You know those sci-fi teleporters like in Star Trek where you disappear from one location then instantaneously reappear in another location? Do you trust that they are safe to use?
To fully understand my question, you need to understand the safety concerns regarding teleporters as explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI
spoiler
I wouldn’t, because the person that reappears aint me, its a fucking clone. Teleporters are murder machines. Star Trek is a silent massacre!
I don’t buy the idea that disintegrating my molecules and reconstructing new ones is tantamount to murder or suicide.
If all I experience is being one place one moment and another place the next, then it’s me. It’s isn’t some fucking clone, it’s me. You’re just being turned into some other form (energy, if we’re using Star Trek rules) and then being turned back.
I’m pretty sure that at 26, I’m already a completely different person than the baby I was born as, literally. My cells have all died and been replaced. The horror. ./s
I definitely don’t think teleportation in science fiction is meant to be killing the person using it and making a clone of them. Like unless a story is specifically about that, I don’t think any given sci-fi author is trying to set up some sinister background plot where everyone is unknowingly killing themselves all the time.
But I do still have to wonder if that’s how it would end up working out in real life. Sure all our cells have died and been replaced since we were born, but that typically doesn’t happen with all your cells at the same time lol. imo it’s probably less about cells and more about like… Consciousness or “the soul” or whatever, I don’t know. Whatever it is, I accept that teleporters in fiction have some way to store and transport it, whether it’s stated in the narrative or not. But in real life I have no idea how we’d be able to tell if such a thing could even work.