this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I definitely don't think teleportation in science fiction is meant to be killing the person using it and making a clone of them. Like unless a story is specifically about that, I don't think any given sci-fi author is trying to set up some sinister background plot where everyone is unknowingly killing themselves all the time.
But I do still have to wonder if that's how it would end up working out in real life. Sure all our cells have died and been replaced since we were born, but that typically doesn't happen with all your cells at the same time lol. imo it's probably less about cells and more about like... Consciousness or "the soul" or whatever, I don't know. Whatever it is, I accept that teleporters in fiction have some way to store and transport it, whether it's stated in the narrative or not. But in real life I have no idea how we'd be able to tell if such a thing could even work.
In real life, I think we'd probably glean some insights to the soul in the development process. Like say, if one of the first human test subjects goes through it, only to have their personality irrevocably changed, and no one can identify any external reasons why, then that would warrant further research before billions of humans start using it and it becomes an actual problem.
I think part of my "resistance" to this question is that by default, I'm approaching it from the assumption that I'm living in some hypothetical world where a teleporter is as common and everyday as a car or train, and extrapolating from there, so a lot of the hypotheticals don't exist for me because I'm imagining public use. "What if someone puts the version of you that didn't teleport in their basement" well then they would have to coerce me out of the presumably public location for teleports between cities or wherever, because if I step on a pad expecting to be halfway across the globe in two seconds and instead I'm still in the same room, I'm not gonna leave until it's explained to me what went wrong and I'm given assurances for future service and compensation for the failure that already happened.
"oh well what if it only created copies of you" well then it probably wouldn't supplant any existing forms of transportation :), and of course then I wouldn't use it to get around.