Would you use a Star Trek type transporter?

Probably not. I would like the transporter rifle invented by that crazy vulcan on DS9. He combined viewscreen/scanner technology as the scope with transporter technology at the end of a rifle barrel. He could then scan for any place on the station and fire a projectile there from the comfort of his own quarters. The bullet would materialize with all its kinetic energy inches from the target.
 
Aepervius said:
Let me ask you this, would you be fine if I am allowed to kill you , completely butcher you, and make sure everybody would agree you would be killed, in an horrific and terrible pain, then generate a clone atoms by atoms of you which in he has the exact same as you had before the process and would not be differentiable from the universe perspective ?
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Okay, let's answer properly this time. It would depend, obviously. I don't want to put myself through all sorts of horrendous suffering if it isn't actually necessary. But you're adding unnecessary details and giving me no reason to think the process would achieve anything. Based on the information you've given, I'd be unhappy, just as I'd be unhappy to let some random put me to sleep to make a long journey go faster.

As a thought experiment, the question stands. Why would an exact copy of you not actually be you? What can you point to as a way of differentiating the "real" you from the "copy" you? (scare quotes because it tends to prejudge a certain view, but I can't find a better way of explaining it)
 
Recovering Agnostic said:
Some of my cells have regenerated since the message you're replying to was posted, so you're arguing with someone who doesn't exist. :p
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The story of the axe of washington and so forth. IMHO I see it as wrong as comparing a system which replace a very minor part of you while keeping 99+% identical (especially the brain part) with something which leaves 0% intact.

If you were to use that argument with say replacing neuron by neuron with a electronical copy with 100% identical working you would have a point. But that is not what we are speaking of.
 
Aepervius said:
As usually in thsi thread there is a confusion. What you look like from the universe perspective minus you, and what would be the effect on you.

Let me ask you this, would you be fine if I am allowed to kill you , completely butcher you, and make sure everybody would agree you would be killed, in an horrific and terrible pain, then generate a clone atoms by atoms of you which in he has the exact same as you had before the process and would not be differentiable from the universe perspective ?

Remember you were definitively killed. The other has the same memory, but is not you. just a copy.
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No I wouldn't be fine with this. I would have terrible memories of the murder and pain involved. Totally different from being deconstructed painlessly and reconstructed elsewhere in exactly the same way down to the same atom with all my hopes, dreams and desires still there.
 
Yorkie said:
No you wouldn't be dead. If absolutely everthing was copied you are still you but in a different place. You are your memories, thoughts and feelings not the stuff you are made from.
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I don't understand how you could reach that conclusion. I would have been destroyed and an exact copy been made. Unless you believe in a "soul" or something religious then the beamed down me is no more the original than a copy of a CD is the original. It is exactly the same with the same memories (apparently, I can't see how that would actually work) but it is not me.
 
Recovering Agnostic said:
Okay, let's answer properly this time. It would depend, obviously. I don't want to put myself through all sorts of horrendous suffering if it isn't actually necessary. But you're adding unnecessary details and giving me no reason to think the process would achieve anything. Based on the information you've given, I'd be unhappy, just as I'd be unhappy to let some random put me to sleep to make a long journey go faster.

As a thought experiment, the question stands. Why would an exact copy of you not actually be you? What can you point to as a way of differentiating the "real" you from the "copy" you? (scare quotes because it tends to prejudge a certain view, but I can't find a better way of explaining it)
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Because a copy is just that. it is a different person , a twin with the same memory, but the initial person simply died and is not continuing. It is simple as that.

In fact at some level you probably already recognize what I am hinting at. Why would it matter to you if you are *explicitely* killed (with or without torture) if a copy of you is made up at your destination with your memory ?

Again if you destroy the original material brain you kill the person. It does not matter if reconstitute a 100% copy at the end. That person will be virtually identical to the universe, but the original died.
 
Aepervius said:
No you are what you are made from, and when that is gone be it dematerialized or decomposed into rot, you are dead. ETA: you are an *emerging* property of that material. Destroy the material and that emerging property is gone. It does not matter if you construct an *exact* equivalent copy somewhere else.

You are confusing or making the false equivalency of separating the memory+thought, and the holder of it (body). This nearly beg an elan vital or a soul.

An identical clon of you atom by atom is not you. It is a copy which is indiferentiable by the external universe, true, but you died. Your consciousness is not continuying. The cosnciousness of the copy started the moment it was created, but with already made memory.
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Even if every part of my conciousness was somehow placed into a machine I would still be me. My world view may change - drinking oil instead of a fine wine would take a bit of getting used to - but if I still could love, hope, dream etc as I do now I would still be me. I am not what I am made of - I am what I think.
 
Yorkie said:
No I wouldn't be fine with this. I would have terrible memories of the murder and pain involved. Totally different from being deconstructed painlessly and reconstructed elsewhere in exactly the same way down to the same atom with all my hopes, dreams and desires still there.
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Read again I said the copy is reconstituted without the memory of the murder (state as it was before the process started).
 
Recovering Agnostic said:
I've highlighted the bit that I see as important. Why wouldn't you be you? What aspect of "you" would be absent? You would have the same appearance, the same thought processes, the same memories, the same dodgy knee, you'd even remember walking into the transporter. What else is necessary to make you "you"?
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What if, instead of pushing the 'transport' button I pressed the 'copy' button instead and made an exact replica of me? Out of whose eyes would I be looking?

I would need an awful lot of convincing that the transporter didn't operate in the same way, just destroying the original while making a copy.
 
Yorkie said:
Even if every part of my conciousness was somehow placed into a machine I would still be me. My world view may change - drinking oil instead of a fine wine would take a bit of getting used to - but if I still could love, hope, dream etc as I do now I would still be me. I am not what I am made of - I am what I think.
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Well we found our first volunteer for the teleporter experiment. Me, you would have to drag me in kicking and screaming.
 
Yorkie said:
Even if every part of my conciousness was somehow placed into a machine I would still be me.
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This is probably where we diverge. Imagining we have the technology to transport the atoms which make up your body, what would it mean to transport your consciousness into something else? What would you transport?

Last time I jumped on this particular merry-go-round, I jumped off again when it developed into a discussion of consciousness being an illusion, so it didn't really matter if the original me is destroyed as it is destroyed from moment to moment anyway.

It may well be an illusion, but I happen to be clinging to it and I'm not letting go until something more convincing comes along. :)
 
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Recovering Agnostic said:
Was it by any chance one of Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom's tests? They turned them into a book, Do You Think What You Think You Think? I think they asked other questions as well, one involving a choice of whether to download your mind to a computer in the case of some sort of neurodegenerative disease, in an attempt to identify apparent contradictions. I read it at the start of the year, and got a clean bill of philosophical health! :cool:
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I don't recall the names, however I'm fairly certain it had something to do with an British University. It did have those extra questions however, I assumed that I may have misunderstood one of the questions or simply clicked the wrong button. :-)
 
As I am now, I would not do it.

If, however, I were a member of Starfleet, and my participation in space exploration depended on my using a transporter, and I really, really wanted to explore space, and everyone else in Starfleet routinely transported, I might be able to ignore my objections.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
This is probably where we diverge. Imagining we have the technology to transport the atoms which make up your body, what would it mean to transport your consciousness into something else? What would you transport?
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Haven't got a clue. Maybe (and I'll whisper this to you) my.......soul.

Jack by the hedge said:
Last time I jumped on this particular merry-go-round, I jumped off again when it developed into a discussion of consciousness being an illusion, so it didn't really matter if the original me is destroyed as it is destroyed from moment to moment anyway.

It may well be an illusion, but I happen to be clinging to it and I'm not letting go until something more convincing comes along. :)
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We're all on the Matrix anyhow aren't we?
 
Jack by the hedge said:
What if, instead of pushing the 'transport' button I pressed the 'copy' button instead and made an exact replica of me? Out of whose eyes would I be looking?

I would need an awful lot of convincing that the transporter didn't operate in the same way, just destroying the original while making a copy.
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This is why for me also; the copy may think he's me, and everyone else would think the same, but obviously I would not experience what he sees or feels. So I don't see why anyone would think that the copy is me, just because the original is destroyed first?
 
Travis said:
I don't think I would. I would be too afraid that a mess up in the transmission would leave me without skin on the other side or something. Or, for that matter, that I might apparate someplace where I shouldn't be apparating. You know like half of me is in a rock or something.
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I would expect that somebody from a couple hundred years ago might have the same reluctance to use the subway system. What if the train suddenly falls off the track, or slams into a wall going many miles an hour? How do I know it's going to take me where I'm supposed to go?

Familiarity solves this problem. If teleportation becomes as common and accurate as it is in the Federation, I doubt many would continue to have those fears. The existential fears about the nature of "the self," qualia, etc. might still survive, though.
 
Thunderchief said:
This is why for me also; the copy may think he's me, and everyone else would think the same, but obviously I would not experience what he sees or feels. So I don't see why anyone would think that the copy is me, just because the original is destroyed first?
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Same here. People have been "transporter cloned" in Star Trek. This is all the evidence you need that what comes out is not the original, but a copy. It may look the same to everyone else, but that's only because the original can't tell you he's dead.
 
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