Teleportation... possible?
- Thread starter Reverend
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Who needs a soul when you have TV...
marconelly!
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Hmm, but yor neural cells do not regenerate like the rest of your body. You have what you have of them and they just continuously die off as you age. Even though your body does completely change every couple of years, your brain stays built of the same material. Not that it says too much, as there's a certain type of parrot that is able to regenerate neural cells, for example, so I'm not thinking brain is some magical tissue that cannot be successfully reproduced in the case of what I call 'brutal' teleportation (building a copy, then destroying an original) Now, whether the brain's electrical processes, or whatever makes it work, could be reproduced intact on the copy, is another question.
Long time ago, I was reading a very interesting book on this subject called "An Emperor's New Mind" written by an eminent British physicist Roger Penrose, who sharply and cleverly argues that the teleportation of living beings is definitely impossible, not only because of the technical problems but also because of some fundamental understanding problems. He gives some really good insight into the issue from the physical and philosophical standpoint. If memory serves me - on one hand, he gives some quantum physics proof that it's simply impossible making a teleported copy of particles without destroying the original in the process (and I think the Aussie experiment actually confirmed his theory). So, that would be a good thing, IMO, as it would render the ethics problem irrelevant - there wouldn't be an original alive to be killed after the copy is made. However, in the rest of the book, he explains his belief that teleporting living beings is something outside of the realm of today's physics understanding. He argues that we lack fundamental theoretical knowledge of what makes us different from an inanimate object. For example, he says that our pragmatic, technical approach of trying to mimic the workings of our brain with supercomputers having an equal or better number of circuits and memory as our brain, programming them, or letting them learn, is wrong, and will never give any working result. So far, he's been right with that too. All AI building attempts have failed pretty miserably, from what I know. Basically, he's saying that out brain pulls it's capability from some yet-unknown resource (perhaps it's some special kind of particle or physics process that makes it work, or some such unknown physical layer or structure), and that trying to reproduce that, much less teleport, without prior knowledge about the issue in question would inevitably fail. He's going into great detail into his thinking and explanations, and gives more answers that you'd expect from such set of questions.
It's quite an old book, though (somewhere from the 80s) so maybe some new scientific findings have changed his thinking, I wouldn't know.
Everyone likes Roger, he is a great physicist. However he goes off on the deep end here and there. His whole consciousness spiel is one of them.
Sorry to let people down, but teleportation isn't going to happen anytime soon. With the laws of physics as currently formulated, its more or less technically impossible.
It would be easier to reconstruct a clone from the information (which is already a monstrous number).. But thats already most likely impossible from a construction point of view (how to arrange all the atomic physics in such and such an order... very hard)
Several orders of magnitude easier would be to reconstruct your mind on a computer simulation.
Sorry to let people down, but teleportation isn't going to happen anytime soon. With the laws of physics as currently formulated, its more or less technically impossible.
It would be easier to reconstruct a clone from the information (which is already a monstrous number).. But thats already most likely impossible from a construction point of view (how to arrange all the atomic physics in such and such an order... very hard)
Several orders of magnitude easier would be to reconstruct your mind on a computer simulation.
If you teleport me, since you have to go through the whole re-construction / de-construction thing, could I have certain parts of myself "enhanced"? I'm sure you could tweak a little here or a little there, right?
I can see it now: I volunteer for the first experiment with teleporting/enhancing a human, and they mess it up... when I come out, my right arm is 6" longer than it was before.
"I didn't say anything about my ARM, you idiots!"
Sorry... but I'm going through a KILER like state of mind today.
I can see it now: I volunteer for the first experiment with teleporting/enhancing a human, and they mess it up... when I come out, my right arm is 6" longer than it was before.
"I didn't say anything about my ARM, you idiots!"
Sorry... but I'm going through a KILER like state of mind today.
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covermye said:
Hmmmm.... it's so much easier to simply copy raw data, than to understand what it all means.
Well that leaves the bending of space time as a much better proposition
But regardless of that if you could reconstruct yourself like that with some sort of nanotechnology, dying would not be an issue anymore, we would all be of the same age as we wish, and I would assume that designing your own body to your liking (from scratch so to say) would be the latest fashion...
But regardless of that if you could reconstruct yourself like that with some sort of nanotechnology, dying would not be an issue anymore, we would all be of the same age as we wish, and I would assume that designing your own body to your liking (from scratch so to say) would be the latest fashion...
Sage said:
The best I can do at expressing my doubts is the following thought experiment (granted, there are possible loopholes that can be exploited):
Let's say you teleport yourself this way, but the method of teleportation has a time differential between the creation of a copy and the removal of the original matter. Now let's say by some fluke it gets halted. (This was actually a plot point on The Outer Limits, I believe.) Now let's say both the original and the copy are awake at the same time.
Do you as a conscious mind think you are in two places at once, do you actually perceive in two locations simultaneously, even though the sensory data may need to travel a vast distance? Do you only perceive the place where you originated, or only your destination? What does that mean for the other you?
What keeps your consciousness relatively the same as your body cycles through components is the graduality of it, as well as the fact that at all times the components have a direct causual relationship with what came before them, and what comes after in the cycle. Teleportation through destruction/construction removes that causality, and could potentially create two instances of a person. However, you could only be one of them. You could either be the collection of atoms at the beginning, where everything connected to you is, or somewhere else where absolutely nothing has anything to do with you on any level.
The way you would see things happening would be you stepping into the teleporter and getting scanned, then getting a message saying the teleport was successful and that you are at your destination, despite everything looking the same outside the pod. Then the machine says it is going to correct the duplication. How they eliminate you is probably implementation-specific.
Imagine you are frozen via cryonics. 1000 years from now, advanced bio and nanotechnology uses a retreived cell to clone you a new body. They then transplant and repair your frozen brain (which had some thermal cracks in it from freezing). You awake, are you still the same person?
Now imagine a more advanced cryonics experiment. You are frozen, your brain is divided into two halves. They are sent on separate rocket ships towards a colony planet 1000 years travel away. When both parts arrive, your brain is put back together, repaired, and unfrozen. You awake, are you still the same person?
Now just extend this thought experiment to a "poor mans teleporter" where each and every atom of your body is separately put into statis, flown on a million trillion rocket ships to the destination, and then reconstructed. Ask the same question.
Now imagine a more advanced cryonics experiment. You are frozen, your brain is divided into two halves. They are sent on separate rocket ships towards a colony planet 1000 years travel away. When both parts arrive, your brain is put back together, repaired, and unfrozen. You awake, are you still the same person?
Now just extend this thought experiment to a "poor mans teleporter" where each and every atom of your body is separately put into statis, flown on a million trillion rocket ships to the destination, and then reconstructed. Ask the same question.
Please with sony's cell processer all you will need is a single ps3 to do this in 1 minute
Seriously if we can speed up our tech process and increase the rate at which we advance we may be able to make this possible in the next thousadn years .
Not to mention the advances we will make to ourselves with biotech and genetic enhancments .
One thing that people forget about is that we are more than just a bunch of atoms. We are a bunch of atoms that interact in a complex way in a specific location. If someone halts the movement of these atoms, you are dead. If someone takes you apart and then reassembles you, the best case scenario is that you get a new person that looks and acts just like you, but you are still dead. Sorry, Democoder.
If you think that people have a soul and that you can be disassembled and reassembled without consequence, then please tell me which atom the soul resides in? (I'm talking about being disassembled/reassembled here.)
The Star Trek tripe about "pattern buffers" storing locations, spin, velocity, etc. of atoms is garbage. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that you can't know both position and momentum of things at the quantum level. Also, the "copy argument" is a pretty good refutation that transporting is a good idea. That is, what happens if you mistakenly fail to destroy the original when you transport? Obviously, the person at the original location is the "real" person and the one that was transported is a "clone", albeit a clone with all of the memories of the original. Remember, you are more than just a collection of atoms, you are also a bunch of precise chemical reactions at a particular location. That's what separates living from dead: What you are dead, the proper chemical reactions no longer exist although all of the atoms may still be present.
Two electrons can have the same spin and velocity, does that make them the same electron? Of course not. Similarly, two copies of the same person aren't both the real person.
-FUDie
If you think that people have a soul and that you can be disassembled and reassembled without consequence, then please tell me which atom the soul resides in? (I'm talking about being disassembled/reassembled here.)
The Star Trek tripe about "pattern buffers" storing locations, spin, velocity, etc. of atoms is garbage. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that you can't know both position and momentum of things at the quantum level. Also, the "copy argument" is a pretty good refutation that transporting is a good idea. That is, what happens if you mistakenly fail to destroy the original when you transport? Obviously, the person at the original location is the "real" person and the one that was transported is a "clone", albeit a clone with all of the memories of the original. Remember, you are more than just a collection of atoms, you are also a bunch of precise chemical reactions at a particular location. That's what separates living from dead: What you are dead, the proper chemical reactions no longer exist although all of the atoms may still be present.
Two electrons can have the same spin and velocity, does that make them the same electron? Of course not. Similarly, two copies of the same person aren't both the real person.
-FUDie
FUDie said:
That's a very odd position to have. We are biological machines. Our cell machinery can be slowed down, and today, it is possible for people to have their temperature lowered, their heart stopped, brain activity reduced to zero, and then be revived. You wouldn't say that if a clock is stopped, then restarted, it's a new clock! Clearly these are the same people who went to deep hibernation and came back. They have identical memories, identical information content.
You clearly don't believe that mildly hyperthermic people are "dead", but they have slower cell metabolism. Therefore, if there is a sliding scale from 100% cell metabolism speed and 0%, at which point are frozen people dead? (cryogenically freezing people does not, as you assume, result in "0%" movement of atoms)
The laws of physics say that if I split you apart, spread your atoms to the far end of the known universe, bring them back together in the same state, you cannot distinguish the origin from the copy. It makes no sense to talk about original and copy in these circumstances, and it certainly makes no sense to call someone dead when no experiment or measurement, done by the person themselves, or the world at large, could possibly tell the difference.
I don't believe in a soul. My thought experiment is to get people to think about where the "soul" could be if medical technology can effectively "kill" you for an hour or so now and bring you back to life. What place is there for the soul if you can be frozen for eons?
According to quantum mechanics, two electrons with the same quantum state *are* the same electron. You are positing a hidden variable (e.g. unique ID) which does not exist. If you manage to put two electrons into the same state, they are indistinguishable by any possible experiment, even in principle. This fact is incontrovertable and many phenomena in physics simply wouldn't work if particles in the same quantum state weren't *exactly the same* identity.
Again, the fact that is looks and acts like you, doesn't make it you. You are a self-aware, conscious person (at least I assume so, I have never met youDemoCoder said:
). If some disassembles you and reassembles you, you are no longer the same consciousness.If someone stops one clock but then starts an identical clock, that doesn't make them the same clock!
I think it depends on where consciousness begins and ends. Slower cell metabolism may still be enough to sustain the consciousness.
It makes a very large difference. Think about your consciousness. When all thought processes stop, there is no more consciousness. When they are restarted, there is a new consciousness. The fact that it has the same memories and stuff is good enough for observers, but certainly wouldn't be good enough for the original consciousness.
I don't believe in a soul so I guess I can't answer that one
That doesn't make sense. If you have an electron in your house with the same velocity, etc. as an electron I have in my house, they can't be the same electron because they are in different places. Maybe I used a poor example, I never studied quanum mechanics and I *hate* paradoxes.
-FUDie
If they have the same quantum state, then they are indeed the same in terms of identity (ie. like identical twins); there's nothing to distinguish them other than location (ie. like having twins in separate rooms). This is true for BE condensates - all of the particles within the collective are identical.FUDie said:
Well you can but just not both at the same time to a high degree of certainty. A bit of research on squeezed light is worth doing too.
DemoCoder said:
This poor man's teleporter sounds a lot like riding in a meat truck.
The thing is, the unfrozen brain is still the original brain. Destroying the original and reconstructing doesn't have this. Not only that, since that method uses matter at the other end, it is possible to set the machine to make duplicates. Which one are you then? One of the two identical twins, or the hamburger at the origin?
But location *is* important. Say you have identical twins A and B. A goes to the movie and B stays at home. Maybe you and I can't tell A from B, but B certainly knows they he/she stayed at home!Neeyik said:
When I said "you cant know both position and momentum" obviously I meant *know*. The more you know about one quantity, the less you know about the other. I don't know about you, but if someone was going to disassemble me, and I didn't think think they'd be killing me, they'd better *know* exactly where everything belongs and how it was moving with respect to other parts otherwise you're liable to fly apart when being reassembled.
-FUDie
