• FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    If your consciousness exists right down to conversationally-induced existential dread, what do you care what or where the substrate it exists on is?

    • Stamets@startrek.websiteOP
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      1 year ago

      As long as poutine still exists and my elbows are still as sensuous then I don’t care what happens.

    • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The idea is that it does not exist. I have this worry about transporters (or would if they were real). I can only look at it as that one consciousness ends, truly dies. On the other end out pops a consciousness that thinks it is the same person, but is actually a new person, who will live only until it enters the next transporter.

      In other words, whatever you think the rest of your life is going to be, post-transporter, will be unknown to you, because you will be dead, and that future will be lived by someone who believes themselves to be you, but is not.

      I don’t say this to be argumentative - I WISH I didn’t view transporters this way - it ruins Trek for me if I let myself think about it, and I’d love to be convinced I’m wrong.

        • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          So if a perfect copy of you existed, you’d be okay with being executed if it were painless? The other you lives exactly as you would,

          • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I see no reason to execute me when I could just fuck my clone, but if there were a copy of my and a bomb was set to go off I’d chill in one perspective’s last moments.

            • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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              1 year ago

              Couldn’t be me. Another me existing would only mean my family wouldn’t have to mourn me, but I couldn’t just accept death because of it.

                • He wouldn’t exist. A copy of him that they could not distinguish would exist. He’d be dead.

                  If you say that doesn’t matter to you, fine, but I don’t think it’s hard to grasp why a lot of folks wouldn’t be OK with it, especially as a daily form of transportation.

                  • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    If any entity that affects the world in the exact way I would is affecting the world the way I would have it affected, “I” exist.

                    My dreams, memories, hopes, and desires propagate through what we call existence and there is zero difference if i was stored in a computer for a little while and or there is two of me.

                • Default_Defect@midwest.social
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                  1 year ago

                  That was part of my point. It would be one less thing to worry about, my family doesn’t suffer the loss, but it doesn’t change that I wouldn’t just let myself die because of it.