this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
175 points (95.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43510 readers
1442 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well, if the technology actually existed, it would solve that whole "soul" question.
We would know pretty quickly if we transported humans and they came out the other side as soulless aberrations because their original just got killed.
So yeah, I would 100% use it after it first proved once and for all that the sum of our consciousness really is all the synapses and signals and grey matter in our heads. Because if so then what does it matter if your original matter has been erased and then recreated. Your clone is just as much you as you are you at that point.
How would you know?
Fair question.
I'm assuming that if your soul really is "you" then a soulless clone of you that is identical to you down to every atom, but had no soul, would be bad.
I don't know if that means your soulless clone would just be an instinct driven animal, or maybe just an evil version of you that immediately grows a goatee. I don't know what function your soul actually performs. But at some point, maybe not immediately, a bunch of soulless clones walking around would be noticed. Maybe?
As far as an outside observer is concerned, the clone is identical to you in every way. But now you're the outside observer, a dead outside observer, while that clone goes on and lives your life.
It's not really about a 'soul', but your first person perspective of being you and not being someone else. Imagine if the teleporter malfunctioned and created the clone without disassembling you. That clone isn't 'you', and disassembling you still wouldn't make the clone you.
If you have no soul and you just exist as matter, then in a horrible transporter accident where your clone and your original still exist, now there are two of you. You are both you. There is no difference if you are both perfect copies of each other. 1=1.
Sounds like a win/win to me, finally a best friend who really gets me.
You wouldn't experience being the clone though. You'd only be one of you, the other person is completely separate.
Hopefully my clone likes me as much as I like me.
You're assuming that souls exist. That may be a mistake.
Spiritualists think they are some timeless deity puppeteering their bodies like marionettes, afraid that using the transporter will cut the strings. More palatable to imagine the fleshbag collapsing on the floor without your control inputs than knowing you are the fleshbag...
Agreed. That's my point. I don't really know if we have a soul. If transporter technology existed and worked as theorized, then it would answer a bunch of questions that have been plaguing humanity.
If everything that I am can be duplicated by making a perfect copy of me atom for atom, then there is nothing to fear from transporter technology.
Souls are useless in any case.
If you're satisfied that a perfect copy of you takes your place after your obliteration, sure.