Would you enter a Star Trek teleporter?

[Jeff250]

Based on discussion in this thread where there's some debate over whether such a device would actually be killing you or not, I want to know, would you enter a Star Trek teleporter? We'll say the teleporter works as follows: it scans your body, encodes it into bits, disintegrates your body, transmits the bits to a remote location over light, and then at the remote location, 10 seconds later, the bits are received, decoded, and your body is recreated as an exact material duplicate according to the pattern encoded in the bits. Would you be willing to use this device, or would you take the six hour shuttle ride to the planet's surface instead?

[MD-1118]

I'm voting yes, of course.

There should be an option for "let someone else go first and see what happens".

[Jeff250]

Haha, a good joke answer (added it), but unfortunately, it wouldn't actually resolve the question, as in either case, to the reassembled guy it would seem like he's the original guy, so asking him wouldn't really reveal anything.

[Tunnelcat]

I voted "yes" with a caveat. I'd go through only if it could transport a piece of cooked steak and have it come out at the receiving end with the same smell, taste and texture unaltered by the transport process. I'm thinking of the movie "The Fly" here. If a transporter couldn't replicate the taste and smell of a cooked steak, or some other food for that matter, they got the process waaaaay too wrong for a living being to use.

But with that aside, would you even trust someone's software, let alone the hardware, to transport your molecules and reassemble them in the proper order? Now think Microsoft before you answer.

[Will Robinson]

I say yes. (assuming my perception is they work as well as they did in the television show)

And for the people who say you are dead once you get 'disassembled'....if someone killed your loved one and beamed across the room in a failed attempt to beam himself to safety would you think you are looking at the murderer or a whole new person that resembles the one who got away?

[callmeslick]

I'm voting 'yes' because it's merely fiction in the first place.

[Tunnelcat]

I'm voting 'yes' because it's merely fiction in the first place.

You never know.

[Krom]

Of all the science things in Star Trek, the least possible one is the transporter (and replicators because they are almost the same thing).

But if someone managed to build one, to the same specs as the Star Trek counterparts, then I would totally go in one. Why? Because by the numbers, the Star Trek transporter would actually be the only method of travel safer than walking.

[Jeff250]

I say yes. (assuming my perception is they work as well as they did in the television show)

And for the people who say you are dead once you get 'disassembled'....if someone killed your loved one and beamed across the room in a failed attempt to beam himself to safety would you think you are looking at the murderer or a whole new person that resembles the one who got away?

I think that asking what is a person qua survival is somewhat orthogonal to asking what is a person qua criminal justice. For instance, if the killer merely used the machine to make a duplicate of himself, it would (I think) seem obvious that there would now be two different people in the sense that they can both die independently of each other and that neither's survival is dependent on the other. On the other hand, you could still pose the question as to whether we should try both for murder or just the original.

[Jeff250]

To those who would eagerly enter the transporter, does the timing of the disintegration and reassembly make a difference? If the reassembly happens ten minutes after the disintegration, then maybe that's not so problematic, but what if, perhaps due to a malfunction, your original body isn't disintegrated until ten minutes *after* the body on the other end is already reassembled? Does the guy who entered the transporter survive?

[Jeff250]

But if someone managed to build one, to the same specs as the Star Trek counterparts, then I would totally go in one. Why? Because by the numbers, the Star Trek transporter would actually be the only method of travel safer than walking.

How can it be safer than walking when it murders everyone who enters it! I'm trying to save your guys' lives!

[Will Robinson]

I say yes. (assuming my perception is they work as well as they did in the television show)

And for the people who say you are dead once you get 'disassembled'....if someone killed your loved one and beamed across the room in a failed attempt to beam himself to safety would you think you are looking at the murderer or a whole new person that resembles the one who got away?

I think that asking what is a person qua survival is somewhat orthogonal to asking what is a person qua criminal justice. For instance, if the killer merely used the machine to make a duplicate of himself, it would (I think) seem obvious that there would now be two different people in the sense that they can both die independently of each other and that neither's survival is dependent on the other. On the other hand, you could still pose the question as to whether we should try both for murder or just the original.

No, you misunderstood my scenario.
If someone came into a room where you and your brother stood, killed your brother, and then attempted to teleport to safety but a mistake led him to be 'disassembled' by the teleporter but reassembled in the same room instead of far from your wrath.

Would you be looking at an innocent 'new' person, the murderer now being dead by way of being disassembled by teleportation? Or would you be looking at the murderer who merely teleported across the room?

[Ferno]

Is it really dying if you're still you but in a copy of your body?

[MD-1118]

But if someone managed to build one, to the same specs as the Star Trek counterparts, then I would totally go in one. Why? Because by the numbers, the Star Trek transporter would actually be the only method of travel safer than walking.

How can it be safer than walking when it murders everyone who enters it! I'm trying to save your guys' lives!

Oh god, why can't I stop laughing! I need sleep, I can't take that statement seriously at all

[Tunnelcat]

But if someone managed to build one, to the same specs as the Star Trek counterparts, then I would totally go in one. Why? Because by the numbers, the Star Trek transporter would actually be the only method of travel safer than walking.

How can it be safer than walking when it murders everyone who enters it! I'm trying to save your guys' lives!

Oh god, why can't I stop laughing! I need sleep, I can't take that statement seriously at all

Why is it funny? If, let's say, a transporter is essentially equivalent to a fax machine. That means the original body is destroyed during the copying process while the other body that it creates at the receiving end is a whole new body. Hence, murder and rebirth. But that opens up the possibility of using the transporter for healing and infinite life.

[MD-1118]

Oh god, why can't I stop laughing! I need sleep, I can't take that statement seriously at all

Why is it funny?

I'm trying to save your guys' lives!

If Jeff manages to actually save any single one of us from teleporter-related death with his admonishments in this thread, I'll print out a copy of it and eat it. I don't see human teleportation becoming a thing anytime soon, so it's not really an issue.

seriously can't stop laughing though, it's too much

[Tunnelcat]

Oh god, why can't I stop laughing! I need sleep, I can't take that statement seriously at all

Why is it funny?

I'm trying to save your guys' lives!

If Jeff manages to actually save any single one of us from teleporter-related death with his admonishments in this thread, I'll print out a copy of it and eat it. I don't see human teleportation becoming a thing anytime soon, so it's not really an issue.

seriously can't stop laughing though, it's too much

Perhaps, but look at what we've accomplished in just the last 200 years. We've been to the moon, we can destroy an entire city with one bomb, we can generate power instead with that same technology, we can fly and have faster than sound aircraft travel, we can clone living things, we can build impossible structures that defy gravity and we can dive to the depths of the ocean. None of this was even remotely possible in people's minds back then. If it was, it was only fantasy, like Star Trek is now. What's to say we don't come up with some fantastic new things in the next 200 years?

On the same topic, how about if we eventually figure out how to bend space in local areas and use those folds to move ourselves vast distances via these "shortcuts" in space instead of going through the hassle and danger of disintegrating and reassembling ourselves just to travel from one point to the other? More rambling thinking on my part........

[vision]

To those who would eagerly enter the transporter, does the timing of the disintegration and reassembly make a difference?

Makes no difference to me whatsoever. I ascribe to the Buddhist concept of no-self, often illustrated with the chariot allegory. To summarize: "Individual beings are without a permanent essence and are simply combinations of material and immaterial processes, subject to change at every moment, that are designated a name for matters of convenience."

An exact copy of me would still be me. None of the cells in my body are original. With the exception of some neurons, every cell in my body had died and been copied countless times. Even if all copies were in the same room together, naming one "original", "copy 1", "copy 2", etc... is just something practical to do, but all of them would really be me in the sense that we all had the same self-awareness, memories, and initial conditions right at the moment copies were made.

[MD-1118]

Perhaps, but look at what we've accomplished in just the last 200 years. We've been to the moon, we can destroy an entire city with one bomb, we can generate power instead with that same technology, we can fly and have faster than sound aircraft travel, we can clone living things, we can build impossible structures that defy gravity and we can dive to the depths of the ocean. None of this was even remotely possible in people's minds back then. If it was, it was only fantasy, like Star Trek is now. What's to say we don't come up with some fantastic new things in the next 200 years?

On the same topic, how about if we eventually figure out how to bend space in local areas and use those folds to move ourselves vast distances via these "shortcuts" in space instead of going through the hassle and danger of disintegrating and reassembling ourselves just to travel from one point to the other? More rambling thinking on my part........

First of all, I don't think human teleportation technology will be readily available in 200 years. Secondly, what do you think your chances of living that long will be? I'll be honest, unless highly efficient and effective life extension technology is made cheap and readily available in the next fifty years, I don't think I'm going to make it.

Gonna go pass out now.

[Jeff250]

Why is it funny? If, let's say, a transporter is essentially equivalent to a fax machine. That means the original body is destroyed during the copying process while the other body that it creates at the receiving end is a whole new body. Hence, murder and rebirth. But that opens up the possibility of using the transporter for healing and infinite life.

To be fair to MD, I did make that post in jest to try to generate some more discussion in the thread, but I like your fax machine analogy, especially since the discarding of the faxed material is optional in the process. Not sure I understand what you mean with the last sentence though.

No, you misunderstood my scenario.
If someone came into a room where you and your brother stood, killed your brother, and then attempted to teleport to safety but a mistake led him to be 'disassembled' by the teleporter but reassembled in the same room instead of far from your wrath.

Would you be looking at an innocent 'new' person, the murderer now being dead by way of being disassembled by teleportation? Or would you be looking at the murderer who merely teleported across the room?

No, I understand, but I could have stated my point more simply. My point is simply that your question (does the duplicate deserve to die) seems independent of my question (did the original survive). For instance, even if the assembled person is a separate person, he, being an exact duplicate, would be exactly as evil as the first, and exactly as much of a danger to society, so it seems like I could answer "yes" to yours while still answering "no" to mine.

In my modified version of your scenario, I tried to imagine the criminal making two mistakes, the original one that you laid out where he mistakenly assembles the new body across the room, but also an additional mistake where he forgets to disintegrate his original body, so now there are two of them! I tried to use this modified scenario to drive home the point that even in a case where it were (I think) obvious they were two separate people, we might still want to kill the duplicate as well.

An exact copy of me would still be me. None of the cells in my body are original. With the exception of some neurons, every cell in my body had died and been copied countless times. Even if all copies were in the same room together, naming one "original", "copy 1", "copy 2", etc... is just something practical to do, but all of them would really be me in the sense that we all had the same self-awareness, memories, and initial conditions right at the moment copies were made.

I feel like the simultaneity of the Star Trek transporter is a slight of hand that makes the process seem reasonable. If instead of

1) Encode original body into bits
2) Disintegrate original body
3) Transmit bits to remote location
4) Assemble duplicate body at remote location

it were in this order

1) Encode original body into bits
2) Transmit bits to remote location
3) Assemble body at remote location
4) Original body has a nice ten minute chat with duplicate body
5) Disintegrate original body

then it would seem more obvious what is going on here, especially to the original body.

[Hunter]

Assuming we're talking about a Star Trek transporter which transmits data via a matter stream as opposed to copying it (ala present day tech) then yes. Why not? But I don't see us coming up transporters anytime soon, and even if we do, it'll be matter duplication which would result in killing you first.

[vision]

I feel like the simultaneity of the Star Trek transporter is a slight of hand that makes the process seem reasonable. If instead of...then it would seem more obvious what is going on here, especially to the original body.

Well now you are changing the question. Sorry for my lack of Star Trek knowledge, but I had always assumed the process of encoding involved disassembly. If you want to make copies before you destroy the original, then that is a different question. Why would the original even need to be destroyed?

[Krom]

The Star Trek transporter literally converts its target to energy, beams that energy across some distance like a laser beam, then converts it back into matter again. So how it manages to accidentally make a copy of someone when it reflects off some magnetic storm or something like that basically boils down to "plot?". Making copies doesn't make sense because it would require the transporter to break its usual well behaved routine and suddenly defy conservation of mass/energy to happen.

[MD-1118]

To be fair, we're discussing a hypothetical departure from standard operational procedure of a hypothetical technology. Krom and vision are technically correct, but I think we should cut Jeff some slack since pedantry ignores the actual question he is asking. He even stated in the initial post:

We'll say the teleporter works as follows: it scans your body, encodes it into bits, disintegrates your body, transmits the bits to a remote location over light, and then at the remote location, 10 seconds later, the bits are received, decoded, and your body is recreated as an exact material duplicate according to the pattern encoded in the bits.

[Krom]

You know some Japanese people are adverse to having their picture taken because they believe photographs can steal a persons soul? I think this transporter idea is kind of the same superstition, just dialed up a bit higher since it'd involve breaking you down until you are nothing but a beam of energy and then putting you back together again.

I mean if we get all serious here, then there are other problems to talk about with the whole process, like for instance if you converted an object with the mass roughly equal to the average human adult into some form of energy beam, it would probably be enough energy to blow up half the solar system.

[Jeff250]

The Star Trek transporter literally converts its target to energy, beams that energy across some distance like a laser beam, then converts it back into matter again.

Even supposing that we transmit and use the energy from your disassembled body to power the machine that reassembles you, how does that make a relevant difference though versus just using energy from the grid? I think that that explanation is just another sleight of hand in Star Trek transporter lore to make the concept seem feasible but that breaks down under closer inspection. In any case, because of entropy, it's impossible for all of your energy to ever reach the destination, and so even after granting every liberty we could to the technology being futuristic, at least some energy would have to be supplanted from the grid for reassembly.

[Tunnelcat]

Why is it funny? If, let's say, a transporter is essentially equivalent to a fax machine. That means the original body is destroyed during the copying process while the other body that it creates at the receiving end is a whole new body. Hence, murder and rebirth. But that opens up the possibility of using the transporter for healing and infinite life.

To be fair to MD, I did make that post in jest to try to generate some more discussion in the thread, but I like your fax machine analogy, especially since the discarding of the faxed material is optional in the process. Not sure I understand what you mean with the last sentence though.

Well, here goes my idea. Say every person in the future has been genetically mapped and all fatal genetic alterations and disease causes are known. Since many birth defects, aging and many other diseases are caused by genetic alterations from the normal genome, what if this futuristic teleporter/transporter could have a good or repaired stored copy (since gene repair is starting to look more and more possible for those born with defects) of your genome for pattern recognition, a copy of when you where healthy and young? Say that during the transport process, your molecules and genes could be rearranged and restored to your healthy younger state before it reassembles you, since this machine is either taking you apart and reassembling you elsewhere or is destroying the old you and recreating a new you in the process anyway. I mean, if we ever get to the point of making this sort of technology, why wouldn't this be a possible further extension of it's capabilities?

[MD-1118]

Well, here goes my idea. Say every person in the future has been genetically mapped and all fatal genetic alterations and disease causes are known. Since many birth defects, aging and many other diseases are caused by genetic alterations from the normal genome, what if this futuristic teleporter/transporter could have a good or repaired stored copy (since gene repair is starting to look more and more possible for those born with defects) of your genome for pattern recognition, a copy of when you where healthy and young? Say that during the transport process, your molecules and genes could be rearranged and restored to your healthy younger state before it reassembles you, since this machine is either taking you apart and reassembling you elsewhere or is destroying the old you and recreating a new you in the process anyway. I mean, if we ever get to the point of making this sort of technology, why wouldn't this be a possible further extension of it's capabilities?

There's one major flaw with this. It would necessarily revert the individual's personality and mind to the point at which the backup was made, which means they would have none of the experiences or memories from the time since the 'good' backup was made.

I suppose if we're that advanced, we could find some way to retain the memories and such themselves, but there invariably would be issues with compatibility, given the body and brain chemistry and voltages would have different values between the 'current' body and the 'backup' body. You're simply trading one problem for another.

[Tunnelcat]

I think that would only be an issue if the brain is diseased. A machine this advanced could be programmed to discern healthy brain tissue from diseased tissue, keeping all the memory links intact, depending on how old the person was, I'd think. If the brain was so diseased that it had to be repaired, wouldn't someone want to choose life with some or total loss of memory over absolute death?

[vision]

At this point I think it is fun to note that many people would use a Star Trek teleporter even though none of us know how it works, haha.

[Spidey]

You could probably say the same thing about a microwave, hell most people don’t even know how their car works.

The days of actually knowing how the things you use every day work, are long gone.

[MD-1118]

You could probably say the same thing about a microwave

Hey, I know exactly how my microwave works!

There's a tiny dwarf inside it with a lump of iron that he heats in a small kiln, releasing radons that cook my meal through thermal frictioning. When I push buttons, a bell inside rings to let him know how long to heat the kiln, and when it's done he receives his reward, alchemical gold, produced as a result of heating the iron. He gets fresh iron from the replicator in the back.