• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Stupid teleportation topic.

Assuming that there is no "soul" or extra entity that makes you "you" not already defined by modern physics, I guess it would be theoretically possible to construct a machine that could make a copy of a person, including the conciousness (since by the previously stated definition, it is part of a persons matter and nothing else).

Now, if you were copied while being unconcious and both of you moved around randomly, how could you know which one of you were the original?
 
Assuming that there is no "soul" or extra entity that makes you "you" not already defined by modern physics, I guess it would be theoretically possible to construct a machine that could make a copy of a person, including the conciousness (since by the previously stated definition, it is part of a persons matter and nothing else).

Now, if you were copied while being unconcious and both of you moved around randomly, how could you know which one of you were the original?
*Fights, but gets drawn in nevertheless*

You couldn't and it wouldn't matter. Both would be you.
 
Metallus said:
Its like faxing a document and then destroying the original. Didn't we have this discussion with Ian oh so many month's ago?
Oh, we sure did. More than once. I think it might have been involved in one of his proofs that ... that ... you know, that consciousness is something funky.

~~ Paul
 
Perhaps some clarification is in order.

The person you feel yourself to be, the you "you", is determined only by the configuration of your body's matter and the current interchanges this matter is having with itself and its surroundings.

I am not the same person now as I was when I was 5 years old, or as I was 1 second ago. And I'm not even thinking of the fact that the atoms we consist of are constantly being replaced by others. (I seem to recall an article which stated that some 98% of the atoms you now consist of are replaced by new ones every year).
 
Yeah - I remember these conversations well...

Oh, btw - DD, I'm coming over there to shoot you now. I have a perfect duplicate of you in storage and in order to give him the $1,000,000 waiting for him, you have to die first. But you won't mind, of course, since they're both 'you'.

:D
 
Exactly, but philosophically speaking, wouldn't teleportation by copy/delete be unethical? Just because it happened instantaneously and we keep one copy, it's still murder.

Every time you brush against a wall or put on/remove an article of clothing you're killing innumerable skin cells. Is that murder as well?
 
I like this forum. There was a debate about this in another forum I go to and everyone that responded were against teleporting and couldn't see any problems with that. I'm talking a fairly irrelegious bunch, too.

Any idea how much correlation between religious beliefs and views of this topic is?
 
Every time you brush against a wall or put on/remove an article of clothing you're killing innumerable skin cells. Is that murder as well?

I would argue no since I define ones self as being the consciousness, which is insignificantly affected by loosing the skin cells.
 
Why do you think teleporting affects consciousness?
I don't neccessarily think so. I think being killed affects ones consciousness, so if teleportation were to be performed by copying and "deleting" the original, I believe teleportation would indeed affect one person's consciousness, yours, but just one of yours... :p

[Edit: of course you asked me... *slaps forehead*]
 
Last edited:
Assuming that there is no "soul" or extra entity that makes you "you" not already defined by modern physics...
Even if there were such a thing as a soul, it would not necessarily exclude that possibility. It maybe that the 'soul' can bind itself to the result of the teleportation just as it did to the original.

Let's take for example Rupert Sheldrake's concept of morphogenetic resonance which is, although a piece of crock, a fascinating idea. If this 'theory' were correct, it would make teleportation even less problematic than it is in a strict materialist universe. Because the person stepping out of the receiver is so much like the person who stepped into the transmitter, s/he will resonate very strongly with the morphogenetic field of the person who stepped into the transmitter. The person at the receiving end will simply have all the memories and the same conciousness, soul if you will. That's true even if that person is not a perfect duplicate of the first, the only thing that matters is that s/he is alike enough to resonate strongly with the original.

How about this for a teleportation experiment:
Suppose you are led into a room, which is unbeknowst to you actually the inside of a teleporter. Without you noticing the teleporter makes a perfect copy of you in an identical room, but does not destroy your orginal. So there are now two identical yous, in two identical rooms. How long will it take before the two yous start behaving noticably different?

If your conciousness depends at its deepest level on quantum randomness, the behaviour patterns of both yous start to divert fairly rapidly. And both end up as two different people.

On the other hand, if the universe is ultimately deterministic, both yous may behave very similarly for a long time. After a while though, even the smallest differences between the rooms will have 'butterfly' effects, and slowly but surely, the yous start differing in behaviour.

In a Sheldrakian universe however, both yous will very strongly resonate morphogenetically. The rooms and the two yous are so similar that they influence eachother making sure behaviour stays the same. Even if the yous are lightyears away from eachother, there is no observable difference between them. Whatever small difference there may be, it will disappear through mutual influence. You have not split in two, but in a way you also do not exist in two places at once, because the even rooms are identical and resonate with eachother making them basically one and the same room. Distance ceases to exist.
 
'is a copy the exact same as the original in all aspects'?
For all those who say yes, would you be willing to be the first person to use a teleporter? :D
 
Say that we had figured out a way to send signals directly to the brain, indistinguishable from the real thing. We could link a mind up to exterior sensors and switch between the data feeds at will. The sensors would just be a vessel for the mind.

Now, imagine that two minds shared a feed. They would both recieve the same input to process. What if the second mind was an identical copy of the original? Assuming we could exclude the effect of quantum randomness, they would also stay identical indefinately. In a given situation, both would react the same way. Both minds would think they were controlling the output.

Imagine you were in this situation. If someone asked you if it were okay that one of you were to be deleted, what would your answer be?

I am undecided. Aside from the issue wether it would be suicide, murder or neither, both of me wouldn't really notice wether the other disappeared, so why should it matter? Aww, I made my head hurt... :boggled:
 
I'm sure most of you are familiar with the issue. You have the ability to teleport to any location you want with out any danger. The problem is that the teleportation actually just destroys you and creates a replica at another location. Do you enjoy your great new life teleporting anywhere you want to go or do you let dopey philosophical concerns ruin your life?
If you have the ability, then you have it, regardless of your philisophy.
If it is enjoyable using your teleport ability, then it must be enjoyable.

So my answer, "Yes" I'll use it. And I think it should be a joy using it.

I am assuming the teleportation and teleporter do a perfect job of exact replicating. Down to the every detail.
 

Back
Top Bottom