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!
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?
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.
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.