001100 010010Jul 25, 2023

Would you use teleporter technology if it existed? Why or Why not?

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/1065014

Would you use teleporter technology if it existed? Why or Why not? - Divisions by zero

You know those sci-fi teleporters like in Star Trek where you disappear from one location then instantaneously reappear in another location? Do you trust that they are safe to use? To fully understand my question, you need to understand the safety concerns regarding teleporters as explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI] ::: spoiler spoiler I wouldn’t, because the person that reappears aint me, its a fucking clone. Teleporters are murder machines. Star Trek is a silent genocide! :::

Show threadDJKJuicyJul 25, 2023

Well, if the technology actually existed, it would solve that whole “soul” question.

We would know pretty quickly if we transported humans and they came out the other side as soulless aberrations because their original just got killed.

So yeah, I would 100% use it after it first proved once and for all that the sum of our consciousness really is all the synapses and signals and grey matter in our heads. Because if so then what does it matter if your original matter has been erased and then recreated. Your clone is just as much you as you are you at that point.

Show threadAnomanderJul 25, 2023

Absolutely this.

Someone else can be the guinea pig, but if it's been tested and everyone came out fine? Yeah. I'll absolutely take advantage.

Show threadolivierJul 25, 2023
Even if the clone is undistinguishable from your old self, that old self has died. “you” has died. You didn’t teleport to Mars, you died on Earth.
Show threadAnomanderJul 25, 2023

You're repeating what OP said.

Thing is, the idea that an "old you" has "died" is a modern soul conceit. If "me" is just the combination of meat, electricity, and memories - then for all intents and purposes I was simply taken apart in one place and reassembled in another. Continuity of all three is maintained when I am reassembled on Mars with my body and memories intact. There is no "old" and "new" me - because what you or OP think defines "me" isn't something that dies when the meat stops working briefly.

Show threadrainhJul 25, 2023
But we can "prove" that isn't true because what if you aren't disassembled on the first side? Just copied over. Either you have a sense and control of both bodies at once, or in a real teleport where you are disassembled, you're gone the moment you teleport and the "you" that remains is another different person with exactly your thoughts, feelings, motivations, memories, etc.
Show threadTrekman10Jul 25, 2023

what if you aren’t disassembled on the first side? Just copied over. Then it’s not what most people imagine when they say “yes”.

Using the star trek transporter as the example, you actually experience the teleportation process. In one episode, we see the perspective of someone being transported and they go into a white void, briefly, and then appear in the 2nd location. It takes like 8 seconds. We also know that some transporters are faster than others.

I don’t believe there’s anything special about my current body. Barring teleportation, I fully believe that if it were possible to disassemble a person, but them in a box, ship them across the Pacific Ocean, and then put them back together again, that they’d be the same person.

I don’t see how being converted into energy and back represents death.

Show threadrichieadler
People experiencing the transport process is due not understanding how copies work. Damn, they don’t seem to grasp the idea of a backup.
Jul 25, 2023 at 6:55pmWeb
Show threadTrekman10Jul 25, 2023

Seeing as anything that we copy or make backups of now is not self-aware, I don’t see what that has to do with anything. If anything, a teleport (as conceived of and described in science fiction, not how it might “actually” work) is more like moving a file from one tree to another. The whole idea of the teleport as a plot device is to create a form of near-instant transportation. I feel like these thought exercises where “what if the teleporter cloned you and killed the original copy” miss that.

Its like, “hmm what if the train from New York to Boston actually brought you to a cloning facility in New Haven, shot you in the head and then replaced you with a lab-grown clone that went on to Boston in your stead” well then it wouldn’t be what most people think of when they think of taking the train.

In order for me to be convinced that the common depiction of teleportation is a form of cloning and murder, I would need someone to prove to me that humans have souls in a metaphysical sense - that there’s something about us as individuals beyond the sum of our lived experiences and the atoms that make up our bodies.

Show threadrichieadlerJul 25, 2023

Seeing as anything that we copy or make backups of now is not self-aware, I don’t see what that has to do with anything. If anything, a teleport (as conceived of and described in science fiction, not how it might “actually” work) is more like moving a file from one tree to another.

Sorry, no it’s not. When you introduce technobabble related to “buffers” and “caches” where the information is stored temporarily, the working must conform to the way files are handled. Yes, you can handwave whatever you like for narrative purposes, but this discussion is not supposed to have as a valid answer “a wizard did it”.

In order for me to be convinced that the common depiction of teleportation is a form of cloning and murder, I would need someone to prove to me that humans have souls in a metaphysical sense

That is ridiculous. Please search the short stories “The phantom of Kansas” by John Varley and “Think like a dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly to see the implications of this kind of transport. Neither posits the existence of a soul, and the scenario of “the original dies, a copy keeps living” is very clearly shown as the only valid explanation, and how the assumption that the person is the same after the transport (or the cloning, in the first story, but the effect are the same) is merely a legal fiction for convenience.

In any transport there’s a copy, and any copy takes a non-zero time and an instant where the copied person must exist in two places at the time. Unless the spacetime is curved and poked and you transit through the hole, there is no other viable model.

Show threadTrekman10Jul 25, 2023

The situation and plot of The Phantom of Kansas doesn’t seem to have much to do with teleportation though? It doesn’t look like Phantom of Kansas features a world with teleportation as a means of transportation, so I’m not sure what relevance it has to the discussion of teleporter technology since no one actually teleports in that story. Also, it makes it clear that there’s a break of consciousness between one body to the next, but most people view teleportation as an instant thing that you’re aware of the whole time. I accept that the premise in Kansas is similar, but people seem to use it to change their sex and appearance but keep their memory, or use it to restore backups of themselves if they can afford it, not get from point a to point b. When the question of “would you step into a transporter, like the one in Star Trek” is brought up, then it feels like moving the goal posts to bring up all these other examples of things that aren’t technically teleporters, or to talk about what a “real” transporter would “have” to do.

The transporter, as shown in Star Trek, and the more generic teleporter, doesn’t kill you and create a clone in your place unless something goes wrong. To believe it does says more about what one thinks of the metaphysical and spirituality than it does about science.