So, let me rephrase the question: what observation is there to predict here?
That’s not the direction I was going with this. It isn’t about empirical observation, but rather aspects of morality which depend on subjective experience. The prediction is under what conditions subjective experience terminates. Even if not testable, that is still an important thing to find out, with moral implications.
Is it moral to use a teleporter? From what I can tell, that depends on whether the person’s subjective experience is terminated in the process. From the utility point of view the outcomes are very nearly the same—you’ve murdered one person, but given “birth” to an identical copy in the process. However if the original, now destroyed person didn’t want to die, or wouldn’t have wanted his clone to die, then it’s a net negative.
As I said elsewhere, the teleporter is the easiest way to think of this, but the result has many other implications from general anesthesia, to cryonics, to Pascal’s mugging and the basilisk.
That’s not the direction I was going with this. It isn’t about empirical observation, but rather aspects of morality which depend on subjective experience. The prediction is under what conditions subjective experience terminates. Even if not testable, that is still an important thing to find out, with moral implications.
Is it moral to use a teleporter? From what I can tell, that depends on whether the person’s subjective experience is terminated in the process. From the utility point of view the outcomes are very nearly the same—you’ve murdered one person, but given “birth” to an identical copy in the process. However if the original, now destroyed person didn’t want to die, or wouldn’t have wanted his clone to die, then it’s a net negative.
As I said elsewhere, the teleporter is the easiest way to think of this, but the result has many other implications from general anesthesia, to cryonics, to Pascal’s mugging and the basilisk.
OK. I’m tapping out here. Thanks for your time.