Would it make a difference if the laws of physics prevent or allow a machine from operating in ‘duplicate’ mode?

  • PonyOfWar@pawb.social
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    20 hours ago

    Depends on whether they would work by actually moving me through space (using a wormhole or something) or by disintegrating me at point A and creating a copy at point B. In the latter case, I probably wouldn’t use them.

    • Apeman42@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Yeah, I’d risk it walking through a Stargate, but the Enterprise transporter can fuck all the way off.

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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        10 hours ago

        We see their perspective though in an episode. It transports and preserves your consciousness somehow. You apparently even see lights.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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        17 hours ago

        Like a solid 4th of trek episodes involve some sort of transporter malfunction. I’m not getting in one either.

    • Lemming6969@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      There’s no difference. The universe could be destroying you and recreating you every Planck second, and it’s indistinguishable from continuous existence.

      • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        13 hours ago

        The problem with that line of thought is that even if it is true, it doesn’t apply here, because when you create a perfect copy of yourself, you don’t magically get a shared continuity where you experience the continuity of both the original and the copy. There would now be two independent chains of experience, and even if every chain of experience is endless destruction with continuity just being a trick of memory, there would still be two divergent continuities now, and one of those would end.

        • Lemming6969@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          True but that’s already happening in theory. All copies would argue they are the original even if their futures diverge. None would think otherwise or have an experience any different than our moment to moment continuity as it stands now. That’s only apparent to a 3rd party.

          • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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            12 hours ago

            From the perspective of a 3rd party, it’s a technicality. From the perspective of the original continued consciousness, it’s not.

            • Lemming6969@lemmy.world
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              11 hours ago

              They would both have the exact same continued consciousness, that only diverges later. Only an outside party can tell there are 2 separate lineages.

    • SpicyAnt@mander.xyzOP
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      19 hours ago

      I am thinking of a case where it is ‘disintegration’ and ‘re-integration’, but making use of some physics that prevent making a copy. For example, let’s say that the mechanism relies on a step for which the ‘no-cloning theorem’ applies. In this hypothetical scenario, a commonly held belief is that the inability to make a copy retains the person’s identity. It is a similar logic to how a person remains who they are from childhood and through adulthood despite the atoms that compose them changing over time.