Humans are the weirdest aliens?

You just know that if humans were some alien species written to be more or less monolithic, they'd have a religion pretty much going "Oh yeah, we had gods, but then we killed them and started doing our own thing".

 

I have a sci fi question, and this seemed to be the best place to put it. You know the kinda edgy Star Trek theory that the transporters don't actually transport anything, they just break you down at one location and build an exact copy of you at another? What happens if it malfunctions? What happens to you if it scans you, builds the exact copy, but never breaks you down?

Suddenly there are two of you, two exact copies with the same thoughts and memories and life. Do you both continue to exist? Do they get rid of one? Which one? The one on the end that failed is the one that's not supposed to exist, but that's the original and the other is just a copy. Do both live and go on with their lives? If that's the case, who owns their car? House? Diary? Who's married to their spouse? Who has a right to work at their job? Does one of them need a new name? New ssn? New birth certificate?

It's been bothering me for a couple days and I'm curious what you guys make of this question.

 

That's kind of a... big thing in transhumanist... thought? Ethics?
And Star Trek actually did that.

FWIW, Star Trek transporters canonically only kinda sorta work like that. They break down the body but transfer the mind ('engram') intact and more or less conscious, the cloning was very much... special circumstances.

 

It's probably a case by case basis. There's many ways this could go I think.

Off the top of my head, maybe also clone everyone else important in that person's life and cram them in a specialized holodeck? Quickly and quietly vaporize one of the set randomly picked without anyone's notice? Send them somewhere else entirely where they'd be most useful, disregarding their rights and opinions completely? Who knows.

 

Also, this comes to mind:

 

The webcomic Schlock Mercenary had a whole thing where a scientist (actually the author cameo of another early webcomic author) who was being forced to work on a portal escaped through it, was duplicated literally billions of times, and instantly became a galactic demographic. Much later there was an arc about some of the clones using nanotech to completely remake their bodies so they could reassert some individual identity.