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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?
Scientists are discovering that Consciousness Affects Matter. (The fact that the Placebo Effect even _exists_ at all is partial proof of this.)
But this is nothing new. You can find doctors talking about their NDEs. A NDE (Near Death Experience) is when a person has an OBE when they almost died.
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's My stroke of insight is an interesting talk about her OBE.
Eben Alexander: A Neurosurgeon's Journey through the Afterlife
Dr.Eben Alexander talks about his Near Death Experience & Proof of Heaven
Before you graduate to OBEs you'll probably want to start with Lucid Dreaming. Reddit, of all places, has a good sub-reddit: /r/LucidDreaming/
Then as you learn to meditate you can work on having an OBE.
Thomas Campbell documents the experiences of his OBEs in My Big Toe -- where he was one the participants.
Once you have you OBE's you can start having them with others.
My wife and I have had shared OBE's -- we then compare and contrast "our notes" to see what is the same and different. The fact that we can describe the same experiences proves that consciousness is non-local -- something that Physicts just now are starting to understand.
Lastly, Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality discusses past experiments done by neuro-scientists that show the brain is !== mind, and non-local.
That is enough resources to get you started. Good luck on experiencing a wider reality !