Teleportation

[Kyriakos]

If the set has consciousness, then it is different from a copy of it. Cause in this way the set [1,2,3] isnt the same as the copy i now make: [1,2,3]. To an observer outside of the set they can only be differentiated if ordered; eg the second was a copy. But the consciousness of the first is not in the second.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

But you are considering consciousness as something separated of the set of particles. As a spiritual thing existing in an esoteric plane. What if it is part of the set of particles? can a consciousness exist at two different places at the same time?

 

[Kyriakos]

But you are considering consciousness as something separated of the set of particles. As a spiritual thing existing in an esoteric plane. What if it is part of the set of particles? can a consciousness exist at two different places at the same time?

The latter is possible, but why assume it will be tied to the copy? (It might, if weird things are the case, but atm there is no reason to assume that mere exact likeness causes reincarnation-like effect).
The former imo is false, though, cause we do have a way to account for a consciousness, empirically: the individual cannot but feel it. It is why descartes has at least one point in his not that philosophical treatise

 

[timtofly]

If the consciousness did not transfer, then the new body would be a blank state without any experiences except newly coming into being. Most cloned hypothesis lean toward a similiar but different and unique individual.

The point is can you copy the personality that is you or not.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well, if you stop existing i think it is safe to say that the teleported person is not you; you will just die (or relocate to a better multiverse at best). Others might not notice, but you will

Actually, you probably wouldn't, at least not for long.

I like this answer:

It's not an experiment we've run yet. You can migrate your consciousness around your brain. We've not yet created artificial neuronal structures and then migrated our consciousness into and out of those structures. My suspicion is that it's possible, but I don't know for sure. I'd also like the technologies to be done by people who think it's possible.

People do indeed change out their atoms extensively over time, so in principle our recollected selves of a decade ago are dead, per how the OP posits the question.

That said, how is the teleported copy any more or less you than you?

You are presumably limiting "where" as referring to within the bounds of four dimensional objective reality. If so, what if there is a flaw in that premise? If not, there are myriad possible answers and your question poses no particular problem.

This actually posits something falsifiable within our reality if it has any relevance to the experiment, and in principle could be tested and confirmed/falsified as a result. Otherwise if the external influence just accounts for whatever we do while hiding from detection all the time it's an extra detail that doesn't make meaningful predictions.

People, even non-religious people, HAVE posited extra dimensions though. Not testable versions of those ideas yet, to my knowledge.

If the consciousness did not transfer, then the new body would be a blank state without any experiences except newly coming into being. Most cloned hypothesis lean toward a similiar but different and unique individual.

The copied person would in principle have identical memories, experiences, personality, and abilities actually. However, if the original wasn't destroyed and they both went on living they would diverge based on different experiences/interactions. Not just mentally, even physically.

Which one is the "real" one? I'm not sure that question is meaningful.

 

[El_Machinae]

Sorry all, I forgot to include my citation for something I was saying earlier

https://www.nature.com/news/2009/090402/full/news.2009.232.html

There is absolutely some Atomic turnover in our body. What I am resisting is the idea that there is complete turnover within a lifetime. It's an urban myth. Decades after your birth we are still able to detect the carbon atoms that were incorporated into your growing body.

Now people can remember this Source the next time the topic comes up.

 

[warpus]

Iirc the teleportation of a particle destroys the original (? Or at least makes it disappear) so wouldnt the original human die?

You could keep the original human around or kill him/her. Those are the only 2 options. In both scenarios the "teleported" being is going to be a clone - i.e. not "you".

 

[AdamCrock]

Each time You teleport the CIA will get an exact blueprint of You from the teleporter and will use a copy for nefarious purposes Maybe the teleport would store a blueprint and "port" a person hundreds years ahead in time (I believe there was a Star Trek episode when they found a teleport on a self loop "storing" crew members for a hundred or so years). We can imagine a jammed teleport spewing out copies of one person Not to mention teleport misshaps (having Your body part in wrong place for example - ouch ! )

 

[Gori the Grey]

You could keep the original human around or kill him/her. Those are the only 2 options. In both scenarios the "teleported" being is going to be a clone - i.e. not "you".

Does it have a claim on property "you" owned, I wonder.

 

[warpus]

Does it have a claim on property "you" owned, I wonder.

It's a different person, so from a purely legal standpoint there would be no basis for that, even though it would be an exact copy.

I suppose it probably depends on the wording of the relevant laws, but I can't imagine any being worded in such a way that an exact replica of you should for some reason own your piano.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If the set has consciousness, then it is different from a copy of it.

Do we know that for a fact? As far as I'm aware, while the best evidence we have is that consciousness comes from the brain and nothing else, we haven't tested this kind of scenario or how someone reacts to "two you's". I doubt the IRB would approve this one either, were it something we could actually do .

 

[Kyriakos]

I am a bit perplexed by the (apparent) issue/lack of understanding of the quite straighforward point that if you get a clone you arent (from your pov;others may not be able to tell) the clone, and that if teleporting kills the original (you) you die instead of actually teleporting.
If you die you cannot but notice, i have to assume

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Well, it is not that straightforward and it is not like cloning at all, at least if we use quantum teleporting, which is the only teleporting procces with some real physical basis we know.

It basically consists in having a bunch of particles at the destination enough to build a human body, which is entangled with another similar bunch of particles at the origin which in turn can be entangled to the traveler's body. Once everything is properly entangled, through a tricky process of partial observations the traveler's body "information" is "teleported" to the bunch of particles at the destination which "acquires" the original body configuration while the original body is necessarily destroyed, becoming a bunch of particles itself.

To understand it somehow we can consider that, once entangled, two things are not two individual things anymore, but become "reflections" of the same thing which exists in two places at the same time. This is called quantum nonlocality, and may sound crazy but is very real and coherent with the idea of particles being nothing but manifestations of the quantum field underlying them which fills the whole space. It has even been done experimentally with individual atoms, and while it is increasingly difficult for larger things made of many particles to keep entanglement due to quantum decoherence, there is not a theoretical limit for the size of things you can teleport this way.

So, speaking about consciousness i am not so sure if it would be destroyed or not. The traveler once teleported wouldn't be a copy but the same traveler in the deepest meaning of the word.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I am a bit perplexed by the (apparent) issue/lack of understanding of the quite straighforward point that if you get a clone you arent (from your pov;others may not be able to tell) the clone, and that if teleporting kills the original (you) you die instead of actually teleporting.
If you die you cannot but notice, i have to assume

A person would only know the difference in whatever brief window it takes to vaporize them.

This is assuming this doesn't actually generate some weird "shared consciousness" effects where the clone and you are actually both you and it turns out the clone gets to feel that vaporization as two becomes one again. I consider that very unlikely, but whatever "quantum magic" we're using in the hypothetical OP (you were of course not able to specify exactly what's being done specifically) could cause unanticipated results in tandem with our incomplete understanding of consciousness.

Most likely you just get two largely identical people and one gets erased, stopping all subjective experience (aka dead), but if we're instead doing a "hypothetical transfer of all particles simultaneously from one point to another", something wormhole-esque, then maybe not.

 

[El_Machinae]

I am a bit perplexed by the (apparent) issue/lack of understanding of the quite straighforward point that if you get a clone you arent (from your pov;others may not be able to tell) the clone, and that if teleporting kills the original (you) you die instead of actually teleporting.
If you die you cannot but notice, i have to assume

I think it's understood. If it's a copy, things got messy. If the teleportation is not a copy, but a transfer, then it gets less messy

 

[uppi]

It basically consists in having a bunch of particles at the destination enough to build a human body, which is entangled with another similar bunch of particles at the origin which in turn can be entangled to the traveler's body. Once everything is properly entangled, through a tricky process of partial observations the traveler's body "information" is "teleported" to the bunch of particles at the destination which "acquires" the original body configuration while the original body is necessarily destroyed, becoming a bunch of particles itself.

It is actually even more complicated than that. Partial observations are not enough to teleport the information from one bunch of particles to another. You need to send the result of these partial observations to the receiving end and do manipulations on the particles there depending on the result you got. The result of the observations is classical information, which can at most travel at the speed of light. As a result, the information at the sending end is destroyed before it can be fully recreated at the receiving end.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It is actually even more complicated than that. Partial observations are not enough to teleport the information from one bunch of particles to another. You need to send the result of these partial observations to the receiving end and do manipulations on the particles there depending on the result you got. The result of the observations is classical information, which can at most travel at the speed of light. As a result, the information at the sending end is destroyed before it can be fully recreated at the receiving end.

Most sci-fi interpretations of teleportation are already breaking causality with FTL transportation of people though no? If we're actually holding onto real physics and only allowing mundane reality to be used in the thought experiment we're going to be operating with different/more sane assumptions about what needs to happen here.

 

[El_Machinae]

Ha! It's only destroyed 'before' if we're thinking that there's an objective time reference

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Also it's not clear that "classical physics" is a thing beyond a way for humans to simply the truth into something that broadly works most of the time. To my knowledge there's no evidence leading us to assume that there's some "break point" between classical vs quantum physics other than our own capability.

 

[Kyriakos]

All physics are anthropomorphic. There likely are many phenonena which just aren't picked up by humans or with the aid of tech.