RangerWickett
Legend
As an emergency escape device, sure.
As daily travel? I'm leaning toward yes.
The me that exists this instant is not the same me that existed a moment before. We're linked in a chronolinear sense, and we're close enough that I feel a sense of continuity, a definition of my 'self.'
I don't know if I'll be alive in 50 years, but I'd like some of my 'self' to carry on, either through kids that I've raised, or memories and ideas I've given my friends. Would I trade a total continuity with an earlier version of myself for a near continuity and the ability to jaunt all over the world in a hurry? Heck yeah.
Now, it'd be less philosophically challenging if the technology was a sort of spatial shifting instead of disintegration and recreation. Like, I always hoped Trek transporters actually worked by creating a billion tiny wormholes that were perfectly aligned to suck your molecules and deposit them in the right spot on the far side. But even then, even if all the molecules are the same molecules that made you up in the first place, will they necessarily be arranged exactly the same as they were before the teleportation?
As daily travel? I'm leaning toward yes.
The me that exists this instant is not the same me that existed a moment before. We're linked in a chronolinear sense, and we're close enough that I feel a sense of continuity, a definition of my 'self.'
I don't know if I'll be alive in 50 years, but I'd like some of my 'self' to carry on, either through kids that I've raised, or memories and ideas I've given my friends. Would I trade a total continuity with an earlier version of myself for a near continuity and the ability to jaunt all over the world in a hurry? Heck yeah.
Now, it'd be less philosophically challenging if the technology was a sort of spatial shifting instead of disintegration and recreation. Like, I always hoped Trek transporters actually worked by creating a billion tiny wormholes that were perfectly aligned to suck your molecules and deposit them in the right spot on the far side. But even then, even if all the molecules are the same molecules that made you up in the first place, will they necessarily be arranged exactly the same as they were before the teleportation?