• ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    13 hours ago

    So what would happen if the original wasn’t “destructively” scanned and was just scanned. 2 would exist. Ergo, you’re dying each time.

    I’ve thought about this for over 25 years at this point. Ever since the first journeyman project game and moment where you teleport to work and it’s like you die, then come back to life, because that’s the only way it could ever work. Unless there’s some weird physics shit I don’t understand where you like slip through a wormhole or something. I don’t know I suck at that kind of physics

    • Soggy@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      The body is dying but the conscousness continues, that’s where the self is anyway. Done right it would be like falling asleep on the train and waking up somewhere else but legally fraught.

      • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 hours ago

        Duh, that’s the inherent philosophical construct. The body dies but a consciousness continues. What “is” consciousness. Is it a “soul” that can be extracted from a corporeal form and injected into a (in this example) carbon copy? If that is the case how does one “verify” the “extraction” occurred and the process of creating a carbon copy did not create a carbon copy “soul”? To the outside observer the scenario you describe would happen but you would die on the train and you 2.0 would pick up where you left off.

        Perhaps (and far far more likely) consciousness is a byproduct of extremely high quality sensory processing with the capacity for storing both long and short term memories and attending to stimuli. But even again if we created a perfect replica of this that is all it would be, a replica. It would think it’s you, but it’s not. The original you, the you it’s copied from, is dead.

        To defeat this means to upend several sciences as far as I know. Biology, neuroscience, physics. A clone will always be morally distinct, and teleportation would always ultimately result in creating a clone. What the legal ramifications of this would be i dont know. Capitalism is wild and if someone did figure this out I bet money there would be a product on the market that was rushed despite not having answered these (likely unanswerable) questions and probably protected from criticism because it “revolutionizes transportation” or some shit

        • Soggy@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          It would think it’s you, but it’s not.

          Cogito, ergo sum. I am not the collection of atoms I was when I was born and I am not a continuity of consciousness from before the last time I slept.

    • n0respect@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      If, by ‘teleport’, we mean: a machine scans your data and sends it to be rebuilt, then I wonder: why stop at 1? You have the data, make 9001 of me!

      The creation of such a machine may actually be dystopia. Human diversity may plummet, with most of us in a predetermined role as clones.