Im not a scientist, but i wouldn't go into the teleporter if that was how it was done. The copy would seem like me to everyone else, but i would still die, ithe copy wouldn't be me.
It all seemed like fun and games until the method of destruction was revealed to be a blender! That's just gross!
If teleportation can ever be realized, this is how it's going to have to basically work. There will have to be tanks of primordial slime on either end, one that the teleported person is relegated to at point A and one that the reconstituted person is made from at point B. If this can be achieved, it would pretty much negate the veracity of the soul.
@ChipArgyle Not necessarily. If the soul is an epiphenomenon of the mind, it would manifest wherever the mind was recreated. Or what if you don't even have a soul until the moment you die and it is created by your death as a sort of data-only escape pod? This style of teleportation really messes up that scenario. You'd soon have dozens of souls wafting around, doing whatever souls do after you die.
@Slacktoo Since when does critical thinking and rational criticism make someone a "complete fucking idiot?" This animation not only provides an inaccurate and biased picture, it is just outright uninformed.
I'm sure you're happy being a moron, but some of us are not.
This is nonsense. Anyone who actually concerns himself with questions of existence without first considering the pragmatic implications is a useless human that does not really contribute to society.
Further, any rational human would recognize that it's obviously irrelevant whether the copy or original was destroyed. I can therefore conclude that the "scientist" in this animation is irrational and therefore NOT a scientist.
@heartxofxbutter Yes, although where Moon explored the personal tragedy of such a situation and how deception complicates things, this version sticks pretty much to the bare-bones moral and logical issues. They'd make a great double feature.
I was about nine or ten years old when I first watched this cartoon, and it's stayed with me, (particularly the image of the man being crushed in the booth at 2:46) branded into my subconscious, for the better part of a decade and a half.
Although in the intervening time I would forget much of what happens in the cartoon, the melody from the song that plays over the credits would still intermittently pop into my head. I caught myself humming it earlier on today, and I finally decided [cont.]
I was going to try and locate the cartoon online, and see if the imagery in it really was as creepy as I remembered. I honestly thought this search would be fruitless, because I could recall so little from the cartoon, but I typed something along the lines of "teleporter cartoon short" into Google, and was astounded to see this video as the first link!
Watching "To Be" again all these years later is a surreal experience. Now that I'm (much!) older the [cont.]
@urizen123 [cont.] imagery in the cartoon doesn't disturb me as much as it did when I was nine, but the themes explored in it (which were mostly, but not entirely lost on the younger me) definitely DO give me a chill up my spine.
It's only now that I can appreciate just how much this cartoon and the questions it raises had an impact on me as a kid. I'm still wondering whether, if I could turn back time, I would really want the younger me to watch it. [cont.]
@Oecobius I've always taken that as a visual pun indicating the scientist's foolishness in accepting the narrator's proposal. But, come to think of it, I can't say exactly what the pun is. Fished in? Fish in a barrel?
@steveasat2 That hadn't occurred to me, but it seems like a good theory; if not a pun, there is at least a "trapped like a fish in a bowl" concept (since the narrator's reasoning has cornered the scientist).
5 minutes is longer than I thought. I used to think I'd be happy to kill myself if a copy survived - now I'm not sure. Oh, if the original only lasts a millisecond I'd go for it, but after 5 minutes I'd try to run away, and after 24 hours I'd help my copy escape.
I hope someday cloning allows us to make an exact copy that takes only hours to days for the clone to become the same exact age as the person they're cloned from and I know it's possible dammit!! How the fuck can an infant copy of a person have the same exact memories, it's virtually impossible because the clone would grow up and experience different things and therefore would have different memories unless they are two methods in cloning.
@Dbkit I consider that more of an advantage than a flaw...unless we're cloning for the sake of organ harvesting, which puts us pretty close to the so-called moral event horizon. Suppose instead that you used such cloning like a videogame pattern buffer. Clone every soldier and cop, freeze the clone, and thaw them if the original dies.
Wait, that's every bit as selfish as organ harvesting. I definitely should not be on the cloning ethics committee.
Hang on, all one of the scientists has to do is remember which booth he came out of (the first time they're asked, obviously not when they know the original dies).
It has been solved. As it turns out, we are all the same subject, so it is not so puzzling the fact that we can be in two places at once. We already are... we are in everyone no matter what. I suggest reading "I am you" by Daniel Kolak.
If they both have the exact same memories they are BOTH originals. They both have the experience of living an entire full life up until the point of copying. You must assume that there are multiple parallel versions of yourself and that in the event of copying one version of yourself only experiences everything in memory and did not physically exist until he was copied and that one version of yourself exists physically within the mind of the original, to be destroyed by the machine.
@Pikmin012 Interesting point. You might also say that you have a 50% chance of being teleported at all. To an undestroyed original, it would appear that the whole thing is a scam. I'd demand my money back...and maybe that's why the original has to be vaporized, leaving only the satisfied 50% of participants.
the problem with cloning...well, stick a piece of paper in a copier and copy it, then copy the copy. repeat. at first the copy is identical, but then after a while...i think the basic idea was done in a micheal crichton book.
@dreamsinmonochrome To be fair, that's also the problem with binary fission. As soon as an error slips in, it gets duplicated until another error makes the mess even worse. Before you know it, organisms start cropping up with opposable thumbs.
@dreamsinmonochrome A photocopy is a *totally* inappropriate metaphor for cloning, and what is shown in here is not cloning at all, and is correctly referred to in the animation itself as "copying."
Every cell in your body copies itself each time it divides, and errors happen every time. Most amount to nothing, some kill the cell, a few lead to cancer. The trick with cloning is resetting the biological clock, but there's been improvement in that regard. But a clone is a twin, not a copy.
This raises some interesting points. My view as a utilitarian is that it's ethical as long as two conditions are met: the original is destroyed immediately and too quickly to be aware of it, and the person being teleported is properly informed beforehand about what occurs. Then it's acceptable because a person's death isn't inherently a bad thing, but rather their fear of harm or death and the consequences of their absence are. So, if neither of those concerns are relevant, it's a net good.
@GLaDRONE Considering how much it can do either FOR or AGAINST humanity, I think being wary of science is a good policy. It's nice to have a donkey to pull your cart, but don't trust it not to kick you if you become careless. If that's the lesson you derived from the story, at least you didn't waste your time here. Watch again and you might find some other lessons too.
@GLaDRONE This was supposed to teach you about the pitfalls of a certain ontological thought experiment and make you think about the nature of consciousness and "self". Are we the emergent property of a certain configuration of matter? This is philosophy, and not supposed to make people wary of science, which is itself a branch of philosophy. If you think this is the dumbest thing you've ever seen, then you might do well to consider your priorities.
@XoXMyChemicalGirlXoX It's a great creepypasta, but you can stop hunting for the clip. But I can't understand why it isn't attributed to Don Hertzfeldt, whose animation style is described in the pasta. See also, "The Russian Sleep Experiment".
Isn't there something more important that they are all forgetting. He just invented a machine that can recreate anything such as precious materials as seen when the guy wearing the gold chain enters the machine. why does he care about ethics, He's rich!
@jim150454 Yeah, but once word gets out, think about it. Everyone will be copying gold, money...they'll become worthless. Inflation will rise to staggering levels and then materials will be worth more than money or itself!
@theBigA1992 It's sort-of illegal in Australia and a few EU states and several US states. But legislation banning the practice is a lot more controversial than merely banning government funding.
Okay that was as disturbing as hell. It at first seems like some innocent children's cartoon from the narration to the animation to the music, but once you actually watch it... well that makes it all the more horrifying.
A copy is a copy. Even an identical one would still be a different person. I believe that if you immediately replace all the matter in the human body, or upload a mind/copy a person and destroy the original, you disrupt the neuronal gestalt that makes up the human consciousness. Perhaps if you slowly replaced the cells in the body with nanomachines that adopted the exact same structure as the cells they were replacing, you could attain immortality and keep your consciousness intact. Perhaps.
@Spartan043 Is the gestalt you describe non-physical or would the difference be caused by the fact that two bodies, no matter how similar, cannot occupy the same space simultaneously? Those are two distinct propositions and I am struggling to decide which should be pursued first. The first is spiritual and the other is phenomenological. Both seem to hold a lot of promise.
@steveasat2 There is still much that science does not yet know about the processes that underlie human consciousness, or how they can be manipulated on the subatomic or quantum level. It is difficult to tell whether or not an instant exchange of matter would work, even if it were extremely precise. My theory is that the human mind is highly synergistic in nature. Messing with even a single neuron can affect adjacent neurons, creating a chain reaction that reverberates through the entire brain.
@steveasat2 As for copies, I believe that if you were to somehow link two minds completely on the material level, they could share experiences or even memories, effectively becoming a single mind. If you were to simply copy a mind, that mind would cease to be the same person almost immediately due to random processes and divergence of the senses and memory.
@steveasat2 Let's say you were to make two copies of a person. Each copy comes into being in two identical isolation tanks. Some may think that both would remain identical, experiencing the same subjective thoughts even after a large amount of time has elapsed. I believe that random factors on the quantum level result in each mind being subtly "pushed" onto divergent tracks, resulting in both irrevocably becoming different from each other and the original.
@rankjack That's a good point. If the original person lost his/her memory at the moment of teleportation, would the copy have a stronger claim? That is, do you cease to be the same person if your personality changes abruptly instead of gradually (as is the case normally)? Family and friends of amnesiacs (or others who suffer rapid-onset mental illnesses) face that problem in real life.
I loved this cartoon so, so much when I was little. I "got" it then, but all these years later and this is the first time I've truly listened to her song at the beginning and end. Amazing work.
@hgryphon Personally, I'm intrigued by the questions such a mechanism would raise. I can see strong arguments on both sides of the issues, so I am not conclusively for or against such technology. From one perspective, it would simply hasten a process that happens naturally every day of our lives: the replacement of old cells with new. I just recently learned that one name for this philosophical paradox is "The Ship of Theseus".
@hgryphon It may help to remember that "soul" does not always refer to a scientifically dubious sort of magical gas that inhabits a living creature. Many people do conceive of it that way, but "soul" can also refer to the intangible unique behaviors and traits that make one object distinct from another. In that sense, a soul is pure information that has no objective existence outside the minds of those who apprehend it...and yet it is a meaningful and useful concept.
@Montork But the memories -are- (semi)permanent imprints on the brain. They are a physical network of connections in your brain - so they would be replicated just the same. To be clear, I'm not sure where we are in our understanding of the specific structure of memories but undeniably they are just part of the software in there.
@alicepatterson575 oh! that is awesome! i mean i thought the brain and body were fantastic to begin with, but if the brain can do something this complex its even more impressive!
@Montork But the memories will have been duplicated! Whether they are instantiated by accretions and ablations of neuronal sheaths, or neurotransmitter levels inside synapses, or ANY PHYSICAL PROCESS AT ALL, if this teleporter is truly faithful then the memories will be duplicated. If it doesn't duplicate memories, then it's not a faithful teleporter.
The webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has proposed an amusing workaround for this problem. Look in the archive for the strip from October 23, 2009.
I once watched this short on PBS as a child. It absolutely chilled me to the bone for it was then I realized the finality of death. My Jehovah's Witness parents had taught me that there is no soul, and yet God will resurrect the dead in paradise because he has stored them in his perfect memory. See the paradox? So I can say watching this at that age changed my life. Sadly, most JWs choose to gloss over this fundamental contradiction.
@cranberrysherbet I don't see the paradox you're referring to. If you think of a person as a collection of information that distinguishes him or her as a unique individual, then recreating that person would be a trivial act for an entity with control over creation itself. Even transhumanists, who tend to be die-hard atheists, see this as a realistic possibility. Death might be final...but there are a lot of ways (spiritual and material) it could turn out to be otherwise.
@steveasat2 But if there is nothing that persists after death, if our minds are just electricity in the brain in a body that turns to dust which is eventually incorporated into other beings, then from our own perspective we have one final death. I don't think it's possible in JW theology to reconcile this.
@cranberrysherbet Hm, I think I see you objection. There would be no continuity of existence between the moment of death and rebirth...no "lifeboat" in which you would migrate from one body to the next.
But in the JW scenario you describe, there'd really be nothing for that lifeboat to carry. Everything you are, even your sense of continuity, exists in God's memory/imagination continually and never dies, only the body that served as its physical expression.
You know what else I wonder about this video? If this machine was mass produced and open to the public, and people knew what it did.... if they got in, would it mean they were suicidal? :O
@EpicMinnie Very good question. A strict materialist would say that the soul is recreated along with the rest of the person in the second chamber. A strict spiritualist would say that a soul cannot be destroyed and has no physical location, so it makes no difference what happens to the first body. I think this cartoon is unsettling because most of us are on the fence between those two positions, and it shows the problems caused by trying to believe both things at once.
@nights1515 The entry on IMDB sounds like what you're describing. If not, click on the "Plot Keywords" portion of that movie's IMDB page to see more movies about cockroaches or jukeboxes. Very handy research tool.
Thank you for sharing this with the rest of us, Steve. It puts all kinds of neat philosophical questions in palpable form, ranging from the ethics of murder to what people might accept if a new technology was offered (ie. Would you die to use a teleporter?), and helps us all to understand life, and being, in a new way.
@kimzeynkink Do you have more? It's hard to find these O Canada cartoons. As a kid I hated them because they scared me but now I appreciate them for their sophistication and being a part of my childhood by scaring me. I've been looking for the short about the Roaches.
@nights1515 I have the Incredible Animation Collection 1 fro National FIlm Board of Canada. It has on it Juke-Bar, If Only, To Be, The Cat Came Back, SPecial Delivery, Why Me?, and Kid Stuff.
@rkyeun I believe there are two issues at stake here. First, are the copies TRULY identical? How could we ever be certain? Second, is it still murder to kill someone who has an identical copy? Is it less wrong if they have a 99% identical clone? It sort of feels okay, but would we just be ignoring the monstrousness of what we were doing?
Every time i see this, i keep thinking that the scientist was flirting with her, the way he brided her and moved his eyes, besides knowing the real truth of his machine.
Right after I saw "The Prestige" for the first time I immediately thought of this cartoon. It scared the crap out of me when I was a kid and it still does today. Even if Hugh Jackman is the one telling the story.
The ethical question tends to overshadow a more disturbing existential question that is such a part of everyday life we get by without ever pondering it. That is, what really gives us our identity? We are not precisely the same as we were a week ago, just like the inventor's copy is no longer the same as his original, from the moment he steps out of the booth.
So is a sense of identity with our earlier selves merely a comforting illusion? Far enough back, they might not even recognize us.
Yeah, even on a macro level, my opinions over time have changed, even though I was supposedly absolutely convinced of my previous opinions before. We change every moment, it's part of living in a changing universe. We all are scions of our previous selves, in a sense: a combination of memories, tendencies and conditions that must continue to exist in order to realize that part of us no longer exists. Combine THAT with the fallibility of memory and the changes that come as we age. Very surreal :)
All of us are very different creatures from the ones we were when we were five years old, but were not concerned bout the "death" of the young version of ourselves. That ver. just slowly and continuously turned into the current ver.
If a serious change in brain-state counts as a death, then you die every time you go to sleep. The person that wakes up in the morning just happens to share the name, body and memories of the one who fell asleep last night, and who thus ceased to exist.
@Uaxis Is a death sentence an easy manner? This question assumes the view that both the copy and the "original" are for all intents and purposes different people but that's the essence of the video. Let me put it this way, imagine you interrupted the signal being sent to box 2 and there was no reconstitution on the other side. From the perspective of the woman in box 1 she is still destroyed, nothing is different, so I believe this is (right or wrong) the most extreme way possible to atone
I adored watching O' Canada and getting exposed to all these artsy cartoons as a child, but this one...out of all the other ones SCARED THE BUHJEEBUZZ OUTTA ME! The other great ones like "The Apprentice", "The Cat Came Back", "Little Black Fly", "The Big Snit", creeped me out, but this one was horrifying, spiderman underoos-soiling, nightmare fuel to me.
I still find it quite unsettling, but thanks for uploading this.
Most of those you cite are Richard Condie films. He really has a terrific knack for visuals that you remember forever. Check out his ode to procrastination "Getting Started".
There was an 'Outer Limits' episode involving teleportation that covered some of the same ground. The imperative for destroying the original was given by the inventors of the device, a race of cold-blooded lizard people, who insisted that 'The balance' of the universe had to be maintained. The interesting twist is that the copy is off having a nice vacation, and the original isn't destroyed (a malfunction). It's left up to the human to grimly follow instructions and kill the frightened girl.
NarutoxHinata1100 is right. The scientist that the girl "killed" was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. In order for her to assuage her guilt completely shouldn't she have copied and "killed" herself just as many times as the scientist had before she met him?
BTW, I just copied and pasted "NarutoxHinata1100" three times. Does that mean there are now four identical NarutoxHinata1100s, and the original must now be destroyed? ;P
The Prestige.
SamuraiSilhouette 2 weeks ago
Iv thought about this a lot! i never thought anyone else thought about this
twizelby 2 weeks ago
Im not a scientist, but i wouldn't go into the teleporter if that was how it was done. The copy would seem like me to everyone else, but i would still die, ithe copy wouldn't be me.
cartoonlover2326 1 month ago
It all seemed like fun and games until the method of destruction was revealed to be a blender! That's just gross!
If teleportation can ever be realized, this is how it's going to have to basically work. There will have to be tanks of primordial slime on either end, one that the teleported person is relegated to at point A and one that the reconstituted person is made from at point B. If this can be achieved, it would pretty much negate the veracity of the soul.
ChipArgyle 1 month ago
@ChipArgyle Not necessarily. If the soul is an epiphenomenon of the mind, it would manifest wherever the mind was recreated. Or what if you don't even have a soul until the moment you die and it is created by your death as a sort of data-only escape pod? This style of teleportation really messes up that scenario. You'd soon have dozens of souls wafting around, doing whatever souls do after you die.
steveasat2 1 month ago
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vinguru896 2 months ago
@vinguru896 You're a complete fucking idiot
Slacktoo 1 month ago
@Slacktoo Since when does critical thinking and rational criticism make someone a "complete fucking idiot?" This animation not only provides an inaccurate and biased picture, it is just outright uninformed.
I'm sure you're happy being a moron, but some of us are not.
vinguru896 1 month ago
This is nonsense. Anyone who actually concerns himself with questions of existence without first considering the pragmatic implications is a useless human that does not really contribute to society.
Further, any rational human would recognize that it's obviously irrelevant whether the copy or original was destroyed. I can therefore conclude that the "scientist" in this animation is irrational and therefore NOT a scientist.
vinguru896 2 months ago
@vinguru896 Could you please explain your position regarding this video being biased? How an unbiased video would be?.
PleasedToBeHere1 1 month ago
This cartoon horrified me when I was younger, I hated Canadians ever since.
ModestDollesin 3 months ago
I miss you Gramma <3 xoxoxo Thankyou. RIP <3
Linz2Binz 4 months ago
The is the movie, the prestige.
MiMa4x01 4 months ago
So, it's like a 10 minute version of the movie Moon.
heartxofxbutter 5 months ago
@heartxofxbutter Yes, although where Moon explored the personal tragedy of such a situation and how deception complicates things, this version sticks pretty much to the bare-bones moral and logical issues. They'd make a great double feature.
steveasat2 5 months ago
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wickedfeylady 5 months ago
Interesting
fcpictures 5 months ago
What? This is a Canadian Cartoon? But its not a shitty flash!
dejablue88 5 months ago
I was about nine or ten years old when I first watched this cartoon, and it's stayed with me, (particularly the image of the man being crushed in the booth at 2:46) branded into my subconscious, for the better part of a decade and a half.
Although in the intervening time I would forget much of what happens in the cartoon, the melody from the song that plays over the credits would still intermittently pop into my head. I caught myself humming it earlier on today, and I finally decided [cont.]
urizen123 5 months ago 3
@urizen123 [cont.]
I was going to try and locate the cartoon online, and see if the imagery in it really was as creepy as I remembered. I honestly thought this search would be fruitless, because I could recall so little from the cartoon, but I typed something along the lines of "teleporter cartoon short" into Google, and was astounded to see this video as the first link!
Watching "To Be" again all these years later is a surreal experience. Now that I'm (much!) older the [cont.]
urizen123 5 months ago
@urizen123 [cont.] imagery in the cartoon doesn't disturb me as much as it did when I was nine, but the themes explored in it (which were mostly, but not entirely lost on the younger me) definitely DO give me a chill up my spine.
It's only now that I can appreciate just how much this cartoon and the questions it raises had an impact on me as a kid. I'm still wondering whether, if I could turn back time, I would really want the younger me to watch it. [cont.]
urizen123 5 months ago
@urizen123 [cont.] If I didn't, perhaps I wouldn't be the cynical screw-up I am today! :D
/ramble over.
urizen123 5 months ago
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urizen123 5 months ago
I must've been one warped kid. I wasn't disturbed when I watched it back then.
DamienBlaze1 6 months ago
I saw this when it aired as a child. Literally disturbed me with wondering how it'd feel to be crushed to death. Thanks Canada!
CardBoardBoxRobot 6 months ago
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Ragitsu 6 months ago
The question isn't does the orriginal live, the question is does the orriginals consiousness transfer over to the copy?
ArmoredScout1 6 months ago
What's with that fishbowl at 6:05?
Oecobius 6 months ago 2
@Oecobius I've always taken that as a visual pun indicating the scientist's foolishness in accepting the narrator's proposal. But, come to think of it, I can't say exactly what the pun is. Fished in? Fish in a barrel?
steveasat2 6 months ago
@steveasat2 That hadn't occurred to me, but it seems like a good theory; if not a pun, there is at least a "trapped like a fish in a bowl" concept (since the narrator's reasoning has cornered the scientist).
Oecobius33 6 months ago
That was all very disturbing.
5 minutes is longer than I thought. I used to think I'd be happy to kill myself if a copy survived - now I'm not sure. Oh, if the original only lasts a millisecond I'd go for it, but after 5 minutes I'd try to run away, and after 24 hours I'd help my copy escape.
snowyowl0 7 months ago
@snowyowl0 If that third scenario isn't a Schwarzenegger movie already, it soon will be.
steveasat2 7 months ago 3
@steveasat2 It's been done as an episode of the New Outer Limits.
streamingmadly 7 months ago
I hope someday cloning allows us to make an exact copy that takes only hours to days for the clone to become the same exact age as the person they're cloned from and I know it's possible dammit!! How the fuck can an infant copy of a person have the same exact memories, it's virtually impossible because the clone would grow up and experience different things and therefore would have different memories unless they are two methods in cloning.
03bgood 7 months ago
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03bgood 7 months ago
@Dbkit I consider that more of an advantage than a flaw...unless we're cloning for the sake of organ harvesting, which puts us pretty close to the so-called moral event horizon. Suppose instead that you used such cloning like a videogame pattern buffer. Clone every soldier and cop, freeze the clone, and thaw them if the original dies.
Wait, that's every bit as selfish as organ harvesting. I definitely should not be on the cloning ethics committee.
steveasat2 8 months ago 2
4:57 looks like the animator got bored and there's a split frame shot of nipples lol
then again, she is pulling her dress back from the neck, so I guess it's accurate
hobbitninja 8 months ago
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hobbitninja 8 months ago
Ｔｈｉｓ ｉｓ ｔｈｅ ｓｔｕｐｉｄｅｓｔ ｔｈｉｎｇ Ｉ’ｖｅ ｅｖｅｒ ｓｅｅｎ． Ｉｓ ｔｈｉｓ ｓｕｐｐｏｓｅｄ ｔｏ ｂｅ ｆｕｎｎｙ ｏｒ ｊｕｓｔ ｍａｋｅ ｐｅｏｐｌｅ ｗａｒｙ ｏｆ ｓｃｉｅｎｃｅ？
skorpiondemetal 9 months ago
Hang on, all one of the scientists has to do is remember which booth he came out of (the first time they're asked, obviously not when they know the original dies).
Burkhart4192 9 months ago
I liked this cartoon, so simple and yet so complex.
But i'm still against the scientist character point of view
I want to live, i dont want a COPY of me live
huaun 9 months ago
I love this problem.
It has been solved. As it turns out, we are all the same subject, so it is not so puzzling the fact that we can be in two places at once. We already are... we are in everyone no matter what. I suggest reading "I am you" by Daniel Kolak.
AlgeKalipso 9 months ago
@AlgeKalipso - I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together...
h4v3l4pt0pw1lltr4v3l 8 months ago
....
shadday2007 9 months ago
If they both have the exact same memories they are BOTH originals. They both have the experience of living an entire full life up until the point of copying. You must assume that there are multiple parallel versions of yourself and that in the event of copying one version of yourself only experiences everything in memory and did not physically exist until he was copied and that one version of yourself exists physically within the mind of the original, to be destroyed by the machine.
Pikmin012 9 months ago
@Pikmin012
Basically, you have a 50% chance of personally surviving the teleportation.
Pikmin012 9 months ago
@Pikmin012 Interesting point. You might also say that you have a 50% chance of being teleported at all. To an undestroyed original, it would appear that the whole thing is a scam. I'd demand my money back...and maybe that's why the original has to be vaporized, leaving only the satisfied 50% of participants.
steveasat2 9 months ago 2
This cartoon fucked me up as a kid.
Thanks John Weldon.
GhostandChromis 9 months ago
reconstituted just like your favourite breakfast beverage
Durandal1717 9 months ago
the problem with cloning...well, stick a piece of paper in a copier and copy it, then copy the copy. repeat. at first the copy is identical, but then after a while...i think the basic idea was done in a micheal crichton book.
dreamsinmonochrome 10 months ago
@dreamsinmonochrome To be fair, that's also the problem with binary fission. As soon as an error slips in, it gets duplicated until another error makes the mess even worse. Before you know it, organisms start cropping up with opposable thumbs.
steveasat2 10 months ago
@dreamsinmonochrome A photocopy is a *totally* inappropriate metaphor for cloning, and what is shown in here is not cloning at all, and is correctly referred to in the animation itself as "copying."
Every cell in your body copies itself each time it divides, and errors happen every time. Most amount to nothing, some kill the cell, a few lead to cancer. The trick with cloning is resetting the biological clock, but there's been improvement in that regard. But a clone is a twin, not a copy.
MyOwnNameWasTaken 8 months ago
This raises some interesting points. My view as a utilitarian is that it's ethical as long as two conditions are met: the original is destroyed immediately and too quickly to be aware of it, and the person being teleported is properly informed beforehand about what occurs. Then it's acceptable because a person's death isn't inherently a bad thing, but rather their fear of harm or death and the consequences of their absence are. So, if neither of those concerns are relevant, it's a net good.
VetaeirYeln 10 months ago 2
This comment has received too many negative votes show
Ｔｈｉｓ ｉｓ ｔｈｅ ｓｔｕｐｉｄｅｓｔ ｔｈｉｎｇ Ｉ’ｖｅ ｅｖｅｒ ｓｅｅｎ． Ｉｓ ｔｈｉｓ ｓｕｐｐｏｓｅｄ ｔｏ ｂｅ ｆｕｎｎｙ ｏｒ ｊｕｓｔ ｍａｋｅ ｐｅｏｐｌｅ ｗａｒｙ ｏｆ ｓｃｉｅｎｃｅ？
GLaDRONE 10 months ago
@GLaDRONE Considering how much it can do either FOR or AGAINST humanity, I think being wary of science is a good policy. It's nice to have a donkey to pull your cart, but don't trust it not to kick you if you become careless. If that's the lesson you derived from the story, at least you didn't waste your time here. Watch again and you might find some other lessons too.
steveasat2 10 months ago
@GLaDRONE This was supposed to teach you about the pitfalls of a certain ontological thought experiment and make you think about the nature of consciousness and "self". Are we the emergent property of a certain configuration of matter? This is philosophy, and not supposed to make people wary of science, which is itself a branch of philosophy. If you think this is the dumbest thing you've ever seen, then you might do well to consider your priorities.
alienproxy 9 months ago
@alienproxy
>science, which is itself a branch of philosophy
...Oh god, i was just trolling, I had no idea people could be so stupid.
GLaDRONE 9 months ago
@GLaDRONE no its canadian :D and its epic
Allcanadian79 9 months ago
I'd do it for 10 dollars.
Thelostcup 10 months ago
You can totally see her tits at 4:57
MW10T 10 months ago
What a thought-provoking look on individuality and the ethical problems of cloning.
JohnFordDanceTroupe 10 months ago
Ok I know it's probably not real, but is there any place I can watch that creepy animation by him called sunlit nightmare?
XoXMyChemicalGirlXoX 11 months ago
@XoXMyChemicalGirlXoX It's a great creepypasta, but you can stop hunting for the clip. But I can't understand why it isn't attributed to Don Hertzfeldt, whose animation style is described in the pasta. See also, "The Russian Sleep Experiment".
steveasat2 11 months ago 2
@steveasat2 Hmm, thanks for the info, I'll check that one out!
XoXMyChemicalGirlXoX 10 months ago
11 people who disliked this were the originals shoved into the machine.
youngromh4x0r 11 months ago
@youngromh4x0r I really don't think thats funny at all.
arceuspokemon123 11 months ago
@arceuspokemon123 hey, none of these "so and so many people who disliked it..." comments are funny. Mine isn't an exception.
youngromh4x0r 10 months ago
La clonacion Humana y La Existencia Individual
son los temas de esta caricaturade Weldon
loboestrella1 11 months ago
Dr. Doofenshmirtz's early days.
hotelmario510 11 months ago
Notice all the random objects in the room? lol
WhiteDragon103 11 months ago
4:58 - 4:59
NIPLES!!!
anyeloelite 11 months ago
I like the cameo of the two-face lady in the banknote.
Bisqwit 1 year ago
This disturbed the crap out of me when I was a kid.
Coolcat1991118 1 year ago
who knew that canada could pump out such disturbing cartoons
kurox67 1 year ago 14
@kurox67 Well the subject matter would probably be too sensitive for most of our God-fearing neighbors to the south.
Shahamu 7 months ago
Has anyone ever seen this Canadian cartoon called "Carl Squared"? Its about a teenager and his clone.
03bgood 1 year ago
I remember this cartoon, I saw it when I was a child. For some reason, it unnerved me...
Tortured1 1 year ago
Isn't there something more important that they are all forgetting. He just invented a machine that can recreate anything such as precious materials as seen when the guy wearing the gold chain enters the machine. why does he care about ethics, He's rich!
jim150454 1 year ago 3
@jim150454 I think you've just thumbnailed a sequel, JM. And you're quite right: as soon as you're rich ethics tend to go out the window.
steveasat2 1 year ago
@steveasat2
If something can be easily made, it loses it's value. Same thing happened with gold on Star Trek.
Ragitsu 11 months ago
@Ragitsu Same thing happened TO Star Trek, didn't it? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
steveasat2 11 months ago
@steveasat2
From DS9 onwards, I tend to agree with that sentiment.
Ragitsu 11 months ago
@jim150454
If something can be easily made, it loses it's value. Same thing happened with gold on Star Trek.
Ragitsu 11 months ago
@jim150454 Yeah, but once word gets out, think about it. Everyone will be copying gold, money...they'll become worthless. Inflation will rise to staggering levels and then materials will be worth more than money or itself!
hotelmario510 11 months ago
9 people have eternal fear of the sunlight.
OSDolphin 1 year ago
9 people lost their continuity after riding in the machine.
WhiteDragon103 1 year ago
Gotta love how the ending is all chipper over somebody being DEAD.
fastbreak333 1 year ago 17
@fastbreak333 you call that chipper? i shit my pants
Atma505 5 months ago
@SafetyLight How can you know that souls exist, let alone that half of people have them?
QueenAnime99 1 year ago 2
Isn't Human cloning illegal
theBigA1992 1 year ago 4
@theBigA1992 It's sort-of illegal in Australia and a few EU states and several US states. But legislation banning the practice is a lot more controversial than merely banning government funding.
steveasat2 1 year ago 2
@theBigA1992 In the United States, it's only illegal in AR, CA, CT, IA, IN, MA, MD, MI, ND, NJ, RI, SD and VA.
NotTheLaw 10 months ago
isn't human cloning illegal?
theBigA1992 1 year ago
Okay that was as disturbing as hell. It at first seems like some innocent children's cartoon from the narration to the animation to the music, but once you actually watch it... well that makes it all the more horrifying.
Teekoness 1 year ago
This was why Dr. McCoy hated teleporters.
streamingmadly 1 year ago
Can't Believe that woman killed herself just as a pathetic attempt to escape guilt.
theBigA1992 1 year ago
I would have sex with myself.
Frap357 1 year ago 3
A copy is a copy. Even an identical one would still be a different person. I believe that if you immediately replace all the matter in the human body, or upload a mind/copy a person and destroy the original, you disrupt the neuronal gestalt that makes up the human consciousness. Perhaps if you slowly replaced the cells in the body with nanomachines that adopted the exact same structure as the cells they were replacing, you could attain immortality and keep your consciousness intact. Perhaps.
Spartan043 1 year ago 2
@Spartan043 Is the gestalt you describe non-physical or would the difference be caused by the fact that two bodies, no matter how similar, cannot occupy the same space simultaneously? Those are two distinct propositions and I am struggling to decide which should be pursued first. The first is spiritual and the other is phenomenological. Both seem to hold a lot of promise.
steveasat2 1 year ago 2
@steveasat2 There is still much that science does not yet know about the processes that underlie human consciousness, or how they can be manipulated on the subatomic or quantum level. It is difficult to tell whether or not an instant exchange of matter would work, even if it were extremely precise. My theory is that the human mind is highly synergistic in nature. Messing with even a single neuron can affect adjacent neurons, creating a chain reaction that reverberates through the entire brain.
Spartan043 1 year ago
@steveasat2 As for copies, I believe that if you were to somehow link two minds completely on the material level, they could share experiences or even memories, effectively becoming a single mind. If you were to simply copy a mind, that mind would cease to be the same person almost immediately due to random processes and divergence of the senses and memory.
Spartan043 1 year ago
@steveasat2 Let's say you were to make two copies of a person. Each copy comes into being in two identical isolation tanks. Some may think that both would remain identical, experiencing the same subjective thoughts even after a large amount of time has elapsed. I believe that random factors on the quantum level result in each mind being subtly "pushed" onto divergent tracks, resulting in both irrevocably becoming different from each other and the original.
Spartan043 1 year ago 2
The Majestic anyone...?
rankjack 1 year ago
@rankjack That's a good point. If the original person lost his/her memory at the moment of teleportation, would the copy have a stronger claim? That is, do you cease to be the same person if your personality changes abruptly instead of gradually (as is the case normally)? Family and friends of amnesiacs (or others who suffer rapid-onset mental illnesses) face that problem in real life.
steveasat2 1 year ago
I loved this cartoon so, so much when I was little. I "got" it then, but all these years later and this is the first time I've truly listened to her song at the beginning and end. Amazing work.
piccorotto 1 year ago
Accountability shafted onto the original.
1aundulxaldin 1 year ago
In my opinion, the original should have been decided by random chance. After all, they're identical.
Shadyguy111 1 year ago
I really like this. What year was it first released?
expandranon 1 year ago
@expandranon 1990.
mtext 1 year ago
This could very well be the most brilliant uploads I've ever seen here on youtube. Thanks for sharing.
expandranon 1 year ago
I can't tell if you're for or against this kind of matter transport, or were just skating the issue...
hgryphon 1 year ago
@hgryphon Personally, I'm intrigued by the questions such a mechanism would raise. I can see strong arguments on both sides of the issues, so I am not conclusively for or against such technology. From one perspective, it would simply hasten a process that happens naturally every day of our lives: the replacement of old cells with new. I just recently learned that one name for this philosophical paradox is "The Ship of Theseus".
steveasat2 1 year ago 2
@steveasat2 Interesting. Though I generally cringe away from philosophy, I'll have to look it up and hope there's not too many "soul" references...
hgryphon 1 year ago
@hgryphon It may help to remember that "soul" does not always refer to a scientifically dubious sort of magical gas that inhabits a living creature. Many people do conceive of it that way, but "soul" can also refer to the intangible unique behaviors and traits that make one object distinct from another. In that sense, a soul is pure information that has no objective existence outside the minds of those who apprehend it...and yet it is a meaningful and useful concept.
steveasat2 1 year ago 4
see the thing is unless memories causes a permanent imprint on a persons brain.. in the literal sense, then the memories of a person will be erased.
Montork 1 year ago
@Montork That would be awfully awkward, having to explain to the teleportees why they all have amnesia.
steveasat2 1 year ago
@Montork But the memories -are- (semi)permanent imprints on the brain. They are a physical network of connections in your brain - so they would be replicated just the same. To be clear, I'm not sure where we are in our understanding of the specific structure of memories but undeniably they are just part of the software in there.
alicepatterson575 1 year ago
@alicepatterson575 oh! that is awesome! i mean i thought the brain and body were fantastic to begin with, but if the brain can do something this complex its even more impressive!
Montork 1 year ago
@Montork But the memories will have been duplicated! Whether they are instantiated by accretions and ablations of neuronal sheaths, or neurotransmitter levels inside synapses, or ANY PHYSICAL PROCESS AT ALL, if this teleporter is truly faithful then the memories will be duplicated. If it doesn't duplicate memories, then it's not a faithful teleporter.
rpresser 1 year ago
The webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has proposed an amusing workaround for this problem. Look in the archive for the strip from October 23, 2009.
steveasat2 1 year ago
I once watched this short on PBS as a child. It absolutely chilled me to the bone for it was then I realized the finality of death. My Jehovah's Witness parents had taught me that there is no soul, and yet God will resurrect the dead in paradise because he has stored them in his perfect memory. See the paradox? So I can say watching this at that age changed my life. Sadly, most JWs choose to gloss over this fundamental contradiction.
cranberrysherbet 1 year ago
@cranberrysherbet I don't see the paradox you're referring to. If you think of a person as a collection of information that distinguishes him or her as a unique individual, then recreating that person would be a trivial act for an entity with control over creation itself. Even transhumanists, who tend to be die-hard atheists, see this as a realistic possibility. Death might be final...but there are a lot of ways (spiritual and material) it could turn out to be otherwise.
steveasat2 1 year ago
@steveasat2 But if there is nothing that persists after death, if our minds are just electricity in the brain in a body that turns to dust which is eventually incorporated into other beings, then from our own perspective we have one final death. I don't think it's possible in JW theology to reconcile this.
cranberrysherbet 1 year ago
@cranberrysherbet Hm, I think I see you objection. There would be no continuity of existence between the moment of death and rebirth...no "lifeboat" in which you would migrate from one body to the next.
But in the JW scenario you describe, there'd really be nothing for that lifeboat to carry. Everything you are, even your sense of continuity, exists in God's memory/imagination continually and never dies, only the body that served as its physical expression.
steveasat2 1 year ago
wow.. just read a disney comic featuring donald duck that made me think of this very cartoon XP
DemiTrusdale 1 year ago
You know what else I wonder about this video? If this machine was mass produced and open to the public, and people knew what it did.... if they got in, would it mean they were suicidal? :O
EpicMinnie 1 year ago
What happens to the souls or the spirits of the originals / copies that get destroyed?
EpicMinnie 1 year ago
@EpicMinnie Very good question. A strict materialist would say that the soul is recreated along with the rest of the person in the second chamber. A strict spiritualist would say that a soul cannot be destroyed and has no physical location, so it makes no difference what happens to the first body. I think this cartoon is unsettling because most of us are on the fence between those two positions, and it shows the problems caused by trying to believe both things at once.
steveasat2 1 year ago 3
@EpicMinnie Who knows if we have one?
Jakeb575 1 year ago
"The Prestige" deals with this same problem
wickedfeylady 1 year ago
LOL This is what I always thought about the Star Trek Transporters. It's just a suicide machine that creates a clone of you on the other side.
Chnamanjx 1 year ago
Hmm Juke bar may be it not sure I remember the roaches lived in a jukebox.
nights1515 1 year ago 2
@nights1515 The entry on IMDB sounds like what you're describing. If not, click on the "Plot Keywords" portion of that movie's IMDB page to see more movies about cockroaches or jukeboxes. Very handy research tool.
steveasat2 1 year ago
Thank you for sharing this with the rest of us, Steve. It puts all kinds of neat philosophical questions in palpable form, ranging from the ethics of murder to what people might accept if a new technology was offered (ie. Would you die to use a teleporter?), and helps us all to understand life, and being, in a new way.
Silentchap 1 year ago
When I saw The Prestige this cartoon was the first thing to pop in my head
nights1515 1 year ago 20
@nights1515 Same here! My wife hadn't seen this and I own it on laserdisc but the player isn;t hooked up and I was glad to find it here.
kimzeynkink 1 year ago
@kimzeynkink Do you have more? It's hard to find these O Canada cartoons. As a kid I hated them because they scared me but now I appreciate them for their sophistication and being a part of my childhood by scaring me. I've been looking for the short about the Roaches.
nights1515 1 year ago
@nights1515 I have the Incredible Animation Collection 1 fro National FIlm Board of Canada. It has on it Juke-Bar, If Only, To Be, The Cat Came Back, SPecial Delivery, Why Me?, and Kid Stuff.
kimzeynkink 1 year ago
OH MY GOD I saw this when I was 6 on cartoon network's O Canada
landosalemchainsaw 1 year ago
a very good story i added it to my fevs
Allcanadian79 1 year ago
@rkyeun
while quantum teleportation doesn't destroy the original it does "scramble" it, making it less original than the copy.
So with quantum teleportation the question of who is real is easy. (the scrambled person will probably still be alive though)
Doilookfatinthese 1 year ago
Its bizarre how many people think the answer to this is simple, which sort of leads me to believe they don't understand the question.
supafly345 1 year ago 6
@rkyeun I believe there are two issues at stake here. First, are the copies TRULY identical? How could we ever be certain? Second, is it still murder to kill someone who has an identical copy? Is it less wrong if they have a 99% identical clone? It sort of feels okay, but would we just be ignoring the monstrousness of what we were doing?
steveasat2 1 year ago 3
Every time i see this, i keep thinking that the scientist was flirting with her, the way he brided her and moved his eyes, besides knowing the real truth of his machine.
KP3131012 1 year ago
Right after I saw "The Prestige" for the first time I immediately thought of this cartoon. It scared the crap out of me when I was a kid and it still does today. Even if Hugh Jackman is the one telling the story.
TheSeptet 2 years ago
has anyone ever seen a different version of this video on O Canada?
mysticatspr07 2 years ago
Different in what way? Animation, narration, or music? That would be very interesting to see.
steveasat2 2 years ago
In a lot of ways, the ending of this film kind of reminds me of the concept of Pheonixes.
I mean much like pheonixes, the heroine arose anew from her own ashes, so to speak.
Anyway, I always loved this animation.
battybuddy 2 years ago
Wait...you need a license to ride a Skidoo?
Barbaric Canadians.....
WeegeeSteichen 2 years ago
I enjoyed this video greatly, but in order to be disturbed by it, it would have needed to raise an ethical question more
likely to arise for me in any conceiveable future.
By the way, though it is a theorem that in quantum
teleportation the "original" needs to be destroyed
to make possible its reconstruction elsewhere, this
is just a quantum theorem. It does not have much
to do with the kind of identity issues raised by the cartoon. We hardly feel identified with a particular quantum state.
peterbacsi47 2 years ago
The ethical question tends to overshadow a more disturbing existential question that is such a part of everyday life we get by without ever pondering it. That is, what really gives us our identity? We are not precisely the same as we were a week ago, just like the inventor's copy is no longer the same as his original, from the moment he steps out of the booth.
So is a sense of identity with our earlier selves merely a comforting illusion? Far enough back, they might not even recognize us.
steveasat2 2 years ago
Yeah, even on a macro level, my opinions over time have changed, even though I was supposedly absolutely convinced of my previous opinions before. We change every moment, it's part of living in a changing universe. We all are scions of our previous selves, in a sense: a combination of memories, tendencies and conditions that must continue to exist in order to realize that part of us no longer exists. Combine THAT with the fallibility of memory and the changes that come as we age. Very surreal :)
nutherefurlong 2 years ago
@steveasat2
All of us are very different creatures from the ones we were when we were five years old, but were not concerned bout the "death" of the young version of ourselves. That ver. just slowly and continuously turned into the current ver.
If a serious change in brain-state counts as a death, then you die every time you go to sleep. The person that wakes up in the morning just happens to share the name, body and memories of the one who fell asleep last night, and who thus ceased to exist.
MajinSora 1 year ago 2
@MajinSora That thought always makes me pretty glad about waking up, if a bit guilty.
steveasat2 1 year ago
Disturbing.
bfugal 2 years ago
Needed a better musical intro. That woman's singing voice was just annoying.
Coid 2 years ago
I love her voice!!
klausette 2 years ago
The ending is fucking ridiculous. No one should ever be permitted to atone for guilt in such an easy manner.
Uaxis 2 years ago
That's the point...it's tongue in cheek.
tigrress 2 years ago
@Uaxis Is a death sentence an easy manner? This question assumes the view that both the copy and the "original" are for all intents and purposes different people but that's the essence of the video. Let me put it this way, imagine you interrupted the signal being sent to box 2 and there was no reconstitution on the other side. From the perspective of the woman in box 1 she is still destroyed, nothing is different, so I believe this is (right or wrong) the most extreme way possible to atone
Jakeb575 1 year ago
I adored watching O' Canada and getting exposed to all these artsy cartoons as a child, but this one...out of all the other ones SCARED THE BUHJEEBUZZ OUTTA ME! The other great ones like "The Apprentice", "The Cat Came Back", "Little Black Fly", "The Big Snit", creeped me out, but this one was horrifying, spiderman underoos-soiling, nightmare fuel to me.
I still find it quite unsettling, but thanks for uploading this.
Drroxxette 2 years ago 5
Most of those you cite are Richard Condie films. He really has a terrific knack for visuals that you remember forever. Check out his ode to procrastination "Getting Started".
steveasat2 2 years ago
It had the same effect on me, too!
klausette 2 years ago
There was an 'Outer Limits' episode involving teleportation that covered some of the same ground. The imperative for destroying the original was given by the inventors of the device, a race of cold-blooded lizard people, who insisted that 'The balance' of the universe had to be maintained. The interesting twist is that the copy is off having a nice vacation, and the original isn't destroyed (a malfunction). It's left up to the human to grimly follow instructions and kill the frightened girl.
ddrucker 2 years ago 2
Great episode! It was based on the science fiction story "Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly.
dsfashena 2 years ago
The only problem is you can't depend on humans to kill other humans as part of such a spanning industry. It is completely inane.
Uaxis 2 years ago
I saw that episode as well.
aeroldoth 2 years ago
NarutoxHinata1100 is right. The scientist that the girl "killed" was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. In order for her to assuage her guilt completely shouldn't she have copied and "killed" herself just as many times as the scientist had before she met him?
BTW, I just copied and pasted "NarutoxHinata1100" three times. Does that mean there are now four identical NarutoxHinata1100s, and the original must now be destroyed? ;P
WeegeeSteichen 2 years ago