You know those sci-fi teleporters like in Star Trek where you disappear from one location then instantaneously reappear in another location? Do you trust that they are safe to use?
To fully understand my question, you need to understand the safety concerns regarding teleporters as explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI
spoiler
I wouldn’t, because the person that reappears aint me, its a fucking clone. Teleporters are murder machines. Star Trek is a silent massacre!
Well, if the technology actually existed, it would solve that whole “soul” question.
We would know pretty quickly if we transported humans and they came out the other side as soulless aberrations because their original just got killed.
So yeah, I would 100% use it after it first proved once and for all that the sum of our consciousness really is all the synapses and signals and grey matter in our heads. Because if so then what does it matter if your original matter has been erased and then recreated. Your clone is just as much you as you are you at that point.
How would you know?
Fair question.
I’m assuming that if your soul really is “you” then a soulless clone of you that is identical to you down to every atom, but had no soul, would be bad.
I don’t know if that means your soulless clone would just be an instinct driven animal, or maybe just an evil version of you that immediately grows a goatee. I don’t know what function your soul actually performs. But at some point, maybe not immediately, a bunch of soulless clones walking around would be noticed.
Maybe? (Or maybe not?)
As far as an outside observer is concerned, the clone is identical to you in every way. But now you’re the outside observer, a dead outside observer, while that clone goes on and lives your life.
It’s not really about a ‘soul’, but your first person perspective of being you and not being someone else. Imagine if the teleporter malfunctioned and created the clone without disassembling you. That clone isn’t ‘you’, and disassembling you still wouldn’t make the clone you.
If you have no soul and you just exist as matter, then in a horrible transporter accident where your clone and your original still exist, now there are two of you. You are both you. There is no difference if you are both perfect copies of each other. 1=1.
Sounds like a win/win to me, finally a best friend who really gets me.
You wouldn’t experience being the clone though. You’d only be one of you, the other person is completely separate.
Hopefully my clone likes me as much as I like me.
Absolutely this.
Someone else can be the guinea pig, but if it’s been tested and everyone came out fine? Yeah. I’ll absolutely take advantage.
This is how I feel about lab grown meat. I’m sure it’s probably fine, but I don’t want to be one of the first to try it out. I’ll give it a couple of years and see how the first adopters get on lol.
I would actually really like a 4"x4"x1.5" square of perfectly marbled steak cloned from Kobe beef genes in some tray in a lab. No gristle, no bones, perfect consistency in every bite.
Seared in a blazing hot cast iron pan with salt, pepper, butter and lemon.
$8.99 lb. at Publix. I’ll take the transporter to get there.
Note to self: check on DJKJuicy in a couple of years before trying this
So you’d commit suicide so that some clone of you with all your memories can have a fun time on Mars?
How would we ever know for sure if the copy was really you or not? What question could we ask that only your objective self would know, but the sum collection of cells would not?
Exactly. The copy would think it’s me, and that’s nice for it. It would go around thinking the tech was great.
But I wouldn’t get to enjoy that because I would be dead.