Resolution of Transporter Problem

[Whiplash]

The reactive dispositions of the body will be transfered just the same. Of course no one wants to be shot because our DNA is programmed to resist death but this does not mean the experiment kills anyone.

What is being challenged in this experiment is our beliefs about self. You have not yet produced any evidence that something tangible is lost in the Teletransporter.

Nick

Nothing tangible may be lost to everyone one else in the universe. But my biggest (and really only) concern is that I don't want to have a my own personal life end. That doesn't serve me any purpose.

Everyone else would still have "me". The universe will still have "me". But as far as I'm concerned, the onus is on people to explain how I will magically change perspective to the new "host" from my own personal point of view. There is no logical reason to assume this will happen. The most logical thing is that I end up going to sleep and never waking up, lights out, while a new copy of me continues it's merry existence. Convinced that it is the real me, from the start.

I haven't seen anything to change the rather obvious logic that there would be two seperate individuals, and I would continue to experience life through my original set of eyes.

If there is reconition that it's "lights out" but the copy of you still serves others.. then great, if you are willing to make that sacrafice, more power to you.

I find the questions like "how do you know you don't die in your sleep each night" to be a ridiculous stretch of logic. I really find the whole subject to be ridiculous because I don't believe we will ever be capable of creating entire duplicates using other matter. If so we could actually create entirely new human beings and life forms, from scratch. I just don't see us ever having that kind of power. It strikes me as being far too complex to ever be possible.

But the only thing that matters to me personally is whether I continue to experience my life for myself, or it ends. Especially if such technology is ultimatey used to extend life. What use is it to do so if the original person doesn't end up experiencing it? It only serves everyone else at that point. Not the person in question. They still get the perfect copy of you walking around. But you never got the benefit of the life extension. It's worthless.

 

[Earthborn]

I'd bring up programs, but I have a creepy feeling that you see all instances of the same program as BEING the same program. If I have one computer - say, my desktop - on which I create a simple dice-rolling program; and I have another computer - my laptop - onto which I copy the program; I see those as two programs, identical but distinct. One may fail while another may succeed. Both may share identical experiences, but then again, both may not. At some point, one copy might cease altogether; the duplicate, while useful to me, is not the original program, and vice versa. And in most cases, the only copy that could actually be considered the 'original', to my mind, ceases to exist after the first time it is run; because once the program is 'saved', that is its first copy, and the original - the one living in the RAM - ceases to exist.

Its actually worse than that. RAM loses its contents when it is not powered, because it then it is no longer refreshed. It only stores for a very short time, and what ever is in it needs to be copied over and over thousands of times in a second.

If you are writing a program, the only "original" is the first character you typed the first time it is stored in RAM. Everything after that is a copy, a copy of a copy, a copy of a copy of a copy. Still you have no difficulty seeing every copy as being essentially the same thing. If you stop coding for a while to get a cup of coffee, when you come back it will seem as if nothing happened and the code has just been sitting there all along. And as long as you make no hard copy or save it to disk, you accept it as being "the original". And that's the whole point: as long as there is no more than one copy at any time, a perfect copy for all intents and purposes is the original.

 

[Whiplash]

Its actually worse than that. RAM loses its contents when it is not powered, because it then it is no longer refreshed. It only stores for a very short time, and what ever is in it needs to be copied over and over thousands of times in a second.

If you are writing a program, the only "original" is the first character you typed the first time it is stored in RAM. Everything after that is a copy, a copy of a copy, a copy of a copy of a copy. Still you have no difficulty seeing every copy as being essentially the same thing. If you stop coding for a while to get a cup of coffee, when you come back it will seem as if nothing happened and the code has just been sitting there all along. And as long as you make no hard copy or save it to disk, you accept it as being "the original". And that's the whole point: as long as there is no more than one copy at any time, a perfect copy for all intents and purposes is the original.

From our point of view yes. But if the code was alive and had consciousness, what would it's feeling be? A series of waking/sleeping moments over a long existence? Or would each individual existence of the code over time have it's own short lived consciousness, based on previous data, but followed by oblivion when the next is created?

If people are arguing over whether the copy of you is good enough for everyone else, I don't deny that. But what about me? The first me that stepped in? If it's lights out, I don't want it. That is effectively suicide. That's what interests me about these subjects. It's the only thing that matters to me.

 

[cyborg]

But as far as I'm concerned, the onus is on people to explain how I will magically change perspective to the new "host" from my own personal point of view.

The same magical way in which you have a personal point of view about anything. You only exist in the now - the sense of continuation is the image of the past on your mind. If you cease to exist in the next moment there is no you to experience anything. If you start existing in the next then you return to start experiencing again. That which you see as a continuum of personal experience is nothing but a series of fine slices lined up so close that the illusion of movement becomes apparent.

And another cyborg dead... Will the slaughter never end?

 

[rocketdodger]

Everyone else would still have "me". The universe will still have "me". But as far as I'm concerned, the onus is on people to explain how I will magically change perspective to the new "host" from my own personal point of view. There is no logical reason to assume this will happen.

If your consciousness is information, then it can be represented as a number. If it can be represented as a number, then any time it is copied or transferred it retains full identity. That is the nature of numbers. 1234 is the same as 1234.

 

[Z]

The spreadsheet program running on my desktop and the copy on my laptop aren't the same. That's not the point though.

That's exactly the point.

I don't pretend to know what a dualist would be fine with but in order to jump it would take something akin to a homunculus.

Exactly.

This a meaningless statement. I'm not the guy I was a year ago. So what? You seem to think there is something significant as it realtes to clones but not to what is actually happeining. We are dynamic and constantly changing.

Exactly. Think about what you just said.

So, do the clones that exist today (identical twins) share a single spirit or does only one of them have a spirit and the other is a zombie? Does god make second spirt and why would he not do the same for a clone?

I, personally, don't think the divine whatever makes spirit - not in a deliberate, conscious act. I think it's more of an energy - undetectable as of yet - that can multiply and recombine and change and all sorts of woo interaction stuffs. I think any offspring is 'empowered' by some combination of a fragment of life-energy from the parents.

Now, presumably, if this life-energy does exist, then there is a material component to it; scientists might be able to discover and learn to manipulate it; and future models of the teletrans might also be able to empower dead flesh this way; in that case, a living twin might well exist at the other end.

But like a twin, the duplicate at the other end is not the same person as the original.

It's just that what I sense of as me would continue. If I were cloned and the clones met we wouldn't know who was the original. We would both think that we were the original. Which calls for a youtube video.

Ah, yes... argument by YouTube.

Sadly, my connection is far, far too slow and inconstistant for me to view YouTube videos, but I promise when I get a chance I'll check it out.

You are making my head spin. The MadTV video makes more sense. The "clone" would also be a collection interralated processes operating within a given material construct. And the two watches are in many ways the same but in a number of ways different. They don't process differently and.... You're not saying anything.

Actually, I think you're getting a pretty good sense of what I am saying - that two duplicate items are not the same item. You're willing to accept that with watches, spreadsheets, twins - but not with your teletrans-created duplicate.

No, but then two twins are not the same either. An original and clone aren't the same. Both would, at the moment of consciousness following cloning believe that they were the origninal.

But they can't both be right - basic identity theory. So one IS the original, and one is brainwashed/programmed to believe it is the original.

Now you've gone off the deep end. You are saying that if I save a copy of my spreadsheet from one computer it won't work in another computer? That's just not true.

That's not what I said. I think you're getting so flustered with me that you're failing to read my words.

I don't understand. I'm happy to discuss it and I can't imagine anyone not wanting to discuss it. Like identical twins they wouldn't be the same self. The would start as the same self and both percieve themselves as the original.

You contradict yourself right there! 'They wouldn't be the same self... they would start as the same self...'

Now you're making MY head spin.

No. Flat out wrong and indifensible.

Indefensible, perhaps?

Not really. By claiming that you are transported - that the 'self' is a concept materially separatable from the body and brain - this is clearly the invisible homonculus of the argument.

I'll let my uncle know. He has identical twins. Boy, will he ever be surprised.

You've apparently never had twins yourself. Identical twins aren't perfect duplicates - not by a long, long shot. Any halfway observing parent recognizes the difference between their children rather quickly.

My nieces are identical twins - I could tell them apart after a few days' time visiting with them. Adorable little cross-eyed girls, too. They go for surgery to correct that in a week, I think... that'll take some getting used to.

Is that why identical twins are always born dead... oh, wait.

Covered already.

And what happens when one twin absorbes another. A real phenomenon that is the subject of ridiculous thriller at the moment. What happens to the twins soul? Due two souls inhabit the same body or does one soul die or go to heaven or limbo?

I don't believe in an afterlife. As stated before, I view 'spirit' as some kind of energy form that can grow, change, etc. It's all woo - I'll be the first to admit that - and subject to change as new evidence arises.

Having absorbed my own twin, my guess is that, in most cases, the spirit of twin 2 never took hold in the first place, or dwindled out and died; in a rare few, the spirit energy is simply consumed/subsumed by the surviving twin. I highly doubt any twin-absorption results in two distinct and viable spirit patterns in the same body, though I suppose it could happen.

 

[Z]

You said in the first paragraph that most of the brain cells remain the same. You seem to give different answers as it suits you.

The cells are the same cells. The data stored in those cells changes, but the primary material constituents remain the same.

I'd have thought someone who's been considering this issue for decades would have learned that much about brain cells by now. I was all for the argument that our entire body changes every 7 years, but upon doing research, learned our brains DON'T change (aside from learning, and of course the death of some cells).

You can take a drug that will kill you painlessly or you can get into the transporter.

If the transporter is painless, too, then the two options are absolutely equally viable to me.

I don't appreciate hypocrisy. Accusing me of sophistry while you engage in ad hominem is extremely poor form.

Maybe so. I like ad hominem, though, you silly John Candy-loving fool.

I'm really curious why you thing this is significant? Aside from the novelty I don't see anything at all significant in it. It happens in the womb all of the time.

Twins are not identical - they are not the same person.

Do you really think one twin is willing to die, just so the other can go live on Mars?

 

[Mercutio]

Why don't you ask the inhabitants of the international space station whether their identity/history is stored inside them at any given point.

Why would you suspect that they have special insight on this?

Introspective accounts are worthless. We know that our accounts of perceptual tasks are vastly different from the multiple parallel throughput processing in separate brain areas. I think Paul referred to it as "the binding problem", which arises because some researchers are all too attached to introspective accounts. How do these processes come together into one percept? They don't. There is no percept, there is no stored consciousness any more than there is stored walking in my legs when I sit down. Yes, we can shoehorn the phenomena into the "storage" metaphor, but that does not mean it is appropriate.

Probably because most people retain their identity and history regardless of environmental changes. Ask Neil Armstrong, he will tell you. His entire childhood didn't get magically whisked away for the duration of his stay on the moon. Did it?

Good thing I never implied that it did--my goodness, what a silly thing to think. Fortunately for Neil, he had a continuity of perceiving, thanks to the fact that he was perceiving from that same body as it moved through time and space. He took a rocket to the moon, not an atomizer.

First off, you are setting up a false dichotomy, accusing me of saying that all of the information is in the present environment, when I point out that you are neglecting any influence of environment. Secondly, the entire field of social psychology exists because people's behavior changes as a function of their environment. In many cases, the environment is a better predictor than any known personality measures. There is a great deal of research on the effects of living in places like the space station or sealab (I even have a book on it in my office); only ignorance of the environmental effects of such habitats would lead one to suggest that the inhabitants store their histories inside them somehow.

Yet, when you ask a person where they have been, they can tell you. Where on Earth do you think that information is stored?

Thank you for revealing your assumptions. I do not think that it is stored. I think the "storage/retrieval" metaphor is a faulty model for the situation.

You would also be surprised at how inaccurate self-reports can be. If the information is stored, why is it such lousy information? The storage-retrieval metaphor requires researchers to look in encoding, storage, or retrieval processes for sources of error. Alternately, one could revisit the appropriateness of the metaphor in the first place.

A history of interaction with the environment changes the organism (in this case, the person). The combined effects of the past environmental changes, and current environmental contingencies, effect the person's behavior. These statements are true, regardless of whether you try to impose a storage/retrieval model on them. When you do impose that model, though, you add details that are part of the model and not necessarily part of the actual phenomenon.

 

[Z]

B
Thats because the "incinerator" version is a strawman. Nobody who treats this experiment seriously ever considers it with an "incinerator." Why would anybody willingly walk into an incinerator?

We are discussing a teletransporter that acts instantaneously -- the information is duplicated in the same instant that the original body is destroyed. Anything else is a strawman.

Emphasis mine.

IN other words, an incinerator. It's no strawman - it's the very fact of the experiment. And the fact is, there is nothing to suggest that consciousness is merely an immaterial integer that can be extracted from physical states and magically moved to another physical state.

 

[Z]

I don't at all understand this line of logic. No, I can't imagine that I would kill myself at that point but it's not "devastating". The perspectives simply are not the same. We didn't evolve to sense survival in that way. We view the time arrow as moving in a single direction and not divergent. Had we evolved to be aware of say, divergent universes then I could see the sense of self and survival being different than it is now. As it is now, I'm only concerned that the me I'm experiencing in the present will continue. The clone fits that model so I don't have a problem with it so long as I could simply go to sleep and wake up as the clone (and assuming that it is an exact replica of me).

But that's just it - you would go to sleep and.... never wake up again.

The clone is not the me you are experiencing at the present, and will not continue.

If I woke up from sleeping and was informed that I was a clone and the original had died while sleeping it likely wouldn't have the same effect on me as being told that there was a clone and one of us had to die, me. At that point I don't care if I was a clone or the original. My sense of survival would kick and I wouldn't want to die.

THANK YOU! That is exactly my point.

Because no matter what, that person they've got the gun pointed at is the only self you will ever or can ever know. The clone believes it is you, but it's all implanted memory, and you'll never experience one second of their life.

 

[Whiplash]

The same magical way in which you have a personal point of view about anything. You only exist in the now - the sense of continuation is the image of the past on your mind. If you cease to exist in the next moment there is no you to experience anything. If you start existing in the next then you return to start experiencing again. That which you see as a continuum of personal experience is nothing but a series of fine slices lined up so close that the illusion of movement becomes apparent.

And another cyborg dead... Will the slaughter never end?

That's very interesting and metaphysical (if I understand the word correctly), but I'm not sure it address what I meant about "magically" taking over the new body.

Example; a clone copy of me is made, complete in every detail in terms of memory, right up to the moment of the procedure. I am still awake and conscious. The clone is then awakened.

We are seperate individuals. I'm not seeing through two different sets of eyes, controlling two seperate bodies. I'm still me, in my own head, seeing the copy. He wakes up and sees me and thinks he is the original and I'm the copy. In his own, seperate and individual (newly created) consciousness, based on my past.

This is why I call the transfering "magical". It seems to me to be completely logical and common sense that this would be a new, sepearte individual consciousness. If the original person is killed at the moment of awakening the "copy", or even before, it's still a seperate individual consciousness. Because if you had not killed the original before the copy was awakened it would be there to tell you "nope, I'm still me, that's a copy!".

The copy may wake up screaming "IT WORKED!" and swear up and down it was the real me, continuing to exist. But for me it would have been oblivion.

Doesn't this make any sense? I can't see how I would ever experience any kind of "sleep" followed by "waking up" in a new form unless my brain actually was physically moved into the new form. There would still be a conscious "me" walking around, the same me in every physical way. But my consciousness I was born with never phsyically experiences any of it as far as I'm concerned. I need to have someone explain to me why that should follow naturally, even if the body is destroyed the instant the new one is created. If you fail to do that, you can see that the original would still be there and begging not to die. They are seperate.'


EDIT: If the idea is that as long as the original is destroyed in the instant of the copy awakening (or before) that some believe consciousness would then continue in the new form; but alternatively if the copy was awakened before the original was destroyed, only in that circumstance would a second, indvidual consciousness be created: That's an interesting thought and I don't deny the possibility but I wouldn't put my faith in such a thing happening when my life was on the line.

But to me, the idea of each teleported individual being a seperate and new consciousness based on the past data, over and over, serves every other person in existence other than the person being teleported. You are all still there walking around and continuing to exist for the benefit of others, but your original consciousness went to oblivion long ago.

I can't help but imagine the Star Trek universe, where everyone is really "them" copy number XXX.. People's original consciousness being destroyed long ago, and the copies running around. Great for everyone else, but a heinous crime against the original life. I would find this kind of lifestyle even worse than abortion! People experiencing death, every day, over and over, and new copies taking up the next cause.

 

[Z]

Fair enough. Whenever not dying at all becomes an option I might go for that.

I plan to live to be 200. That's long enough for me.

Headdesk, though. The whole premise of the thought experiment is that it's *not* a scam. I wouldn't even get on a jet if there wasn't a decent amount of transparency as far as what would go on once I was at 20k feet. I did say that if it was commonplace, understood, and people did it a lot and were happy with it, that's when I'd want to try it. Of *course* I wouldn't want to be an early tester. Of anything, much less a matter transporter.

The premise is faulty for one key reason, then: you can never, ever know if it's a scam!

Tell me how you can tell that a duplicate made in the other end is you? It could very well be some sort of advanced android made to look and act like you. It could be a marvellously well-made up actor. It could be a computer-generated image. And so on, and so on - and no matter what, you cannot ever know any different (aside from, of course, capturing your duplicate and digging into its body and finding proof of this wrongdoing - but it's on Mars and you're on Earth...).

And the reason for this is - that you don't suddenly shift your awareness from the original to the duplicate.

The only way your awareness could ever shift - as RandFan has been kind enough to stress again and again - is with a homunculus.

The teletrans thought experiment fails out of the gate.

 

[Mercutio]

First off, I don't even for a second believe that "self" is simply stored information.
[snip]

Nor do I.

I was chastised earlier on the thread for ignoring the OP, so I went back to it, to argue from "assume that self is stored information" as a given. I think the argument can be made that even under the OP assumptions, Darat2 is a different person from Darat1, and that one can still be opposed to stepping into the machine for the same reasons one may be opposed to killing any other person.

 

[Z]

I know. The central assumption in the OP is that consciousness is an idea as well.

I know. The central assumption in the OP is that the number is what is important, not the coordinates.

And, hence, the central assumption in the OP is non-materialist in nature.

Thank you... case closed.

 

[Z]

Its actually worse than that. RAM loses its contents when it is not powered, because it then it is no longer refreshed. It only stores for a very short time, and what ever is in it needs to be copied over and over thousands of times in a second.

If you are writing a program, the only "original" is the first character you typed the first time it is stored in RAM. Everything after that is a copy, a copy of a copy, a copy of a copy of a copy. Still you have no difficulty seeing every copy as being essentially the same thing. If you stop coding for a while to get a cup of coffee, when you come back it will seem as if nothing happened and the code has just been sitting there all along. And as long as you make no hard copy or save it to disk, you accept it as being "the original". And that's the whole point: as long as there is no more than one copy at any time, a perfect copy for all intents and purposes is the original.

Actually - and I am in programming now (well, in college) - I don't consider it the same program until the moment it's saved on some hard medium - and even then, I am concerned about the copy that is stored there retaining its intended form and structure. Also, since a program on hard medium is not actually anything but a pattern meant to generate a program once read, copied into the computer, and activated, the fact is that no program really exists beyond a few millionths of a second!

There have been many times when, over the course of running 'a program', I've wished I could bring back an earlier copy (from even a few seconds) and get things working again.

Heck, that's the whole idea of backups, isn't it?

I don't see it as the same program, moment to moment; I see it as a series of infinite changes, unless a significant portion of the program is using and/or operating off of permanent memory. Then parts of the program are the same - just as that part of our consciousness running in permanent memory are the same from moment to moment.

That's just me, though. I also think my computer has a preference for Lorrie Morgan's rendition of My Favorite Things, and Alan Parsons Project instrumentals, as they always pop up regularly when I set my music to random.

 

[Lithrael]

EDIT: If the idea is that as long as the original is destroyed in the instant of the copy awakening (or before) that some believe consciousness would then continue in the new form (snip)

I get the impression what's being argued is not that the consciousness will 'continue' but rather that one ends and the other picks up exactly where it left off - beginning from there. The argument is that there is no significant difference between that interrupted consciousness and actual continuous consciousness.

The problem when you have two copies coexisting is IMO simply that it destroys the illusion of continuity that we are used to thinking of as our selves. I am not troubled by the idea of going to sleep and ceasing to be, replaced by another me (and I am not currently troubled imagining this has already happened), but I would not very much enjoy getting to say hello to another me and then having to off myself, and if I was a duplicate I would feel bad about having to know my original died unhappy. I dunno though, it might become palatable if I get to die in a really awesome and spectacular way!

But to me, the idea of each teleported individual being a seperate and new consciousness based on the past data, over and over, serves every other person in existence other than the person being teleported. You are all still there walking around and continuing to exist for the benefit of others, but your original consciousness went to oblivion long ago.

Erm... It serves the newly created version of the person being teleported.

Life itself is simply about carrying on. How is this a travesty any more than the fact that (barring stuff that's alive right now) everything that has ever lived has died?

Tell me how you can tell that a duplicate made in the other end is you? It could very well be some sort of advanced android made to look and act like you.

Headdesk again. The same way I can tell that people who use airplanes aren't being replaced by alien pod people. I'm talking about thoroughly checking it out beforehand to the point I'm satisfied it's not a giant conspiracy. If I don't have a decent amount of confidence that I am being replaced by *me* then I don't go. This line of questioning seems like a total derail to me.

 

[rocketdodger]

Emphasis mine.

IN other words, an incinerator. It's no strawman - it's the very fact of the experiment. And the fact is, there is nothing to suggest that consciousness is merely an immaterial integer that can be extracted from physical states and magically moved to another physical state.

In the non-strawman example, your first physical body is simply removed from existence before you have a chance to perceive anything.

In the strawman, you have to get up out of the teletransporter and walk into a very hot incinerator, looking forward to your impending doom.

There is quite a difference between those scenarios. At the very least -- even if you don't think consciousness will be transferred -- it is the difference between being shot in the head and being burned alive.

 

[Gate2501]

In the non-strawman example, your first physical body is simply removed from existence before you have a chance to perceive anything.

In the strawman, you have to get up out of the teletransporter and walk into a very hot incinerator, looking forward to your impending doom.

There is quite a difference between those scenarios. At the very least -- even if you don't think consciousness will be transferred -- it is the difference between being shot in the head and being burned alive.

Just for the record.

When I referred to it as incinerating the being on teleporter pad A, I was thinking of a flash incineration scenario.

Like it sprays plasma all over the inside of the chamber or something and instantly destroys you.

 

[rocketdodger]

Why would you suspect that they have special insight on this?

Because those types of people have some of the most startling environmental changes of all human experience. Others might be prisoners, submarine crewmen, etc.

Yes, we can shoehorn the phenomena into the "storage" metaphor, but that does not mean it is appropriate.

I don't see what else could be appropriate, given that if you put a person in a sealed room they don't change their history or identity. The only valid conclusion is that their history and identity is somehow stored somewhere in their physical person.

First off, you are setting up a false dichotomy, accusing me of saying that all of the information is in the present environment, when I point out that you are neglecting any influence of environment.

No, I ain't.

I explicitly said environmental influence was very important. You tried to argue with me that the actual environment, rather than just its influence, was what is important. Then you went on to make claims that a person's history and identity isn't necessarily stored in their physical body. I am just giving you what I feel are strong counterexamples.

Secondly, the entire field of social psychology exists because people's behavior changes as a function of their environment. In many cases, the environment is a better predictor than any known personality measures. There is a great deal of research on the effects of living in places like the space station or sealab (I even have a book on it in my office); only ignorance of the environmental effects of such habitats would lead one to suggest that the inhabitants store their histories inside them somehow.

Perhaps we are talking about different things. I am talking about one's internalized history -- the things one thinks of when they remember stuff. I am not talking about the actual molecules left behind on the Eiffel Tower from that visit to Paris 20 years ago.

Now it seems to me that by definition internalized history must be internal to an individual. Do you disagree?

Thank you for revealing your assumptions. I do not think that it is stored. I think the "storage/retrieval" metaphor is a faulty model for the situation.

I don't think so, given that I can sit here and retrieve thousands of stored memories without much environmental influence at all. Yes the environment was important at the time the memory was formed, but not now.

You would also be surprised at how inaccurate self-reports can be. If the information is stored, why is it such lousy information? The storage-retrieval metaphor requires researchers to look in encoding, storage, or retrieval processes for sources of error. Alternately, one could revisit the appropriateness of the metaphor in the first place.

Ok, I will bite. What other metaphor is appropriate?

A history of interaction with the environment changes the organism (in this case, the person). The combined effects of the past environmental changes, and current environmental contingencies, effect the person's behavior. These statements are true, regardless of whether you try to impose a storage/retrieval model on them. When you do impose that model, though, you add details that are part of the model and not necessarily part of the actual phenomenon.

You claim the "storage/retrieval" model adds details that aren't necessarily part of the actual phenomenon.

Can you provide a single example?

 

[rocketdodger]

Just for the record.

When I referred to it as incinerating the being on teleporter pad A, I was thinking of a flash incineration scenario.

Like it sprays plasma all over the inside of the chamber or something and instantly destroys you.

Yeah I assumed as much, but unfortunately there are others that don't -- and they make a living by attacking strawmen.

EDIT: You can instantly spot a strawman version of the teletransporter experiment because it involves "asking" the "original" if they would kindly let themselves be killed. Or even letting them know something went wrong.