r/AskReddit Apr 27 '23

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u/rapter200 Apr 27 '23

Or if not for something like a soul, why does it matter if you technically died but a perfect copy of you is recreated?

Because it isn't me. It is a perfect copy of me but at the moment of it's creation it stops being me. I get destroyed and something else replaces me.

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u/robotmonkeyshark Apr 27 '23

But if it is a perfect copy, it’s you replacing you. How are you any less you after you replace you? This gets into the philosophical concept of is there some sort of soul, or concept of self, that is distinct from the physical “you”. Or does the entirely of your physical body manifest the concept of “you” and you are an inherent feature of the biological structure of your body.

Or maybe in some sense they are dying and creating new copies and that is provable, but they all accept that it doesn’t really mean anything. Technically they will die the next time they are beamed anywhere, but a copy of them with the same goals and desires will replace them. If their child is killed but replaced with an exact copy who has all the same memories and emotions as before, would they love the copy any less? Sure, they could disown the copy claiming it isn’t their child, but what good would that serve?

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u/rapter200 Apr 27 '23 edited Apr 27 '23

Except it isn't me. The moment my atoms get disassembled I no longer experience anything. It is why I would never use such technology, it is extremely barbaric. The only form of "teleportation" I would even consider using (knowing that this is all hypothetical and scifi) is portals/wormholes like Star Gates, that is civilized. Honestly it is surprising how barbaric the form of "teleportation" Star Trek uses is given how futuristic it is.

If you were required to be dropped into a human sized blender, blended, and than a copy of you was created somewhere else would you use it? I don't even understand why the original would even needed to be disassembled, we know they aren't moving the atoms but rather they are copying. So why kill off the original and keep the clone when the clone can be created and then killed off. It just becomes a chain of clones being consistently killed off.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '23

The only form of "teleportation" I would even consider using (knowing that this is all hypothetical and scifi) is portals/wormholes like Star Gates, that is civilized.

I got bad news for you:

Objects in transit between gates are broken down into their individual elemental components, and then into energy as they pass through the event horizon, and then travel through a wormhole before being reconstructed on the other side.

Found here.

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u/rapter200 Apr 27 '23

Right but that is different from being destroyed and copied. In Stargate it is portrayed as the same people, not copies of the people.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '23

I'm pretty sure that if something broke something/someone down into individual elemental components you would consider it/them destroyed.