Love itThe text capture here sums up a recent Sunday of mine, trying to get from Denver to Durango. Is there any question why I love teleporting over, say, flying on airplanes? You can keep all the things that make flying terrible – the baggage-losing, the delicate flight crews, engine troubles, TSA feel-ups, the computer malfunctions. Sure, my molecules may be irreversibly damaged in the process, but it beats airplanes.
— David HolubHate ItWhat the hell is wrong with you people? You think that because you see it on “Star Trek” it’s safe? I absolutely, abhorrently, wrathfully say I will not get in your teleporter. I despise your teleporter. Your teleporter freaks me the f out. If your teleporter stood in front of me, I would hit it with my Luddite-stick.
Do I want the convenience of a machine that can transfer matter and energy to secondary locations? Yes. I would love to poke a button and phase onto the Charles Bridge in Prague or to a dance party on the dark side of the moon. But here’s the thing – there are too many what-ifs.
I mean, you teleport me somewhere successfully. But it’s not my specific molecules when I get there. It is a gathering of molecules arranged to my pattern. My continuity as a living, breathing being has been disassembled. A clone of me has been created. Am I me if I am a clone? How exactly do you transfer a non-tangible item like a personality? It would be a murder of me and a creation of a new me programmed with my hopes, mannerisms, and memories.
Get your GD teleporter off my lawn. No way am I going in. No how.
::throws bricks at teleporter from rocking chair::
::swiftly runs to quantum machine::
::jump-kicks teleporter, then bounds back to safety of porch::
Patty Templeton
