# Would you use a transporter beam?



## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Assume the technology dematerializes you, sends information to another location, and then you are reconstructed exactly the same - to the last atom - including all memories.  Would you be happy to transport?

Is your answer the same if there is a slight delay between the copy being created and you being dematerialized.  So you see your copy appear on the other side of the room, and then you are dematerialized?

For me, I can't help but view it as death.  I've been disintegrated, and a clone of me is walking around in my place.  It thinks it's me, but it's mistaken; it's a clone of me. And it's so good that nobody else can distinguish.  Except I got disintegrated, and that's a copy of me.

That clone, though, in scenario #2 where a slight delay means it sees me in the original transporter booth just before I dematerialize, would know it's the copy. It would know that because it is standing in the destination booth and it's looking at me in the origin booth.  In that case, the copy must feel weird knowing that it's a 5-second old copy of me, and that I'm dead.

What about you?  It's an old debate, but I always enjoy it!

[video=youtube;pdxucpPq6Lc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc[/video]


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## amerigoV (Jul 7, 2015)

At work I am changing roles that will require more travel. Just about anything has to be better than the airlines. So count me in as an early adopter!


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 7, 2015)

I honestly don't know.  

On the one hand, as a Catholic, I'm essentially a dualist.  A dualist believes the self is seperate from the material body.

But...do I believe it in my bones?


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> A dualist believes the self is seperate from the material body.




I don't believe that.  But operating on an assumption that it is true - does that necessarily mean that a machine can teleport the self?

What about Scenario #2, where there's a slight delay built in?  Are you happy to be disintegrated while your copy waves at you (assuming your self either resides now in the copy, or has been duplicated)?


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## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 7, 2015)

Like I said, I really don't know.


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## Umbran (Jul 7, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Assume the technology dematerializes you, sends information to another location, and then you are reconstructed exactly the same - to the last atom - including all memories.  Would you be happy to transport?
> 
> Is your answer the same if there is a slight delay between the copy being created and you being dematerialized.  So you see your copy appear on the other side of the room, and then you are dematerialized?




As we understand it today, quantum mechanics answers the question for us, through Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  You *cannot* be copied *exactly*, as the information about your original body cannot be known *exactly*.  There *will* be differences.  So, yes, you got disintegrated, and there's a very close copy of you walking around.  Star Trek had to invoke gobbledigook (the "Heisenberg Compensators") to get around this 

In some cases, a person may feel that if the copy is close enough, that's good enough for them.  If, for example, this was the only way to get a human to colonize a planet around another star... I might well feel that's a good enough death for me.

But, to get across the room, where I'd see my replacement, and he would see me (and largely feel he was me, even though he'd remember that I said all this, so that we'd both know he wasn't really me)?  Isn't using a transporter for that kind of overkill anyway?


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## trappedslider (Jul 7, 2015)

I'm not full sure either..i mean it owuld cut down on travle time so that's a plus but i am reminded of this funny bit from Star Trek II The wrath of Khan 

McCoy: Where are we going?
Kirk: Where they went.
McCoy: Suppose they went *nowhere*?
Kirk: Then this will be your big chance to get away from it all.


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> As we understand it today, quantum mechanics answers the question for us, through Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  You *cannot* be copied *exactly*, as the information about your original body cannot be known *exactly*.  There *will* be differences.  So, yes, you got disintegrated, and there's a very close copy of you walking around.  Star Trek had to invoke gobbledigook (the "Heisenberg Compensators") to get around this
> 
> In some cases, a person may feel that if the copy is close enough, that's good enough for them.  If, for example, this was the only way to get a human to colonize a planet around another star... I might well feel that's a good enough death for me.
> 
> But, to get across the room, where I'd see my replacement, and he would see me (and largely feel he was me, even though he'd remember that I said all this, so that we'd both know he wasn't really me)?  Isn't using a transporter for that kind of overkill anyway?




Yes, assume Heisenberg Compensators or whatever other fictional tech is needed to make the fictional teleporter work. It's a thought experiment predicated on the assumption that it works.

And maybe it's a big room. Or it's some where else and you're using a viewscreen.


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## Tonguez (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> As we understand it today, quantum mechanics answers the question for us, through Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  You *cannot* be copied *exactly*, as the information about your original body cannot be known *exactly*.  There *will* be differences.  So, yes, you got disintegrated, and there's a very close copy of you walking around.  Star Trek had to invoke gobbledigook (the "Heisenberg Compensators") to get around this




does Quantum Entanglement compensate for Uncertainty?

If it works then I'd be happy to do it, on the belief that our physical bodies are composed of quantum wavicles anyway

my only issue would be not turning in to Jeff Goldblum


 heeeeelp me


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## delericho (Jul 7, 2015)

I'm pretty sure Star Trek style transporters will remain impossible for the rest of my life. In addition to the Uncertainty problem Umbran raised there's also a computational one - teleporting a single subatomic particle is one thing, but teleporting many billions and then putting them back together in the right order is quite another.

But if one were to become available, I would potentially use them... once the technology was properly mature and gone through three or four generations. Basically, once RyanAir start offering transporter services, it's probably safe to start using the non-budget providers.


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## Umbran (Jul 7, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Yes, assume Heisenberg Compensators or whatever other fictional tech is needed to make the fictional teleporter work. It's a thought experiment predicated on the assumption that it works.




I am saying that, in a purely functional sense, the transporter works.  You get something that look, walks, talks, and thinks like you.  It has your memories, and all that.  On observation and questioning, no human would know the difference.

Except that it's initial state is not *exactly* what your state was when you were scanned.  There's an atom out of place here, a few metabolic reactions that'll go differently there.  It will progress, going forward, in *slightly* different ways than you would have.  If they scanned you, disintegrated you, and put the duplicate exactly where you were - the events and actions you would have experienced and what he will experience will diverge.

Basically, the transporter creates something like an "alternate timeline you".



> And maybe it's a big room.




It is still swatting a fly with a bazooka.


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I am saying that, in a purely functional sense, the transporter works.  You get something that look, walks, talks, and thinks like you.  It has your memories, and all that.  On observation and questioning, no human would know the difference.
> 
> Except that it's initial state is not *exactly* what your state was when you were scanned.  There's an atom out of place here, a few metabolic reactions that'll go differently there.  It will progress, going forward, in *slightly* different ways than you would have.  If they scanned you, disintegrated you, and put the duplicate exactly where you were - the events and actions you would have experienced and what he will experience will diverge.
> 
> ...




So.... assuming the technology 100% works as described above, would you use a transporter?


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## Hand of Evil (Jul 7, 2015)

sure, it would be a proven technology.  mindset would be that it is no different from trains, planes and automobiles, you would know there is a risk but acceptable.  Now IF it just got on the market, could see myself looking at it like an escalator.


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## delericho (Jul 7, 2015)

Of course, there are other applications - since there's no actual reason why you need to disintegrate the original to get the copy, we could use it to colonise other worlds without having to actually leave Earth. Or use it to take a backup copy of a person, and thus abolish death.


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## Janx (Jul 7, 2015)

To Umbran's point, if that was happening, they'd allegedly find it during testing when repeated transportings eventually result in larger differences from the original baseline.  That's shut it down for human transport.

Therefore, since it hasn't been shut down, that problem does not exist and MorrusPorting is the de facto means of teleportation in the latter half of the 21st century.

Are you going to get on the damn pad or not?


I would reckon that even though I know where my steak comes from, and would rather not watch the process before it gets to the grocery store, that I am still happy to eat steak and forget about that little detail.

Knowing that MorrusPorting is safe, reliable and only fails to make perfect copies less often than flying crashes due to Levitator failure, I'd be inclined to trust it and overlook the detail that I am being reassembled as a copy.


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

delericho said:


> Of course, there are other applications - since there's no actual reason why you need to disintegrate the original to get the copy, we could use it to colonise other worlds without having to actually leave Earth. Or use it to take a backup copy of a person, and thus abolish death.




Does it abolish death? So it creates a backup of you.  You're standing there looking at your backup smiling at you. Are you happy to accept a bullet to the head?


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## Umbran (Jul 7, 2015)

Anyone here seen The Prestige?

Assuming the thing works as I described it - there is a rate of error under which I might find it acceptable for casual transport (not "cross a room" casual" but, "visit Hawai'i" casual).  Over that error rate, I would still accept it for extreme cases (like colonizing a planet).


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Anyone here seen The Prestige?
> 
> Assuming the thing works as I described it - there is a rate of error under which I might find it acceptable for casual transport (not "cross a room" casual" but, "visit Hawai'i" casual).  Over that error rate, I would still accept it for extreme cases (like colonizing a planet).




OK. Forget error rates. It works. It's a thought experiment.  

The point isn't that it might go wrong. Just assume it doesn't. It's the issue of continuity. Are you still you? What if the original still exists? Is use of it death?


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## delericho (Jul 7, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Does it abolish death?




"Abolish death" was somewhat hyperbolic, I'll grant. But I can certainly see people taking regular backups and, in the event of an untimely demise, restoring from backup.

(Another, somewhat ghoulish option: in the event of an organ failure or similar we'd then be able to generate an exact tissue match. Though that would be rather better if we could restore just a part of a person from backup, rather than generating a clone and then killing him/her to harvest organs.)



> You're standing there looking at your backup smiling at you.




Perfect! Why didn't I think of it before: another me. One for the week, and one for Sunday best. 

(To misquote from AJ Rimmer, twice.)


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## Janx (Jul 7, 2015)

The prestige was a good movie.  Better than the book. And that story was not about errors in copying.  It was about the very question Morrus is asking.

Would you be ok with killing your original, when you get rebuilt at the other pad?


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## Umbran (Jul 7, 2015)

delericho said:


> Though that would be rather better if we could restore just a part of a person from backup, rather than generating a clone and then killing him/her to harvest organs.)




Why is it better?  You materialize the duplicate, take the organs, and then dematerialize the remains.  What's the problem?

If need be - take the original scan while you, yourself, are under sedation.  So, when you materialize the duplicate for harvesting, it is under sedation, and never regains consciousness.


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Janx said:


> The prestige was a good movie.  Better than the book. And that story was not about errors in copying.  It was about the very question Morrus is asking.
> 
> Would you be ok with killing your original, when you get rebuilt at the other pad?




That is, indeed, the question!


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## Raunalyn (Jul 7, 2015)

This is an interesting discussion.

I think the main thing to consider is this;

From your viewpoint, are you actually dead? Or, does your POV somehow pick up from where the "clone" materialized.

Personally, I think it's the former...you cease to exist. So, from your viewpoint...that's it. That's a different person over there, not you.

Then again, you'd be dead...you wouldn't necessarily care, would you?


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Raunalyn said:


> This is an interesting discussion.
> 
> I think the main thing to consider is this;
> 
> ...




That's why I included the situation where there's a slight delay.  Does it alter anything if both exist simultaneously for a moment?


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## Raunalyn (Jul 7, 2015)

Morrus said:


> That's why I included the situation where there's a slight delay.  Does it alter anything if both exist simultaneously for a moment?




If we rule out the metaphysical and assume that the "soul" or "spirit" does not travel with you (as a recovering Catholic, I tend to do this...I'm not sure I believe in the soul, favoring the convention that _cogito ergo sum_ defines us), then you are essentially committing suicide. For me, knowing that I have a clone that will "continue" my life in my place is not really an incentive to over-ride my sense of self preservation.


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## Ryujin (Jul 7, 2015)

Yes.

There was an episode of either the new "Outer Limits" or the new "Twilight Zone", in which they dealt with a similar issue. Humans were either subjugated by, or junior members of, an alien empire with teleportation capabilities. Humans were moved back and forth to do rather menial jobs. The system 'deleted' the original, by order of the overlords, except when it didn't (the subject of this particular episode).


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Raunalyn said:


> If we rule out the metaphysical and assume that the "soul" or "spirit" does not travel with you (as a recovering Catholic, I tend to do this...I'm not sure I believe in the soul, favoring the convention that _cogito ergo sum_ defines us), then you are essentially committing suicide. For me, knowing that I have a clone that will "continue" my life in my place is not really an incentive to over-ride my sense of self preservation.




I'm 100% in agreement with you.  That's exactly how I feel about it.  So my answer is no, I would not use a transporter beam.


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## Cor Azer (Jul 7, 2015)

I honestly can't say at the moment if I'd be able to or not. I'd love to be able to, but as said, turning off the self-preservative is not an easy thing.

In the delayed scenario, I wonder if some of the research done with people who suffer from problems recognizing others would be useful (imposter syndrome, etc)? Either helping the teleportee overcome the disjoint sense of seeing themself, or sync their sense of continuity?


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## Bullgrit (Jul 7, 2015)

[video=youtube;Ro_QpDJX-Sk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro_QpDJX-Sk[/video]

Bullgrit


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## Janx (Jul 7, 2015)

Raunalyn said:


> If we rule out the metaphysical and assume that the "soul" or "spirit" does not travel with you (as a recovering Catholic, I tend to do this...I'm not sure I believe in the soul, favoring the convention that _cogito ergo sum_ defines us), then you are essentially committing suicide. For me, knowing that I have a clone that will "continue" my life in my place is not really an incentive to over-ride my sense of self preservation.




I think the complication isn't about you starting on Pad A and ending on Pad B looking at you still on Pad A for an extra second.

The problem is that you started on Pad A, look at a flash of light on Pad B and see yourself over there before you feel yourself being dismantled.

There are 2 of you at stake here.

For the soul part, my non-spiritual view on the matter is this.  Each person is unique primarily because of the distinct formation of their neural network.  That neural network has been forming since before they were born and continues to grow and adjust.  The neural networks for 2 twins may be similar, but because those twins do not occupy the exact same coordinates in space, they see and experience the world from different perspectives and thus develop differences.  Your soul is effectively the current state of that neural network.  To copy you would require capturing that state (which in computer science terms, may be energy, not matter).

Thus, the moment there are two of you (one on Pad A and one on Pad B), there are two souls in existance, initially very similar but immediately diverging (like forks in realities).  And the MorrusPort is about to kill one of them.


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## Umbran (Jul 7, 2015)

Janx said:


> (which in computer science terms, may be energy, not matter).




Mr. Spock's "pure energy" does not exist.  Energy is a quality that *things* have.  The energy of your brain is associated with the particles that make it up.  For the copier to work and get you a living being, rather than a lump of dead meat, it must be catching not just the matter and position, but energy states as well.


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## delericho (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Why is it better?  You materialize the duplicate, take the organs, and then dematerialize the remains.  What's the problem?




Oops. Good point.


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## Janx (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Mr. Spock's "pure energy" does not exist.  Energy is a quality that *things* have.  The energy of your brain is associated with the particles that make it up.  For the copier to work and get you a living being, rather than a lump of dead meat, it must be catching not just the matter and position, but energy states as well.




fair enough.  Anyway, do you step into the machine to go on your vacation or not?


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## Hand of Evil (Jul 7, 2015)

You have to ask, what are you?  Soul/energy or physical?  I think we are talking about transcendence, where our society has moved beyond the material.  Transportation could be seen as an early step, use of equipment to help us perform a task that one day we would be doing at will.


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## Umbran (Jul 7, 2015)

Janx said:


> fair enough.  Anyway, do you step into the machine to go on your vacation or not?




I gave an answer earlier, but... thinking more....

If it works the way I said... probably not.  

If it works the way Morrus said... I have issues with considering hypotheticals that run contrary to how I know the universe actually works.  If it can work the way Morrus originally states, some rules are getting broken - in order to answer I'd need to know which.  I am *not* throwing myself into a machine that's going to disintegrate my body unless I understand how it works!  I think this is a rational position to take


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I gave an answer earlier, but... thinking more....
> 
> If it works the way I said... probably not.
> 
> If it works the way Morrus said... I have issues with considering hypotheticals that run contrary to how I know the universe actually works.  If it can work the way Morrus originally states, some rules are getting broken - in order to answer I'd need to know which.  I am *not* throwing myself into a machine that's going to disintegrate my body unless I understand how it works!  I think this is a rational position to take




You're really not entering into the spirit of the thread! It's a philosophical question, not a technical one. It doesn't matter how it works - just that it does. 

We all understand that it's fiction. Nobody is claiming it's anything other than pure sci-fi.


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## tomBitonti (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> As we understand it today, quantum mechanics answers the question for us, through Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  You *cannot* be copied *exactly*, as the information about your original body cannot be known *exactly*.  There *will* be differences.  So, yes, you got disintegrated, and there's a very close copy of you walking around.  Star Trek had to invoke gobbledigook (the "Heisenberg Compensators") to get around this




I think this is close to the answer, but, I thought that state could be transported without it being determined?

But, there is another problem: Quantum mechanics apparently doesn't allow copying.  See "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem".

If transporting consciousness requires copying of quantum state, it would seem that a transporter must destroy the initial state in order to transport it to another location.  Personhood / identity / the essence of consiousness seems to be preserved.

On the other hand, if consciousness does not require copying of the full quantum state, which is to say, if a lower fidelity copy is sufficient, then maybe both a transporter and a copying transporter are possible.  But, that seems to bring up a different question: If a person goes into a coma, and their brain function is largely disrupted, then they recover, are they the same person, or a new person who has acquired another's memories?  This could be taken further: How much is a person, today, the same as the person, yesterday?  Conscious state might arise in the morning, pieced together from the memories of past days, and then dissipate every evening.

Thx!

TomB


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## Umbran (Jul 7, 2015)

Morrus said:


> You're really not entering into the spirit of the thread! It's a philosophical question, not a technical one.




I say that is a false dichotomy.


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I say that is a false dichotomy.




Meh. If you don't want to play along, don't. It's all just a bit of fun. :shrug:


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## Janx (Jul 7, 2015)

Umbran said:


> I gave an answer earlier, but... thinking more....
> 
> If it works the way I said... probably not.
> 
> If it works the way Morrus said... I have issues with considering hypotheticals that run contrary to how I know the universe actually works.  If it can work the way Morrus originally states, some rules are getting broken - in order to answer I'd need to know which.  I am *not* throwing myself into a machine that's going to disintegrate my body unless I understand how it works!  I think this is a rational position to take




I'll consider this as playing along.  Your previous answers questioned the science of a philosophical question. This answer gets down to something reasonably definitive about the question itself.

Consider that for the rest of us, we don't know how stuff works and we use it anyway.


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## RangerWickett (Jul 7, 2015)

As an emergency escape device, sure. 

As daily travel? I'm leaning toward yes.

The me that exists this instant is not the same me that existed a moment before. We're linked in a chronolinear sense, and we're close enough that I feel a sense of continuity, a definition of my 'self.' 

I don't know if I'll be alive in 50 years, but I'd like some of my 'self' to carry on, either through kids that I've raised, or memories and ideas I've given my friends. Would I trade a total continuity with an earlier version of myself for a near continuity _and_ the ability to jaunt all over the world in a hurry? Heck yeah.


Now, it'd be less philosophically challenging if the technology was a sort of spatial shifting instead of disintegration and recreation. Like, I always hoped Trek transporters actually worked by creating a billion tiny wormholes that were perfectly aligned to suck your molecules and deposit them in the right spot on the far side. But even then, even if all the molecules are the same molecules that made you up in the first place, will they necessarily be arranged exactly the same as they were before the teleportation?


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## freyar (Jul 7, 2015)

Well, if I answered the question as originally posed, I don't think I'd do it. On the other hand, if it worked like in Star Trek, it could be very useful.

But I want to comment on the physics stuff....



Umbran said:


> As we understand it today, quantum mechanics answers the question for us, through Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  You *cannot* be copied *exactly*, as the information about your original body cannot be known *exactly*.  There *will* be differences.  So, yes, you got disintegrated, and there's a very close copy of you walking around.  Star Trek had to invoke gobbledigook (the "Heisenberg Compensators") to get around this






tomBitonti said:


> I think this is close to the answer, but, I thought that state could be transported without it being determined?
> 
> But, there is another problem: Quantum mechanics apparently doesn't allow copying.  See "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem".
> 
> <snip>




As noted, it is impossible within quantum mechanics to *duplicate* (or *clone*, using the jargon) the state of a given system onto another system without messing up the state of the first one.  In other words, you can't have the teleporter that creates the duplicate before getting rid of the first one.  However, it is completely possible quantum mechanically to *teleport* a system (that's the technical term), meaning you can take one system and transfer its quantum state to another of the same kind of system at a distance.  It's just that the first system's state gets jumbled up.  This has also been done experimentally over a distance of almost 150 km (for photons).  I think someone asked, so here's the answer: this physics is inextricably related to entanglement.

That's also a problem if you wanted to use quantum teleportation to actually teleport someone.  The system you want to teleport has to be entangled from the start with the system at a distance (so it really works by setting up two systems at one place, then shipping one of them somewhere else in a normal way).  I don't know how you would entangle a person with a set of exactly the same numbers of atoms, etc, but I imagine it would mess you up even before you get to the point where you want to destroy yourself to create the copy at a distance.  Anyway, seems difficult.


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## Janx (Jul 7, 2015)

RangerWickett said:


> As an emergency escape device, sure.
> 
> As daily travel? I'm leaning toward yes.
> 
> ...




Also consider that I could record what happened in Pad A, put a screen in the room for Pad B and play it back right after you respawn on Pad B.

Which means, I could trick you into thinking that I've been disintegrating your body and killing the original you every time.  Even if it's really been a magic worm hole that simply looks like a copy and disintegrate macro.


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## Tonguez (Jul 7, 2015)

Janx said:


> Thus, the moment there are two of you (one on Pad A and one on Pad B), there are two souls in existance, initially very similar but immediately diverging (like forks in realities).  And the MorrusPort is about to kill one of them.




but does that matter? if the soul is material - just a sum of the neural network - then why not trash one copy in favour of another? do copies have inherent value?

if we are a wave function then it all pans out


(also as someone with leukemia I'm not too worried about particles being slightly different with each iteration, how long would it take until the accumulation of changes became noticeable)


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## Alzrius (Jul 7, 2015)

Nah, those things cause psychosis.


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## Morrus (Jul 7, 2015)

Tonguez said:


> but does that matter? if the soul is material - just a sum of the neural network - then why not trash one copy in favour of another? do copies have inherent value?
> 
> if we are a wave function then it all pans out




Does it?  You're on Pad A. I flip the switch. Your copy appears in Pad B. I then hand you (the original on Pad A) a gun and tell you to blow your own brains out. Do you do it?


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## Janx (Jul 7, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Does it?  You're on Pad A. I flip the switch. Your copy appears in Pad B. I then hand you (the original on Pad A) a gun and tell you to blow your own brains out. Do you do it?




That I feel was the real "gotcha" point of the question.  It's not about the guy on Pad B.

It's the fact that YOU are still standing on Pad A when they said you'd be over on B, and what's this laser doing burning your feet?


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## Tonguez (Jul 7, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Does it?  You're on Pad A. I flip the switch. Your copy appears in Pad B. I then hand you (the original on Pad A) a gun and tell you to blow your own brains out. Do you do it?




no thats messy, and pain is real (even if fleeting). personally I wait for the dis integrator and gently fade, confident that Pad B is still Me.


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## tomBitonti (Jul 7, 2015)

freyar said:


> That's also a problem if you wanted to use quantum teleportation to actually teleport someone.  The system you want to teleport has to be entangled from the start with the system at a distance (so it really works by setting up two systems at one place, then shipping one of them somewhere else in a normal way).  I don't know how you would entangle a person with a set of exactly the same numbers of atoms, etc, but I imagine it would mess you up even before you get to the point where you want to destroy yourself to create the copy at a distance.  Anyway, seems difficult.




Heh: Create a magic "entangled foam" which fits in a coffin shaped device (since a coffin is about the right size for most folks), entangle that with a similar device, then transport the second device to wherever.

Then you just need to figure out how to entangle the foam on one end to yourself, and the second device to a "blank" on the other side.

Press the button and bang, you have some non-sentient goo on this side and (with luck) you emerge from the blank on the far side.

If we say that the full quantum copy is necessary to preserve consciousness, then we can have the blank be a copy accurate up to but not including the detailed quantum state.

Lots of magic, for sure.  The coffin filled with foam seems to be a person sized ensemble of quantum bits, and we are struggling to make just a half dozen.  Maybe copying the state of the nervous system would be sufficient?  (But, that's still huge.)

Not sure if the basic mechanism is valid: Can you entangle B with C, then entangle A with B and C with D, then force the state of A to D?  Applying natural language reasoning to "entangle" seems iffy.

Thx!

TomB


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## tomBitonti (Jul 7, 2015)

Eh, if that would work, it seems to create the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The notion of entanglement that I proposed must be wrong.

Thx!

TomB


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## Richards (Jul 8, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Star Trek had to invoke gobbledigook (the "Heisenberg Compensators") to get around this



"Gobbledigook?"  That's not "gobbledigook" -- it's technobabble!  

Johnathan


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## freyar (Jul 8, 2015)

tomBitonti said:


> Heh: Create a magic "entangled foam" which fits in a coffin shaped device (since a coffin is about the right size for most folks), entangle that with a similar device, then transport the second device to wherever.
> 
> Then you just need to figure out how to entangle the foam on one end to yourself, and the second device to a "blank" on the other side.
> 
> ...




Yeah, the hugeness of the number of subatomic particles that make us up is an incredible practical problem.  But you have it basically right; you need to create the two "entangled coffins" and ship one to the destination ahead of time.  Then you get into a third device that entangles you with the coffin that stayed behind --- of course, it would have to be done in a very precise way that so far we only know how to do for something like a single set of electrons.  So you end up with you at the destination and two buckets of weirdly entangled goop at the starting point.  So really, what you are doing is entangling B & C, sending C somewhere else, and then entangling A & B, which forces C into the state of A.  At least that's how it works for electrons and photons and the like.  



tomBitonti said:


> Eh, if that would work, it seems to create the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The notion of entanglement that I proposed must be wrong.




People have wrestled with this issue when it comes to entanglement for a long time (going back to Einstein, in fact).  The way to think about it is that there's a fair bit of indeterminateness in how a quantum system will interact with the environment (another quantum system).  That means that, to transmit a message using entanglement, you also have to send information by normal means, which is limited to light speed.  How to apply this to something human-sized is quite a hard question (and similar questions are an active area of research in physics), but presumably there would have to be a lot of information sent by normal means in order to reassemble you properly at the end of the teleportation process.  Still, travel at close to light speed would be pretty useful.


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## Umbran (Jul 8, 2015)

freyar said:


> So really, what you are doing is entangling B & C, sending C somewhere else, and then entangling A & B, which forces C into the state of A.  At least that's how it works for electrons and photons and the like.




And note that entanglement is not a permanent state for all time.  You have to create the new entangled state without disrupting the old one.


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## freyar (Jul 8, 2015)

Umbran said:


> And note that entanglement is not a permanent state for all time.  You have to create the new entangled state without disrupting the old one.




Right.  And you have to somehow keep B & C entangled, which generally means keeping them isolated from everything else around them, while you ship one of them somewhere.


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## Umbran (Jul 8, 2015)

And, here's a short film that's relevant.  Aside from being amusing, it does shed some light on why how a thing works matters.

Includes some NSFW language, I am afraid, so I am stretching rules to post it - if anyone prefers, I'll take it down.

https://youtu.be/vBkBS4O3yvY


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 8, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Assume the technology dematerializes you, sends information to another location, and then you are reconstructed exactly the same - to the last atom - including all memories.  Would you be happy to transport?
> 
> Is your answer the same if there is a slight delay between the copy being created and you being dematerialized.  So you see your copy appear on the other side of the room, and then you are dematerialized?
> 
> ...




I'm basically with you.

The thing for me is that there doesn't seem to be a continuum of consciousness - *I* don't disappear and reappear someone else from my perspective. I just disappear. 

If there was some way to preserve consciousness for the trip...there'd be a little more to it.


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## Umbran (Jul 8, 2015)

Richards said:


> "Gobbledigook?"  That's not "gobbledigook" -- it's technobabble!




Not quite.  "Technobabble" is techno-jargon that the listener can't understand, but may actually be accurate and correct.  The difference between technobabble and normal use of jargon is the intent and audience - if you have two specialists talking about a subject, they're just using jargon.  If they are knowingly using it in front of a layman to confuse or mislead, then it is technobabble.

The full term I was referring to is "pseudoscientific gobbledigook" which differs from technobabble in that it is guaranteed to have little or no accurate technical content


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## Ryujin (Jul 8, 2015)

Umbran said:


> Not quite.  "Technobabble" is techno-jargon that the listener can't understand, but may actually be accurate and correct.  The difference between technobabble and normal use of jargon is the intent and audience - if you have two specialists talking about a subject, they're just using jargon.  If they are knowingly using it in front of a layman to confuse or mislead, then it is technobabble.
> 
> The full term I was referring to is "pseudoscientific gobbledigook" which differs from technobabble in that it is guaranteed to have little or no accurate technical content




It's a subset


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## MarkB (Jul 9, 2015)

To be fair, the Star Trek Transporter is not quite the appropriate model for this. Although some very unusual circumstances allow for transporter-duplication, the device does not function by scanning a person and creating a copy - instead, it converts them into a matter stream, shunts them through a buffer, and transmits them, intact, to a distant location. And, according to at least one TNG episode, the subject remains conscious throughout the process.

However, to take the example at face-value, I would not be interested in using a device which copied me and deleted the original, at least for everyday use. In exceptional, life-or-death circumstances, I might resort to it in order to allow at least some version of me to exist, but I would view it more as a data backup than an escape.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jul 10, 2015)

I think our sense of self is a fascinating thing.

Naively, one might say that we want a sense of continuity. But... We don#t actually have that. When I sleep in at night and wake up, there is just time gone. I can't remember what happened, my continuity is broken.

Our bodies are not stable and always in the same state. We're living beings that constantly change.
Their state is constantly changing. What would make an error during a teleportation process different from a change in your state because you moved or inhaled some oxygen?

Basically, every nanosecond we experience some change. And yet, we still think we're the same person. Only sometimes, when we look back, we realized how we changed from what we once where, but still, we think we're us.


For Morrus scenario - if my copy winks back at me before I get annihilated, I have some severe doubts that it's me. It's another copy of me. I am about to be destroyed. I would say sucks to be me, but I am no more in a bit anyway. 

I think I will not travel with MorrusPort.


When it comes to stuff like quantum entanglement/teleportation... maybe it's actually different. But then the "see my own copy" aspect can't happen, AFAIK.



BTW; if we were theoretically able to entangle our bodies so we could "teleport", it might be very different from Trek teleporters. 

Since you can't entangle at any distance, it might work by us stepping into the "entanglement machine" black box, and then stepping out. Inside that block box, there are entangled particles. That box will be transported to whereever we want to go, and when it's there, the parts can be "released".  So basically, instead of sitting inside the plane, w would simply send two briefcases - one containing our stuff, and the other containing our quantum entangled particles that become us later. 

But I think the part where we step out of the machine is where the whole process is failing... If I understand QE correctly, if you collapse the wave function of one partner in an entanglement, you do so with the other. But I bet that if you step out f the box, you will under go a lot of wave function collapses, so it's not actually possibe to work that way.


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## RangerWickett (Jul 10, 2015)

Hm. If you have the technology to scan and rebuild people, you probably have the technology to understand what creates consciousness. So you could easily edit people's thoughts mid-transport, and have them pop out the far side acting exactly as you desire.


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## Janx (Jul 10, 2015)

RangerWickett said:


> Hm. If you have the technology to scan and rebuild people, you probably have the technology to understand what creates consciousness. So you could easily edit people's thoughts mid-transport, and have them pop out the far side acting exactly as you desire.




there we go.  problem solved.

can we alter Umbrans brain to trust the transporter before he gets in?

Or beam him out, alter him, and replace him with the modified "ammenable Umbran" who will be more eager to volunteer for physics experiments for his mysterious masters?

I don't think this new tech extension is going to win Umbran over...


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## JWO (Jul 10, 2015)

I wouldn't want to do it, especially if I knew for certain that the guy coming out the other end was just a copy of me and didn't have my consciousness.

Here's a further question - What if a loved one went through the machine. In effect, they'd still be the same person. They'd have all the same memories the original version of them had so they'd remember everything you'd been through together...how would you feel about them if you knew that the original version of them had been wiped out and this new one was a copy.

They'd still feel the same way about you but it would be a different consciousness to the original.

I don't know if I could deal with that...


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## freyar (Jul 10, 2015)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> When it comes to stuff like quantum entanglement/teleportation... maybe it's actually different. But then the "see my own copy" aspect can't happen, AFAIK.



Right!  But, if it worked, you would get a perfect recreation of yourself at the moment you started the process.



> BTW; if we were theoretically able to entangle our bodies so we could "teleport", it might be very different from Trek teleporters.
> 
> Since you can't entangle at any distance, it might work by us stepping into the "entanglement machine" black box, and then stepping out. Inside that block box, there are entangled particles. That box will be transported to whereever we want to go, and when it's there, the parts can be "released".  So basically, instead of sitting inside the plane, w would simply send two briefcases - one containing our stuff, and the other containing our quantum entangled particles that become us later.
> 
> But I think the part where we step out of the machine is where the whole process is failing... If I understand QE correctly, if you collapse the wave function of one partner in an entanglement, you do so with the other. But I bet that if you step out f the box, you will under go a lot of wave function collapses, so it's not actually possibe to work that way.




Almost.  The way quantum teleportation works --- at least for single particles, which is all we know how to do --- is more like you prepare two entangled boxes, and you keep one and put one of them on the plane.  Then, when it arrives, you entangle yourself with the box you kept.  This effectively destroys you at your first location but creates you at the second location (not quite simultaneously, since the origin teleporter would have to send some information to the destination).  The practical upshot is that you could create many pairs of these "entangled boxes" and ship one half of each pair to various destinations, so you could really set up a quantum teleportation business.

The other thing about the quantum aspect of this is that if you could really do it (though I think practically it'd be pretty much impossible), the "copy" would be quantum mechanically indistinguishable from the original.  In other words, you wouldn't really be "killing" the original since a set of indistinguishable particles would take on the exact same quantum state.  What look like the nearly insurmountable problems, though, are (1) keeping the two "entangled boxes" actually entangled over macroscopic times and distances and (2) figuring out how to do quantum processes to something as big as a person.  Of course, these are related issues.


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## SkidAce (Jul 10, 2015)

If it "moved" me maybe.  If it by definition "copies" me, then no.  

A copy is not me...its him!

So what Morrus is theoretically asking (intentionally or not) is "would you let copies of you be made if you had to die to make them?"

----

Why stop at one?  Let's make an army of me!


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## WayneLigon (Jul 12, 2015)

Morrus said:


> Assume the technology dematerializes you, sends information to another location, and then you are reconstructed exactly the same - to the last atom - including all memories.  Would you be happy to transport?




Yes.



Morrus said:


> Is your answer the same if there is a slight delay between the copy being created and you being dematerialized.  So you see your copy appear on the other side of the room, and then you are dematerialized?




Yes. The mind is the thing - once you can duplicate minds, 'death' ceases to have any meaning or impact. Both of them are me (for a second), it's not a 'clone' per se. In fact, I'd probably prefer that, since that way I know there won't be a transmission glitch in the broadcast. The idea of a transmission glitch would be my main worry, something that would change me in a way I don't pre-approve.


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## AlexM (Aug 4, 2015)

I'd say no. The human mind: thoughts, emotions and the rest, is still too poorly understood. Besides, one glitch and I'm gone... unless they have a backup file.


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## Jhaelen (Aug 4, 2015)

freyar said:


> The other thing about the quantum aspect of this is that if you could really do it (though I think practically it'd be pretty much impossible), the "copy" would be quantum mechanically indistinguishable from the original.



If that was how it worked, I'd have no problem using a 'transporter beam'.


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## Umbran (Aug 4, 2015)

AlexM said:


> Besides, one glitch and I'm gone...




Can't the same be said for an airplane, though?  We already have many technologies we use regularly that, if they go just slightly awry, lead to our deaths.


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## Umbran (Aug 4, 2015)

RangerWickett said:


> Hm. If you have the technology to scan and rebuild people, you probably have the technology to understand what creates consciousness.




Don't count on that.  

Edison established the first electrical utility power station in 1882.

The electron was not discovered by JJ Thompson until 1897, 15 years after Edison started distributing them through wires all over New York City.  

Which is to say, our ability to manipulate a thing can precede our understanding of what we are manipulating.


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## AlexM (Aug 4, 2015)

The airplane is a physical object while a transporter is a disassembly - reassembly device. I would hate to appear at my destination with parts missing, or experience a power loss at a critical point, causing me to remain in a disassembled state, especially if my destination is not another transporter.


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## tomBitonti (Aug 4, 2015)

I guess a big question is whether a person can be copied in a non-quantum sense.

If quantum state must be copied to preserve consciousness, then there can be only one of a person.  This would be most convenient, since it simplifies the question.

But, if the quantum state doesn't matter, or is only important in a transient sense, then you could copy a person.

But also, if the quantum state doesn't matter, then continuity can be questioned without considering teleportation: The person that I am today may not be continuous with the person that I was yesterday.

Brings up a lot of messy questions: If I store my physical state sufficient to recreate myself, then destroy my physical state, am I alive or dead?  (We have this problem in D&D when a person is petrified.  What happens to their soul?)

Or, if quantum state matters, but only in a transient sense that it is regenerated on a regular interval when consciousness arises, say, in the morning after sleep, then we might see subtle differences between instances of a person which were created from the same physical base.  The person on the far end of a teleporter could really be an evil twin.

For folks watching "Dark Matter", they are playing with this idea, with a transporter implementation which uses a biological 3D printer and copied memories to effect transportation.  See episode 8.

Thx!

TomB


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## Umbran (Aug 4, 2015)

AlexM said:


> The airplane is a physical object while a transporter is a disassembly - reassembly device. I would hate to appear at my destination with parts missing, or experience a power loss at a critical point, causing me to remain in a disassembled state, especially if my destination is not another transporter.




Dead is dead.  Maimed is maimed.  I fail to see how "missing an arm from a transporter accident" is worse than "missing an arm from a car crash".


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## MarkB (Aug 4, 2015)

Just avoid the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation models.

“I teleported home last night with Ron and Sid and Meg
Ron stole Meggy's heart away and I got Sidney's leg.”


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## Legatus Legionis (Aug 5, 2015)

.


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## was (Aug 7, 2015)

No, I would not use it. I prefer the original me, though others might disagree.


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