Death Teleportation. Are you still afraid of death?

[phart010 | 1,708]

I was listening to a theory on a potential way of teleportation for humans. If we came up with a way of cloning an exact replica of a living, breathing, adult human, not just the physical cells, but also the thought contents of the brain, including all of one’s memories, we would immediately be able to use this as a form of teleportation.

Basically the point of origin teleportation device would be a machine that scans your body and maps all of the information needed to recreate you into a data file. Then this machine would wirelessly l send the file to another machine that would create a clone of you that remembers everything that happened until the moment you were scanned. 

Now the last order of business would be to verify that the clone was successfully made. If a success, then you just need to incinerate the original you.  

This brings the question, if this type of technology were possible in the future, would you be content with your body being laid to rest, knowing that there is another exact copy of you somewhere else continuing on and living out the rest of the life that you started?

I guess this type of question assumes that you believe there is nothing more to the human being than the physical, ie there is not spiritual component to the human being.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

That's kind of the exact premise and sort of moral/ethical questions asked by the show Altered Carbon (as well as the series of books it was based on).  There are some who are content to accept the new technology, which, by the point the show picks up, is considered mandatory for every save those few who managed to get an exception based on religious beliefs.

Not only did the tech allow those with enough resources to be able to travel semi-instantly to distant worlds (that had already been established by other foks who got there via the "long haul" method), but since the data for one's mind was recorded separately from one's body, it also allowed for swapping/borrowing/upgrading/etc. bodies with others, and all the moral/ethical dilemmas that go along with that.  Spoiler tag below for another issue that arose, which was possible, but considered illegal and was tied to at least one of the seasons' plots.

Spoiler

There were also the issues of having backups done of one's mind as well as body, and then the morally/ethically dubious (and illegal in the world built by the show/books) issue of what happens if you have more than one of those copies "online" at any given time?

Lots of good food for thought in that series, as well as a lot of heart/mind bending given all the weird and difficult situations that various characters face, both directly and indirectly.

[G-type | 2,483]

1 hour ago, phart010 said:

This brings the question, if this type of technology were possible in the future, would you be content with your body being laid to rest, knowing that there is another exact copy of you somewhere else continuing on and living out the rest of the life that you started?

absolutely not. A copy of you, is not you... It would be comparable to having a twin brother who has the same memories as you, but it's not you. You die and they continue in your place. You're still dead. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,549]

I think this is one of the philosophical question posed at the end of 

Spoiler

The Prestige

 

[DefaultGen | 5,414]

I am not getting in a Star Trek transporter, no.

[Link | 2,715]

 

[RH | 4,924]

In spite of all checks, transporter A malfunctions-- transporter B releases the "new" you, and you go on doing whatever you wanted to do on the other end of the world.  At the origination site, an error is reported, and you exit the machine.

Which "you" is really you?  Do you recall the first version, or the clone/copy for destruction?  I have a feeling both individuals would argue they have a right to survive.  This can't be discounted as possibility.  Nothing is infallible.  If you create the copy before destroying the original, there is always the possibility that something will break in the middle, so which being has a right to life?

Then there's the real issue and it's that as much as we'd like to think the world would play nice with tech like this, you know good and well that some country would get ahold of this, raise up a bunch of super-strong men with innate skills appropriate for the future-modern battle field and they'll "clone" them 1,000,000.  If that's too archaic, they'll find their "Einstein" who's loyal to the party and simply clone 1,000 of them to work on making a super-weapon.

Yeah, no, I don't see this ending well in any scenario. That's my $.02.

[TDIRunner | 2,744]

Nobody cares about the man in the box.

[a3quit4s | 4,105]

Can I fit onto a Nintendo tape?

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

This technology already exists and has been proven working. There's a documentary on YouTube about quantum physics that explains it pretty well.

It works like a pair of gloves, imagine putting one glove in a briefcase and flying it around the world while the other stays in a briefcase with you. While both briefcases are sealed closed, the state of both gloves is left and right at the same time and one glove doesn't get a defined side (left or right) until you open the briefcase and look. So by opening the briefcase with you, you're effectively setting the state of the other glove on the other side of the world which was both left and right until you opened one briefcase.

This can be done in nature as well, scientists have discovered paired electrons that are affected by changes to the twin. They are able to inflict changes onto one of the pair and it will directly and inversely affect the other. They also managed to separate them between hundreds of kilometres and the changes were still observed over that distance.

This means, effectively, they could do it on a multi-trillion scaled level with all of the electrons in your body and send you hundreds of kilometres by creating paired electrons of everything in your body, transporting them far away, then inflicting the changes on your body and observing the materialization of another you from the twinned set at the other end. A side effect of the experiement is that the original was always destroyed in the process, even on the smaller scale.

So now what happens is you step into the teleporter, your body is destroyed and another you is materialized from the other set of electrons on the other side. You may say that this other you is not you but the human body's cells only live for a specified number of years before they're replaced by new, healthy ones and about every 7 years, every cell in your body has gone through this death and rebirth. So effeectively, you are not the same you as 7 years ago, does that mean you're no longer you?

If I find the documentary, I'll post it here, it's in my saved feed.

[fox | 1,668]

Wouldn’t need a teleporter if you just fixed Theseus‘ ship

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

Here is the documentary.

 

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

21 hours ago, G-type said:

absolutely not. A copy of you, is not you... It would be comparable to having a twin brother who has the same memories as you, but it's not you. You die and they continue in your place. You're still dead. 

This is exactly what I was going to say. 

[Link | 2,715]

Your twin brother has had different experiences than you have, though. The machine copies you, not just your appearance but including all of your synapses, neurons, scars. The brother doesn't have those.

I guess I am a materialist in this regard. I don't believe in a soul or other essence or spirit that exists apart from the brain and body. I believe the copy – if done correctly and completely, without losing any fidelity or resolution – experiences uninterrupted existence with all that came before.

[KokiriChild | 1,644]

Also recommend Living with Yourself with Paul Rudd on Netflix for those interested in these kinds of ethical questions!

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

I couldn't help but to think of this.

[G-type | 2,483]

On 9/30/2022 at 11:15 AM, Link said:

I guess I am a materialist in this regard. I don't believe in a soul or other essence or spirit that exists apart from the brain and body. I believe the copy – if done correctly and completely, without losing any fidelity or resolution – experiences uninterrupted existence with all that came before.

maybe the copy would experience that, and to them it would feel like they had teleported (while retaining all your memories).. but even if you don't believe in a soul... do you still believe your consciousness is contained in your body?... if the body dies there would be no experience of continuity for your current consciousness... it would cease to exist.

[sp1nz | 613]

There are so many considerations to this, even if you try to touch most of the bases, that it feels like the best you can come up with is insane speculation. It's basically questions of 'Teletransportation paradox' and 'Ship of Theseus'. When a clone human is created and then the old human is destroyed, I would say your old consciousness definitely died, so while others perceive "you" continuing, the original consciousness died - unless you can feel yourself as an organism of shared consciousness, which would almost certainly need some physical link between the bodies (like 'craniopagus twins') unless future humans are some transhuman cloud-connected beings.

We can't even understand human brains yet, and we would need to have technology that would transfer us so elegantly through time-space that our consciousness had uninterrupted continuity; quantum theory was mentioned, maybe that's one possibility, but building something that can utilize that theory is the gigantic undertaking. So sure maybe in the future it's possible on a theoretical level to pull off a teletransportation with continuity of consciousness but the resources needed to pull it off could be very prohibitive and maybe singularity++ level A.I. is the minimum needed to come up with a way to do it for a human organism, so the practicality might be an impossible wall for us, if not the laws and ethics of the matter.

In my speculation I would call teletransportation with continuity of consciousness a pipedream and just a fun dreamer scenario. I don't much believe in human race surviving long enough to see it actually happen, even if it was possible, with how things are going.

But no, I wouldn't touch teleportation devices with a googolplex sized pole while I'm alive, no matter what some expert/A.I. posits about functionality of such.

SOMA is a great game that delves into this question from a few angles.

Edited October 3, 2022 by sp1nz

[Link | 2,715]

4 hours ago, G-type said:

if the body dies there would be no experience of continuity for your current consciousness... it would cease to exist.

Yes, that's as I said. The first body and everything is destroyed. 

 

5 hours ago, G-type said:

do you still believe your consciousness is contained in your body?

Yes. I don't see any other way it could work. The cloning process would create a new consciousness, which has a physical basis. 

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

Guys, thoughts and memories are nothing more than checmical reactions, all of those would be retained with the copy. Duplicating the chemicals would still be you on the other side.

There's no such thing as soul and consiousness, those are things humans made up because we didn't understand the chemical processes at that time.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,014]

7 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Guys, thoughts and memories are nothing more than checmical reactions, all of those would be retained with the copy. Duplicating the chemicals would still be you on the other side

If that's all it is then we'll find out sooner or later. I think there's a better chance to back up memories and personhood digitally than chemically. 

[MagusSmurf | 577]

I see no purpose served here in incinerating the original. You made a copy of someone, cool, and then you're just killing the person you copied afterwards for no particular reason other than maybe not wanting to bother adjusting rules, laws, and norms to accommodate the ramifications of the new technology so mass slaughter is okay? It's really dumb.

[phart010 | 1,708]

3 hours ago, MagusSmurf said:

I see no purpose served here in incinerating the original. You made a copy of someone, cool, and then you're just killing the person you copied afterwards for no particular reason other than maybe not wanting to bother adjusting rules, laws, and norms to accommodate the ramifications of the new technology so mass slaughter is okay? It's really dumb.

If we were talking about real life, there would be more of a discussion. This is just a hypothetical that relies on fantasy 

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

15 hours ago, MagusSmurf said:

I see no purpose served here in incinerating the original. You made a copy of someone, cool, and then you're just killing the person you copied afterwards for no particular reason other than maybe not wanting to bother adjusting rules, laws, and norms to accommodate the ramifications of the new technology so mass slaughter is okay? It's really dumb.

Well, it all depends on how the technology actually works.  In Star Trek terms, people have always talked about how you're "destroyed," but in actuality what's happening is that all the molecules in your body are mapped to a pattern, then your physical being is converted from matter to energy, then that same energy is transported along the transporter beam to its destination, whereupon the pattern recorded earlier is used to convert your energy back into matter at your destination.  You're not really "disintegrating" the original person so much as converting their physical being from one state to another and back again.  Disintegration typically infers that something is being totally destroyed, which isn't what happens in the Star Trek method.

As far as literally destroying a body and everything therein after scanning it completely and sending that scan off elsewhere to be reformed, and thus "teleport" across vast distances, I think there's a current day discussion/argument that fits this situation pretty well, if not perfectly.  If the technology works as you're suggesting, that the "original" (or last existing, in cases where someone has used the tech at least once before) copy, then I think it comes down to a person's right to decide what happens to their own body, followed up by whatever the overarching laws are of the governmental body/bodies that rules this area.  It would be up to an individual to decide whether or not they were going to allow more than one copy of themselves to exist at one time, followed up by, or ruled over by the current government's laws allowing or disallowing such a practice.  In such a society, is it up to the individual to decide for themselves or the government to enforce its own judgement upon them?

[Link | 2,715]

2 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

Star Trek... If the technology works as you're suggesting,

Did you read the OP?