First I’d like to say that anyone who has not sampled Clifford Simak’s work is in for a treat, so don’t delay, read this one, or any other of his work you can get your hands on.
Every story has limits, that’s what makes them so good, but for interplanetary travel, I am not sure that people on earth would see the need to kill the copy on earth to send one off planet.
I am sure that I would not feel comfortable doing so and for most people faced with the actual act, they would not go through with it either. Self-preservation instincts are just too great. No matter what might one envision, approach one of those tables and its a much harder proposition.
Perhaps, as in the case of a transporter beam, if its done to you once without warning and you feel continuity of experience, you might feel better about it. But, I’m pretty darn sure I would feel queasy about it in the real world.
The difference is that in everyday experience there is a smooth continuity of conciousness, you change gradually, with the teleporter there is an abrupt and total break in conciousness. For an instant you don’t exist in any form except for information.
I should point out that in addition to being a fantastic parody of pulp fiction novels, Down has some great parts about Transmat booths. Beside the getting killed part, it claims that it would be possible to keep the person from being killed, and simply have a copy come out the other side. This would kill the economy however, so we aren’t allowed to know this.
P.S. Down takes place within the universe of Doctor Who. However, besides one throwaway line, he is not mentioned. Thus, there is no reason for a newbie not to read it.
I don’t see why that makes any difference, besides, I do actually have short breaks in my consciouness once a day or so, usually an night. It’s every bit as valid to argue that the person (that is the gestalt of my brain states) that awoke this morning is just someone who merely thinks he is the same person that lived yesterday. I don’t even see why there needs to be a break; the brain states that composed ‘me’ five minutes ago simply don’t exist any more - all I have is a memory of them - a copy or a transported person would have no less.
I wouldn’t use the transporter. If it was the kind of transporter that actually disassembled me and put me back together again on the other side—or just shoved me through a wormhole—then maybe. Probably, even. But if it was the kind that just made a perfect copy of me, then no.
If the fellow who came out the other side was considered to “count” as “me,” then hell, good luck to him. But he’s still just my identical twin, and my consciousness just died. The thing that’s looking out through my eyeballs right now would no longer exist.
I mentioned the possibility that a similar thing happens when you go to sleep at night but I’d consider that more of a car engine idling than it being switched off and restarted.
In the transporter there would be a different break in continuity of conciousness, in everyday living any changes are a smooth gradual progression, sure you aren’t the same person you were five minutes ago but you gradually changed into the person you are now.
Ok so, when you step into the teleported you die. And a perfect replica who thinks he’s you comes out the other side. You won’t care, because you’re dead and no longer capable of thinking let along caring. Your copy won’t care, because he has all of your thoughts and memories and can’t tell that he’s not you. Everyone else won’t care, because to them the copy is you. He know all of the jokes you know, loves the same people you love, etc.
And for clarification, I do believe that your consciousness can’t be plopped into the copy. Just that for all intents and purposes beyond purely theoretical, it has been.
What if you drink until you pass out? There is definately a break in consciousness, no? Yet you’re the same person.
The Mind Backup is easy, IMO, in that one creates a copy of one’s self. One dies and one’s self is gone to wherever one’s beliefs dictate. The copy is then booted up into a new body (or one’s old body). The process doesn’t bring immortality through a series of backups any more than the Ford corporation makes Henry Ford immortal by existing forever.
Suppose we could copy a person exactly. We create two Bobs, let’s say. One Bob is the original Bob, one is the copy. If we kill the original Bob, he is now dead and has ceased to exist as a going concern—except for his function as a public health hazard. The copy is not Bob. The Mind Backup suffers the same problem; the only difference is that we wait for Bob to die before creating the copy.
Teleportation, as described, I’m not so sure about. Suppose one fell into a coma for twenty-one years. Is it really true that all the cells in one’s body are replaced every seven years? If so, then when one wakes from the coma, one will be no more one’s original self than after the teleportation. I confess, that I would eschew the teleportation device. At least at this point I would.
Ok so, when you step into the teleported you die. And a perfect replica who thinks he’s you comes out the other side. You won’t care, because you’re dead and no longer capable of thinking let along caring. Your copy won’t care, because he has all of your thoughts and memories and can’t tell that he’s not you. Everyone else won’t care, because to them the copy is you. He know all of the jokes you know, loves the same people you love, etc.*
What if the teleportation process didn’t destroy the original and after confirmation was received that your double had safely arrived on the other side someone handed you a gun to blow your brains out. After all it doesn’t matter anyway right?
The only difference between this and the original scenario is that the original is an automated process (and a lot less bloody).
*js_africanus
What if you drink until you pass out? There is definately a break in consciousness, no? Yet you’re the same person.*
As I said above this is a complicated one that I’m not sure about but I’d view drinking into unconciousness, or falling asleep, more akin to putting a car engine into idle rather than turning it completely off and on again as the transporter would do.
The coma scenario I’m even less sure about, aren’t coma’s a very poorly understood phenonemen in general?
I’d certainly take the second option, at least until I died a few times. Then I’d see how annoying the missing time got. I’m less sure about the teleporting; there’s something that bothers me a little about having to put myself in the situation.
Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (and subsequent Bitchun Society stories… I know he wrote at least one more) made a very good point about it: a society of immortals doesn’t have to argue with its critics, only outlive them.
As for the teleporter, if the same energy is used I would have no problem with it. If other energy is used (like if the disassembly transporeter reported to the reassemble transporter that you have to use 2.04 gigawatts of power, go find it on your own) then it is kill and clone - just my humble O.
Mind backup, there is no point, except for resaerch, there is nothing of you left.
It’s not consciousness since I believe that’s just an illusion. It’s the electrons, protons and various fields in your brain and body. Living as we do now they all obew the laws of physics as we know them. But with the teleporter each and every one of those things are just like that equation I mentioned early. They go from a history with smooth change in tangents to a sudden break. And even though none of those things makes us who we are the amount of the similarity in the composition of my body from second to second is very high. Giving us the ability to say what is us.
Basically what I’m saying is that our connection with who we are is already so tenuous (unless you believe in something supernatural) that I don’t particularly feel like fiddling with it unless I absolutely had to.
You know, putting this aside this would be a criminals greatest treasure. Convicted murderer’s on the run. Copies himself without killing the original, knocks the copy out and lets the police catch it.
I’d be scared something would go wrong and I’d turn into The Fly. The 1950s one, with the fake-fur head and the big shiny eyes.
Of course, I’d still be able to think and write like a man, and I could live on rum-spiked milk. But having people scream their guts out every time they met me would get me down.
John Varley wrote some short stories that includes mind back-up, but he used it as a plot device, and didn’t explore the philosophical implications, AFAIK.
Well, I see no one expanded on my transmat post. No matter. I will still explore this possibility. As I understood the book, rather than
, the transmat scans your body and stores the information. It then disintegrates your body as part of a separate step. Later, your body is reassembled at the next transmat booth. Even though they are placed so close together, they are separate steps. Thus, to answer the OP’s question, I would only use the technology, provided I first did the following:
[ol]
[li]Beg, borrow, or steal two transmat booths.[/li][li]Place them inside a faraday cage. (that is so they don’t send a signal to the manufacturer, stating I am about to tamper with them.)[/li][li]Tamper.[/li][li]I=Hopefully, I will be able to send an object between A and B, without disintegrating the original object.[/li][/ol] What was the point of all this? Not really much, besides the fact that I know feel I know enough about them to know how they work, and will feel safe. That, plus the fact that I can now make all the (blank) I want.