$me = "π§";
$stillMe = & $me;
unset($me);
print($stillMe); // wohoo, teleportation rocks!!!
$me = "π§";
$copyOfMe = $me;
unset($me); // π this sucks!!!
print($copyOfMe); // wait, what happened?
Comic Strips
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β Correct: https://xkcd.com/386/
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Web of Links
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the reference never changed position in memory, so nothing actually happened during the teleportation process other than a re-labelling.
For real teleportation, that memory has to physically change position. I would do it gradually though, bit-by-bit, synchronized, and very fast.
The idea is that if you slow it down, you witness half-yourself getting destroyed exactly as you witness your other half getting created, with the only carry-over being a single 1 or a 0
So teleportation is like going into the woodchipper feet first? Ok, now I slowly understand McCoys problems with that invention.

Arent we kinda new every micromoment? I mean, the electrons powering our feelings and deeds are new every moment in time. The atoms we are made of are exchanged over time so we arent even the same matter after x many years... So we are never who we were before. Dying seems to be a part of living, not just the end...
Edit: even the Information saved in our bain change over time, they get more. And remembering things isnt correct every time so even the quality of information changes...
Whew. So that wasn't me on video last night. π
The crimes of Theseus
Yes. I think this thought experiment ultimately boils down to "do you believe in a soul".
Not necessarily, I see it as "stream of consciousness". And no, sleep isn't the same as your stream of consciousness completely ending and then a clone of it starting up somewhere else.
I don't believe in souls, but I sure as shit wouldn't go through a Star Trek style teleporter. Many people seem to think that since the clone that pops out the other end is identical to them, down to the brainwaves, that it doesn't matter. They don't seem to comprehend or care that from THEIR point of view, they would die.
The fact a perfect copy has replaced me would not be of any solace, if anything it makes it scarier.
It's the "or care" for me. Death and sleep strike me aa much the same and as long as I wake up somewhere after I don't care which it was.








Never bought into the whole, "sleep is the same thing," argument. There's no period during which your brain functions cease during sleep. They slow during non-REM sleep, then reach near waking levels once you enter REM, but they never end. That's not remotely like having your entire body disassembled at molecular level and rebuilt somewhere else. One is essentially like a computer that's screen has gone idle while it performs background tasks. The other is like transferring all of your files to a new computer and then throwing the original into a woodchipper.
Conciousness, what makes you, you, is not your brain functions. A "braindead" person usually still has a functioning part of the brain that regulates heartbeat. But the parts that are required for conciousness are gone.
The point behind the sleep analogy isn't that everything shuts down as in death, but your conciousness shuts down. It's more like a computer that has suspended it's processes to disk (aka hibernated) but then went into low-power mode instead of powering off completely. You can wake it back up and it restart these processes. You could even buy a new computer identical to the old one, copy the hard drive over bit by bit and have the new computer launch all the old processes. Are they then the same processes or different ones? A calculation that was suspended will pick up where it left of after all.
Conciousness, what makes you, you, is not your brain functions.
This is an extremely debatable assertion that scientists and philosophers will still be debating long after you and I are dead, but empirically, the evidence is pointing towards, "No, your consciousness is just a byproduct of that lump of meat in your skull." Phineas Gage, for example, discovered that a huge portion of what made him, him was actually his left-frontal lobe.
We could argue about conciousness, the soul, and the ship of theses for hours, and it would all still be opinion, but what is not opinion is this; your consciousness is being run on meat hardware, physical damage to or a chemical imbalance in that hardware will effect your consciousness, and it is constantly running processes, even when in sleep mode, until it is permanently shutdown. Based on that information, I would not let anyone disintegrate my brain, even if fhey reassembled it perfectly.
It doesnβt actually shut down though. Did the person behind this theory not have dreams?
You don't dream the whole time you're asleep. Not to mention non-sleep unconsciousness like anesthesia.
Hence me using an analogy where the computer also doesn't actually shut down
That is one theory of how teleportation will work. Otherwise, you have a replication machine.
Star Trek has multiple stories about people being accidentally cloned by the transporter.
Which implies it is creating a copy.
Which implies it is destroying the original.
In the TNG episode Lonely Among Us, while under the influence of an alien entity, Picard disintegrates himself into a nebula. The crew spend hours trying to get him back and are about to give up, when Troi senses Picard's disembodied presence nearby, and they are able to reconstitute his body from the transporter buffer, reuniting it with his mental energy.
So Star Trek has effectively confirmed the scientific existence of the soul, and the fact that it exists independently of the body, and that the soul can continue to exist without the body, and that the transporter can transport the soul without destroying it. So, no, the transporter is not a suicide machine.
"the prestige: intensifies
Star Trek transporters.
Shades of The Prestige?
In fairness to Mr Tesla, his machine didn't kill. It made a perfect living duplicate. (The magician on the other hand...)
what is this prestige that everyone keeps talking about?
The Prestige is a movie where Wolverine and Batman fight in a battle of who is the best magician. David Bowie makes a teleportation machine for Logan to teleport across the entire theater to the shock of the audience.
Tap for spoiler
But we learn that the machine is not a teleporter, but a distance copier--the original Logan still remains on the pad while his copy stands across the expanse, beaming triumphantly down on the amazed audience. Logan rigs a trap door for his original self to fall through and drown every night, and every night, he never knows if he will be the one to die or the one to live.
Reading this was better than the actual movie.
But the movie also has Alfred!
Oh, yeah, dang... I forgot about that.
so was reading what you just said.
Unreadable quality
Try this:
![[Repost of the comic from OP]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3da386f9-dfba-4bee-96a0-093e0e790386.jpeg)
(I just opened the image in a separate browser)