The transmitted/reassembled entity would have the same memory cache and therefore would believe he was me. Assuming the original "me" had been consumed in the process, there is no conflict. You have no way of determining otherwise. The fly in the ointment as far as I am concerned is that molecules (or even basic particles cannot be converted into photons and reconverted into particles with any assurance they will replicate faithfully. Goes against quantum theory. And THAT's assuming you could rearrange them in the same order. Star Trek always tried to base their gimmicks and phenomena on an expert's opinion that "This could conceivably happen if we just get smart enough to pull it off." But in the transporter, they failed in spades.

I believe that consciousness would require a constant live connection. My take is that if you are breaking apart everything that we are, we would not survive. The recreation would be an exact copy but not the same person. Each time you're transported you'd die and be rebuilt. You are not only each cell, but the connections between each cell. Your arm is not an arm if it is in molecular pieces, and your brain is not either. At that moment you die.

The Star Trek style transporter erases you and duplicates you, so you are not made of the same atoms that were disintegrated when you went in. But as far as I'm concerned, 'you' are just the consciousness that comes along with your ever-replenishing physical form, as @LadyAlyxandrea said, so as long as the consciousness goes with the re-built body, then that's you.

I bet that if we tried it, though, we'd find that doesn't happen... What we'd get at the other end would be like opening a Word document — it would look identical and still relay information, but there'd be no 'undo'; no connection to its history. It would be a weird situation.

Plugging myself for a moment: I'm writing a story in which faster-than-light travel is achievable because the Universe works like a TV screen with a seed which zips simultaneously about the place, creating every particle. You just tell the thing where you want it to put your atoms on the next refresh — so even if you reappear on the other side of Jupiter, it's still you.

If you want to get really deep, the cells of the human body die and regenerate within 7 years, so technically you are not the same person you were 7 years ago, as nearly every cell that made up who you were then has been replaced

Hmmm if it's still moving your cells and molecules and rearranging them they are still your cells and molecules so technically it'd still be you. If it's dematerializin you into a copy of yourself, you'd be an artificial you.

I've thought about this a bit, and it seems there really would never be a way to know for sure if the person that steps out is the 'same' person, or a perfect copy.

Technically the Star Trek transporter technology disassembles / reassembles you and so is from a certain perspective killing and resurrecting you. But it's still you, as others have pointed out. Assuming there were actually such a thing as a "Heisnberg compensator" and the brownian motion and relation of all the subatomic particles could be precisely replicated in a reasonable time frame, you would still be "you" for any meaningful definition of "you".

I suspect that the malfunction some people have with the concept may be unconsciously rooted in old religious ideas of some spirit-like essence being left behind in such an operation. In order to be okay with hypothetical tech like this, you would have to be a philosophical naturalist through and through.

Shades of Blade Runner in which Deckard thinks he is human, but turns out to be a replicant. Is Deckard still Deckard? Was Deckard ever Deckard?

What if you were a human clone but didn't know it? Are you still you? What does it even mean for a human clone to be "you"? And if you are not you, then who are you?

But, if there is no constant human soul, does the question even make any sense? Nonsensical questions have no sensible answers.

It's essentially the Ship of Theseus, but done all at once. It's really just a question of how we use language: there is no real reason to think of the specific collection of individual atoms as you, since they are constantly being swapped out anyway by regular metabolic functions. It's just the way we talk about it that causes the hangup. If we are us even while the atoms change from metabolism, and no one minds that, it shouldn't make much difference if the atoms change from something else, or at a different rate. The you is your persisting consciousness.

Best case, it would have a high statistical probability of being you. You can't make a signal that contains the mass and position of your atoms due to the uncertainty principle. I always wished trek transporters were worm-hole based, or some artifact of subspace.

Nah: The original me was born of my mother, the subsequent me was born of a machine. A duplicate is never the original, no matter how fine a copy. If it became possible to 'transport' atom for atom and re-organise in exactly the same way, then i guess it would be the same me. But if the same atoms were transported and re-assembled differently? I just don't know...

Hmmm....you do know that there are people who actually teleport. Many of them, in fact. Usually, people don't do it deliberately - they just find themselves somewhere else when they are in danger, but some eastern disciplines allow people to teleport at will.

We are all made of energy, and time and space don't really exist, so why not?

This has happened to me numerous times, and my brother-in-law, a close friend, and my daughter have also reported teleporting. In fact, I usually didn't realize it had happened to me until later, since it seemed normal at the time.

Once, I found my car behind a monster truck that was about to hit me head on in a narrow mountain road with steep gullies on both sides of the road.
Several times I started out with my husband on trips that should have taken several hours, only to see the exit signs for the city almost as soon as we got on the interstate.

When my car's speedometer stopped working, suddenly I was able to drive to Louisville from my farm near Morehead, KY, in 20 minutes instead of two hours, and to Cincinnati, OH, in 40 minutes when it should have taken three hours.

I didn't pay much attention, although my dad met me in the driveway freaking out when I called him from my sister's house in Louisville just before starting for home, and arrived at my house in 20 minutes, even though I'd stopped for gas on the way. He kept yelling that it was impossible, but I didn't pay much attention to him.

But after I got a car with a working speedometer, suddenly those same trips took several hours apiece, to my annoyance.

A few years later, my daughter's car's speedometer also stopped working, and the same thing happened to her. Others on this website have reported similar things happening to them.

If you troll me, I'll just block you.

Whats truely a bitch is that both are equal in everything. Thought and memories and loves and desires. My thoughts that if one died then the original died even though there was a duplicate.

I personally suspect that sure it would essentially kill you but copy you first anyway so yes the being that stepped out WOULD be me. I don't believe in a soul or anything similar, and believe "you" are the sum of your experiences so if those were copied and killed (perhaps unknowingly) then the replacement would still be perceived as still being you/me.