this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
29 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

42489 readers
2517 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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

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

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Of course I would.

Everything that makes you -you- is contained in the physicality of your brain. Even fairly small changes in your brain will create large shifts in cognition and personality. So anything that replicates your body and brain, down to the last atom, is going to be creating -you-. As far as you are concerned, nothing happened; you ceased to be in one place, and immediately sprang into existence in another.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Every atom in your brain gets replaced every four five years anyway so clearly it's the position and structure of the atoms that's important rather than the atoms themselves. So obviously there is no point worrying about it because it happens anyway, and you're clearly fine.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

The individual atoms probably get replaced far more often. And I think that, depending on how you look at -you-, the -you- of a year ago isn't the same -you- as who you are now; the change is just so gradual that you don't notice.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

"As far as you are concerned"

Correction: "as far as anyone else is concerned."

Consciousness IS continuity. If you are disentigrated and a perfect clone pops up somewhere to replace you... you died. Your current stream of consciousness ended and a perfect copy replaced you.

As far as all external observers are concerned it's still you. But from your own perspective? Well you won't have one anymore, you'll be dead.

[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

...But the -me- that just popped into existence isn't going to perceive a gap in continuity at all. It may be a new -me-, but it has all the memories and experiences that -I- had just prior to being disintegrated. From the perspective of the new -me- there's no change at all.

Are you the same person as the person that went to sleep last night? How would you know that you weren't replaced by a clone with precisely the same memories and experiences? Or a clone that thinks that it has the same memories and experiences? I can remember last night, but can I prove that my memories are accurate?

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The fact that a clone would be seamlessly picking up my stream of consciousness after I die would be little consolation to me.

Sleep may be similar from a philosophical or external point of view. But I'm not sold that lack consciousness during sleep is in the same league as completely destroying, and then, rebuilding it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Seriously tho, why does it matter? If you are annihilated and a down to the quark exact duplicate is created, what's the difference?

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

While I agree with you it would -for me- still depend on how the process works. Suppose the new copy needs to be compared with the original after being constituted for safety reasons. So the original doesn't get destroyed before the copy is created. So for an instant there will be 2 'yous'. That makes jt less desirable for me. Now suppose the verification time -either due to technical or administrative purposes- takes minutes or hours? At that point I would not step into a transporter.

load more comments (2 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I am with Bob Johansson (Bobbyverse) on this one. Star trek is utterly inconsistent with how transporters work. They only ever play up when it's convenient for the plot line, but the rest of the time they're totally fine and no one worries about it.

Transporters are supposed to move the atoms by converting them into energy, moving that energy through subspace, and then converting them back to atoms on the other side, the only energy in the system is the energy that was created when the atoms were converted, so it shouldn't be possible to create a transporter clone, no matter how many "confinement beams" you have, as where would it's atoms come from?

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Until the spy starts sapping it!

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

If it opens a spacetime tunnel and I cross it with all my original atoms, yes.

If it disintegrates me to 3d print a copy on the other side, no.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (15 children)

Stargate yes, Star Trek no.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Stargate lore incorporates buffers holding your intermediate information, so it's the same than Star Trek, actually.

load more comments (14 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

No, I don't see any possible solution to continuity of consciousness. See Walk like a Dinosaur to understand the implications, but basically you would need to destroy the original and duplicate it from scratch.

If there is such a thing as a soul, it would likely be impossible to duplicate, but even if not, you would have to destroy the original.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't understand everybody worrying about whether their consciousness moves with us. We literally don't even know what it is, we have no provable theory or idea of what it is. As far as I can tell, your consciousness is something your brain does, not something that exists external to your body, otherwise that's basically believing in spirits.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you're comfortable being vaporised and then a single identical clone being created elsewhere then good for you, I guess.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why should it be a clone and not the original you? This is all theoretical

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If the mechanism is that you are broken down in to your constituent matter and then that template is used to reconstruct you elsewhere, then how could it be anything other than a clone? Even if "the same matter" is used to reconstruct you, a copy is just being precisely pieced together based on your template. Surely?

If you were just scanned to build your pattern and then a transporter just spat out another you using that pattern, what would that other you be?

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If it is using the same matter then how could it possibly be a copy?

If I take a Lego set, deconstruct here and reconstruct it over there, is the one over there now a copy/clone? Or is it the same thing?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I would explicitly say that it was a copy of what I originally built, but that it is not my original build. What I consider to be me is the consistently maintained configuration of matter, primarily my brain, rather than the constituent matter. If I am unconfigured then I would consider myself dead, and then any further reconfiguration of me I would consider to be a replica of my original configuration.

As a wise philosopher once said:

No disassemble!!!

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

If it's wormhole based tech then yeah why not, atomic based teleportation comes with too many philosophical and existential flavors for me personally

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I totally respect the way you approached it. I would totally use either, but I value myself very little and value being able to get somewhere that has alcohol quickly to dull the things I feel very much.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If it's wormhole based tech then yeah why not...

Trans dimensional horrors. See: Event Horizon

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What pronouns do "Trans dimensional horrors" use?

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Phtagn/Phtagns

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I totally respect the way you approached it. I would totally use either, but I value myself very little and value being able to get somewhere that has alcohol quickly to dull the things I feel very much.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No thanks, the plot in wikipedia is horrifying enough to read, I ain't watching that shit.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Absolute classic, both the '53 one and the remake with Jeff Goldblum.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Do I trust that an ephemeral pseudoscience concept of "teleporter technology" is safe to use...? No...? On what basis would anyone make that judgement.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

On what basis would anyone make that judgement.

Suspension of disbelief

load more comments (2 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

If we talking time tested technology that's been around for a couple centuries (i.e. Star Trek), sure.

Brand new tech? No thanks.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Assuming we're talking about our reality, this device is getting made by a corporation who will release it as soon as the potential profit exceeds the cost from its non-zero error rate.

No, I'm not getting into some Musk 2.0's shoddy body disintegrator.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I always assume this is asking me as if I was in one of the examples universes like Star Trek. I 100% would never get in Musk's Teslaporter, but in a world where it's as widespread as airplanes and trains? Would use, wouldn't be murder.

load more comments (2 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If we're talking exactly like star trek I'm 90% on board with it. Yeah, yeah, so I'm a clone now, big whoop.

You wanna know the 10% that really fucking haunt me?! Mother fucking Tuvix. Everyone you know can turn into a Tuvix situation real fast, that's the real nightmare.

load more comments (1 replies)
[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Use it on myself? No.

Use it to start a combination movers / electric / tunneling / waste management / highly-illegal-hardware-pirating company?

Yes.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Imagine, going for a skiing trip and when you get down, you don't queue for the lift, but you just ski into the portal and continue at the top of some piste. The commute gets insanely short, I can WFH, pop in for lunch or a coffee chat, and then jump back home to do some work.

I've read that the cells in my body aren't the same as the ones I was born with, so I did a very slow gradual body swap already, possibly a few times.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I`v seen the fly, fuck this shit.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

There's a Ship of Theseus aspect to Star Trek's transporters in particular that I find interesting. In that there is an actual matter stream sent to your destination. But ultimately I couldn't be sure that the me I am now would come out the other side - and I probably wouldn't.

I have the same concern about uploading my brain to a computer. Even if it's a perfect copy it's still a copy. And that's before you factor in for other things like, I am not just my brain I am also the hormones that affect my brain.

load more comments
view more: next โ€บ