Doctor Mad Scientist here has managed to create a truly miraculous machine: a working matter teleporter, just like in Star Trek! Step into the cool glowy chamber in room A, and the machine will break you down to your subatomic technobabble components and reconstruct you in room B. The process is infallible. There is no risk of arriving without certain parts, no risk of arriving inside an object, no risk of horrible mutation. The machine breaks you down and reconstructs you in another place, that's it.
The "you" to step out into room B will have all of your memories, all of your personality, every little thing that makes you "you". Objectively speaking, nothing at all has changed. The laws of thermodynamics remain un-violated. Nothing was created or destroyed: "you" just moved from one room to the other. Not even your own mother would be able to notice any kind of difference.
Of course, the "you" who stepped into the teleporter was destroyed. It had to be in order to provide the particles for the assembly of the "new"(?) you.
Subjective annihilation, objective transportation.
My question is simple: will you step into the teleporter? Please ignore the whole scientific side of this discussion, it's really not the important thing. What I am asking, in a sense, is would you really care about "dying" (ending your current "stream of consciousness", if you will, assuming we don't know anything about the supposed existence or nonexistence of the human soul) if from everybody else's point of view nothing really happens.
Maybe such technology is possible, maybe it isn't. Maybe we will get to see it during our own lifetime. It doesn't matter as much as the philosophical debate.
Discuss on, and good evening.
The "you" to step out into room B will have all of your memories, all of your personality, every little thing that makes you "you". Objectively speaking, nothing at all has changed. The laws of thermodynamics remain un-violated. Nothing was created or destroyed: "you" just moved from one room to the other. Not even your own mother would be able to notice any kind of difference.
Of course, the "you" who stepped into the teleporter was destroyed. It had to be in order to provide the particles for the assembly of the "new"(?) you.
Subjective annihilation, objective transportation.
My question is simple: will you step into the teleporter? Please ignore the whole scientific side of this discussion, it's really not the important thing. What I am asking, in a sense, is would you really care about "dying" (ending your current "stream of consciousness", if you will, assuming we don't know anything about the supposed existence or nonexistence of the human soul) if from everybody else's point of view nothing really happens.
Maybe such technology is possible, maybe it isn't. Maybe we will get to see it during our own lifetime. It doesn't matter as much as the philosophical debate.
Discuss on, and good evening.
