The Teleporter
Which one of you is you?
Level 2 · 1 / 20
The Teleporter
Travel is instant now. A booth scans every atom of you, destroys the original, and rebuilds an exact copy on Mars a second later. The copy remembers breakfast, misses the same people, has your headache. Millions use it daily and none of them complain. This morning there's a fault: the scanner works, but the original you isn't destroyed. You're standing in the booth, and someone on Mars is answering to your name.
Which one of you is you?
Then ask
- The staff apologise and offer to finish the job on the original. Do you let them?
- Would you have stepped in the booth yesterday, before you knew about the fault?
- If you'd never learned how it worked, would any of this bother you?
The classics and some new ones. A scenario, the question it forces, and the follow-ups that make it bite.