Would you use a transporter beam?

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.

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.

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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...

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...

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.

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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.

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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.

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?"

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

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?

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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?

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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.

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.

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.

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

AlexM said:

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

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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.

RangerWickett said:

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

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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.