Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith for February 08, 2015

Transcript:

You know the Star Trek problem? The one where if you're obliterated but then reassembled, you are still dead, even though there is an exact duplicate of you. Yeah. Well, to me that means it's unethical to put someone in the teleporter machine because you're killing them. Sure. But what if you put something in the teleporter that isn't aware of its existence? Like, it's probably unethical to up and kill a million mice for no reason. But is it unethical to run the teleporter on the same mouse a million times? Or say a lady was in labor and the baby was stuck, and you could teleport it out. Would that be unethical? I mean, technically you still got the teleporter problem, but the baby won't remember. And what really weirds me out is teleporting the baby seems fine to me if you do it fast. Like, so there's only a discontinuity in space, not time but if you obliterate the baby, then reassemble it a year later, that seems more questionable somehow. I'm pretty sure this is the kind of stuff you get all figured out by the time you're a grown up. Well obviously.