Define 'you'.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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If it's jot you then the question becomes, are you willing to commit suicide so a reasonable facsimile of you can save some strangers.
I'm willing to die to save people, so if some version of me actually gets to survive it, with there being a chance that it is me, then there's no reason for me not to do it.
Are you willing to die to save any people?
People dumb enough to nap on a trolley trail? No. rich people? Also no.
Actually this would be faster the other way around.
Orphans with chronic diseases who, should they be saved stand a reasonable chance at a cure and a long, prosperous and happy life?
Also no.
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Clone myself.
Send clone through teleporter to pull lever.
360 no scope snipe the imposter clone motherfucker.
Claim credit for saving people.
Is cloning that much faster than running to the lever? Do you also keep a cloning machin always handy on you?
The teleporter is basically a cloning machine
Are there any flies buzzing around?
No but theres billions of microbes on you
Doesn't it depend if the teleporter open a up a wormhole or used replication?
If you teleport the people off the tracks then you can kill them all while still taking credit for saving them.
Depends if teleportation uses TCP or UDP
UDP teleportation sounds pretty questionable.
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You’ve shed and replaced every atom that you were made of when you were born and many times over since then, are you still that same entity?
Yeah, but you didn't shed them all at once. If the ship of Theseus exploded, and then they built a new one, the question wouldn't be, "Which is the true ship of Theseus?" it would be, "Hey, did you guys see Theseus' new ship?"
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The Trolly Problem of Thesius
The traveling salesmans trolley problem of Theseus if you try to find out first how to get everywhere efficiently.
It won't be me and, unless I have some loved one there, I'm not thoughtlessly jumping into suicide.
If it's a wormhole or Niven-style teleporter, it's unarguably you coming through the process. Star Trek... I'll grant that the conversation gets a little more complicated.
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I think teleportation is a really interesting philosophical question. If life is deterministic and there is no soul, then there should be no problem with teleportation. From a deterministic atheist perspective it should not be a problem, I wouldn't teleport myself though 😅
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Doesn't that make it even more selfless?
Define "you." An identical collection and pattern of atoms and subatomic particles? Then yes. A continuous consciousness as experienced by the "me" on the entry side of the teleporter? No.
Would I kill myself to save five lives and create one? Yes
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My concern would be less about whether it sends the original or creates a perfect copy, but more about how reliable it is. Getting Riker'd/Boimler'd would be okay, but having more than a negligible chance of any other sort of transporter accident would definitely give me pause.
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I tend to think what "you" are is the pattern formed by the various electrical and chemical signals in your brain and whatever other parts of your body are involved in cognition, and since patterns are ultimately information, and a completely identical copy of some information is the same information with nothing to distinguish it, that a sufficiently perfect copy of you literally is you, and as such, if the teleporter works the way fictional teleporters are generally described as working, then yes, it is you.
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But if I don't do it, I'm not who I think I am.
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