It's not...impossible...we can't really describe what "consciousness" is. How do we know the universe doesn't explode and restore-from-savestate every 10 seconds, and we just keep on meeking through blisfully unaware?

You ever read "Timeline", by Michael Crichton? Not exactly his best book...and definitely not his best movie (unless you're the type to swoon for Paul Walker, in which case...alright). But in it they talk about time travel and compare it to a fax machine, except the original is 'destroyed'. What "goes back in time" is actually a carbon copy, a clone. I think it was Timeline, at least.

It's probably been brought up countless other times in Sci-Fi as well. Probably dozens just in Star Trek alone. But I'm not much of a sci-fi buff. But I think about that every time teleportation, or time-travel, or even cloning, like in "The 6th Day", shows up in stories.

But ultimately, the particles get destroyed, meaning the entire body gets destroyed, so with it, the consciousness. So really, you must die every time you teleport, or time-travel, or whatever, right? But you're completely unaware of it. You're just a new copy, destroyed and re-assembled. A person of Theseus. Lights out on one side, lights on on the other.

But...like, lights out is lights out, right?

Maybe I'm just stoned. What are we talking about again?