Thomas II

Teleportation,as you described it,is not the right way to travel. There are "short cuts" in space, worm holes...but they have to be big enough so that their tidal gravitational field would not shread you to smithereens.

Juma

My concern with this question does not lie in if its physical possible or not, if the copy is "exactly the same" or not or if there are other better ways to travel. My thought about it is the same as has been expressed by Legend et al: The first body is killed and that is you. That there is a new copy of wont make YOU alive again, just a copy. I often hear the opinion that you somehow continue to live in the new body. I assume this thought comes from Star Trek etc, but I cannot see how it could be.

Loxos

Juma,

"That there is a new copy of wont make YOU alive again, just a copy."

That besides a few brainstem cells and whatnot, there will be nothing of the material "you" left in the "you" ten years from now would seem to contradict your main premise. Only the continuity of the relationships between parts, and the sociological connection (narrative) between those two states, past and present, makes you the "same". How is that any different? "You" are only a copy of what you were yesterday, with a few explained diachronic changes.




Loxos

James T

That it's impossible you mean :rolling:

UncleJim

You have made a requirement of the fact that such a device exists. The next requirement would be that it is safe to use.

James T

Safe to use depends on your definition of what is required for you (the original you) to continue to exist. wiploc's staying alive link (post #7) is a good exercise on the topic.

UncleJim

Assuming we are talking about living human beings then this sets the standard of what is required for it to be safe to use.

James T

A living being walks in to a machine, a living being walks out with continuity of experience and memory and in every respect claims to be the original person. Safe!

Yet I would be reluctant to use it. My reasoning, if it has the ability to transmit then the transmission could be received by two receivers. Therefore two of you could arrive at the destination, both with absolutely identical confidence that they were the original with continuity of memory and experience (one would not remember the transmission of course but memory would hide this jump). How does one discriminate between the two? Oh but which was the official receiver ... we eliminate the other one arbitrarily calling it a copy.

Cius

I have a condition for my use:

The law must establish proper ways to handle Priority Identity Status. This is due primarily to the problem outlined by Kale Tainer's and James T's posts. I think it must be required that a "destination" is set prior to the plankscan, and no matter what may happen (evil twin recievers etc) if it is the case that there are two of "you" out the other end, the one at the "destination" retains priority identity rights.

Or, in the event of a non-destructive scanning process, you give the technician at the destination an axe and have him off the "copy" in a bloody mess. Question is, would this be ethical?

Juma

Yes, thats was so intriguing with the teleportation example! Will you, knowing this, use the teleportation machine? For me its obvious that the experience of the first body end with the disintegration and a new completely detached experience start with the new body. If I enter such a teleporting device then I will seize to exist. Another body that is very similar to mine will appear somewhere else and will have my memories but it wont be the continuation of me, only something that is similar to me.

Do you mean that this is only a illusion and that it really is me that continues living?

Think of the possibility that there are two copies in each teleportation. Do you believe that you would experience both of these selfs then? I dont. For me its seems to be a bizarre thought. I think you would experience nothing.

Something that makes the two cases (teleportation versus normal cell change) very different is that teleportation is a very abrupt change, maybe even including a time gap whereas normal cell change is an overlapping slow change, a change that is very slow when compared to the time scales of the mind. But I'm too tired to try to show how this could support my belief, if it ever could.