Teleportation and You
Private_Coleman
PhD in Video Games Join Date: 2002-11-07 Member: 7510Members
PhD in Video Games Join Date: 2002-11-07 Member: 7510Members
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">This forum is empty wut</div>Let's pretend we can teleport!
Say I; the brilliant scientist that I am, built a teleporter that worked. The teleporter uses instant transmission of individual atoms one at a time to create the object at the other side. This happens very quickly, so quickly it looks like the occupying object vanishes.
I go through the teleport to show you it works, and come out the other side and say I told you so. I look exactly as I went in and remember everything previous in detail.
Would you use my teleportation device to get around or would you refuse? Why?
Say I; the brilliant scientist that I am, built a teleporter that worked. The teleporter uses instant transmission of individual atoms one at a time to create the object at the other side. This happens very quickly, so quickly it looks like the occupying object vanishes.
I go through the teleport to show you it works, and come out the other side and say I told you so. I look exactly as I went in and remember everything previous in detail.
Would you use my teleportation device to get around or would you refuse? Why?
Comments
The rest of the world may be unable to tell the difference, and my identical doppelganger may not know the difference either (though I think he might, since he's identical to me - he'd just go "well, no sense worrying about it NOW"), but I'm still dead.
For even more mindboogledness; let's assume the only thing that makes of what we are, is the physical components of us. Time and location doesn't matter, since do we cease existing because we move? or when time progresses? Trough time we are carried on the persistency of the feeling of us. But who to say it's still us? Am I the same as I were as a child? any given instance of self will automatically think it's itself.-insert long explanation i cba typing here - That's why me > you is just as valid as me > future me.
It's actually a pretty nice philosophy to cope with death.
You nailed it to a degree.
If you have different thoughts and action, it wouldnt be completely identical. However the feeling of self would be the same. Since feeling of self = our existance. So in one twisty manner you would be both instances of the person, although it's really hard to perspectivise that <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
For a little while maybe but since the two of you aren't occupying the exact same space, things would start to differ, if only minusculey at first.
War, weapons delivery, terrorism
Food Supply
Water
Exercise (you think Americans are fat now? Wait till they don't even have to walk to the tv or fridge)
Travel (vastly increased opportunities for tourism, including space)
Privacy
Many of our seemingly unrelated modern problems would be changed drastically. Oil usage would be drastically cut due to instant transportation, garbage could be dumped in space, production processes that effect modern capitalistic economies (both positive and negative).
If a country did invent a working teleporter, it would be a massive technological advantage over the rest of the world.
*teleports an armed nuclear bomb set to detonate in five seconds into the enemy's command bunker*
On the other hand, if the teleporter somehow teleported the same molecules that make you up to another location (i.e. break you down into component atoms, send those, then reassemble them), it is the same you. Although that would depend on your views. If you don't think a "soul" can be teleported, then you're gonna be fairly weary of it, I guess.
Personally, I'd probably use the second type, but I definitely wouldn't be the first in line to test it.
Star Trek: You convert matter to energy, then send that energy to someplace else and then transform that back into matter. The problem here is quite obvious: You need to send a form of energy, that automatically transforms back once it reaches its desired location.
Advantage would be, that you can send objects and people at light speed to places that you haven't even been at. The problem is that this needs way more energy than the 2nd method.
The fly: Basically same as in Star Trek, but you have 2 chambers and teleport to a know location, where you have placed a receiver before. This receiver only needs the signal and lots of energy, but less than in method one.
The recreation: Again, you need two chambers as in the fly, but the 2nd chamber has to be filled with enough subatomic particles (maybe wven whole atoms) so that you do not need all that energy to convert matter to energy and back. Instead you just copy the location of all your particles, then send it to the 2nd chamber and recreate it there. Now, this is of course a direct copy or for living beings: cloning process. So in order to become a method of teleportation you need to kill the original.
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Of these 3 methods you would try only the third, because it is essentially some kind of suicide, without the consequence of death <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />.
For even more mindboogledness; let's assume the only thing that makes of what we are, is the physical components of us. Time and location doesn't matter, since do we cease existing because we move? or when time progresses? Trough time we are carried on the persistency of the feeling of us. But who to say it's still us? Am I the same as I were as a child? any given instance of self will automatically think it's itself.-insert long explanation i cba typing here - That's why me > you is just as valid as me > future me.
It's actually a pretty nice philosophy to cope with death.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually all of your cells are replaced over time: bone and neural tissue are some of the slowest; skin and especially the interior lining cells in the intestines are some of the fastest. So the physical you a few years ago is not the physical you now. Those atoms are not the same atoms you are now. And you are eating and drinking new atoms in regularly, and pissing, crapping, sweating, spitting, shedding, cutting (hair and nails, not the rest hopefully) rest of you out.
The only thing that stays constant is the structure and the electrochemical process that are alive like fire. Thus why I have made the comparison that if I transfered my consciousness to another body it would be like passing the flame from one candle with another. The only odd thing is if the flame didn't just transfer, it duplicated.
That might be an interesting error of such a teleportation method: Accidental Duplication
Not to derail the thread further, but you said "actually" in context to my quote, which lead me to belive you you were correcting on me <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
Anyways, yours was a superior example in it's simplicity. My posts were abit confusing and jumpled. I apologize for that. I hope lolfighter will be persuaded!
Take Faskalia's example:<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The recreation: Again, you need two chambers as in the fly, but the 2nd chamber has to be filled with enough subatomic particles (maybe wven whole atoms) so that you do not need all that energy to convert matter to energy and back. Instead you just copy the location of all your particles, then send it to the 2nd chamber and recreate it there. Now, this is of course a direct copy or for living beings: cloning process. So in order to become a method of teleportation you need to kill the original.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Now, suppose we don't destroy the original, but leave it intact. We then take the original and the copy and put them under two nutshells, have one of those crazyhandspeople switch the nutshells back and forth so quickly that nobody knows which is which anymore. In fact, this gets original-lolf and copy-lolf so dizzy that even they can't remember who's the original.
However, I remain convinced that they would still have a sense of self, distinct from the other. Meaning that both are perfectly capable of pointing at the other and saying "that's not me, that's just someone who is identical to me." This makes both of them distinctly existing entities. Kill one, and that entity is dead.
This, in essence, is what would happen if I got teleported, only without two of me existing at the same time.
The exact me sat here typing this message would no longer exist. My existence would be over. It's irrelevant that there's another me, identical in every way, both to myself and to others. THIS version is gone. I happen to be this version, there will be another me in that one. I don't like him anyway, he copies me too much.
What about the original question. Actual honest to god teleportation where YOU are moved from point A to point B by disassembling you and sending YOU through space to the new position?
every one seems hooked on the idea of long distance cloning instead of teleportation....
How about converting your mater into energy and then back again? (assume some sort of additional energy is added to the equation that takes care of the problem of things like conservation of energy, and the inability to create a lossless system).
In these situations I see no problem, you as you has been moved from A to B
If you want to talk about Long distance cloning then an interesting one to look at is in Transmetropolitan. Perfect clone is created in a distant area, and you then use telepresence (or something like it) to shift your consciousness from one body to the other.
I am of course being entirely hypothetical here and assuming everyone is telling the truth, and their teleporter operates the way they say it does. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
I'd have to go with lol and shock. It doesn't matter if you are rebuild from the same atoms as your former body or made from random atoms snatched from the air. The atoms are identical anyway. What counts, is that you have to die, your consciousness would cease to exist. A little later a computer would create a duplicate of you, but that still wouldn't change the fact that it's just a copy. I really don't care what happens to my body but rather, what happens to my brains.
Now if somone invented a teleport that used wormholes to bend space and move your physical being to a different location, without the whole ripping you in pieces. That would alright I guess.
You know, before this thread I didn't really think anyone else pondered the metaphysical implications (or complications) of teleportation.
By the way, quote (from memory, apologies for errors). Kudos for recognition. Searching not allowed. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg
It there's no chance for the continunation of consciousness while transporting, you're dead. If 'your body' magically ends up somewhere else (piece by piece or otherwise) it's no longer you. That is, unless someone else who has tried it can prove that they had the capacity to be conscious during the trip (as in: thinking and sentinent in transit - while their individual atoms or waves of energy were flying around).
Of course, you wouldn't necessarily be able to trust that person, maybe he's an evil doppelganger that intercepted your friend in transit and took his place, now he's trying to get more doppelgangers in our universe.
I doubt you'd need to worry about people beaming nuclear weapons anywhere, you'd need some sort of means of reconstructing your teleportation object (unless there's so magical way of interdimensionally teleporting, like Half-Life or something). Unfortunately, my knowledge of physics peters out before quantum mechanics, mostly, so there's not much insight I can offer as to the feasibility of such things other than "probably not for a very long time, if ever."
What about the original question. Actual honest to god teleportation where YOU are moved from point A to point B by disassembling you and sending YOU through space to the new position?
every one seems hooked on the idea of long distance cloning instead of teleportation....
How about converting your mater into energy and then back again? (assume some sort of additional energy is added to the equation that takes care of the problem of things like conservation of energy, and the inability to create a lossless system).
In these situations I see no problem, you as you has been moved from A to B
If you want to talk about Long distance cloning then an interesting one to look at is in Transmetropolitan. Perfect clone is created in a distant area, and you then use telepresence (or something like it) to shift your consciousness from one body to the other.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What's worse?
Killing you first and then rebuilding you
OR
cloning you can and then killing the original?
And because this is discussion, I feel the need to quote something to put previously mentioned points in a different light.
<!--QuoteBegin-John Dies at the End+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(John Dies at the End)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him.
He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs, you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face.
On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand new handle for your ax.
The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the next spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade.
Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand new head for your ax. As soon as you get home with your newly-headed ax, though, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last winter†resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.
You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that slayed me!â€
Is he right?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's all about where you draw the line I guess.
1. If you sever your arm, have a new one cloned and reattached. Is that part still you? (To me: yes)
2. If you die and are resuscitated, are you still you? (yes)
3. If your brain gets sliced in half and some miracle future technology fuses the halves together exactly as they were, still you? (yes)
4. You're put in cryo-stasis. None of your atoms move for a period of 10 years. Still you? (yes)
5. You step into the teleporter machine, but instead of moving your atoms somewhere. It breaks the bonds in preparation to teleport, and something goes wrong on the other end so it restores the bonds without moving a single atom. Still you? (yes)
6. Same as 5, but every atom is moved in unison exactly 1 millimeter to the left. (yes)
Combine 4 with 6 and that's the rough equivalent I personally draw to the described machine.
As soon as you bring conversion to/from energy into the mix, then keep that suicide booth away from me!