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[–] 16 points 18 hours ago (18 children)

The bit I find worrying is that you'd have to trust you will be 1:1 reconstructed at the other side.

What happens if there's an error on the reconstruction side and it either fails to reconstruct you back properly, or at all?

Or what if some malicious party injects something into, or removes part of your reconstruction?

There'd be no way for you to know from the other side, so you could just be killed or maimed in an instant, and there'd be nothing you could do to stop it

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  • [–] 1 point 6 hours ago

    What happens if there’s an error on the reconstruction side and it either fails to reconstruct you back properly, or at all?

    what happens when you die in a car accident? your family and friends mourn for a while and life continues...

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  • [–] 6 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

    What do you care? That's not you on the other side, just your copy.

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  • [–] 6 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

    If you're taking teleportation, you've likely already accepted (or are ignorant of) the fact that you as a literal being will perish - but you survive conceptually through your copy.

    So I care if that copy gets made. If it doesn't, then I'm not just literally dead, but conceptually dead too.

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  • [–] 3 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

    I read one scifi novel where the teleportation was almost instant across the galaxy, the caveat was that it duplicated you, so the original walked out of the booth, while the copy was the one who actually went somewhere. Aside from the issues of having several of you around if you went back to the destination, not every teleport was great for the original either. One instance where they were trying to escape some creature planetside, and as they ran into the booth the main wondered if they'd be the one who made it to safety, or not. Of course next chapter picks up with the safe one's pov....

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago

    There's a game called SOMA that plays around with a similar idea - but for digitization.

    And of course the answer's quite straightforward. If you're the copy that got in the chair, you're the one left behind.

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  • [–] 5 points 18 hours ago (5 children)

    Do you think the transporter reconstructs the contents of your stomach & intestines? Like, do you still have to pee when you come out the other side, or does it just take care of business for you?

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  • [–] 5 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

    I always thought the lack of bathrooms was because they had little waste transporters that beamed the pee out.

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  • [–] 4 points 17 hours ago (1 child)

    Assuming that whatever computer is processing your blueprint could accurately detect all of your poop and pee, then I don't see why it couldn't physically do that.

    And the incentive would line up too, as it would both save the company money on reconstruction and be beneficial to the customer.

    Better question yet is if it's possible to tamper the blueprint, where would the limit be? Could it be used medically to essentially perform surgery on you (or rather your clone)? Could the teleporter service basically offer you a character creation screen to make yourself however you'd want to look or be?

    Of course, again, this relies on you trusting the teleporter service with your entire being. If they fail, you're not just literally dead, you're conceptually just gone.

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  • [–] 2 points 16 hours ago

    Assuming that whatever computer is processing your blueprint could accurately detect all of your poop and pee, then I don't see why it couldn't physically do that.

    Heh, well, there might be a pressure problem... but yeah if it's accurate enough to put all of the walls of your intestines back where they were, why bother reconstructing that log inside there? But then... do you fill the empty space with vacuum? air? fluid? or do you try to reconstruct the intestine, not as it was, but in a relaxed/empty state?

    Better question yet is if it's possible to tamper the blueprint, where would the limit be? Could it be used medically to essentially perform surgery on you (or rather your clone)? Could the teleporter service basically offer you a character creation screen to make yourself however you'd want to look or be?

    If we can get rid of your waste, we can at least get rid of kidney stones too, right? And probably tumors and parasites, maybe even bacterial infections.

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  • [–] 1 point 17 hours ago

    If you fly instead, you have to trust the pilot, ATC, the mechanics, the aircraft engineers, the builder, its suppliers, and on and on. At least in a transporter malfunction, you die in an instant, rather than in terror as the plane crashes.

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