Source Page. Credit is to SMBC-Comics and even more credit to @aperson@beehaw.org who noticed it was missing and found the credit in this comment. Sorry about that and thanks, you're awesome aperson <3
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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If your consciousness exists right down to conversationally-induced existential dread, what do you care what or where the substrate it exists on is?
As long as poutine still exists and my elbows are still as sensuous then I don't care what happens.
The idea is that it does not exist. I have this worry about transporters (or would if they were real). I can only look at it as that one consciousness ends, truly dies. On the other end out pops a consciousness that thinks it is the same person, but is actually a new person, who will live only until it enters the next transporter.
In other words, whatever you think the rest of your life is going to be, post-transporter, will be unknown to you, because you will be dead, and that future will be lived by someone who believes themselves to be you, but is not.
I don't say this to be argumentative - I WISH I didn't view transporters this way - it ruins Trek for me if I let myself think about it, and I'd love to be convinced I'm wrong.
If they act the way I would act and have my memories how is that not me?
So if a perfect copy of you existed, you'd be okay with being executed if it were painless? The other you lives exactly as you would,
I see no reason to execute me when I could just fuck my clone, but if there were a copy of my and a bomb was set to go off I'd chill in one perspective's last moments.
Couldn't be me. Another me existing would only mean my family wouldn't have to mourn me, but I couldn't just accept death because of it.
Of course they wouldn't mourn you. You'd still exist and everything is gravy.
He wouldn't exist. A copy of him that they could not distinguish would exist. He'd be dead.
If you say that doesn't matter to you, fine, but I don't think it's hard to grasp why a lot of folks wouldn't be OK with it, especially as a daily form of transportation.
If any entity that affects the world in the exact way I would is affecting the world the way I would have it affected, "I" exist.
My dreams, memories, hopes, and desires propagate through what we call existence and there is zero difference if i was stored in a computer for a little while and or there is two of me.
That was part of my point. It would be one less thing to worry about, my family doesn't suffer the loss, but it doesn't change that I wouldn't just let myself die because of it.
You aren't dying. You're just moving.