this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Star Trek

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (19 children)

Teleporters are interesting because when you think about it long enough, you realize the person on departure end died.

You think about it more... and if the person that comes out the arrival end is an exact replica -- down to the atom -- and, further, has internal continuity of experience... You realize that if you accept they died then you kind of also have to accept that the "you" of any given instant is constantly dying and giving way to the "you" of the next instant. That person living that experience at that exact moment will never exist again; they're dead.

So you're kinda back to transporters being business as usual again, but with a fun new existential crisis on the side.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (8 children)

In practice, I agree with you. The transporter scans, disintegrates, and reconstructs the thing being transported. But when the thing being transported is reconstructed at a subatomic level it is effectively identical.

I can imagine the society we see in startrek having already worked through the moral and philosophical implications. I would have loved to see that addressed in an episode tho.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Is one carbon atom the same as another carbon atom, philosophically? Can you keep your identity when all your atoms are replaced by other atoms of the same kind? It's the ship of Theseus problem

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Irrelevant to the transporter as the same matter is moved by the matter stream and reassembled in the same order. This is less asking if the ship of Theseus is the same ship after the hull and the mast were replaced and more asking if my kitchen table is still the same after I took the leaf out, folded the legs in, put it in a truck, moved to a new house, and set it back up

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