The copy-paste teleporter problem

[AbyssGazer]

Let's say you were living in a world where teleportation was commonplace. A mundane activity like taking the car to work.

One day, top secret information is revealed to you that the teleporters are copy and paste, not cut and paste. The person stepping in to the teleporter is killed a millisecond after the newly created copy is created at the intended destination. The killing is not some unavoidable side effect but a deliberate feature secretly installed to avoid the problems that would otherwise arise.

You have memories of using the teleporter daily for decades. Now you suddenly realise that in a sense you were born today, and will in the same sense die tomorrow if you take the teleporter to work.

Now let's say your livelihood and even being functional in society depends on using the teleporter. Not using it would be the equivalent of not using electricity in current year. You currently live a great and fulfilling life.

It is not possible for you to alter the teleporter to remove the kill feature. Will you rationalize the whole thing away and go to work tomorrow, or will you never use a teleporter again?

 

[Breadbassket]

The society that made the "teleporters" should be destroyed for wasting good cloning technology.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

No one sane would use the teleporter after learning it, and in general those questions are just gay "what if something mundane was actually horrifying" that's not really worth considering.

Now if you'll excuse me I have a train to catch

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

The movie Prestige has a copy-and-paste teleportation device, and the person who makes use of it uses it in such a scenario where the leftover copy is immediately trapped to drown to death. At the end of the movie, a lot of sacrificed copies are visible.
In the video game Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, there is also a kind of copy-and-paste machine, and the fate of the remaining copies is also shown. Namely, them passing the time in an underground bunker until food runs out and they inevitably die.

 

[AbyssGazer]

No one sane would use the teleporter after learning it

You sure about that? On the contrary I'm certain 99% of normies would just push the though aside. "I've already done it a million times, so what?"

That's some kick-ass music btw.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

You sure about that? On the contrary I'm certain 99% of normies would just push the though aside. "I've already done it a million times, so what?"

Unless they are too idiotic to think on it then no. Now if you had it so the the teleporter creates a clone of you and then kills that clone for some reason, that would be a more interesting scenario, since you yourself don't die.

 

[Daddy's Angry Juice]

The movie Prestige has a copy-and-paste teleportation device, and the person who makes use of it uses it in such a scenario where the leftover copy is immediately trapped to drown to death. At the end of the movie, a lot of sacrificed copies are visible.
In the video game Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, there is also a kind of copy-and-paste machine, and the fate of the remaining copies is also shown. Namely, them passing the time in an underground bunker until food runs out and they inevitably die.

There was also the video game Soma where when someone sends their consciousness to another body/device they are just making a copy of their consciousness to the new body, while the old one is simply left behind to live out whatever shitty fate they have.

 

[Tablet County]

Will you rationalize the whole thing away and go to work tomorrow, or will you never use a teleporter again?

Why are you asking me? I have already been obliterated by the teleporter.Ask the other me walking around in my skin.

 

[AbyssGazer]

There was also the video game Soma where when someone sends their consciousness to another body/device they are just making a copy of their consciousness to the new body, while the old one is simply left behind to live out whatever shitty fate they have.

That's the story that made me think about the whole thing in the first place. One of my all time fav games.

 

[CoolFool]

You sure about that? On the contrary I'm certain 99% of normies would just push the though aside. "I've already done it a million times, so what?"

That's some kick-ass music btw.

That would be my mindset. The original me has already died, and I've "died" a bunch of times already. If I die instantly and have no memory of it, then who really cares at this point?

 

[Stephanie Bustcakes]

That would be my mindset. The original me has already died, and I've "died" a bunch of times already. If I die instantly and have no memory of it, then who really cares at this point?

I, personally, am not going to kill myself just because a bunch of other people did it.

 

[Tanuki Mixed Nuts]

Copy/paste deez nuts motherfucker

 

[winterfag]

Depends on whether or not the clone is six inches tall

 

[McMitch]

There was also the video game Soma where when someone sends their consciousness to another body/device they are just making a copy of their consciousness to the new body, while the old one is simply left behind to live out whatever shitty fate they have.

My favorite part is that the main character never actually comprehends the topic, and at the end when the satellite with copies of everyone is shot into space, he still asks why he’s been left behind.

Depends on whether or not the clone is six inches tall

If a teleporter functioned by making a clone of you, but it was six-inches-tall and actually a clone of Hitler, should you torture it?

 

[Mr. Racewar1488]

I'd keep quiet about it if they made a female version of myself so I could have a wife that wasn't annoying as fuck.

 

[Poteto]

how many things do we do every day without a second thought, but if you proposed it to someone a thousand years ago they would respond that they would rather die

 

[parameter]

Think like a dinosaur and balance the equation.

 

[El Goblina]

One of the best parts of Mickey 13 was dealing with the implications of this kind of technology, though it was more "post-death cloning" than anything. No spoilers because this premise was plain from even the previews.

 

[CoolFool]

I, personally, am not going to kill myself just because a bunch of other people did it.

But "you" have already died, at this point countless of times. The other thing is that in this fictional world where teleporters exist, I assume other horrifying dystopian things also exist, so I'm sure this wouldn't even be the worst thing on the list.

 

[We Are The Witches]

But that's what a teleporter is, there is an old video with Michio Kaku talking about it.

The problem is that your OP does not explain what the process of "dying" here means or how it occurs, because at first, it hints heavily towards the possiblity of something like a "soul" being present in the person. And through that shattering of the soul it's when dying and "reborning" occurs.

Otherwise it's a mere rearrange and recomposition of matter.

Through the same token we could say that you are dying every second/moment, and being reborn at the same time. Every time something changes in you, you are not the same, gradually this becomes more and more apparent over the years, but in an instant, we can say that your current consciousness is different from the one a single second ago.