Teleportation Safety

[jonks]

Read a Takeshi Kovacs novel by Richard Morgan for an indepth analysis of the consequences of such technology. Altered Carbon is book 1. The tech in the book actually deals with consciousness/memory stored as data, but same concept in practice.

Or see The Prestige

 

[silverpig]

You would have to be destroyed. In order to make an exact copy the machine would need to determine the exact quantum state of every particle in your body. You can't measure that state without destroying it, so the original you would have to go in order for the information to be stored somewhere else. Then that information would have to be destroyed in order to make a new copy of you.

 

[Farang]

Another interesting question is--if teleportation technology existed, would there then be a way of answering the original question? I say no because you'd get what seems to be the same person coming out the other end, saying it is perfectly safe.. when in reality the original is dead.

 

[Dirigible]

Me #1 walks into teleportation booth #1. An instant later, me #2 walks out of teleportation booth #2 a thousand miles away. What happened?

Me #1 was scanned, down to the smallest detail. That information is sent to booth #2. Booth #2 creates a new me (me #2) that's an exact duplicate. The matter involved is different, but to me #2 it just feels like teleportation of the same person.

Ah, but in the flash of light that accompanied the scan of me #1 and blinded all bystanders, the floor of booth #1 opened up. Me #1 fell down. Booth floor closed above me #1. Evil teleportation booth owner has me #1 in his clutches and forces me #1 to work as slave labor until me #1 dies. Since me #2 is out and about, no one knows that this is what happened to me #1 and no search is started. No one knows it's happened. Evil teleportation booth owner secretly does this to everyone who uses the teleportation booths and has an army of slaves. AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Idea is not mine. It's paraphrased from a cloning story where someone regularly lived the good life, got super fat, then supposedly had their "self" transferred into a skinny, fit clone, who walked out and started the cycle again. The fat version of the person still was that person ("self" wasn't transferred, just copied) and had to work in misery as a slave for the cloner, along with all the previous fat versions of himself. I like how evil it is.

 

[Throckmorton]

I've thought about this since I used to watch TNG on TV. I think the original you would cease to exist. The new you that gets built by the teleporter would be indistinguishable from the outside obviously. Star Trek reassembles the molecules with 100% precision though, down to the quantum level. Maybe that helps.

I guess it depends on what consciousness is, and what makes you YOU in the first place. Why am I me and not some other consciousness in another body?


The fact that so many of us wondered about this is pretty sweet.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

I guess it depends on what consciousness is, and what makes you YOU in the first place. Why am I me and not some other consciousness in another body?

See I think you are looking at it the wrong way.

Yes, you are not that guy across the street, this is true. But you also aren't "you 1 year ago". You are literally a different person. You only think you are the same person because of your memories which are determined by the physical arrangement of atomic particles in your brain.


Basically think of it not as "you" moving through time, but a series of different "yous", each existing for a moment before giving up the body for the next "you".

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally posted by: Chiropteran

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

I guess it depends on what consciousness is, and what makes you YOU in the first place. Why am I me and not some other consciousness in another body?

See I think you are looking at it the wrong way.

Yes, you are not that guy across the street, this is true. But you also aren't "you 1 year ago". You are literally a different person. You only think you are the same person because of your memories which are determined by the physical arrangement of atomic particles in your brain.


Basically think of it not as "you" moving through time, but a series of different "yous", each existing for a moment before giving up the body for the next "you".

You aren't the same person at every moment in time, but it's the same consciousness persisting. You were you yesterday and you're you right now.

 

[BeauJangles]

Originally posted by: ConstipatedVigilante

Originally posted by: BlinderBomber
In response: I would never, ever take a teleporter. The clone of you would be a clone, but it wouldn't be you.

Actually, it would be. They would act exactly the same as you. They'd have all the same memories and thought patterns. Whether or not I'd get along with my clone is another thing entirely. I might find myself absolutely obnoxious, or it might be like finding a best friend. My best friend and I seem to always think on the same patterns (jump to the same conclusions, interpret things similarly), but we're very different people (analytical vs. creative, my outlet is writing vs. artistry for him).

I think it would be exactly you up to the moment you were teleported, but your consciousness wouldn't suddenly shift to the newly-made you. From that second onward you would be two separate entities.

 

[Farang]

Originally posted by: Chiropteran

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

I guess it depends on what consciousness is, and what makes you YOU in the first place. Why am I me and not some other consciousness in another body?

See I think you are looking at it the wrong way.

Yes, you are not that guy across the street, this is true. But you also aren't "you 1 year ago". You are literally a different person. You only think you are the same person because of your memories which are determined by the physical arrangement of atomic particles in your brain.


Basically think of it not as "you" moving through time, but a series of different "yous", each existing for a moment before giving up the body for the next "you".

Interesting.. so you're saying the difference is the same between you & transported you as it is between you & past/future you?

I don't know if I agree with that.. because present you is different from past you but those differences were brought about by slow changes in your biological self. In contrast, transported you is a reconstruction of you created by the destruction of you

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Teleportation works by converting all the matter in your body into information. Assuming that Computers are able to take in the petabytes of information of the entire body, yes, teleportation would destroy your first body.

However, it would create an interesting prospect for cloning.

 

[randay]

i am me.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: Farang

Interesting.. so you're saying the difference is the same between you & transported you as it is between you & past/future you?

I don't know if I agree with that.. because present you is different from past you but those differences were brought about by slow changes in your biological self. In contrast, transported you is a reconstruction of you created by the destruction of you

I think consciousness is just an illusion created by our memory.

The difference between you and transported you would be the same as the difference between you now and you 1 second later, except for differences arising from the change of location.

 

[mundane]

Originally posted by: sirjonk
Read a Takeshi Kovacs novel by Richard Morgan for an indepth analysis of the consequences of such technology. Altered Carbon is book 1. The tech in the book actually deals with consciousness/memory stored as data, but same concept in practice.

Or see The Prestige

Double Sleeving is prohibited by the Protectorate, and carries a mandatory erasure penalty!

 

[Eli]

Being reconstructed atom by atom isn't the same thing as a clone in this sense.

It would be you, it would not be a clone. Your life is what has arranged your atoms the way they are.

In the traditional sense of a clone, that clone has to live and grow, thus making it different from you.

Edit: I guess it would be better to say that cloning as we know it now isn't a true clone in the strictest sense of the word.

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally posted by: Chiropteran

Originally posted by: Farang

Interesting.. so you're saying the difference is the same between you & transported you as it is between you & past/future you?

I don't know if I agree with that.. because present you is different from past you but those differences were brought about by slow changes in your biological self. In contrast, transported you is a reconstruction of you created by the destruction of you

I think consciousness is just an illusion created by our memory.

The difference between you and transported you would be the same as the difference between you now and you 1 second later, except for differences arising from the change of location.

You are talking about personality, not consciousness. Our consciousnesses could be switched, and we'd still be the same people we were previously because all the memories, behaviors, etc would be the same. The only difference would be I'd be you and you'd be me.

 

[m1ldslide1]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

Originally posted by: Chiropteran

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

I guess it depends on what consciousness is, and what makes you YOU in the first place. Why am I me and not some other consciousness in another body?

See I think you are looking at it the wrong way.

Yes, you are not that guy across the street, this is true. But you also aren't "you 1 year ago". You are literally a different person. You only think you are the same person because of your memories which are determined by the physical arrangement of atomic particles in your brain.


Basically think of it not as "you" moving through time, but a series of different "yous", each existing for a moment before giving up the body for the next "you".

You aren't the same person at every moment in time, but it's the same consciousness persisting. You were you yesterday and you're you right now.

Yeah but what is consciousness? I have roughly the same thoughts - I was me yesterday, I am me right now, I was me 15 years ago. But I'm almost entirely made up of different cells and neural pathways now than when I was 13, right? So what do I have in common with myself at that age, or even five minutes ago? Mostly it's memory. One would think that if they are a single conscious being because of memory, then one would think the same about the present. But what exactly is the present? That's a tough one to wrap my brain around. The present must exist only as an infinitely narrow measurement of time, racing forward into the 'future' at infinite speeds, leaving memory in its wake.

So is there a soul or a singular being in there somewhere in a traditional sense? Or maybe it all boils down to a collection of memories with an imperceptibly thin coating of 'the present' out in front.

 

[Crono]

To provide a biblical viewpoint (if you don't want to hear it, then ignore the rest of this post), what makes "you" more than anything else is your soul (aka "spirit"), which does not die even if your body does. What tethers the soul to the body, we don't know. The physical interface linking the spirit and body is the brain, but the spiritual counterpart is not known because we cannot "see" (sense) spiritually. People think that the brain is the mind, the part of you that thinks and feels, but that is not the case. The brain itself is just a means for relaying control from your mind (which is part of your spirit) to your body. You could think of the brain as being a keyboard or a conglomeration of peripherals, to use an analogy. The keyboard is just an interface, and so is the brain (though both are important, of course, in their respective roles ). If your brain is damaged or dies, your mind is not injured and does not die, just as if you spilled soda on your keyboard (or took a hammer to it) you would not be injured or die. The link, however, would be damaged or severed. If your keyboard is broken, you are limited in input. Perhaps you wouldn't be able to use crtan lttrs, or you wouldn't be able to type at . If your brain is damaged, you can perform certain functions (to the point where you would be considered "brain dead"), or if it is completely destroyed, your body dies.

Teleportation (though I hesitate to use the word because of its technological/sci-fi connotations) is something that is recorded in the Bible. The Holy Spirit "caught away" Philip instantly to a different location. The language there seems to indicate that Philip was "translated" from one place to another (interestingly enough, though I won't go into the details here, there are references elsewhere that indicate what we would perceive as "time travel" has/is being done to the 2 people that never died: Enoch and Elijah) instantly. The deconstruction and reconstruction of molecules and atoms appears to be something that Jesus could do as well, since He passed through solid matter on 2 occasions. I don't think that in either case that the Bible as being new people afterwards. In any case, this information doubtlessly is no use to any would-be ATOT scientists, as the Bible isn't a technical manual on having supernatural powers, but I thought I would share.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: silverpig
You would have to be destroyed. In order to make an exact copy the machine would need to determine the exact quantum state of every particle in your body. You can't measure that state without destroying it, so the original you would have to go in order for the information to be stored somewhere else. Then that information would have to be destroyed in order to make a new copy of you.

Star Trek had "Heisenberg Compensators" so they didn't have to deal with that pesky Uncertainty Principle.

And something I missed earlier that Chiropteran said:

Your memory and consciousness only exist in your mind based on the biological arrangement of neurons.

Memory, yes. That is a stored arrangement of neurons.
Consciousness, however, is the result of masses of neurons firing together over time. A "stream" if you will. This is why we perceive time as something different than space.

To those who answered yes (and we're still assuming "Star Trek-like" meaning Uncertainty doesn't apply), let's assume that time "stopped" (or more appropriately, that you stopped in time, although this is purely hypothetical either way) and then started up again. Would you know it? Answer: no. Same thing with teleportation.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: Vic

Memory, yes. That is a stored arrangement of neurons.
Consciousness, however, is the result of masses of neurons firing together over time. A "stream" if you will. This is why we perceive time as something different than space.

But it does stop. When you lose consciousness, that stream stops until you wake up, right?


Teleportation would be much the same I think. It would be like blacking out for a moment and waking up somewhere else.

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton

You are talking about personality, not consciousness. Our consciousnesses could be switched, and we'd still be the same people we were previously because all the memories, behaviors, etc would be the same. The only difference would be I'd be you and you'd be me.

If our consciousness switched, and I'm you and you are me, with each others perspective memories, how would either of us ever know it happened?

I say we couldn't, nobody could. And I think it's easier to just remove the whole idea of "consciousness" as a state separate from our memories and working brain.

It's sort of meaningless, so why even try to think about it when it's not needed for a complete understanding?

 

[mindmaniac]

What's so hard to understand, if you get dematerialized the curren't "you" dies, so what there is another version of you with all the same memories, it's a completely new person not the one you originally started with.?

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: DanTMWTMP
There was a Star Trek: Enterprise episode about the teleporter yesterday on Sci-Fi. The actress who plays Ensign Hoshi is not too shabby. Rather hawwt if you ask me.

There was also an episode of TNG with Barclay being conscious in the matter stream. People on a station or planet had gotten stuck in the transporter streams or something and were manifesting to him as monsters. And he figured how to get them out.

Anyway, I think the way it works in star trek is that your body is actually scanned, then your molecules converted to data/energy, sent somewhere, and reconstituted.

Think of it this way: You take a small metal object, lets say an iron frying pan, melt it down and carry the liquid metal somewhere else, then put it into molds originally used to make the frying pan. Is it still the same pan? It was remade exactly to how it was, using the material from the original pan.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: mindmaniac
After watching "The Big Bang Theory" last night which I apologize for this topic came up that has been perplexing everyone at work. Please defend your answers if possible.

"Will the new you be any bit better than the original"
"Nope, same!"
"Ahh that's a pity"

:laugh:

I :heart: that show. That was a good episode but not as good as the Halloween one .

 

[SunnyD]

The physical body doesn't matter, it's the consciousness (or "soul" as some of you have said) that matters. As was previously mentioned, atomically we're constantly building a new "you", but the consciousness is binding. I suppose it's a matter of being able to rebuild an exact duplicate down to the exact atomic and subatomic structure as well as the energy patterns (in the case of neural impulses) of an instantaneous snapshot of a human - and viola, you have a transporter actually transporting you.

But then the question is, if you don't actually transport, but duplicate, then what happens? At that point I would venture to guess that there would be two of you, but now the two of you are in physically different quantum states (as you're now occupying two dissimilar points of space-time at the same time), hence you've just cloned yourself. There is no guarantee that one or the other you will behave exactly the same from that point on - which begs the question then, if you do transport and destroy the original, are you still really you since you're now in a separate space-time. It becomes a paradox... are really boils down to the question which can't be answered - what makes you you? That would be your consciousness at a given point in space-time, and that, my friends can never be replicated.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Raduque
Think of it this way: You take a small metal object, lets say an iron frying pan, melt it down and carry the liquid metal somewhere else, then put it into molds originally used to make the frying pan. Is it still the same pan? It was remade exactly to how it was, using the material from the original pan.

No - because the atomic state of the pan is completely different. If you carried the actual pan to point A at time B versus carrying the atoms of the pan to point A at time be, then reconstituting the pan via the mold - you would have to place every single atom and subatomic particle in the exact same configuration, and state as they would have been if the actual pan had been carried. Quantum uncertainty means this will never happen, at least not with our current understanding of physics. You will never be able to predict every single change that will happen over the time of transport all the way to the subatomic level between the solid pan and the liquid pan.