Everyone always focuses on the Ship of Theseus or the existential parts of this, but the societal impacts would be crazy.
Millions of people teleporting to the most beautiful places on earth and wrecking them, highways and boring parts of cities abandoned, mass death of people teleporting into a crush crowd at Mecca, landmarks toppled under the weight of teleporting tourists and bosses teleporting into your house for a “work from home” meeting, weapons and bombs being teleported into war zones…
Things would eventually find a new normal and teleporting food and resources around would remove the need for ships and trucks, you could explore the world much more easily and there would be lots of science to do in hard to reach places, marine biologists would have a field day exploring the deep ocean, doctors could teleport cancer cells out of patients, space agencies teleport probes, bases and astronauts to the moon and around the solar system…
Like it would be such a huge upheaval with so many implications. It’s interesting that people really fixate on the “would I die though? What does dying even mean if I’m still around?” part, even though I think that’s maybe the least interesting thing. I guess it taps into a very primal survival instinct?
Depends on how the technology works. It’s more likely that you would need someone’s how to receive or both ends, even if it were technically possible to just teleport randomly from point a to point b I feel like that feature would be disabled on commercial models precisely to stop the above from happening.
There are a couple old sci fi stories that feature “time tourism”, where they have to stop sending people to popular events like the crucifixion of Jesus because they’re getting overcrowded. Robert Silverberg’s novel Up the Line and Garry Kilworth’s Let’s Go to Golgotha! In one of them the time travelers vastly outnumber the locals, and swing the vote to release one of the thieves instead of Jesus, because that’s what the travelers think they’re supposed to do.
Everyone always focuses on the Ship of Theseus or the existential parts of this, but the societal impacts would be crazy.
Millions of people teleporting to the most beautiful places on earth and wrecking them, highways and boring parts of cities abandoned, mass death of people teleporting into a crush crowd at Mecca, landmarks toppled under the weight of teleporting tourists and bosses teleporting into your house for a “work from home” meeting, weapons and bombs being teleported into war zones…
Things would eventually find a new normal and teleporting food and resources around would remove the need for ships and trucks, you could explore the world much more easily and there would be lots of science to do in hard to reach places, marine biologists would have a field day exploring the deep ocean, doctors could teleport cancer cells out of patients, space agencies teleport probes, bases and astronauts to the moon and around the solar system…
Like it would be such a huge upheaval with so many implications. It’s interesting that people really fixate on the “would I die though? What does dying even mean if I’m still around?” part, even though I think that’s maybe the least interesting thing. I guess it taps into a very primal survival instinct?
Can I just teleport the poop out of my colon and the piss out of my balls, so I don’t have to get up to go to the bathroom?
Where are you storing your piss again?
Piss is stored in the balls
When you’re a little older you’ll learn about what actually comes from the balls.
Yeah it’s piss
Or you could eat whatever you want and then teleport it out of you. No more fatties – unless they like that shit.
But that would enable bioterrorism, where you teleport your waste into the body of someone you want to kill. We would all have to wear tinfoil suits.
Depends on how the technology works. It’s more likely that you would need someone’s how to receive or both ends, even if it were technically possible to just teleport randomly from point a to point b I feel like that feature would be disabled on commercial models precisely to stop the above from happening.
There are a couple old sci fi stories that feature “time tourism”, where they have to stop sending people to popular events like the crucifixion of Jesus because they’re getting overcrowded. Robert Silverberg’s novel Up the Line and Garry Kilworth’s Let’s Go to Golgotha! In one of them the time travelers vastly outnumber the locals, and swing the vote to release one of the thieves instead of Jesus, because that’s what the travelers think they’re supposed to do.
There’s a book where people have figured out teleportation so they have to hide women to prevent kidnappings.