Timeline for How to convince people to teleport themselves?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
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| Jun 15, 2016 at 10:58 | comment | added | JohnEye | @MartineVotvik: Well, it is a small consolation, but I guess it's still good enough to me. And given that people prefer to not think about many things in their lives to escape the existential angst, dying during teleportation would probably be just another item on the list. | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 15:55 | comment | added | Martine Votvik | @JohnEye I do agree with you on that the following copies very likely would have less and less of a problem with this. But who cares about the original? You ask. Well, the original of course, who will never get to smell a flower, hug his loved ones or eat a steak ever again. It is a very small consolation that some fleshcopy of yourself who believes himself to be you can do these things if you can't. So again, you must simply not care to experience anything more of life to go through with the first procedure. | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 15:24 | comment | added | JohnEye | @MartineVotvik: I disagree, you have to factor in the fact that it is extremely convenient and with every teleportation, the person becomes more and more used to the fact that it is safe. Who cares if it's not the original - from the copy's perspective, they just entered a machine hundreds of times and every time woke up on the other side. There would be some people who would try to minimize the number of teleportations, but I think the vast majority would teleport often and they would not care about the philosophical aspects at all. And I bet many others would just give in to peer pressure. | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 14:54 | comment | added | Martine Votvik | @JohnEye, as a hypothetical thought experiment I have no problem accepting this. But in reality I think it would be difficult to convince people that like living to give up their lives in this way. Then again, I must remind myself we're not talking about "reality" we are talking about a fictional setting. But I would still claim that the general population would have to have a weak sense of individuality to accept this as an acceptable way of traveling. | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 14:44 | comment | added | JohnEye | @MartineVotvik: Sure, the original me would be dead, but the other me would be thinking "oh hey, how lucky I'm the one that lives now". And I'm completely fine with that scenario. I do not consider this a real death, that's like saying that moving a file from one disk to a different one destroys it. Sure, the original is physically erased, but an identical file exists elsewhere. Is there a difference between a 'move' action and 'copy and delete' action if the moved file is identical? Why should I care? | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 12:39 | comment | added | Martine Votvik | @DRF I realise that my understanding of the situation rests on a conception of self that might not be shared by other people, but it does not rest on a conception of a soul. Rather, to me the sense of self is an illusion, but it is an illusjon that takes place in the location of this flesh. It doesn't matter how perfectly you recreate the shape of somebody, if you disintegrate the flesh where the illusion is happening then the illusion is over for that location. An illusion taking place in another location will not be you any more than if some rando thinks that he is you for other reasons. | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 12:29 | comment | added | DRF | @MartineVotvik I suppose I should point out that I'm agnostic. I don't particularly believe or disbelieve in the existence of a soul I just don't see how you can reasonably argue you stop existing if for all intents and purposes you still seem to exist. | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 12:27 | comment | added | DRF | @MartineVotvik I'm not sure how that concept translates once that kind of technology exists. The only sense in which we understand it is going back in time. I can't tell if the person that existed 10 minutes ago still exists. The best I can tell is that I think I'm that person. In other words the person writing now had no sense of existing 10 minutes later. You can only look back not forward in that sense it's not obvious that such a concept as the being that I experience as myself exists unless you are willing to admit a soul of some kind. In that case it seems non obvious what happens to it. | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 12:16 | comment | added | Martine Votvik | @DRF I mean the entity that you experience as yourself, you will not be waking up in your "clone" you will be dead. The clone will have your memories and your life, but it will not be your consciousness | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 12:09 | comment | added | DRF | @MartineVotvik I don't know what it means when you say "You as an individual". The moment you can create perfect clones in the way the OP describes it seems utterly non-trivial to define "me". Even at our level of technological and psychological advancement we don't really know what "me" or "I" means. In my mind assuming there is no non-physical component to a "me" it seems that existence itself as a self-aware entity is threatened. If on the other hand you believe in some sort of "soul" whatever that is then there seems little sense in believing it gets destroyed along with the body. | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 10:40 | comment | added | Martine Votvik | @JohnEye but it wouldn't be your consciousness starting up somewhere else, it would just be a copy of you with your memories. You as an individual would be dead. Or did you miss this detail in the question "Memories & feelings of the original = stops with teleportation." | |
| Jun 14, 2016 at 8:45 | comment | added | Luaan | @NeilSlater Physically, there is no continuity. Unless you posit that there is something non-physical involved (e.g. a soul, or connection to The Force), there is no difference between two moments of "your" existence, regardless of whether you were conscious or not, and being annihilated and reconstructed later. Sure, that doesn't mean people will not be opposed at first (as they were to trains), but as far as we can tell, all our consciousness is a result of a specific physical configuration, just like in your computer. Making copies without destroying the original is the bigger issue. | |
| S Jun 14, 2016 at 1:31 | history | suggested | Tom | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 14, 2016 at 1:12 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Jun 13, 2016 at 20:54 | history | edited | Vincent | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 13, 2016 at 17:15 | comment | added | JohnEye | @NeilSlater: Of course, I know all the thought experiments and their philosophical implications. But after thinking about it for a long time, I decided that dying in the process is not a problem for me as long as the new me is a perfect (or near-perfect) copy. I would probably have some second thoughts if the death of the original would be excruciatingly painful though. But dying only to be replaced by a perfect copy to gain a little convenience in life? Sign me up! :-) | |
| Jun 13, 2016 at 17:03 | comment | added | Neil Slater | @JohnEye: But would it - would you have the same continuity? There is a deep philosophical question here, because there is no physical difference to the "copy" whether you (as the original) continue to exist or not - they may not even know - so there appears to be no actual continuity to the teleport destination, even if to the copy there should be a feeling of continuity. The OP's question has more subtlety than you assume - and the issue is completely ignored in 99% of sci-fi with disassembling teleporters. | |
| Jun 13, 2016 at 16:30 | comment | added | JohnEye | I certainly enjoy my life and would like to go on living, but I would certainly use the teleport whenever convenient. It's the same thing with falling asleep - my consciousness shuts down for some time and starts up later. Except in this case, it would start up somewhere else. | |
| Jun 13, 2016 at 14:53 | history | answered | Martine Votvik | CC BY-SA 3.0 |