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Why Teleportation Would Kill You

50 videos recommended on HN
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2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2016–2020 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Pointed to in threads about mind uploading and teleportation as a good, accessible look at personal identity.

CGP Grey asks whether Star Trek-style teleportation would kill you and recreate a copy, working through the philosophy of identity and the Ship of Theseus. It is a short animated explainer.

“CGP Grey has a good look at the question wrt Star Trek teleportation” (HN, 2018)

2 recommendations · 4 citations · Explainers

6 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@sillysaurus3 Mar 2017 Cites it
on HN thread Your yearly dose of is-the-universe-a-simulation
This runs into the question of whether you're a single person. [this video] [link] If you transplant half your brain into another body, and both of you wake up, which one is you? If you start swapping your atoms one by one with someone else, and neither of you die, at what point do you become the other person? Unfortunately questions like that are necessary in order to address the idea of a simulation afterlife. If our bodies are literally who we are, and our bodies disperse, it may not make sense to say that we can still be simulated after our bodies disappear.
Raises question of whether you are a single continuous person.
@bmn__ Apr 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming (2018)
> a YouTube video CGP Grey: The Trouble with Transporters [this video] Steve Shives: Is Star Trek's Transporter Actually a Murder Machine? [link] > why wouldn’t they just [link] For purpose of storytelling, these powerful side effects of transporters need to be restricted. Hence, as an in-universe explanation, a pattern buffer ∙ is a physical phenomenon that cannot be (fully) expressed as information ∙ deteriorates over time, so needs to be rematerialised soon. For the exception, see [link]
Cited on transporter trouble among other sources.

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