I like to think that technology like this is indeed as cruel as truly killing you, but that the implication is overlooked due to the transported clone being abl

I like to think that technology like this is indeed as cruel as truly killing you, but that the implication is overlooked due to the transported clone being able to attest that they indeed survived the journey, and that there is no dead Kirk to say otherwise. And for pragmatic reasons, a spacefaring society would ofcourse be very happy to have technology like this, and very disinclined to abandon it. Furthermore, as much as humans tend to speak highly of the value of life, if the victims of such a machine are completely silenced and their relatives see no difference, this is an easy dark bargain for humanity to make. What I'm saying is that there is likely no scientific uncertainty about machines like teleporters killing the original, but that human society simply accepts and hides this fact under the rug. We are good at ignoring uncomfortable side effects, when they have no direct impact on us. (until you're the one standing in a teleporter for the first time, facing the social pressure of either calling everyone else a clone and a fake, or taking the teleportation yourself) What there is instead is a strong cultural established norm that teleporters do infact not kill you, and that this cultural norm is upheld for more or less pragmatic reasons. A false but useful-for-society cultural norm. On the trope of the "wiser and kinder aliens", I would imagine that if a machine like this were to exist in any other universe than Star Trek (idk about Star Trek aliens that much tbh, they seem like humans cultures more or less), there would definitely be alien societies that have discovered teleportation but would not for a second consider teleporting living objects of importance, let alone themselves. Because they could be more thorough with the philosophical implications of the machine and less inclined like us, to hide it under the rug.