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There's a Star Trek novel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock_Must_Die! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock_Must_Die!) where IIRC they explore how the transpor

There's a Star Trek novel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock_Must_Die! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock_Must_Die!) where IIRC they explore how the transporter is sort of destroying the original you and recreating a new one somewhere else. It's a legit philosophical question, but practically speaking, the people who use the transporter don't feel like they're longer themselves. They just feel like they've moved. That's fiction, of course, but what the characters experience is what I'd expect to happen in real life if a transporter did exist. If a structure (human) is destroyed and recreated identically at some other location, I don't see why that should be any different than moving the atoms over while preserving the structure. And I don't see why things would be different if you created the same structure (or an isomorphic one) inside a computer. Of course, I'm assuming that what makes you you is simply the structure and how it operates as a system. That's definitely a philosophical question, but I think if its answer is what I expect, then a perfect recreation of you is you. And yes, this raises the question of whether there can be more than one of you. (Which I think the Star Trek novel also covers.) I don't think this cloning presents a philosophical barrier, though. I think it's similar to calling fork(). The only observable differences come from the kernel intervening to change the pid and fork()'s return value. There's nothing fundamentally unsound about the idea of splitting into two and both being "you". Although there are definitely things that are unsettling about it.

pmoriarty 6y ago
"the people who use the transporter don't feel like they're longer themselves. They just feel like they've moved." Well, the people going in the transporter would be killed, so they wouldn't be feeling anything after that. The people coming out of the transporter might feel like they just appeared in a new place, but that is immaterial to the people who were killed by the transporter. Similarly, a mother could have grounds for rejecting a teleported child, for the one who came out of the teleporter was not physically the one she gave birth to. Incidentally, the philosophical concept that episode explores goes back long, long before Star Trek, to the Ship of Theseus[1] thought experiment from Ancient Greece (and I wouldn't be surprised if this was considered even before then in ancient India or China). The Ship of Theseus problem asks: if a ship's parts are progressively replaced with new parts, until all the parts have been replaced, is it still the same ship? The cells in our bodies are being progressively replaced. A materialist, naturalist, or physicalist would have trouble explaining how someone could retain their original identity if nothing of them was left after this process. The brain upload, teleporter, and transporter questions are variations on these. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
- nick_kline 6y ago
  It's not immaterial at all. It's basically the same thing as going to sleep at night and waking up or seeing your friend after a 1 minute break. It can feel like the person who was gone had continuity.
  - patagurbon 6y ago
    To the observers, but not to the person being transported.
    - indrax 6y ago
      Do you have a reason to believe that the consciousness would stay in one place and be destroyed rather than be in both places, and then just one place again? I don't think that consciousness has momentum.
      - pmoriarty 6y ago
        Why would the consciousness of one person migrate to the other? You're really talking about (at best) a new instantiation of the identical consciousness in a new body. That's not the original consciousness moving, that's a new (identical) consciousness coming to life. I am unconvinced a consciousness can migrate out of the body that it's in. Copies are not enough. This is made more obvious if you consider the case that the original is not destroyed. Then the clone that comes out of the end of the transporter would be having experiences that the original can not experience. If they were really one consciousness they would have one experience from that point on, but they don't. They're two different people. So in the first case one person dies and another person with the same body and memories is born, and in the second case the first person does not die and another person with the same body and memories is born. In both cases they are two separate people.
        indrax 6y ago
        >You're really talking about (at best) a new instantiation of the identical consciousness in a new body. That's not the original consciousness moving, that's a new (identical) consciousness coming to life. This is making a lot of assumptions about how consciousness works. If I make a copy of a book the story doesn't move, but it is now in two places. If I destroy the original book the story isn't lost. I think experience might be more like that. Multiple copies of the same information system will all only have one subjective experience. Yes if you run two versions they will diverge and the question is much more complicated. But if there is one moment of copy/destruction or you're scanning and then simulating/rebuilding a frozen brain, then there's no point in time where a consciousness doesn't have a future version.
xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
A decent non-fiction book, Teleportation: The Impossible Leap, by David Darling, that I read some years ago, tackled these sort of ethical/philosophical questions neatly. I think you'd find a whole lot of people unwilling to use a Teleporter, even over multiple generations.
randallsquared 6y ago
> practically speaking, the people who use the transporter don't feel like they're longer themselves. They just feel like they've moved. That's begging the question, isn't it? If the destroy-and-copy view is right, then the people who use the transporter are dead, and replaced by the transporter with people who have the memory of having safely used the transporter. I agree, though, that after a while society would just adapt and no one would care whether they'll survive the transport.
rasz 6y ago
'balance the equation' so to speak https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/Think_like_a_Dinosaur https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/Think_like_a_Dinosaur
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
There's a Star Trek episode where Riker discovers a transporter copy of himself on an abandoned outpost. He'd transported out years earlier, but the 'Riker' who stayed thought the transport had failed. Lived on by the skin of his teeth for a decade. They kind of glossed over the morality - a wasted episode really. Didn't say much about which was the 'real' Riker. Didn't seem to care.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  That was the right answer. There were then two people with common memories up to a point. There could be legal complications, probably already thoroughly explored. Does Starfleet have two flag officers now, with two service records? Yes. If he were married, does his wife now have two husbands? Probably. Kids? Two dads, now. Property? Held in common, until they negotiate. Etc.

pmoriarty 6y ago

"the people who use the transporter don't feel like they're longer themselves. They just feel like they've moved." Well, the people going in the transporter would be killed, so they wouldn't be feeling anything after that. The people coming out of the transporter might feel like they just appeared in a new place, but that is immaterial to the people who were killed by the transporter. Similarly, a mother could have grounds for rejecting a teleported child, for the one who came out of the teleporter was not physically the one she gave birth to. Incidentally, the philosophical concept that episode explores goes back long, long before Star Trek, to the Ship of Theseus[1] thought experiment from Ancient Greece (and I wouldn't be surprised if this was considered even before then in ancient India or China). The Ship of Theseus problem asks: if a ship's parts are progressively replaced with new parts, until all the parts have been replaced, is it still the same ship? The cells in our bodies are being progressively replaced. A materialist, naturalist, or physicalist would have trouble explaining how someone could retain their original identity if nothing of them was left after this process. The brain upload, teleporter, and transporter questions are variations on these. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

nick_kline 6y ago
It's not immaterial at all. It's basically the same thing as going to sleep at night and waking up or seeing your friend after a 1 minute break. It can feel like the person who was gone had continuity.
- patagurbon 6y ago
  To the observers, but not to the person being transported.
  - indrax 6y ago
    Do you have a reason to believe that the consciousness would stay in one place and be destroyed rather than be in both places, and then just one place again? I don't think that consciousness has momentum.
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      Why would the consciousness of one person migrate to the other? You're really talking about (at best) a new instantiation of the identical consciousness in a new body. That's not the original consciousness moving, that's a new (identical) consciousness coming to life. I am unconvinced a consciousness can migrate out of the body that it's in. Copies are not enough. This is made more obvious if you consider the case that the original is not destroyed. Then the clone that comes out of the end of the transporter would be having experiences that the original can not experience. If they were really one consciousness they would have one experience from that point on, but they don't. They're two different people. So in the first case one person dies and another person with the same body and memories is born, and in the second case the first person does not die and another person with the same body and memories is born. In both cases they are two separate people.
      - indrax 6y ago
        >You're really talking about (at best) a new instantiation of the identical consciousness in a new body. That's not the original consciousness moving, that's a new (identical) consciousness coming to life. This is making a lot of assumptions about how consciousness works. If I make a copy of a book the story doesn't move, but it is now in two places. If I destroy the original book the story isn't lost. I think experience might be more like that. Multiple copies of the same information system will all only have one subjective experience. Yes if you run two versions they will diverge and the question is much more complicated. But if there is one moment of copy/destruction or you're scanning and then simulating/rebuilding a frozen brain, then there's no point in time where a consciousness doesn't have a future version.

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago

A decent non-fiction book, Teleportation: The Impossible Leap, by David Darling, that I read some years ago, tackled these sort of ethical/philosophical questions neatly. I think you'd find a whole lot of people unwilling to use a Teleporter, even over multiple generations.

randallsquared 6y ago

> practically speaking, the people who use the transporter don't feel like they're longer themselves. They just feel like they've moved. That's begging the question, isn't it? If the destroy-and-copy view is right, then the people who use the transporter are dead, and replaced by the transporter with people who have the memory of having safely used the transporter. I agree, though, that after a while society would just adapt and no one would care whether they'll survive the transport.

rasz 6y ago

'balance the equation' so to speak https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/Think_like_a_Dinosaur https://theouterlimits.fandom.com/wiki/Think_like_a_Dinosaur

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

There's a Star Trek episode where Riker discovers a transporter copy of himself on an abandoned outpost. He'd transported out years earlier, but the 'Riker' who stayed thought the transport had failed. Lived on by the skin of his teeth for a decade. They kind of glossed over the morality - a wasted episode really. Didn't say much about which was the 'real' Riker. Didn't seem to care.

ncmncm 6y ago
That was the right answer. There were then two people with common memories up to a point. There could be legal complications, probably already thoroughly explored. Does Starfleet have two flag officers now, with two service records? Yes. If he were married, does his wife now have two husbands? Probably. Kids? Two dads, now. Property? Held in common, until they negotiate. Etc.