Sounds like relief, honestly. And a fresh start for clone me.
I would be the guy who says, “Open-source teleporters only.”
I ain’t risking having myself modified surreptitiously. 😑
No worries, its not you modified its your clone. Youre dead!
Meanwhile Buddha: have I got some bad, but also good news for you…
I’d use a teleporter with no hesitation. What’s important is my memories and sense of self, not the actual meat it’s in. I could find out I’m a copy of myself right now and not be bothered.
Yeah but once you step in the teleporter you stop being. The copy is only useful for other people to keep interacting with your clone, but the actual you is dead.
So what? There would be persistent awareness. The new me would remember everything up to the old me’s death and keep living. I’m fine with that.
Id be more fine with not remembering but to each their own
A man cannot step into the same river twice
There’s no “actual” you. Your body creates a sense of an “I”. If you copy that body including the brain, the copy will have the same. You wouldn’t say that the copy’s sense of smell is somehow different, so why make a distinction for the sense of self?
Who guarantees the copy is exact? I don’t think we can do checksums on living bodies.
Well I imagined we were talking about an imaginary sci-fi technology. Obviously it would be more complicated and possibly at risk for some kind of manipulation in real life. If I were presented a teleporter where the only fault is a philosophical question about being a copy, then I don’t mind being a copy and my original self dying.
I think this idea and confidence hold extremely true until you think about Elon Musk.
I have no idea what you mean lol
His machine would not work very well.
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s far worse than that. If a company has a teleporter that can build a copy of you, they can also build an almost-copy of you. Say, a copy that is less rebellious. More obedient.
Yeah, the idea’s cool in fiction, but in reality I would never touch a machine like this. I will walk my ass over in analogue.
I wrote a blog post about this: https://phil.red/blog/2025/9/5/identity-illusion
Fun fact: if continuity’s the only definition of self, then we die every single night, and a different person who thinks they’re us awakes
People say this but I don’t understand why. I don’t think there’s any reason to believe we meaningfully cease to be “continuous” while asleep, in fact we’re not even unconscious when we sleep, our brain keeps processing stimuli, in parts of the cycle we dream, etcetera.
This isn’t true. Dreaming is only during certain periods of the sleep cycle. Through many parts of the night, you are truly gone.
Not entirely true. I’ve had dreams while asleep or heard things that really happened only to recall th em later when I awoke.
Sleep might represent a reduction in consciousness, but I’m still a stream do consciousness.
Sometimes dreaming and sometimes recalling doesn’t prove you always have a stream of consciousness. You have different sleep phases each night, some are entirely dream less. Large groups of your neurons sync up during NREM sleep, firing at the same time. I don’t see how consciousness can survive becoming basically a pendulum. People awoken during NREM in studies usually say they weren’t experiencing anything. Maybe they were and just didn’t remember, we can’t prove that, but it seems unlikely and it couldn’t be much of an experience while most of your brain is busy flashing on and off again like a flickering lightbulb.
Then think about cryogenics. The wood frog can be frozen solid and come back to life by thawing, so there’s nothing fundamentally preventing our existence from becoming discontinuous
This doesn’t mean much. You only dream during REM sleep, one phase of your sleep cycle. But there are periods during every night where the lights are off and there’s nobody home.
Just as you said, that depends on definition. And since we know jack shit about how conciousness works all of those definitions (minus one) will be flawed. Going by some definitions that include this, you could say you die every second. I had restless nights thinking about this and the only conclusion I came to is that it’s ironically not worth losing sleep over this, because if this is true then one you can’t do anything about it two you won’t even notice it. Alternatively this is a flawed perspective and you are just overthinking something that isn’t even true.
Warhammer 40k: Can I interest you in a trip through literal hell?
Also: what kind of immortality would you like?
Hmm… ironic immortality! I have eternal life, but grow increasingly more weary and numb to it’s joys until I wish for the sweet succor of death that will never come.
I don’t think that would be real. People become bitter and weary because they get old and their bodies start hurting and their minds failing more and more.
If you stay sharp and fit, you won’t get bitter.
Star Trek teleporter: fax machine / shredder combination (remember that time the shredder bit malfunctioned and we got double Riker…?)
Wormhole: just a weird long gateway (with a chance of spaghettification). No problems there unless it somehow takes you through some sort of hell dimension or something.
Stargate: somehow both, because let’s be frank, the Ancients were kind of dicks. (Also, didn’t actually need the whole buffer thing, that one Orlin built in Carter’s basement with a box of scraps was completely analog, no computer bits, and it worked just fine until it didn’t.)
Schlock Mercenary (webcomic) had a couple of good takes on this concept. The “wormgates” in SM were more like teleporters, in that they disintegrated you, reduced you to data, and recreated you on the other side. As a side effect, the Gatekeepers could make copies of you in transit, which is how they kept their galactic dominance intact, by interrogating and shredding gate-clones. Arguably, they murdered trillions of sapients with their gates.
In-universe, it’s impossible to generate big wormholes, but the F’Sherl’Ganni “faked” it and everyone just kind of assumed there was some weird physics they’d figured out that nobody else knew.
The Teraport, in SM (or “tear-apart” as it was sometimes called derisively) at least had some continuity, by porting you through billions of microscopic wormholes. Whether that kills you or not, well, that’s between you and Carl.
The “wormgates” in SM were more like teleporters, in that they disintegrated you, reduced you to data, and recreated you on the other side.
That’s exactly how stargates work in the Stargate series (except for the bit where they could work like normal wormholes, but they’ve got a scanner/shredder/maker mechanism stuck in front of the wormhole for no apparent reason).
I don’t think they ever duplicated anyone (with a stargate), but Teal’c('s data) once got stuck in the buffer. Technically nothing would prevent the gate from duplicating travelers, as long as it had enough energy and it could be prevented from flushing the buffer.
It’s not like that Riker episode was taken lightly. But, you would think that an event like that would have led to a lot more soul searching. For example, occasionally there were religious people in Star Trek – what does this say about transporters and souls?
From what I remember, they spent a lot more time on the mechanics of a dude getting duplicated: the bureaucracy of it (his rank, etc.) and how it affected his relationships with Troi etc.
But, no talk of how every time someone is transported the original body is killed? No talk about how this might be a means of creating an army of clones?
Same deal with people being stored for a long time in the pattern buffer. Does this mean you can create backups of people so that if they die they can simply be beamed from that data?
remember that time the shredder bit malfunctioned and we got double Riker…
I member!
Was interesting to see people try to explain to him why he was left behind…
The ship of thesis is “the ship of thesis” because it is the ship that thesis is using. He could hop off a trireme and on to a “boston whaler” and it would be the ship of thesis.
Edit: you must live with me spelling sin. I will not alter time and reality to correct that which is.
How can you spell trireme correctly, but not Theseus
Quick question: Do you pronounce it as “gif” or “gif?”
Yes
Did you refer some meme I never heard of, of is that really how you thought “Theseus” was spelled?
I have a little voice in my head that says words and I guess how they are spelled based only on my phonix education in elementary school and my vaguely western New England/ upstate New York accent.
But have you like… Never read the name before?
shakes head in polyglot disbelief
I may have, but, it was stored as a phonetic sound with in my mind. I could try and transliterate it in to the couple other languages I am familiar with the phonetics of, but I suspect the same error would occur.
interesting how differently we people store information…
You ever read “Blind sight” by Peter Watts?
Really interesting hard sci-fi book about minds.
Not yet. Noted.
Every meal you eat becomes part of you. You are basically teleporting your way through time with the refrigerator.
A distinction between a teleporter and a transporter…
To teleport implies the original matter is instantly moved from one place to another so there would be no destruction and reconstituted copy. A wormhole would seem to be the only realistic way that could be achieved.
A transporter, well that means copy then kill. No one knows if the kill part is painful because noone survives it. I find it funny Riker’s copy is actually the “original” and his lack of death is considered a transporter accident. Yet he is the one treated like the copy…
And all that said, barclay’s experience in the transporter beam is more suggestive of a wormhole style device.
I don’t know why I bothered to write all this out…
To transport just means to move, so if anything the term “transporter” implies physically moving people rather than copying. The term “teleport” is the more ambiguous one…
Iirc Thomas is not Will’s copy. Basically the transporter has a malfunction where Thomas and Will are both constituted on a transporter pad. So both are the “original” and also both are neither. In a sense, the William Thomas Riker who stepped onto that pad that day ceased to be, forked into two different lives.
I used to use this episode to talk about identity when I taught ethics back in the day. Both men carried on their lives under the belief that they were the same man who stepped onto a transporter pad on Nervala IV. Their experiences defined who they were, demonstrating that it’s more than biological material that makes any one of us us.
Now the deeper question is: since you can’t add matter to the universe, what’s missing to give life to two Rikers?
Sounds like trek had the technology to copy people. You would think if they are sending people out into the unknown to explore galaxies light years away they would just send a copy. Or at least keep a copy.
I wonder what earth piccard would be up to…
The energy that was used in the original teleportation. I didn’t think it was that deep, it used more energy to reconstitute more matter.
You know what, now that your mention it, wasn’t the explanation that the signal was reflected back to the surface due to the ionising radiation of something, so the beam was kinda split or doubled. So my premise was wrong.
Yeah. They tried to split the beam to account for the radiation, half of it made it through, the other half mirrored back. I’m guessing the computer can extrapolate the remaining matter based off of data saved in the pattern buffer?
Either way, Thomas Riker was way under-utilized in Star Trek. I also love how “okay, sure” everyone is about this situation.
Someone needs to. At least you put thought into it.
I’m glad you did.
The are other methods from Star Trek that could potentially be size as well.
Like “hey you actually travel through this other dimension where your physical form is undisturbed and no time passes in this dimension”
Which sounds ok, but “by the way it’s kinda a hell-dimension and your consciousness gets tortured for a distance-relative time there but won’t retain the memories after…”
Stop giving your time to corporations! W this, T that. They have played us for absolute fools, there is no need for economy class.
Seize the means of eldritchticity production comrade, don’t believe any nonsense about colors. The trains are always on time under the F co-op too.
They both got converted into energy, Thomas is just as much a copy as Will. Also, apparently your experience is constant across the process, as seen by Barclay grabbing someone out of the matter stream. Presumably someone would notice if it hurt…
his lack of death is considered a transporter accident
Must do wonders for his self worth! 😄
Isn’t Tom just another copy? He came out of the pattern buffer the same as Will iirc.
Because they’re not killed, it’s literally covered by multiple episodes, they’re streaming and aware the whole time.
There’s even a episode where someone’s awareness is stuck in the buffer after their body is destroyed
body is destroyed
You kind of defeated yourself here
If everyone around you is already only a copy of a copy, what use are you being the original?
Are you a movie executive by chance?
Given how much real Boomers took to ai slop, they probably wouldn’t think that deeply about being killed and copied constantly.
I’m not sure ‘kill’ is the correct word here. It seems to me that your conscience (aka: “you”) is being sent around to various places while the body (aka: the last 20 years of groceries) is merely being reused to recreate some other person. That’s the way I see it anyway.
“What if instead of landing craft, we just used some kind of teleporter thingy? It’d be a lot cheaper over all.”
“Great idea, Gene. I’m sure this won’t have any future story repercussions that get way out of hand!”
It’s all retconned from a money and plot decision. That should tell you enough.