Sorry about that ridiculous watermark.
Not to mention, if we have the technology to construct human bodies and minds on the other side of that teleporter, what is to stop them from modifying the machines to change your brain (or body). I have lost any trust I once had in any government or company to believe them if, hypothetically, they tell me they have the know-how to change my opinion of Coca Cola upon reconstruction.
Cory Doctorow vibes.
I never understood the problem people seem to complain about here.
A perfect copy, is perfect. There’s no detectable, no measurable, no identifiable difference.
So what are you talking about? Unless you don’t think perfect is actually perfect.Because it’s still a copy, so you still die. Imagine if there was a delay between the copy being produced and the original being destroyed, long enough for them to see each other if transported within the same room.
You are a different person than you were yesterday.
You have all sorts of new and different experiences from that person.
You’re even a different person reading the last word in this sentence, than you were when reading the first.But you’re no less you, are you?
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Yes! Great movie!
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That machine was much more than a transporter. It didn’t have to destroy the matter to duplicate it.
Angier was stupid to keep killing the other versions of himself. He could have created a much better trick, being in several places at once.
And they each would have felt they were the original Angier. Who could say they were wrong? They all were, and are still, the original. Just different versions of him, with different experiences. No different than you, being the same person who was different yesterday than you are today.
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I think I’ve explained this too many times to do it again, but: teleportation doesn’t have to be “destroy and reconstitute” any more than going through a door necessitates killing you and reconstituting you on the other side of the door. The key is establishing continuity of your mind across the intervening space, which is mostly an engineering problem.
The real problem with all of this is that people can’t get away from the idea of a soul. Something intangible unmeasurable that is really “us” riding around in a meat-robot. It’s hard for people (me included) to realize that the meat packaging is all that we are. If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am. There is no “me” outside of that… And that’s a really hard concept to accept and internalize.
If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am.
If you perfectly recreate your body without destroying the original, the original doesn’t start seeing and hearing through the clone. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, there’s no difference between the you that steps into the transporter and the you that steps out of it, but you do actually die when you’re “transported.” You don’t get to see what’s on the other side of the transporter, another being that shares your exact memories does.
Not only that, but they‘re also literal bombs. Remember E=mc^2? With a technology capable of converting 100% of matter into usable energy, you‘d have a pretty scary bomb bomb.
And yet, on the list of bomb bombs Star Trek has given us, it’s pretty far down there. I mean, wanna talk about WMDs? Look up Genesis or Generations. Those fuckers are un-nuking stars and collapsing nebulae because why not.
