Find identical twins, dress em the same, have one walk into a cardboard box with “teleporter” written on it by a child, and have the other twin come out another similar cardboard box.
Eh. You are a piece of software running on meat. Every night, there are long periods where ‘you’, the conscious entity of your awareness, ceases to exist. You only dream for a small portion of the night. There are times when you are simply gone.
Yet we have no problem accepting this fact. We’ve just collectively accepted that there is some continuity of consciousness between each day. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. You have the memories of yesterday, but ‘you’ have not been in continued conscious existence since yesterday. In a very real sense, we are a series of single-day lifetimes stitched together across time.
If you’ve ever gone under anesthesia, it’s even more jarring. When you’re under, you’re not asleep. You’re not dreaming. You’re just gone. The time passes in an instant.
If my consciousness can be discontinuous through time, why can’t it be discontinuous through space? If I can believe that I am the same me as the mes of yesterday and tomorrow, why can I not believe that a remotely assembled copy of me is also me? I used to run on that meat, now I run on this meat. It’s all me in the end.
Yeah and to take what you were describing further, we can’t ever really be sure our lives existed at all. If the universe was created in its current state 5 minutes ago, we would have no way to know.
But anyway, the ease of accepting one’s own continuity from day to day is part of the teleporter problem. It’s at the heart of it, honestly. I think it’s a given that the copy of you that comes out the other side will believe that they are the original you and will assume your identity and life without skipping a beat.
The concern is the likelihood that you experience a quick death by being vaporized while the copy of you experiences the “created 5 minutes ago in current state with memories intact and can’t prove otherwise” phenomenon.
I’ll also add that as far as we can tell, our conscious minds are emergent properties of our physical brains. Losing consciousness while verifiably keeping your brain in a specific spot is quite a bit different than disassembling your physical brain and reassembling it somewhere else.
If we instead had evidence that our souls/identities existed on some other plane and our brains were more like antennas, I might think differently.
My million dollar idea is a teleporter.
You walk in and get teleported.
Gibe moneeis nao plz
My million dollar idea is an add-on for your device that kicks every billionaire on the planet in the nut sack every time someone teleports.
OKAY YOU HAB MANIES SO YOU GIBE IMMDITLEE
Find identical twins, dress em the same, have one walk into a cardboard box with “teleporter” written on it by a child, and have the other twin come out another similar cardboard box.
NO TALK YES MONEE GIBE NAO ME
I can teleport you some crypto quantumcoins?
YOU GOBE YOU GEEVING NAO
Five Dogecoins for 25% valuation?
What you have made there, sir, is a horrific copy and kill device!
Eh. You are a piece of software running on meat. Every night, there are long periods where ‘you’, the conscious entity of your awareness, ceases to exist. You only dream for a small portion of the night. There are times when you are simply gone.
Yet we have no problem accepting this fact. We’ve just collectively accepted that there is some continuity of consciousness between each day. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. You have the memories of yesterday, but ‘you’ have not been in continued conscious existence since yesterday. In a very real sense, we are a series of single-day lifetimes stitched together across time.
If you’ve ever gone under anesthesia, it’s even more jarring. When you’re under, you’re not asleep. You’re not dreaming. You’re just gone. The time passes in an instant.
If my consciousness can be discontinuous through time, why can’t it be discontinuous through space? If I can believe that I am the same me as the mes of yesterday and tomorrow, why can I not believe that a remotely assembled copy of me is also me? I used to run on that meat, now I run on this meat. It’s all me in the end.
Yeah and to take what you were describing further, we can’t ever really be sure our lives existed at all. If the universe was created in its current state 5 minutes ago, we would have no way to know.
But anyway, the ease of accepting one’s own continuity from day to day is part of the teleporter problem. It’s at the heart of it, honestly. I think it’s a given that the copy of you that comes out the other side will believe that they are the original you and will assume your identity and life without skipping a beat.
The concern is the likelihood that you experience a quick death by being vaporized while the copy of you experiences the “created 5 minutes ago in current state with memories intact and can’t prove otherwise” phenomenon.
I’ll also add that as far as we can tell, our conscious minds are emergent properties of our physical brains. Losing consciousness while verifiably keeping your brain in a specific spot is quite a bit different than disassembling your physical brain and reassembling it somewhere else.
If we instead had evidence that our souls/identities existed on some other plane and our brains were more like antennas, I might think differently.
NO MOR TOK YOU GIBE MONIE NAO