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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?
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/
See, I didn't think so either, until I checked the scientific literature. There most certainly are examples of corroborated out of body experience. It's most often found in studies of near-death experience cases, especially of blind subjects.
Let me remind you that skeptics base their opinions on evidence, not on what some TV magician tells them is true.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There is an alternative to the problem matter producing awareness: awareness might be an inherent property of matter. I don't imagine an atom or electron has a particularly sophisticated awareness, but if it has even the smallest fleck of "I am!" to build upon, then it fundamantally changes the nature of the questions we should be asking.
In that case the awareness of an organism need not be a is not a fundamentally new feature, but an emergent structure from the interactions of more primitive consciousnesses. Much as the life of an organism emerges from the structured functioning of the life of its cells. Or the wisdom of crowds (and insanity of mobs) emerges from the interaction of large groups of people.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.