Teleportation big question: does it kill person in process?

[Pawelk198604]

I know that teleportation will be a long beyond our reach, but I wonder if someday will develop as transporter just like in Star Trek, is teleported person will still be the same person who came into the transporter/teleporter, or will only copy, and the original die in process.

[tater]

Conservation of energy, and conservation of momentum. Think about it a while.

[baggers]

I know that teleportation will be a long beyond our reach, but I wonder if someday will develop as transporter just like in Star Trek, is teleported person will still be the same person who came into the transporter/teleporter, or will only copy, and the original die in process.

The answer depends of who you are:

- a scientist

- a philosoph

- a religious

- a lawyer

- an advocate

- ...

[SargeRho]

No, they won't be the same person. There will be not a single original anything left in the teleported person. It wouldn't change "who" they are, by which I mean their memories, thoughts and personality, assuming no teleporter malfunction occurs, they would be pretty much identical to the original person, but the original person will be dead.

[Captain Sierra]

Quantum teleportation as depicted in most sci-fi IPs seems to involve atomic disintegration. Yeah, you'd be dead.

I have a few questions:

How are memories, personality, etc. stored. Brain chemistry I assume? Can that be replicated correctly?

We as people have a sense of being. We know that we are ourselves. What happens to your consciousness on teleportation? How would the same consciousness end up in the new body? While it may be you to everyone else, it might not be you to you (in other words, since you are dead for a fraction of a second, do you somehow come back in the new body or is the consiousness of the original you dead permenently?).

[K^2]

Quantum teleportation as depicted in most sci-fi IPs seems to involve atomic disintegration. Yeah, you'd be dead.

You are thinking of Universal Constructor (UC) teleportation. The UC disassembles you at source and reassembles you at destination. StarTrek employs UC teleportation, which is heavily exploited throughout the series. This is definitely one of these, "I'd rather walk," scenarios.

Quantum Teleportation involves actually transporting matter state. It fundamentally precludes existence of copies. Your state is transferred whole from source matter to destination matter. By every sensible definition of teleportation, including these involving locality limits, QT is actually non-lethal.

Unfortunately, QT has some very severe limitations which mean that we almost certainly never will have practical QT for macroscopic objects. The list of problems is lengthy and technical, so I won't get into details unless someone challenges this, but serious, QT isn't happening. That's not to say that it's useless, because there are a whole bunch of quantum information applications for QT.

The only type of teleport system that's both feasible in some distant future and that I'd consider a "safe way to travel," in that you actually travel rather than being killed and cloned, is similar to what's used in Stargate franchise. They have a lot of technobabble around it, but the ghist of it is that rather than being disassembled whole, you step through an surface where you are converted into a digital form. The digital space is fully simulated until you are fully within. In the series, they refer to it as the buffer. What that means is that if you are standing half way through the portal, half of you keeps existing in the physical form, and half of you is simulated within the buffer, still allowing connection between neurons, blood flow, etc. So in effect, there is never a point where you are copied whole, but rather there is a gradual transition preserving continuity. That is, until you are fully within the buffer. At that point, your simulation is paused, and data is copied from source gate to destination gate. At the destination end, the reverse process takes place.

There is an additional bit within the canon about both matter and data for reconstruction being sent along a wormhole formed between two gates, but that's not particularly relevant. The above scheme is the only practical UC-type teleportation that I'd find acceptable. In addition, the fact that the interface between physical world and the buffer is 2D, it actually makes the conversion process feasible without having to resort to something like freezing the subject. All in all, the only practical teleporter I am aware of that doesn't kill the subject.

[baggers]

Quantum teleportation as depicted in most sci-fi IPs seems to involve atomic disintegration. Yeah, you'd be dead.

I have a few questions:

How are memories, personality, etc. stored. Brain chemistry I assume? Can that be replicated correctly?

We as people have a sense of being. We know that we are ourselves. What happens to your consciousness on teleportation? How would the same consciousness end up in the new body? While it may be you to everyone else, it might not be you to you (in other words, since you are dead for a fraction of a second, do you somehow come back in the new body or is the consiousness of the original you dead permenently?).

For what we know, "consciousness" and "freewill" are just illusions given by chaotic mechanism inside our brains.

It will work as well in your "copy" and the destruction of the "original" won't miss to anyone.

[Findthepin1]

Early on I think we'll end up with imploded "input" boxes/scanners due to vacuum left by disappearing objects, and objects having been teleported appear at absolute zero with no momentum (although as soon as they appear the laws of physics apply to them and they heat up and fall), so given the risks I don't think humans would teleport until we can transport energy information as well.

On the other hand, if we had a way to "copy" an area, we would be able to work around this.

[Bill Phil]

Are you the same you from a month ago? Yes? Then yes to the OP's question.

Your body's specific atoms change in a matter of weeks. After five years it's practically guaranteed, you have different atoms than five years ago.

But a large majority are replaced in about one month...

[Teutooni]

Here is a thought experiment for you. Consider regular movement through quantized spacetime. If a macroscopic object such as a person moves the smallest possible distance does he die? There is no motion between the states, one time instant he is somewhere and the next he is somewhere else. What if he moves not to an adjacent 'pixel' but skips a few, does he die? If the person gets disintegrated, transferred as information and reconstructed, is that any different? Does it even matter if you are dead while in transit?

[rtxoff]

it's not going to happen anyway so why bang the head against the wall by wasting thinking energy on something like that.

[lajoswinkler]

Yes, because teleportation requires destroying the original to read its information. This is not a subject of debate. It's obvious and an old thing.

But yeah, it's not gonna happen. Energy required is insane, as well as information storage. Not to mention the key, natural law impossibility - Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

And no, "Heisenberg compensators" are not a thing just like fairy dust isn't.

[ZetaX]

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

[Darnok]

I know that teleportation will be a long beyond our reach, but I wonder if someday will develop as transporter just like in Star Trek, is teleported person will still be the same person who came into the transporter/teleporter, or will only copy, and the original die in process.

In Star Trek movies it looks like it is exact same person, just his/her particles are moved from one location to other. If it would be otherwise you would see immortal characters because everyone would like to be stored in computers memory before mission and so if something goes wrong he could be recreated.

IMO they knew how to convert energy into matter and matter into energy, so why would they kill person instead of just convert his/her body into energy, that is much easier to transport.

[lajoswinkler]

In Star Trek movies it looks like it is exact same person, just his/her particles are moved from one location to other. If it would be otherwise you would see immortal characters because everyone would like to be stored in computers memory before mission and so if something goes wrong he could be recreated.

IMO they knew how to convert energy into matter and matter into energy, so why would they kill person instead of just convert his/her body into energy, that is much easier to transport.

Actually they do have them stored in "buffers" so they can "compare the patterns" in case something goes wrong.

It's called technobabble. Doesn't mean a thing and it's invented to keep the TV show running.

[Lukaszenko]

I'll guess that by the time/if we'll really have to answer this, we'll already have mind downloading/ uploading and we'll be switching bodies at will, which will make OP's question moot.

[Brethern]

Yes, because teleportation requires destroying the original to read its information. This is not a subject of debate. It's obvious and an old thing.

But yeah, it's not gonna happen. Energy required is insane, as well as information storage. Not to mention the key, natural law impossibility - Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

And no, "Heisenberg compensators" are not a thing just like fairy dust isn't.

Technically speaking the person you are now is not the same person who was born x years ago. Due to something about cells getting replaced.

[Bill Phil]

Yes, because teleportation requires destroying the original to read its information. This is not a subject of debate. It's obvious and an old thing.

But yeah, it's not gonna happen. Energy required is insane, as well as information storage. Not to mention the key, natural law impossibility - Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

And no, "Heisenberg compensators" are not a thing just like fairy dust isn't.

For you to live you have to be destroyed and rebuilt at a constant rate.

[lajoswinkler]

Technically speaking the person you are now is not the same person who was born x years ago. Due to something about cells getting replaced.

That's not how personhood is defined. Matter being replaced is a normal thing of living and metabolism. It's the information (matter arrangement) what is the important thing.

[Beowolf]

A thought experiment: Let's say the Star Trek transporter does kill the passenger, and the created clone is a new person complete with a soul. Let us further say Star Trek's universe has an afterlife, which would therefore contain hundreds of instances of each Starfleet member.

An interesting notion for an absurdist bit of fan fiction.

[Fel]

That's not how personhood is defined. Matter being replaced is a normal thing of living and metabolism. It's the information (matter arrangement) what is the important thing.

I'll admit that quantum effects do some really radical things and that ignoring those effects can cause problems in the long run... but can we not get by with understanding how the macro-system works rather than the quantum-system? Modern computing technology uses / prevents quantum effects; but programmers often don't even know what instruction sets their processor is capable of running.

If we adequately model the human mind and body such that we can achieve a large quantity of compression and look at the cells rather than atoms, we can avoid all of these problems and just create pseudo-clones ;p

Oh right... and philosophy, dualism, yadda... no one cares.

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And no, "Heisenberg compensators" are not a thing just like fairy dust isn't.

Our current model of the universe makes them impossible, but we can just change the model to something that works better for us. (Jokes aside, I would caution against absolutes which claim we have amassed all knowledge. No one can say what the future actually has in store for us because we have not amassed all knowledge, our knowledge may be flawed in ways we do not know yet and cannot imagine due to the ignorance that arrogance brings. Our current level of technology is still infantile, not even a century old)

Edited May 25, 2015 by Fel

[Instresu]

I know that teleportation will be a long beyond our reach, but I wonder if someday will develop as transporter just like in Star Trek, is teleported person will still be the same person who came into the transporter/teleporter, or will only copy, and the original die in process.

Well, the thing is that quantum mechanics is in play, and even if we could re-create all molecules and quantum states perfectly, we still have to deal with the appeared randomness. If quantum mechanics truly is random, there's no way a such thing would work without actually changing the neurological state and possibly mess with not memories and things like that.

You do not want to do that.

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I'll guess that by the time/if we'll really have to answer this, we'll already have mind downloading/ uploading and we'll be switching bodies at will, which will make OP's question moot.

Well, that depends on how you define "person," I guess. I'm still the same organism, despite the fact the most atoms in my body have been replaced. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of neurons is not replaced during a lifetime. As memories, at least, are partly stored in the neurological network itself, adding neurons in the chain would damage and potentially destroy memories.

[Mr Shifty]

A thought experiment: Let's say the Star Trek transporter does kill the passenger, and the created clone is a new person complete with a soul. Let us further say Star Trek's universe has an afterlife, which would therefore contain hundreds of instances of each Starfleet member.

China Mieville's book Kraken has a character who can teleport, but is then haunted and driven insane by the ghosts of his former selves.

[SciMan]

My opinion is that whatever makes you, "you" (mind-state, soul, whatever you believe) would, by necessity, be unchanged with respect to the "you" that entered the teleporter.

No atoms that made up your body when you entered the teleporter will make up your body when you exit it. That doesn't make you dead, or a different you.

"You" is a pattern, not a specific arrangement of atoms, because atoms don't have serial numbers or data that can be used as a serial number.

In other words, you're still you, but your body isn't the body that went in the teleporter. And those two statements don't contradict each other.

[BlueCosmology]

Yes, because teleportation requires destroying the original to read its information. This is not a subject of debate. It's obvious and an old thing.

But yeah, it's not gonna happen. Energy required is insane, as well as information storage. Not to mention the key, natural law impossibility - Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

And no, "Heisenberg compensators" are not a thing just like fairy dust isn't.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is irrelevant. The uncertainty principle would apply just the same before and after you teleported someone.