John Weldon's "To Be"

Canadian animation by John Weldon offering a lighthearted overview of a central problem of ontology: the continuity of existence.

• Category

  Film & Animation

[riceisdelicious]

Wait... Instead of using it to teleport people which will kill the original or leave two of the person, why not just turn off the "destroy" part and then just use it to make copies of food and other supplies instead of people? It could instantly solve the huge problems like world hunger, poverty, etc.

[steveasat2]

That kind of logic is known as "Cut Lex Luthor a Check" on TVTropes. Mad scientists seem to be woefully incapable of thinking outside the box. A teleporter with the destroy function disabled would also allow us to make backup copies of ourselves before bedtime. IRL save states!

[shane borgeson]

why would she say he wanted her to be the first person to try it out if she already saw one guy try the transporter box before her. is she saying that the first guy wasn't human? that would be pretty mean if thats the case. cuz he is human.

[steveasat2]

"One of the first". Medallion Guy is evidently a shill, a confederate of the scientist waiting in the crowd in case no one else dares to volunteer. In which case, he's a plant as well as a human, LOL.

[john weldon]

Nice to see folks still mulling over this one; I made it around 1989, apparently several philosophy profs use it in their classes. Stephen G, sorry about the observers; just too lazy to keep drawing them all! Drop by my channel if you want to see some of what I've been up to lately.

[steveasat2]

The reasoning is based on the strong probability that entropy will increase rather than decrease whenever a facsimile is made and that this will render the copy less efficient than the original. The likelihood of an exact duplicate is extremely small, since they cannot both occupy the same space at the same time and are therefore subject to slightly different local effects. Also, it's a cartoon.

[steveasat2]

Both the original and the copy remember climbing out of a booth. If they weren't paying close attention, they could easily both believe they'd climbed out of the first booth and thus were the original.

[3Sciencenut]

What I don't understand is what the argument is about the "original." Obviously the 'actual' original is lying in order to save his life, but each one knows exactly which they are. The first has no memory of existing within the second booth (at least at that instance).

[Nif3]

Jesus fucking christ that was very fucked up, what the fuck.

[Burkhart4192]

I assumed that she waited until after the show ended before asking to know how it worked.

[whitegrant]

I saw this quite a long time ago and have always remembered it, glad to have found it again

[Burkhart4192]

My two cents - assuming that there is no way for the users to know which booth they are in, while they are in the booths they are essentially the same person with two bodies, as they are receiving identical stimuli. Thus, being destroyed and recreated is no different to the universe being destroyed and rebuilt every tick of the universe. What WAS wrong was letting out the original, as this diverged his mind from the other and made him a unique sentient individual.