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Thought Experiment

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    Thought Experiment

    Whilst stuck in a traffic jam trying to get my overcrowed flight, my thoughts turned to the prospect of "teleportation".

    Now I know something about it because I used to regularly watch Star trek. However it got me thinking.

    Basically the principle is that you are split into individual atoms and then you get reconstructed at the other end, so do you die ? I mean a "being" would appear at the other end but it would be a new person, however this reconstituted person would assume that he had been successfully teleported, and would tell everyone that teleportation was perfectly safe, even though the orginal person had been killed.

    Hmm ??

    This got me thinking. So now lets say we replace one atom at a time. I think it is obvious that if an individual atom in the brain was replaced we wouldn't notice. Now if this process were to be repeated then we could replace all the atoms of the brain individually then the person wouldn't notice. Now instead of doing it one by one, we then replace them instantaneously, surely this is effectively the same thing. So surely following on with the logic you can reconstitute someone and its still the same person,a nd you could use different atoms.

    hmm ??

    ...and (following on with this logic) supposing you were to put identical atoms together to make an identical copy, there would be two of you, which one would really be you ??. Supposing the teleporter created a copy.
    I'm alright Jack

    #2
    Isn't teleportation a bit like Ethernet or Token Ring where everything is just sent over as packets and then all put back together in the correct order?
    Brexit is having a wee in the middle of the room at a house party because nobody is talking to you, and then complaining about the smell.

    Comment


      #3
      "The Fly" comes to my mind.....
      Carpe Pactum

      (does fuzzy logic tickle?)

      Comment


        #4
        michael crichton wrote about this kind of thing in his novel on nano technology. went something like: build a teleport machine (even though it doesn't work). eventually someone in a different time will build one exactly the same that does work and will use it to teleport from theirs into yours. voila! you have a time machine that work. just wait for them to activate it..

        Comment


          #5
          Oh God! Can you imagine it.

          It will be like mobile phones, only worse.

          Everyone will be teleporting themselves all over the place. Materialising in the wrong houses when they're pissed.

          And the teleporting infrastructure will be run by knobs such as BT and Virgin!

          "Oops! Sorry! Your left leg has been lost in transit due to a buffer overflow. Have a voucher for a free off-peak transportation trip as compensation".
          Last edited by bogeyman; 10 January 2007, 15:20.

          You've come right out the other side of the forest of irony and ended up in the desert of wrong.

          Comment


            #6
            Teleportation is flawed in this concept of atom by atom reconstruction.

            More likely would be the ability to bend space, to stretch the space towards you so that your start point A and your finish point B touch. You then simply move to point B and unbend space.

            Easy.

            Next.
            What happens in General, stays in General.
            You know what they say about assumptions!

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by zeitghost
              Of course, the War Criminal, James Tiberius Kirk was frequently involved in transporter accidents that projected him into alternate universes and/or splitting him into good/evil halves whilst doing so.

              Though the difference between the good & the evil halves of the War Criminal were extremely difficult to spot.
              No transporter accidents on my ship, no sir-eee. I run a tight ship - sometimes we had difficulty in getting an effective lock on the subject but that was it!
              Anyway - why aren't you dead yet?

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by BlasterBates
                this reconstituted person would assume that he had been successfully teleported, and would tell everyone that teleportation was perfectly safe, even though the orginal person had been killed.
                I suppose it depends what you believe to be your consciousness and where it is and whether or not you think you have a 'soul'. I think your consciousness is analogous to software running on a computer, destroy the hardware and it dies, but make a copy and run it elsewhere (analogous to teleporting) and it can be thought of as the same thing ie. the same person. If there is such a thing as a soul then I guess this device would create soulless people, maybe thats where agents come from.


                Originally posted by BlasterBates
                ...and (following on with this logic) supposing you were to put identical atoms together to make an identical copy, there would be two of you, which one would really be you ??. Supposing the teleporter created a copy.
                They would both be you. Each would have an identical consciousness. Technically, we probably all 'die' many times over our lifetime since cells die and are replaced as we grow. I think.

                C'mon somebody, mention the matrix.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by shoes
                  <snip> Technically, we probably all 'die' many times over
                  Or as the French call it, la petite mort. Or le, if you're a bloke.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by zeitghost
                    Because you didn't kill me, puny hu-man...

                    This inability to follow through spells your doom.
                    He's lucky. I follow through all too often.
                    Boom boom boom boom
                    A-haw haw haw haw
                    Hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm
                    Hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm

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