# Transporters and the destruction of the self: What am I missing here? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 24, 2012, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transporters-and-the-destruction-of-the-self-what-am-i-missing-here/613894 "2012-02-24T23:36:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transporters-and-the-destruction-of-the-self-what-am-i-missing-here/613894/1 "2012-02-24T23:36:25Z")
In another thread about AI rights and sentience, a side conversation developed about storing people’s brains and downloading them into clones, or transporters. Now unwilling to hijack, we decided to agree to disagree about the point and let it die. However, The other poster posited that those opposed to transporter use, or biological storage and cloning do so because the new “you” really isn’t you. It was stated that this was simply something you got or didn’t and nary shall the twain meet. I’m not certain that holds up, help me out here; what am I missing? Assume that the technology for transporters exists in the following manner: A person using one will be “saved” at one end, their atoms scattered and reassembled at the other end. This process is instantaneous. The person who emerges at the other end is biologically, physically, and mentally identical to the one who entered at the starting point. How is this person not “you”? In all senses that matter physically they are identical to the person who was destroyed in the process. No time was lost so they are the same “you” in the sense that the “you” from a minute into the future is still “you”. This would seem to indicate that those opposed to this idea are arguing for the existence of the soul, but nearly all religions posit that the soul is separate from the physical body, surviving its destruction. This would send us down the path of a no true scotsman type argument about what truly constitutes death. Additionally, who or what then is the new person at the other end? What animates them? We don’t tell people who have died and been resuscitated that they are not the same person, so I don’t see the point being made here either. I’m prepared to accept that this may simply be an irrational or “squicky” type experience on the part of those opposed, but I cannot accept then that the two sides have equal validity in a debate. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transporters-and-the-destruction-of-the-self-what-am-i-missing-here/613894)._