this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2026
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Yeah but once you step in the teleporter you stop being. The copy is only useful for other people to keep interacting with your clone, but the actual you is dead.
What happens to "you" several years from now when every cell in your body has been replaced by mitosis?
It's a "I think therefore I am" kind of thing. I know I'm the same person I was five years ago, just with some new memories, and some memories have faded. But I am still the same person.
I don't know whether you are the same person you were five years ago.
The show "Earth 2" in the 90s had an interesting concept in the backstory where not every human had a soul, and they made a device that could detect whether people had souls. I sometimes wonder if that's the case, not everyone is actually a sentient being and just a biological machine.
Of course there's no way to know, so we have to assume that if someone is a human, they are sentient. Same logic as the TNG episode "Measure of a Man", but it applies to humans just as it does to robots.
So what? There would be persistent awareness. The new me would remember everything up to the old me’s death and keep living. I’m fine with that.
If you don't mind there's no problem, of course, but quite a few people want to keep living. If you told a terminally ill person "so you'll die, but don't worry cause we can clone you and tell everybody you got better" I think "oh well then no problem" wouldn't be a universal answer.
Would you be cool going into the execution chamber and getting shot to transport yourself? Would the memory of the death make a difference, or the ability to visit your previous remains? What happens if there is an accident and the new you wakes up, but the execution chamber fails and the old you is still alive?
As far as you know. You wouldn't know what they modified.
Id be more fine with not remembering but to each their own
There's no “actual” you. Your body creates a sense of an “I”. If you copy that body including the brain, the copy will have the same. You wouldn't say that the copy’s sense of smell is somehow different, so why make a distinction for the sense of self?
Because I don't really care about what the copy can do and think, because I'll be dead. My self disappears, even if someone else has a copy of it.
What makes you think that “your self” exists as anything else but an emergent property of your brain existing?
You're just describing a feeling that we all share, but there's no indication that it's more than that. Check out my writings about this topic (link to a scientific book coming to the same conclusion at the end)
https://phil.red/blog/2025/9/5/identity-illusion
A man cannot step into the same river twice