I mean, does it really matter? For all intents and purposes, the person coming out of the teleporter is me. They’ll have continuity of consciousness. You can argue about “oh it just kills you and makes a person exactly like you” like maybe so, but does it matter?
Now imagine it malfunctions and doesn’t vaporize you before creating the copy, but just creates the copy at the end point leaving you still standing in the transporter. Still you? If not, what’s changed?
then there’s two mes which immediately start to diverge into different people due to their different experiences, and the one left behind eventually joins the Maquis.
For the question posed it doesn’t really matter no. Assuming it works the way we expect it to in sci-fi and it’s an exact copy, for all intents and purposes it is you. There is nothing ethereal about the human consciousness—if everything is exactly as it should be, then you have all the pieces of “you” that are needed.
The teleporter dilemma only matters to the being using the device initially. If you’re vaporized, you die. You don’t have continuity of consciousness with a different set of atoms perfectly arranged to be you, even if they perceive that to be the case on the other side. Still you, just not the you that gets to continue to exist.
I mean, does it really matter? For all intents and purposes, the person coming out of the teleporter is me. They’ll have continuity of consciousness. You can argue about “oh it just kills you and makes a person exactly like you” like maybe so, but does it matter?
Now imagine it malfunctions and doesn’t vaporize you before creating the copy, but just creates the copy at the end point leaving you still standing in the transporter. Still you? If not, what’s changed?
then there’s two mes which immediately start to diverge into different people due to their different experiences, and the one left behind eventually joins the Maquis.
I mean, I can just kill myself the normal way
For the question posed it doesn’t really matter no. Assuming it works the way we expect it to in sci-fi and it’s an exact copy, for all intents and purposes it is you. There is nothing ethereal about the human consciousness—if everything is exactly as it should be, then you have all the pieces of “you” that are needed.
The teleporter dilemma only matters to the being using the device initially. If you’re vaporized, you die. You don’t have continuity of consciousness with a different set of atoms perfectly arranged to be you, even if they perceive that to be the case on the other side. Still you, just not the you that gets to continue to exist.