memories will spontaneously cause my consciousness to jump to the other clone. No evidence of any such thing happening.
If I, then, make a copy of myself on Mars, why would I expect to spontaneously inhabit it?
The only reason being ripped apart and having an identical copy made looks like teleportation is the timing. There's a short story about this, where a teleporter malfunction leaves the original version of the traveler alive. Protocol is to 'balance the equation' by incinerating the survivor, which as it turned out was the fate of anyone who stepped into the teleporter under normal circumstances.
Think about a file in a computer system. Copying the file and making changes doesn't change the original file. When you download something and alter it, that's a different copy of the file that's been changed, not the original. Even when you move something rather than copy it, what's actually happening is it's being copied and then the original is destroyed.
Seamless for everyone else, sure. But a tragic, needless, and utterly stupid death for the one who enters the machine.
If I, then, make a copy of myself on Mars, why would I expect to spontaneously inhabit it?
As best we can tell, though, you don't inhabit your body, you are your body.
Admittedly, we don't really understand the nature of consciousness at all, so it'd make sense to hold off on using Star Trek-style transporters until we do.