Exactly. The “me” of yesterday is already dead. He can’t think, feel, act, reason, or anything else. I have memories of being him, but if I’d suffered head trauma, even those could be gone. The illusion of continuous, conscious experience is just that—an illusion.
The young-Earth people say that their god created the world about 6,000 years ago, and planted fossils to test our faith. I say that my god created the universe 6 seconds ago, including these memories that we seem to have. There’s literally no way to prove otherwise.
This is simultaneously the most depressing and most realistic take on the subject I’ve ever read. I’ve always considered time travel to the past to be impossible because the past already happened and is gone, there is nothing to go “back” to. Time is an arrow that only points to the future and is forever in motion, never leaving a trail behind.
With that said, I can still enjoy time-travel fiction for what it is, a fantasy, and suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy it.
And yet you have a vested interest in your continued survival. If you stepped into a transporter and it failed to disassemble you on departure, you would very much protest if a maintenance technician attempted manual disassembly
That’s not a philosophical objection, though, it’s just instinct. If the transporter made a copy of me, the copy would also very much object to this proposed method of error correction.
Exactly. The “me” of yesterday is already dead. He can’t think, feel, act, reason, or anything else. I have memories of being him, but if I’d suffered head trauma, even those could be gone. The illusion of continuous, conscious experience is just that—an illusion.
The young-Earth people say that their god created the world about 6,000 years ago, and planted fossils to test our faith. I say that my god created the universe 6 seconds ago, including these memories that we seem to have. There’s literally no way to prove otherwise.
This is simultaneously the most depressing and most realistic take on the subject I’ve ever read. I’ve always considered time travel to the past to be impossible because the past already happened and is gone, there is nothing to go “back” to. Time is an arrow that only points to the future and is forever in motion, never leaving a trail behind.
With that said, I can still enjoy time-travel fiction for what it is, a fantasy, and suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy it.
“Life is a message scribbled in the dark.”
And yet you have a vested interest in your continued survival. If you stepped into a transporter and it failed to disassemble you on departure, you would very much protest if a maintenance technician attempted manual disassembly
Not being in prolonged excruciating pain is very much part of the appeal of the transporter.
Lol, love the “manual disassembly” terminology.
That’s not a philosophical objection, though, it’s just instinct. If the transporter made a copy of me, the copy would also very much object to this proposed method of error correction.