I always wondered why we can’t just take checkpoints of ourselves via the transporter, so if we die on an away mission NBD—we lose the information and experience of of the mission and that’s it. Could even have like a git repo of ourselves.
It is obvious that no one really thought through the implications of transporters when they were created for TOS. Later, someone came up with the technology behind and it sounds horrific, but no one really understood the implications.
Even by TNG era, there was enough understanding of the idea of transporters where a species could have created a Moon like method of supplying labor, with workers being "beamed out" after their service and enough positions filled with different patterns enough to fool the crew.
This is basically how death and respawn are handled in pretty much every space sim I've ever played. You're insured and if you die, the insurance company pops out a clone of you and charges you (it?) a premium. If we had the tech for it, I'm sure it would actually be a thing.
The very last bit about going to bed being a break in consciousness... I dream. That's how I know. Because the stream of consciousness doesn't actually end when I sleep. It just goes on autopilot, unless I lucid dream.
I understand the science behind this, but I routinely use weed just before bed and have the same amount of dreams (that I remember, at least) as when I take an extended break. From experience I don’t think the sleep/dream disruption is as heavy as they say.