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!
Fair question.
I’m assuming that if your soul really is “you” then a soulless clone of you that is identical to you down to every atom, but had no soul, would be bad.
I don’t know if that means your soulless clone would just be an instinct driven animal, or maybe just an evil version of you that immediately grows a goatee. I don’t know what function your soul actually performs. But at some point, maybe not immediately, a bunch of soulless clones walking around would be noticed.
Maybe? (Or maybe not?)
As far as an outside observer is concerned, the clone is identical to you in every way. But now you’re the outside observer, a dead outside observer, while that clone goes on and lives your life.
It’s not really about a ‘soul’, but your first person perspective of being you and not being someone else. Imagine if the teleporter malfunctioned and created the clone without disassembling you. That clone isn’t ‘you’, and disassembling you still wouldn’t make the clone you.
If you have no soul and you just exist as matter, then in a horrible transporter accident where your clone and your original still exist, now there are two of you. You are both you. There is no difference if you are both perfect copies of each other. 1=1.
Sounds like a win/win to me, finally a best friend who really gets me.
You wouldn’t experience being the clone though. You’d only be one of you, the other person is completely separate.
Hopefully my clone likes me as much as I like me.
You’re assuming that souls exist. That may be a mistake.
Agreed. That’s my point. I don’t really know if we have a soul. If transporter technology existed and worked as theorized, then it would answer a bunch of questions that have been plaguing humanity.
If everything that I am can be duplicated by making a perfect copy of me atom for atom, then there is nothing to fear from transporter technology.
Souls are useless in any case.
If you’re satisfied that a perfect copy of you takes your place after your obliteration, sure.
I disagree, if your current consciousness is all a result of your brain’s functions then creating an exact copy somewhere else creates a second consciousness. It’s “You” in the sense that it believes it’s you, it behaves like you, and no one else would be able to see any difference because there wouldn’t be one. But it’s a new consciousness in a new brain.
The thing to fear then is what happens to that first original consciousness, that’s the “real” you.
Spiritualists think they are some timeless deity puppeteering their bodies like marionettes, afraid that using the transporter will cut the strings. More palatable to imagine the fleshbag collapsing on the floor without your control inputs than knowing you are the fleshbag…