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RobinHanson's avatar

In a destructive scan, the original body is destroyed in the process of creating the scan.

If you are told that people who walk through a door enter aa higher plane, but you never heard from them or have any evidence that they ever have any effect on anything, you are right to be skeptical. If you can talk to them on Skype all the time, their actions have clear impacts on things you care about, and in both ways they seem like the people you knew, you'd be a lot less skeptical.

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Ellie_K's avatar

What is destructive scanning?

...a significant number of humans would accept destructive scanning to become ems.A link or parenthetical explanation would be helpful. If destructive scanning mean physical death, then we are back to the 'uploading consciousness' trope of science fiction and transhumanism.

My hesitancy about transporters is based on a scene from one of the original Star Trek movies. There was a malfunction, and reassembly at the destination was botched, because the people arrived "turned inside out", as Scotty described it. I acknowledge that that is a safety concern rather than a philosophical one (of whether one's identity/essence is preserved).

Returning to destructive scanning: The introduction, about contrarian perception of futurist tech, stirred memories of another movie, Logan's Run. Citizens of that seeming utopia were led to believe that at age 35, they were transformed to a higher plane of existence through a fiery public ceremony. In fact, they were just killed for pragmatic reasons, e.g. population control. That's another reason to be skeptical of destructive scanning. Even if the tech worked, could those who were in charge of the implementation be trusted?

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