Let's assume the transporter functions, as it is inconsistently described, by actually physically beaming the stuff of you -- the matter of your body, converted to energy -- which is then reconstituted on the other side.

While this solves the "transporter duplicate" problem...

...it leaves wide open the question of whether or not the resulting "you" is really you.

The Xerox-style model faces criticism that the person who emerges is a copy and a copy only, but the "beaming matter/energy" model only complicates matters further.

If I am disassembled by the transporter and then re-assembled on the other side, there is an argument to be made that you still "died," and that this "resurrected" version of you is still a distinct being.

Personally, I think both versions of the transporter problem are poppycock because I don't think there is necessarily anything notably special about any particular iteration of a human being; all "me's" are me.

But what fascinates me about this question, and the reason my mind keeps turning it over, is because it forces us to ask question about what identity is, what individuality is, the role of memory and sensation and perception, and (here's the big one)...

...whether an outside observer can do an objective exterior analysis of a subjective interior perception.

(which certainly has bearing on trans issues, but also extends in other, more problematic directions)

First, let me say upfront that I have a *huge* bias in favor of subjectivity, because I think nobody really has objective access to the public common world, let alone the contents and perceptions of other minds. Even the act of observation is an imposition of perspective.

If I take a photo, that photo doesn't show me everything; it only shows what the camera is capable of recording. Our senses are similarly limited, and a true objective perspective would require both omniscience and sublimation.

The lack of human epistemological access to an unfettered experience of the public common world, here, assumes new weight; if Tom Riker, on Lazon II mere moments after the transporter accident, asserts he "is" Will Riker, who is anyone to say he isn't?

Identity is the ultimate subjective, but it's really fascinating when both the observer and the observed have perceiving, interactive minds. In the classic Ship of Theseus thought experiment, the only thing that matters is whether we THINK the rebuilt ship is the same ship.

The ship itself has no opinion. But with people, not so.

In *trans* terms, there's a strong degree to which I have difficulty identifying myself as the same person I was five years ago. And I didn't even pass through a transporter beam.

But there are hard limits to the primacy of subjectivity; no matter what I feel or perceive, if I fall into a hole, I've fallen into a hole.

"I don't understand myself as the same person who fell into the hole" isn't exactly a meaningful statement, whatever the circumstances of the incident. Why, though? What's different? And how does this apply to the transporter problem?

(im thinking this out as I go)

Identity *as such*, identity qua the subjective and experiencing "I" (rather than exterior identification by an observer) has to be rooted, first and foremost, in experience and memory.

The "me" who transitioned at 31 is a different person than a "me" who transitioned a decade earlier, and *has* to be. So much of who I am and how I both apprehend and experience myself (and how I communicate myself) are rooted in those ten years.

The subjective, experiencing "I" simply does not and cannot exist outside the circumstances of its own neurological existence, which is a *material* state.

In this sense, I am uninterested in the uninterrupted persistence of a locus, an unmediated "id", filtered through neurology into expression as a person, in much the same way "evening Mags" and "morning Mags" can be treated as distinct people despite that persistence.

In that case, time is standing in for space; my "I" of a decade ago and my "I" now do not and cannot share experiences because they're localized in time. Which is to say that identity is very shaky, even in the unremarkable vistas of human experience.

The transporter forces all of these questions. It's not just a matter of whether I "am" or "am not" a copy of myself; it's also whether or not that even *matters*.

This is the point I've been dancing around over the entire thread: that it doesn't matter whether the transporter "kills" me because identity isn't special, at least not in a purely material sense.

I am not the person I used to be in an extremely straightforward sense, but honestly the same could be said of virtually anyone. The material circumstances of my brain are as much (if not moreso) component to my identity as the actual matter itself or its pattern persistence.

Which brings us back to the USS Enterprise. Is Miles O'Brien a murderer?

Well one, *no*, because murder requires intent. But I don't think he has even killed anyone simply by virtue of operating that machine. Why?

Because what is materially important is that the person on one end of the beam and the person on the other would both *report* that they share a single, persistent identity even over the interruption in the beam, the same way I am the same woman I was when I went to sleep.

The *process* of that interruption doesn't matter; I have exactly as little access to the experiences of my own past as a transporter duplicate of me, and the fact that one material iteration of me was obliterated in the transporter doesn't mean a damn thing.

In short, "me" now and "me" in five seconds are in no different a position than me before and after a transporter beam: we do not have access to our future *or* past experiences, except the record of them (where memory is concerned). https://twitter.com/Koolasuchus/status/1300769274496192514

The record *is* the experience, as far as the subjective self is concerned. But what about the *objective* self? What does a third party see?

Again, I don't think objectivity exists; even an omniscient mind views from a perspective. All minds do. So to me, this is an entirely irrelevant question, because the thing we're dealing with is subjectivity itself, the question of *whose experience we're describing*.

Good lord I've been at this for nearly an hour.

Anyway, *because* what we're describing is subjectivity, the question of "who" someone "is," we have to take their self-report and self-understanding, inasmuch as we have access to it, at face value.

(and no, I don't think delusion is an applicable counterargument, because we can factually assert that I am not, in fact, Napoleon, nor a secret agent, and my reports to the contrary don't have a meaningful relationship with the public common world)

In summation:

There is no such thing as "you" except when there is.

I like star trek.

ADDENDUM:

The "Freaky Friday" model gives us an absolutely fanTAStic thought experiment to apply to the question of identity persistence, and frankly I'm appalled I never thought of it. https://twitter.com/Professor_Just/status/1300774250869997568

Nobody would say "I have my mom's memories, but not mine" if they were Freaky Friday'd, and all of us would immediately understand (once convinced they had those memories) "who" we were dealing with, regardless of the material body.

We intuitively grasp that self and the material body are not identical with each other, and often treat the self as something "riding" or "controlling" the material body.