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Ask Slashdot: Is Beaming Down In Star Trek a Death Sentence?
Artem Tashkinov writes: Some time ago, Ars Technica ran a monumental article on beaming of consciousness in Star Trek and its implications, and more importantly, whether it's plausible to achieve that without killing a person in the process.
It seems possible in the Star Trek universe. However, currently physicists find the idea absurd and unreal because there's no way you can transport matter and its quantum state without first destroying it and then recreating it perfectly, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The biggest conundrum of all is the fact that pretty much everyone understands that consciousness is a physical state of the brain, which features continuity as its primary principle; yet it surely seems like copying the said state produces a new person altogether, which brings up the problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter. This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul.
This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia? What are your thoughts on the topic?
It seems possible in the Star Trek universe. However, currently physicists find the idea absurd and unreal because there's no way you can transport matter and its quantum state without first destroying it and then recreating it perfectly, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The biggest conundrum of all is the fact that pretty much everyone understands that consciousness is a physical state of the brain, which features continuity as its primary principle; yet it surely seems like copying the said state produces a new person altogether, which brings up the problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter. This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul.
This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia? What are your thoughts on the topic?
> The biggest conundrum of all is the fact that pretty much everyone understands that consciousness is a physical state of the brain
Bullshit.
The shared Out-of-Body experiences proves that assumption false.
There's a great animated short by John Weldon that explores this topic. It's called To Be and can be found at this URL: http://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/
Then a good bet!
TRUMP powa (losing mojo...soon...death)
Is the transporter killing people by ripping them apart atom by atom, and then creating a new person?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
that explains Captain Kirk, interesting
. . . beaming down while wearing a red shirt does NOT seem to be a good idea.
Folks dressed like that never seem to last too long.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
"... which brings up the problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter. This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul."
No, all it says is that a copy of a brain is not the original brain.
If you make a perfect copy of an orange, all the way down to the subatomic level, then that copy is still not the original orange. It's the copy.
If you make a perfect copy of me, down to the sub-atomic level and that copy walks into my room, then I will not suddenly confuse that copy with myself.
Matter converted to energy and re-converted and re-assembled at the other end as matter. It's all you, end to end.
Buffering
Buffering
Buffering
I never knew why they didn't just use the transporter memory to restore all the red shirts...
It's only a problem if you imagine it to be one. Since this is an existential question, the answer is 'do not think about it' and your pretty much fine.
He had Barclay uncoupled the Heisenberg compensator and he was just fine.
... physicists find the idea absurd and unreal because there's no way you can transport matter and its quantum state without first destroying it and then recreating it perfectly, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
It's been established that ST transporters have Heisenberg compensators, so checkmate actual physicists.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How about after a good night's sleep. And what the heck is up with that someone is sitting on you or holding you down as you transition from sleep to being awake. Happened again last night and it freaks me out!
I raised this very question (Star Trek, transporter experiment) to my daughter when she was a teenager. Her response was, what's the difference? Our atoms have already largely completely changed over many times by now anyway. I recall reading years ago, I think it was a Time Life book or perhaps an educational movie, that we're all breathing, and thus by implication incorporating, some fraction of the actual atoms that Leonardo da Vinci breathed; a matter of statistics. Of course, that still leaves the question of whether your consciousness this very instant is already a different "thing" that it was a second ago, and only your current state of your memory leads you to believe that it is the same.
The universe is entirely static, a four dimensional object where everything that has or will happen exists simultaneously in an eternally unchanging state.
Our perception of it dynamically changing over time is an illusion of senses only perceiving a single "slice" of that object.
Furthermore, our consciousness is not continuous, but rather a disconnected multitude, each trapped forever in a specific moment of our lives. Each convinced it has a history because of the illusion of memory. Each convinced it has free will because of the illusion of action.
Since we are talking Star Trek, this has all ready been directly answered. Riker beams up, but leaves a copy. Years later, he is rediscovered by the enterprise crew. Dr. Crusher and Jordi agree they are identical and equally "Riker" so it must be true. Eventually the duplicate wanders off to lead a life of his own. Glad I could wrap that up for everyone scientifically, once and for all.
The Outer Limits did an interesting episode on this topic: s07 e08 Think Like a Dinosaur.
The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's paradox, is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late first century.
This problem is known in philosophy as the Problem of Personal Identity. A must-read article summarizing the topic: https://thoughtexperiments.net/people-who-divide-like-an-amoeba/
Their were a lot of transporter malfunctions on ST. The duplicate Ryker proves that it was possible to make two people, which means that at least one of them was not the original, which means that neither of them were the original.
Star Trek transporters were cloning machines that some moron put a suicide option into them and then pretended they were a transportation method. For no obvious reason, too. Leave the original alive back on earth and let the clones take all the risk.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That's what the Heisenberg compensator are for: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/...
Try it! Library of Babel
Why are you and everyone else here wracking your brains over something Roddenberry pulled out of his ass in order to save production costs?
Let's argue of such a being like 'Q' could exist? Actually, 'Q' was God in Star Trek. Let's ask ourselves why an atheist like Roddenberry had God in Star Trek?
Continuity as its primary thing? Really? Ever been asleep? Discontinuity. For someone like me with sleep apnea where I wake up and fall back asleep all night discontinuity is something I face all the time. But everyone loses consciousness at least once per sleep. So clearly continuity isn't a big deal.
...even in Star Trek.
A scientific view of consciousness would state that if you could find a way to duplicate a physical body, then you could build a transporter as our consciousness is just the chemical and atomic state of our brain.
If we really have a metaphysical "soul", then just how would that re-attach to the physical form you transport elsewhere?
I liked how Dark Matter handled this better, where they created a clone at the destination while you were cryogenically stored at the origin, then if the clone made it back to the transmitter without dying you would get all of the memories of what happened.
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"Get in, get out again, and no one gets hurt."
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
The Star Trek Transporter is a device invented to facilitate telling a story. There was 50 minutes. Obviously they could get in their space shuttle and land on the planet, get from the clear place they chose to the town, and then start the story. Or they could beam in.
There is also the fact that the way the communicators work is elided in the story. Obviously the channel can't be open until you say the name of the person you're calling, and even with some speeding up of the original audio it's going to take a second or two for them to catch up and respond. But nobody waits for the phone to ring on Star Trek.
And of course the data transfer method of the future is to give someone your tablet :-)
These are story devices. We can speculate about matter transmission being applied to conscious entities and copying people, but we should be clear that the reason these are used in Star Trek is not because they think that is how things will be in the future. It's because they made telling the story in the present easier to do.
Bruce Perens.
It's a death sentence, but also a rebirth, so it cancels out.
John 'Defcon 1' Bolton has been appointed National Security Advisor to the 'president'. Fairly soon we will all be vaporized in the coming nuclear holocaust, and then we'll know if the 'soul' or 'consciousness' survives the annihilation of the physical body.
The man should be in jail for life for war crimes. I can't believe he even has the nerve to show himself in public. You'd think he'd want to keep a low profile. But these are insane times.
The biggest conundrum of all is the fact that pretty much everyone understands that consciousness is a physical state of the brain, which features continuity as its primary principle; yet it surely seems like copying the said state produces a new person altogether, which brings up the problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter. This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul.
Consciousness is a physical state of the brain. It is a section of the brain which is 'reading' what's happening in other areas of the brain (more like the 2nd informational hub of the brain, similar to a large rest stop on a superhighway.) You can damage/turn off those other areas without losing consciousness. Continuity is not a primary principle. There are many ways to break continuity. Your unconscious mind don't break continuity during most of those instances. You can watch that on brain scanners.
Sleeping doesn't break continuity. It blocks short-term memory storage of the events happening during sleep. You can slowly train your brain to not do that. When you do so you become a lucid dreamer.
Exactly copying something means you have a second copy. So the second brain has its own consciousness exactly identical to the first until they start experiencing different inputs. In what way does any of that imply a soul? It doesn't, You just made up that statement because you've confused yourself. The summary makes an invalid argument so this shouldn't have been approved to Slashdot.
My thoughts on this topic are meaningless and so are yours. God is a human invention. You can see it time and time again by studying history, how humans react, and the areas of your brain which turn off during meditation/prayer (the section which lets you know where all yours parts are when you're not looking at them, so turning it off gives you an out-of-body experience). It doesn't matter if you're a new person when you have a gap in memory or not. Since it's trivial to demonstrate you don't go under any abnormal physical changes during such periods, the answer to such a question is meaningless no matter the answer.
The "problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter" is no problem at all. That's the fact of the matter. What "you" perceive as "your consciousness" is purely a function of your brain.
When you make an exact copy of a brain, that doesn't complicate anything really. That brain will perceive its own consciousness similarly. And it will very likely function very similarly to the original.
Where's the confusion?
This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia?
The simple answer is there's no way to know that your memories are real. There's also no way to know that other people really exist. All that you can know for sure is that you exist, "I think therefore I am". Go read "Meditations on First Philosophy" by Rene Descartes.
Maybe this is the wrong question to ask...
Obviously, given the transporter doesn't exist yet, this is all hypothetical. However, assuming that a transporter had been developer for inanimate objects and your question preceded a decision to use it to attempt to transfer a living organism, then a different question becomes relevant:-
What is the mechanism by which the human brain achieves consciousness?
Because, I would argue, you can only answer the second question ("Is Beaming Down In Star Trek a Death Sentence?") when you know (1) How the Beaming Down process works; and (2) How the brain acts as the "container" for the mind [assuming it does].
Digging a little bit deeper... If it can be shown that consciousness is achieved merely from the result of a truly massive scale of parallel chemical processes that are taking place in the cells of the brain, then well, it might be possible. It would require technology that could scan the body not to a cellular resolution, but to an *atomic*, or possibly even sub-atomic resolution, instantaneously... then transmit that information to a remote location and reconstitute all that organic matter, with all those chemical "transactions", all synchronised to exactly the same point in time...
On the other hand, if consciousness exists through other means [I'm making this up, but, say quantum super-positioning] then the act of scanning the subject at the point of origin might in fact destroy the "data" before it could be "beamed" anywhere.
This is why my answer is that the OP asks the wrong question. It's not the beaming you need to consider first, it's to understand how consciousness functions at a materials science level. Only then can you start to understand the functional design requirements of the transporter.
There was a video done a couple of years ago about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI&feature=youtu.be
because Star Trek and Star Trek transporters are fantasy. Something that fewer and fewer people seem to be able to distinguish from reality.
Also "Moon" with Sam Rockwell. It's really nice and depressing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film)
If you ever wondered how it might feel to meet an identical clone, with each copy certain they are the "Real One"
why is slashdot inundated with self-absorbed fuckheads asking stupid vacuous questions that make no sense
get a fucking job dicks
fucking slashdot really has become a cesspool of stupidity
Um, this is actually, quite literally, explored and explained in Trek, in considerable detail, including the fact that to transport someone that they must be destroyed (or perhaps more precisely de-constructed) and recreated, right down to the quantum level including position and velocity of every subatomic particle... Hence the Heisenberg compensators. Their certainly seems to be some number of people in the Trek universe that are deeply concerned about this idea as well, being that it would indeed seem to destroy a soul in their view.
It would mean eternal life.
Since it would first record the data of the person to beam, it would analyze it and obviously NOT beam any cancer cells and pathogens down, but delete those from the data first.
Second, it could be used to send the body of a 25 year old in perfect health but with the conscience of the real person, no matter the age.
In case of a fatal accident, the last backup from the last beam could be used to recreate the dead person.
Obviously all esthetic surgeons would go jobless as well.
"All that you can know for sure is that you exist"
That depends on what exactly you mean by "you exist." I agree that what humans consider thinking certainly implies something fairly complex is happening (e.g. - self contemplation).
But why is the copy in the Mirror Universe ALWAYS Evil and has a Beard?
Being an red shit is more or less an Death Sentence
The other day somebody stole everything in my apartment and replaced it with an exact replica... When my roommate came home I said, "Roommate, someone stole everything in our apartment and replaced it with an exact replica." He looked at me and said, "Do I know you?"
- Steven Wright
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Regarding the quantum state of matter, the quantum state of matter can be transported though a process known as quantum teleportation. The matter itself isn't teleported, but the quantum state is.
As for what actually happens in the transporter, it's complicated and Star Trek isn't particularly clear about what transporters actually do and how they work. Dr. McCoy notoriously disliked using transporters. He objected to his body being broken down into atoms and scattered across space, as he put it. The exact philosophical question in this article was also addressed in the Enterprise episode Daedalus, where it was dismissed by Captain Archer as having been resolved and that it is the same person after transport. However, it seems like those being transported have some awareness of the process, such as in TNG's Realm of Fear, where Reginald Barclay can actually feel creatures around him while materializing. There's also the transporter accident in The Motion Picture, where two partially materialized officers are screaming from pain caused by the transporter malfunction. And no discussion of transporter weirdness would be complete without mentioning TNG's Relics, in which Scotty puts a transporter into diagnostic mode and stores himself in a transporter's pattern buffer for 75 years.
Other strange behavior includes TNG's Second Chances, where Riker is duplicated in a transporter accident that results in part of the matter stream being reflected back to the surface of a planet. Kirk is split into two halves in TOS's The Enemy Within, and then merged back together later on. And Voyager's Tuvix involves Tuvok and Neelix being merged into a single being that is then killed to split them back apart.
Producing duplicate copies of a person is impossible with quantum teleportation. Teleporting the quantum state of an atom involves destroying the quantum state of the original. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a fundamental property of the universe, but Star Trek circumvents it with the purely fictional Heisenberg compensator that allows transporting to occur. Again, it's pure fiction, because the uncertainty principle is a fundamental property of the universe that doesn't seem possible to circumvent.
Given a supply of matter and via quantum entanglement, it might be theoretically possible to 3D print a person at the destination and reproduce the quantum state of matter through quantum teleportation. As for whether it's the same person, the answer seems to be no, and that only the quantum state would actually have been teleported. So, yes, anything approaching an actual transporter would seem to kill the original person and precisely duplicate the person at the destination. As for Star Trek, the transporter as it's described on the show is almost certainly impossible. It's a plot device that was created because filming shuttles to get to and from planets was simply too expensive for TOS's budget if they were going to do it on a regular basis.
We might as well be ripped apart and reconstructed every nanosecond right where we stand. I'm not the same persion I was a nanosecond ago. If I start fretting about it I'd never get anything done ever again.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Experiments performed on subjects who had the corpus callosum (the connection between hemispheres of the brain) severed, sometimes to treat chronic epilepsy, suggest that once the human brain is effectively divided in two, consciousness is also divided between the left & right hemispheres. The result is two distinct perspectives and sets of understanding observable within one body, each controlling their respective side of the body, the two sides sometimes disagreeing or fighting each other. This challenges the idea that consciousness exists as an indivisible 'soul', a supernatural phenomenon existing outside of and independent from the matter that makes up the brain. https://www.psychologytoday.co...
install it in a new sleeve a la "altered carbon"
Die every day and live forever... if you are rich enough.
NO DOUBLE SLEEVING!
I'm older, more busted, more sore and more grumpy.
Because it is a TV show.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
What makes you think that you are the same person from one moment to the next, even without the transporter. What gives is the feeling of continuity?
Beaming down is no fun when you gotta be covered in a Beowulf cluster of hot grits.
"how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia?"
We're not the same person, we're recreated from our memories each time we wake up.
If I remember correctly the best way to overcome this is to compensate for it just like in Star Trek. The idea is sound: compensate for Heisenberg with Heisenberg compensators. This is just a simple engineering problem, working out the most practical method of implementation.
I really don't understand why this hasn't been done yet. It's probably due to lobbying from the airlines.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
The answer of course is whatever the creators of star trek say.
Out of all star trek technologies I've found transporter to be the most ridiculous and damaging to the believability and credibility of story lines.
Why would anyone bother to launch photon torpedoes when they can make them appear instantly at a designated location? People seem to have no problem beaming aboard Borg and other unshielded vessels yet nobody ever thinks to beam over a few kilos of antimatter instead?
When you drop shields to board that ship you just crippled nobody would ever think to use this window to send over before mentioned antimatter presents in retaliation? Antimatter has been beamed in numerous episodes. I seem to recall Janeway sending a torpedo care of transporter.
Shields, fusion/antimatter, phasers and cloaking devices at least seem plausible. Warp drives, gravity plates and subspace is anyone's guess.
Transporters damage the genre almost as much as baryon sweeps and nonsense JTK kept spouting about leaving the galaxy early in TOS.
I’d suggest that you’re destroyed and recreated by transporting. The transporters use Heisenberg uncertainty compensators for one, implying a need to compensate for the destruction and re-creation. Transporters also have pattern buffers where they have been used to recreate adults from children and reform aged / damaged adults into their stored patterns. The information used during transport is very redundant. In one incident Riker was transported and the beam split. The result was two Rikers. So, pretty conclusively not transporting your atoms across a distance but rather transmitting a very accurate description of the being reduced to a corpse. Then recreated if no issues crop up.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
.. is a Stupid Question!"
I actually think it's pretty simple. Consciencesness = software. During the teleportation, the body and mind exist in both places. Ergo, continuity (statefulness) is maintained, and the single consciencesness exists in both places simultaneously. Think VM on a live migration. As long as the two copies are forced into exactly the same state (entangled?) It is really just one linked mind. My opinion is that the thing we call a soul, or self awareness, is something that lives entirely in the software of the mind; it's not a tethered spark of ether in an intangible universe. Understanding that our souls are really just the software of an electrochemical network doesn't deaden the experience of self awareness; accepting an understanding of how the mind works shouldn't make your self awareness any less poignant. I do think, however, that the software is less continuous than we may want to admit. Sleeping may be analagous to a computer low power states, but accepting that the soul is effectively a form of software running on a form of a network also accepts that it is likely there are instances where it can be wiped, altered, rebooted, or replaced. There is a lot of interesting reading that dances around this premise, such as, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat." I think it is likely that if we withstand significant trauma or injury the person that wakes up is potentially an altered iteration. However, studies of injuries and neurological issues suggests that there are many levels of how we are encoded in the brain, some of which persist on a durable, low level. Stretching the computer analogy to it's breaking point, short term memory is kind of "Cache", while mid term memory is "RAM". Long term memory is some kind of storage, while behavior, personality and manner are probably closer to System Code. One wonders if the analogy fits well because we build computers to match the ways we think. If the mind works like this, there is a big upside: it makes the path to uploading of the mind straight forward. All we need is the capability to completely simulate a human brain, and to synchronize the two versions completely. One would experience both sets of inputs simultaneously, and the self would be in both places simultaneously. Gracefully shutdown the meat version (cryopreserve?) and you will have moved the mind/soul. Details of the technical implementation are left as an exercise for the reader.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Specifically there are three "places" you are simultaneously; or maybe two and two. In ST you have a thing called the buffer which is not a computer simulation. It's more a pocket universe. The beaming process involves duplicating you such that you identically exist in two places at once. You more than quantum entangled (you get misreads with quantum entanglement) but rather totally entangled. Almost like a mathematical transformation. You continue to exist alive somewhat constricted by a force field. You exist in real universe and the buffer universe simultaneously while particles in each are synchronized. There is one you in two places then possibly three once once you start to beam to your destination. The magic part is this is happening without measurement but rather magical entanglement on a three dimensional scale. You are one person (information down to the quantum level) existing in multiple places at once to varying degrees in the process in a quasi time.
Can this be done? Probably not. Let us not forget it was a plot device to speed up the stories rather than spending so much time in shuttles. What can definitely be done is in the relatively new sci-fi drama "Dark Matter". Where your consciousness and memories can be transferred to another body over distance; either a clone of you or possibly a generic body. Then your prime body goes into a deep coma. When the trip is done the new memories are copied back. Now this is really more of the metaphysical conundrum than Star Trek is. One could download to other bodies quite easily which could be a form of immortality as well as take backup of our minds. Traveling to other planets we could download to bodies developed for the environment (like avatar but actually downloaded rather than piloting). At what point could we become so comfortable having multiple bodies that we have no issues destroying the original rather than bear the cost of storage considering we could re-clone if we wanted our original forms?
As I regular Slashdot reader one would expect me to know the answer to this, but...nope, it's gone!
I think it's safe, in fact, I'm thinking of doing some trials using myself in the test.
Just need to put on a clean shirt.... ah, my lucky red one! That means it's going to work.
The right one is if time doesn't exist who is it exactly that makes it to the next moment, if the one in the previous moment is still there.
You need you need to say the same person a few more times before you get to the teleport question.
Why don't they just rematerialize themselves every day and never get any older? This might not work for some jobs, for example a Star Fleet officer's morning briefing that would have to explain everything that's changed since they were originally scanned in would get excessively long. But you could age one day per week and not have anything get too out of hand. When something really important happens then you get rescanned that day. Of course, what's the point of living if you don't actually get to remember having lived? But not really living but not dying is pretty much the default state of most people anyway.
In critical situations people could work 24/7 for extended periods. Simply replace yourself with the version of you that isn't tired.
Also you can't tell me there's never been a transporter operator that has made a copy of someone they want to have sex with and beamed them off somewhere to rape them. Takes #MeToo to a whole different place.
Not only are Energy and Matter interchangeable but aso Information. Imagine a brain region prosthetic were placed onto the brain to replace a region expected to die from alzheimer's. Interconnected to the same brain regions as that which it replaces, it learns to imitation the same output patterns as per the same input patterns to that when the replaced region dies, the prosthetic takes over (such things are under development today). Now let's suppose the disease spreads and you eventually replace every part of your brain, one region at a time. At what point did you become no longer you?
So the Soul is: one's sense of unique and continued existence.
They say every cell in the body is replaced every seven years. To my knowledge this is true with the exception of neurons. However, would it matter if it included neurons? So long as you copy one's personality and one's memories, I think most of us would consider that to be pretty much what defines us. Perhaps some would include also one's innate drives or perhaps emotional/chemical balance, if not considering those part of the personality already.
If a person walks through a quantum replicator (assume such a thing existed) and two of him or her walked out the other side. They would be the same person until that moment from which time they would start being separate Souls. The reason being, uniqueness split at that point.
It is the information that defines us, not the matter.. The concept "1+1=2" works the same no matter where you write it. It exists outside of the world of matter and energy but it does exist because it remains the same. The matter and energy in which information is implemented brings it into the world the same regardless so long as the information is the same. The same with a person.
Also, is it not accurate to say that we are a slightly different person with each moment that passes? And over time, we come to be more different. Are you the same person at 45 as you were at 25, or at 15, or at 5 years old? The Soul is a concept inclusive of one's life's narrative. It is your story.
Consciousness is an illusion. We are continuously "dying" and being brought back to "life". The only thing that tethers us is the memories in our grey matter and the other connections we have to other grey matter.
Picard has a red shirt. So did Ricker IIRC.
I think maybe the lowest-level distillation of the question is:
Is consciousness independent of and causally isolated from the fabric of reality? Or does it arise from and interact with it?
If it is truly independent, then something unique is forever terminated when the subject is transported...But I find this very unlikely: It doesn't make sense that consciousness would be somehow completely isolated from the domain/scope of reality...since, by definition, this would imply that (a) it doesn't really exist, and (b) can't interact with anything; in which case, it does not matter if it is lost during the process.
The alternative is that reality is the cradle of consciousness; that consciousness arises from reality and can interact with it. Since the two interact, then it follows that they are part of one system. This means that destroying something that is conscious 'here' and reconstituting it 'there' changes nothing of import about the top-level system - thing which is ACTUALLY having the experience - which we'll just refer to as Reality.
"Me, myself, and I" are just experiences arising from dynamics within the top-level domain and scope of the fabric of Reality. The local origin of a particular consciousness - the 'self' - is just a thought that Reality has under certain circumstances, along with conditions that cause feelings of separateness from other things.
There is ONE thing that experiences consciousness simultaneously from all perspectives, and some or all of those experiences include sensations of isolated containment from the reference frame of that localized formation of conscious experiences.
For any particular conscious formation within reality: It may be moved around arbitrarily, deconstructed, reconstructed, there can even be multiple simultaneous copies...it doesn't matter. All that matters is that at any given moment, each local instance of a conscious formation has an intact story to tell itself about where it came from, where it is, etc...I suspect that there isn't even any Real distance between any of these conscious formations, since distance is simply a conscious construct, vision is a construct, etc...
I always thought of the possibility of existing as a soul equivelant. The possibility of each human that ever lived was a real solution to the laws of physics and a finite nonzero probability since time began (if began is even the right word). The possibility cannot be destroyed any more than you can destroy an electron from being a real possibility, and it is as eternal as the physical reality we live in. Each person has a large number of collective states that describe them, from conception, through birth, childhood, adulthood, and near the end of life. Each breath you take, each skin cell you shed, each molecule you incorporate into your body, each movement inside your body, transitions you from one state to another but they were all baked into the universe as real solutions to the laws of physics. It is the sequential progression of these states, since without them you would not even experience time or really be conscious, that defines who we are as people. What makes us special is the emergent behavior that those states create from the simple laws and plethora of particles that is reality. No religion or even untestable assumptions are needed.
to answer the question using this idea, it would be taking a base state and forking it. You wind up with two unique individuals, however it really is not much different from the state to state progression we experience each second of our lives.
It's actually done using special effects. Probably all digital editing in the newer shows.
Log in or piss off.
I think maybe the lowest-level distillation of the question is:
Is consciousness independent of and causally isolated from the fabric of reality? Or does it arise from and interact with it?
If it is truly independent, then something unique is forever terminated when the subject is transported...But I find this very unlikely: It doesn't make sense that consciousness would be somehow completely isolated from the domain/scope of reality...since, by definition, this would imply that (a) it doesn't really exist, and (b) can't interact with anything; in which case, it does not matter if it is lost during the process.
The alternative is that reality is the cradle of consciousness; that consciousness arises from reality and can interact with it. Since the two interact, then it follows that they are part of one system. This means that destroying something that is conscious 'here' and reconstituting it 'there' changes nothing of import about the top-level system - thing which is ACTUALLY having the experience - which we'll just refer to as Reality.
"Me, myself, and I" are just experiences arising from dynamics within the top-level domain and scope of the fabric of Reality. The local origin of a particular consciousness - the 'self' - is just a thought that Reality has under certain circumstances, along with conditions that cause feelings of separateness from other things.
There is ONE thing that experiences consciousness simultaneously from all perspectives, and some or all of those experiences include sensations of isolated containment from the reference frame of that localized formation of conscious experiences.
For any particular conscious formation within reality: It may be moved around arbitrarily, deconstructed, reconstructed, there can even be multiple simultaneous copies...it doesn't matter. All that matters is that at any given moment, each local instance of a conscious formation has an intact story to tell itself about where it came from, where it is, etc...I suspect that there isn't even any Real distance between any of these conscious formations, since distance is simply a conscious construct, vision is a construct, etc...
-CC
I mean, let's assume you take the position that guy down there's not you. Well how is he not you? He thinks he's you. He has a continuous sense of being you. A DNA scan will match your DNA. A brain scan will be identical to the one of the guy who got into the transporter at the far end. These things would have to be true for transporters to be considered an acceptable form of transportation, I think. So is it not you just because you happened to not exist somewhere for the duration you were being transported? That somehow that guy down there didn't get your "Soul"? When for all provable scientific criteria he did? How much not-you is too much not-you? Does an alcohol binge on Friday night kill enough brain cells that you're no longer you? Are you no longer you because a ten-year-old you would not recognize the person you became 20 or 30 years later? We can stay in Plato's cave all night, but at the end of the day, that guy IS you... enough. So stop being a whiny bitch and get in the transporter, McCoy!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
is the problem of how to convince trekkies that this was all just a cheap 1960s TV show and not a roadmap for inevitable science and technology.
STTOS was originally going to be "Wagon Train to the Stars" - one network's answer to the success of the TV Westerns of the day. The problem was that they had a limited amount of money for props, so Rodenberry came up with the whole teleport/transporter solution which solved his money problem, but ultimately ruined the franchise for any thinking person. Nearly every episode carries a dilemma that provides the drama and suspense required to keep an audience, but the transporter could easily solve it, so then there has to be some reason why the transporter won't work.
STTNG made this worse by adding the replicator, which is a rational and logical consequence of (or even precursor to) a transporter, but this adds more problems for the story teller who must distract from the idea of a wunderbox that can make anything as complex as a living human being but cannot make a replacement part for any broken thing.
The Star Trek "Transporter" and the "Replicator" were just gimmicks for a TV show. Nothing says these things are going to be possible EVER. SciFi is a good source of inspiration and it often seems a roadmap to the future, but that's a delusion. The items that appear in SciFi stories are generally either literary contrivances pulled from the writer's imagination to fill a plot hole, or are themselves things the writers of the stories got from other sources of inspiration.
You cannot create a transporter to teleport a living thing from point to point without first knowning a whole bunch of things we do not currently (and may NEVER) know, like what IS life? (not a description of what living things look like, or behave like, or need, but what is LIFE itself.) Can LIFE be moved from place to place without moving the biological structures we associated it with? Can you dissect a living being all the way down to the atomic level without destroying it? Can you assemble a living creature from a collection of atoms and have it be alive when you complete the construction? We do not even understand how most of the structures of the human body actually work yet (from high-level functionality all the way down to the cellular level) - if we did then we could easily cure all diseases, but without that level of understanding of the systems involved, teleporting people will never work and philosophical arguments about "beaming" people are completely silly.
This is a minor plot point in the incredably good "new wierd" novel Kraken by China Miéville. There is a teleporting thief haunted by the thousnds of dead selves from every time he teleported. He is obsessed with Star Trek, natch. Brilliant.
No, really, does it?
If I were to go into a cloning store and clone myself the first thing out of both peoples' mouths would be 'hey let's go see how my clone turned out'
Shatner said it best.
No. In Star Trek they literally beamed your molecules down and reassembled them in-place.
Reassembly of local atoms using just transferred info is later BS from the same unthinking goobers who tried to reduce V-ger's cloud size to only 2 AU from the proper and awesome 82. (If you were going to change 2 words to "fix it", you ignorami changed the wrong 2.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why am I even 'the same' person that I was as a five year old? I barely remember that 5yo self. Wouldn't there be some other 5yo around now that actually has more in common with my 5yo self that I do with that person?
Consciousness isn't continuous anyhow, a sharp blow to the head will soon sort that out. A harder blow that causes large scale permanent destruction of brain matter will sort that out even more so, is the person that wakes up from that really the same person?
The conception of a persisting personal identity is shaky at it's core.
Obviously, twins have different souls, so you kill the person you beam down, and the copy created has it's own Evil soul that only appears to be Good until your back is turned.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In quantum mechanics, fundamental particles are indistinguishable from particles of the same type. An electron is an electron, whether it belongs to me or you. The concept of indistinguishability goes much farther than simply stating that we don't have any way of telling them apart. Fundamentally, it is flawed to think of them as separate entities. If you swap two of my electrons with two of your electrons, physically, you have done nothing at all. It's a no-op. The indistinguishability is responsible for some strange behaviors in quantum objects known as Bose-Einstein condensates, not to mention keeping everything from collapsing into a black hole.
This is because the fundamental object is not a particle, but rather, the field. There is one electron field of which the electrons are just excited states. If you know about semiconductors, then you know about holes, which are quasiparticles. They aren't fundamental objects. A hole moves when an electron moves to fill the hole, opening up a "new" hole where the electron used to be. It is a completely meaningless question whether this is the "same" hole.
The point is that your body is made up of a bunch of these electrons and protons and neutrons. If a Star Trek transporter could exist, it doesn't matter if your body is recreated out of "new" particles, since all particles are the same. Likewise, it is a completely meaningless question whether you are the same person as before. "You" are a particular pattern of excitations in the fields.
A lot of philosophical questions were asked before humans had any understanding of modern physics, and are meaningless. The problem is that people don't have an intuitive grasp of quantum mechanics, and therefore make assumptions on reality which are incorrect.
Well, as far as we know...
Despite all talks of duplicate TNG/DS9 "rikers", it will be very difficult to destroy and replicate exactly someone using a "transporter" like device because of the No cloning theorm.
However, physics doesn't appear to preclude teleportation of some sort where the replication is dependent on the destruction. In fact people have been able to teleport quantum states of photons as far as a satellite in earth's orbit... Since photons are nominally the same except for their quantum state, that's basically teleportation.
Of course teleportation (in this quantum sense) requires pre-entangled objects to exist on both sides and merely theoretically allows...
1. an ingress device to destructively make classical measurements of quantum state of an original object in proximity of one of the pre-tangled objects,
2. take those classical measurements and communicate them to an egress device near the other pre-entangled object
3. an egress device is not longer prohibited from using the communicated measurements and the pre-entangled object to reconstruct the original quantum state in target object (which the act of which destroys the quantum state of the pre-entangled objects and overwrites the target object with the quantum state of the original object).
As you might imagine, this a whole lot easier, if the object to be teleported is a photon because we have relatively simple ways of generating pre-entangled photons, reasonably simply ingress devices to make measurements of quantum states of photons and actual egress devices to modify the quantum state of photons.
Beyond a photon, well, all this telportation stuff is currently very hard, but not yet proved theoretically impossible. ;^)
Pretty much everyone, except all those that see that this statement is completely baseless and does not actually make much sense at this time. The actual state of the art here is that nobody has any idea what consciousness is. Those that claim it being a physical state in the brain is a scientific fact are hacks. Physicalism is a religious stance, not a scientific one and it has no place in Science.
In actual reality, the closer we look, the more mysterious consciousness and intelligence become. They seen to actually not be physically possible. That is a rather major hint that Physics is grossly incomplete here or that things work quite a bit differently (i.e. consciousness is not something the brain creates).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This becomes a non-problem if the atoms never lost their molecular bonds and were simply pushed through a wormhole from point A to point B.
The warp drive creates a distortion in space time, this really isn't that much of a stretch.
Absolutely, it can be deadly. Especially if your shirt is red.
But remember that the transporter is a fantastically complex device that manipulates more data than all the computers on earth today, and does it in about one second. So, we have to ask ourselves: was it designed by Microsoft or by Apple? Is Intel inside? Do any components come from untrusted sources such as China or the Klingon home world? We are not informed of the state of hacking in the Star Trek universe, so there's that; every crewmember on the Enterprise has access to the transporter room.
For a conclusive answer to this Star Trek question, we really have to step outside that reality and ask the HAL 9000.
...omphaloskepsis often...
How do we know that beaming in Star Trek isn't generating a series micro worm holes that connect point A to B and then shift all the original matter to the other side?
We don't cuz well.. it's not real.
When I wake up in the morning, I remember my past (at least mostly). So even if I 'die' and become a different person...even though I have those memories, it seems to work.
If 'I' beam down, and arrive at the destination will all my memories, then that seems to work.
enough said
Many of them believe that all the matter in the universe for the big bang winked into it's own existence out of nowhere, on its own...
Something that science says can't happen...
was a ball and you would die walking off of it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The person is consciousness and consciousness is the state not the instance. If you recreate the state you are the same. If you recreate the state twice both are the same, though not from that point forward. That argument assumes that a person (i.e. state) is whole and discreet at every instance in time.
A more interesting path of inquiry is whether the state at the "present" point in time or does the state throughout their entire timeline define a person. In that case if you create multiple copies you've altered the state timeline (forked it) so is that really the same person?
The idea of destroying matter and recreating it is much less interesting a discussion point around consciousness than the idea of time as either static or flowing models time and what implications the recreating or copying or deleting of state at any point on that timeline means for that consciousness. At least IMO.
Oh, you're fun at parties.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Two Chrichtons: Farscape explored this. We don't have consensus on the "hard problem", and are quite a far way from understanding such a thing, the experience of being as something quantifiable or scientifically describable.
You know its a terrible idea, but all your friends are doing it, because they don't understand how it works. And then your mom starts doing it, and then she lays a huge guilt trip on you because you never visit.
I feel like we can look toward evolutionary biology for an answer to this.
What is the point of me? To spread my genes? If so, and this copy has the exact same genes and thoughts, it is functionally indistinguishable and unimportant.
Whoever wakes up tomorrow with these genes is me, not who's driving my head now. As long as they have that same drive...
... currently physicists find the idea absurd and unreal because there's no way you can transport matter and its quantum state without first destroying it and then recreating it perfectly, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
Actually, current physics says you CAN, in principle, sidestep the Uncertainty Principle and transport the COMPLETE quantum state of an object - using quantum entanglement plus information transmission. BUT you can only get EXACTLY ONE copy at the receiving end and EXACTLY NO instances at the transmitting end.
So if full quantum state is necessary for individuality you can STILL have teleportation - at no more than the speed of light and no copies allowed.
Now this is a pretty violent operation: You have to have two sets of quantum-entangled matter that each have at least as many subatomic particles as you want to teleport, which have been previously transported (sublight) from the entanglement-creating site to the transmitting and receiving sites (while keeping that factory-fresh schrodinger smell intact). Then you have to use one set to interact with every particle of the thing you want to send (changing its state and thus destroying the original), collect a large amount of information that is generated as each particle is blasted, send it (no more than lightspeed) error-free to the receiving end, and use the info and the other set of entangled particles to beat a corresponding mass into exactly the shape and quantum states of the original.
But then you DO get (no more than one) exact to the quantum level version of the original at a new location.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The juicier and Blacker, the better. I even like a slutty woman wrapping her sinful lips around my cockshaft and sucking me to a powerful orgasm. Does that count?
For all the BS going on in this thread, and as far off topic as it's gotten, the idea that it cannot work period! is just wrong. Give me a Scottish engineer, a spanner, and 4 hou...er...20 hours, and it'll be up and running. I know, i know... you don't have 20 hours.... so it'll be done in 4.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
everyone has a unique soul that god created
We aren't static beings. Our bodies are constantly regenerating. A few years later, how much of us is even the same cells? I bet we are completely different cells entirely after 10 years or so.
As such, we are patterns, not matter.
Therefore, the most critical concern is resolution of copy and not necessarily whether you are the same cells.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
First recorded asking of this question - 1775.
We dont know how beaming down works, so how the heck can we assume that it would destroy conciousness? I mean, walking might destroy conciousness in that case .. but we know it doesnâ(TM)t. I think. Donâ(TM)t F with my head.
From the perspective of the rest of the universe ? No it does not matter. From the perspective of the teleported person ? It sure do. You die. Point. You do not continue. A clone of you with your memory do continue. If you don't care to die and let a clone continue, you take the perspective of the rest of the universe, fine for you. But I take the perspective of me, myself and I, and I would certainly care not to die. As for your ship of theseus explanation : yes we sleep , we replace part of ourselves. But it is a process which do not replace whole neuron (neuron in brain stop reproducing at what , 12 ?) or touch the network that much. Yes there is not a continuity of consciousness, and yes the "persona" itself change , grow or degenerate, but it still continue to be the same identical individual. It does not die and have a clone replace it. That is why your comparison fail.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Star Trek is scifi, get over it.
The Transporters seem to work pretty well, mostly.
There are no teleport device. There are no green-blooded aliens, no FTL starships, no star fleet. Relax. Take your meds. All will be well. It's all nonsense taken by a bad sf series that people with severe social adjustment issues follow with a zeal bordering on fanaticism. It's just entertainment. Grow up. Get a life. :)
Doylist approaches are pragmatic, but at the end, boring to the conversation.
We are constantly ceasing to be exactly what we were a moment ago and becoming something completely different. We exist in a different place in the universe, our molecules have all changed in relation to one another...but for tax purposes, we get to keep the same social security number. The important note is, we're constantly changing and being hurled through the universe while still maintaining our identity. So if we cease to exist at one coordinate, and are lucky enough to continue to exist elsewhere...that's nothing new. It's really just a matter of degree.
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
It's a TV series, not reality. And in this series it works. So no, it's not a death sentence, it's a means of transportation.
Captain Obvious was glad to help.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
... your 'soul' and consciousness is not an entity on itself, it's a chemical configuration. And as configuration it will transported. That configuration is send separately and is checked against it's original upon receiving by sending it back again. Also patterns are kept on file to check against for alterations and anomalies, thus you can be reset to an older configuration. Still it will be you.
Bach says it all.
I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg.
Assume three things. 1) there exists a soul. 2) The soul lingers after death. 3) A person "dies" after being transported, and a new person, with a new soul is born. That would mean that for every living thing there would be hundreds if not thousands of souls that used the body around. They would have mostly the same memory. Where would all the souls be kept? Would they hang around with each other? Of course there is the solution that Niven proposed in a short story, that God would kill a race before it learned to transport. So that just as a scientist learns to transport, God rains down all sorts of destruction.
Consciousness depends on the physical state of the brain, but not on "continuity". Atoms don't have hairs. A C or H atom is identical to any other C or H atom, so if you recreate a body atom-by-atom, it doesn't matter whether those are the same atoms as before.
Did some just take a beginners' philosophy class ?
Physics as we know it says this type of transfer isn't even possible. Whilst the OP mentioned Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle it seemed to miss that it means you fundamentally can't do this. You canNOT measure perfectly (enough even) the position *and* momentum (energy) of anything at sufficient level to re-create it elsewhere (even assuming you could). Star Trek techno-babbled "Heisenberg Compensators" to address this, but that's completely fiction.
If it *was* possible, well, then you given it's fantasy you can argue as to if the scanning/reading in *would* be destructive or not (Quantum Mechanics says the measurement will also change the state, but we're in fantasy land here...). If it's not then you have what's been covered by some SF stories, e.g. something goes wrong during transmission, and as you're not sure if a new copy is active at the destination you don't yet destroy the original. If communication issues persist then you may later find the new copy is perfectly fine. Now what do you do to the original ? If the original is destroyed in the process then you'd better hope the copying process works else you've just committed definite murder.
As for waking after sleep... are we even the same person we were before our last conscious thought process? Unconscious one ? Anyone who's ever had their mind changed about something,or experienced anything new has this happen whilst awake.
First, the notion that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of some kind of physical activity (be it the gray matter or something else) is false. Pretty much everyone who has this understanding is gravely mistaken.
Second, and to illustrate the first, you can *not* have an objective test of consciousness. If you could, then it would indeed be some kind of measurable phenomenon. Which, to be consciousness, it cannot be.
It is similar to what is called a category mistake in philosophy when one mistakes the contents of consciousness (including all objects and even the sense of personal subject) for consciousness itself.
If you're conscious *of* something, then you're clearly distinct from *that* something. You can take this infinite steps further and be conscious of that which is conscious *of* something, ad infinitum.
Nothing that you are conscious *of* could ever be consciousness itself!
The remainder is incommunicable by that very same reason.
*then* you're dead ...
If you make a perfect copy of an orange, all the way down to the subatomic level, then that copy is still not the original orange. It's the copy.
I disagree. Once you can make a copy perfect right down the subatomic level, then the distinction between copy and original becomes meaningless. A good analogy is computer files. If I have a file on my computer, say an MP3 of a hit song of my favorite band, and I copy it to another computer or device, I don't think of it as an original and copy cause they're both identical. Similarly, if you replace your aging hard drive with a new fast SSD drive by first backing up your entire filesystem, then restoring it on the new drive, then technically, you're not working with your files anymore, but rather with copies of your files. But you don't really notice or care. Functionally, they're the same.
Complete and utter BS. The difference is separation. It may not make any difference to YOU if you are interacting with me or a perfect copy of me, but it will make a difference to me because I am separate from the copy. I will not experience any interactions you have with my copy any more than I would if you interacted with my identical twin. But again; from your selfish point of view it wouldn't matter.
Do you think it would matter to you if your perfect copy boiled you alive for the fun of it? I suspect it would, at least while it was happening.
If you're interested in these questions, you should read "Altered Carbon" (and its sequels) by Richard K. Morgan. In that series, "consciousness" is stored in a computer component (a "stack") that is stored in the body in the neck. If the body (aka "sleeve") is destroyed, you pop the stack into a new sleeve and pick up where you left off. And some interesting things can occur, such as someone who grows up as a male can be re-sleeved into a female body. It's a good detective thriller, and also deals with this topic in interesting ways.
It's also a series on Netflix. Which is worth watching. But I would recommend reading the books first.
Said the guy who just consciously posted a comment.
Bots can post comments. That doesn't make them "conscious".
How does "consciousness" differ from mere intelligence?
Simple. Consciousness experiences existence. Mere abstractions, processes, can't experience anything anymore than the number 1 can experience anything, because they are only abstractions and don't actually physically exist.
You, are presumably conscious because you experience existence, the bot does not.
They'd just send the info (genetic/memory) a few light years away, if needed. Clone(s) will be generated, as much as needed, with lifespans as needed.
The (presumably) wealthy, powerfull person won't risk his on real life out there. That's what bots and clones are for. (Anone remember Clone Wars?).
The max would be continous medical treatment in low G.
Why not? Maybe it's the same matter just semi-warped with some added visual effects.
Its ALWAYS the bit-part actor in the red shirt that doesn't come back from the away missions.
First thing I thought when I read the summary was Plato's cave. Congrats on being properly educated.
In fact you don't have to disassemble anything. Teleporting is only possible through spacetime warping. It's not a QM problem. It is a GR problem.
And your evidence for this is?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Also anesthesia; coma; knockouts (fights, accidents); some instances of fugue.
It's very clear that the brain, given that it's reasonably healthy, is very good at warm restarts.
I find the assertions that consciousness is something "outside" the brain to be without notable merit. The handwaving about quantum this-and-that being a dynamic, active part of the actual thought process or consciousness is also, at present, entirely speculative — there's no evidence for this at all. If some arises, that would of course be fascinating. So far, though, nothing.
Get a CPAP mask. Soon. Sleep apnea can have extremely serious consequences. I know. It almost destroyed me. My CPAP mask saved my life. No exaggeration.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yes
Dimensional folding is much safer.
C'mon, let's not make this all about Trump.
The Star Trek Transporter is a device invented to facilitate telling a story. ... It's because they made telling the story in the present easier to do.
shhh ... you're not supposed to tell the viewer the writer's tools
that's like tell all the magician's secrets
The poster posits a very materialistic view as being self-evident. In reality, it's very restrictive.
Postulating that there is no soul but only a physical state of gray matter is a bit like postulating that there is no software but only bit states in the transistors of a computer. It seems self-evident, and it's true in a very restricted sense. But at the same time, it's clearly the best way to completely misunderstand what software or soul are.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
Niven covered this in his essay "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation" which includes a history of its use in fiction.
This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia? What are your thoughts on the topic?
What about after we sleep? This is too easy; we only know for a very specific definition of "know". My own take on it is that free will is an illusion and so is this.
If I make an exact copy of the Mona Lisa, which is the real Mona LIsa? Is it the one which has a continuous space-time line? What about after both have been taken out of your sight and returned?
Star Trek's transporter is sort of a combination cloning machine and suicide booth, unless you believe that a person's consciousness is some incorporeal thing that will link to any brain with a certain configuration of neurons - in which case, what happens in a transporter malfunction that fails to destroy the body that went into it and produces a copy?
I explained my personal theory of what defines a human consciousness in this hackaday post.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
We all know that beaming down wearing a red shirt is a death sentence. Clearly you should only use a transporter wearing blue or gold...
I have a Heisenberg compensator in my basement, Geordi dropped it off for me. Wait, my basement just disappeared!
The problem is , at least in the star trek universe, transporter are KNOWN to dysfunction and create copies instead. And that alone is, at least in the star trek universe, a definitive answer. Consciousness is the chemical process of a *specific* brain. Copy that brain and destroy the original, you copied the content, but you lost the original. And in fact if you don't destroy the original, you know got two copies which have an identical memory and soon start to diverge. And that is the evidence (from the perspective again of the star trek universe) that transporter kills and only clone the original.
Anyway all that transporter stuff is silly as there is no framework where this could happen in reality.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The primary problem right now is that we don't know a whole lot about the brain or quantum physics. However there is nothing 'magical' about humans or the brain, there is no such thing as a disconnected soul, the problem is the measurement (which is what the Heisenberg Principle is about) and the fact that the Universe obeys the No Cloning Theorem.
So a Star Trek-style cloning where you measure the state of every particle in your body, convert into energy and back into mass is impossible (as far as we believe our mathematics are correct right now)
However, that doesn't mean replicating a human/brain isn't possible, we can 3D print biological matter already. We should be able to copy the state of the brain and cells down to their individual electrical states, especially if we can bring the original to a complete 'stop' (near 0K). Memories are simply a set of neurons that are wired to fire together, you can "cut the power" to most of the brain, muscles (eg. heart), cells and restart them, if you can restore a 'state' by exciting specific neurons and cells (which we can already do to an extent) on a 3D printed biological mass, you can technically "transport" any animal.
So if you can replicate someone's brain wiring and restart a brain, even in another body, you will have according to most psychologists replicated the person. From that instant however, if both sides continue to exist, these persons will start to diverge and become different persons.
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Corroborated means it would have provided evidence for it. There is alas no evidence for such out of body experience, there is plenty of evidence for FEELING of OOB, there is also plenty of anecdote of people pretending they were truly out of their body, but so do LSD people too. Even the red shoe story is very dubious as information had time to leak 100 ways.
That is why we have had this experience with a screen showing random images above a lamp of operation table, and people which get routinely cardiac operation are put in a clinical death sometimes have OOB. So far nobody has been able to describe the picture, beside some vaguish BS which could apply to any image. Soooo. No. No corroboration.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Clinical death only means blood circulation stopped because heart stopped (or beat frequency is so low as to be considered unable to maintain higher brain function). That's just it. You are not dead, you are just in a state of cardiac arrest. Death is only defined by brain death. Usually the brain death follow cardiac death soon after, but the reason we now rely on brain death is that sometime we do induce intentionally cardiac & pulmonary arrest, for heart operation for example, and sometimes even in unintentional cases we manage to restart it. I wish that instead of using the term "clinical death" they would stop that shit and use cardiac and breath dysfunction. clinical death is not really death, and the brain is certainly not dead (at least until the hypoxia continue and neuron start dying en masse). I wish the term clinical death would be dropped because it certainly seem non obvious to many folk that it only mean "heart stopped".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No, I wouldn't. Reality is full of randomness and the ineffable: from the unmeasurable, to decay, to classical physics interactions far beyond our ability to follow (a circumstance which we often call "chaotic.") I see no need at this point in time to postulate awareness as a causative factor for any of this, as there's both no evidence for it and no way to test for it. It'd be fascinating if there was actual evidence for this that exceeded the standard of "there are things we have not fully understood yet", but so far, nothing.
When you (anyone) says "there is an alternative to A, and that is B", B is a second-class citizen (quite often, worse than 2nd) right out of the door when (A) has falsifiable tests producing repeatable, measurable results that provide a framework for experimentation and subsequent characterization, and (B) has only "Here is an idea."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Brains are not inanimate. Brains are very much animate; they are measurably and significantly active, and it is, as near as anyone can tell at this point due to experimentation and the resulting evidence, this very activity that produces awareness (among many other things.) To suggest that the same thing can happen with (for example) a rock without some comparable active mechanism isn't in nearly the same aisle, nor should it be unless someone can come up with evidence that there is a comparable level of activity going on, or, that said activity isn't required. Neither is true at the moment.
Just because someone can think of something, doesn't mean that the universe will support that something. There is a very good reason for the scientific method being a gateway for ideas that must be passed before those same ideas are worth any more than "well, that's an interesting idea" or "can I share your drugs?"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
http://i.imgur.com/5bA92Sb.jpg
I would think that exact quantum states of the transported item need to be recreated exactly, and with exact relativity to each other, in order to work.
So, consider entanglement. Regardless of distance, entangled particles can be used to predict each other.
Except that they have an opposite characteristic - say, "spin".
So, then your transporter would then scan every particle of an item (like a person) and transmits all that complete data to the destination, where another device assembles all of those entangled particles into a replica - only with all quantum particles in reverse states. The you instantly reverse the source person's quantum particle collection, which swaps with the destination particle collection instantly. Presto. Transported.
Hey - it could happen!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Scottish engineers.
Scotty does not seem to in any way affected by the red shirt rule. I think this makes him the most powerful guy on the Enterprise. Scotty can wear a red shirt AND use the transporter (both there AND back) and live to enjoy a fine Romulan ale.
Let's see Kirk, Spock, or Bones pull that one off!
I propose a scientific test of this (not currently possible, but will be possible if/when the tech for transporters becomes a reality). Here is the procedure for the test:
1. We disable any mechanism that destroys the original in the transporter.
2. We "transport" you (actually making a perfect copy of you at the destination).
3. We then ask the original you to select your method of dispatch from among a list: vivisection, slow immolation, hack-n-slash with dull kknives.
I suspect that you will suddenly change your view and insist that the copy is NOT you, and protest that you should be allowed to keep living. Your copy, of course, being a perfect copy but not facing imminent death will no doubt continue to stubbornly insist that the original can be killed with no concern at all [wink].
If I wasn't changed after surgery and anesthesia I'd be having a serious conversation with my surgeon. - Un less he/she changed me from being alive to being dead.
"The biggest conundrum of all is the fact that pretty much everyone understands that consciousness is a physical state of the brain,"
No, pretty much everyone may think they understand consciousness as a mere phenomenon (although it's doubtful that "pretty much everyone" engages in that pretense), but no scientific materialist has proven it, and it's presumptuous to assert that this subject is not engulfed in enormous controversy. Modern science is inadequate to even investigate consciousness, much less prove anything about it. Of course that does't prevent outlandish claims like this statement from regularly appearing, reminding us how the establishment is blinded by its own hubris. Some logic, metaphysics, and philosophy would help, but these types seem to be allergic. They're terrified at the prospect of something which can't be detected by their fallible senses being real, but intelligible knowledge trumps sensible knowledge every time. Here's a thought: maybe we're not just bags of chemicals aimlessly wandering in a random universe. Maybe reality is teleological, and evolution progresses with a purpose. Maybe our consciousness doesn't dwell between our ears. Maybe our bodies are just the hardware, and consciousness is the software--a separate mathematical process that has no material component. So-called "science" won't touch that with a billion meter pole.
Check out this episode on Teleportation.
Isaac discusses this question and more https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Be warned though - this channel is highly addictive.
No. You're missing a step. It follows that animate can arise from the inanimate. Awareness then arises from the animate. This is what we know to be true; and it's all we have seen thus far.
The claim you are making is that awareness can arise directly from the inanimate; your suggestion that atoms (rocks, etc.) might be aware is exactly that.
The fact is that there's no evidence at all that awareness can arise from the inanimate without forming an animate system first. So your suggestion is no more than speculation, and unfounded speculation at that. For it to have any value beyond "here's an idea", you need evidence. So far, there isn't any. If you can manage to bring some, then we can talk about what you've found. But right now, it's simply baseless handwaving.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In a documentary I saw it was even more than that. It wasn't so much to facilitate a story so much as it was to save on production costs. It costs money to build shuttle sets, and to film shuttle scenes. It was cheaper to just "beam" people into the next scene and just exclaim "technology!"
Another fun fact was the Vulcan neck pinch. Being a family show, they couldn't just run around killing people (hence stun settings), but occasionally they needed scenes without using phasors. Kirk of course would just settle it with fisticuffs. However there was a scene where Spock was supposed to hit a guy on the back of the neck with a phasor to knock him out. Apparently he improvised the Vulcan neck pinch as his unique way to disable people as he thought hitting a guy with a gun was a bit too unsubtle for a Vulcan...
Back then there were even voluntary standards for comic books, . You couldn't show a punch connecting, blood, etc. So there were lots of big flashes with words like "pow" over them.
Bruce Perens.
Yeah, I was the annoying guy who would take home the pretty girl while you and 20 other nerds were deeply involved in discussion of this, and of which female Star Trek character was cuter.
Bruce Perens.
Oh, that's easy. Karen Steele who played Eve McHuron in Mudd's Women.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
ROTFL
Bruce Perens.