Timeline for Can teleportation using the reassembly of atoms preserve consciousness and therefore identity?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 4 at 0:05 | comment | added | Zwuwdz | @JeremyFriesner a similar multiverse idea: if someone goes along and does build the clone/kill type teleportation device and it turns out that we live in a many-world universe with quantum immortality, it strikes me that a sign that one does live in such a universe would be the fact that such a teleporter seems to work for everybody except you... | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 18:11 | comment | added | Robbie Goodwin | Quite. Who wants a teleporter - of any given type - need only write well enough that the audience willing to suspend disbelief… not to strike it down. | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 6:21 | comment | added | Jeremy Friesner | I do like the idea of a "teleporter" that simply searches the entirety of the multiverse until it finds a parallel universe that is exactly the same as the one you're in, except that the objects on the Earth's surface have all been shifted exactly 1 mile west. You activate the device, it transports you to this alternate universe, leaving you to think you've been teleported 1 mile east. | |
| Dec 23, 2023 at 16:03 | comment | added | EvilSnack | Imagine beaming down with your landing party. You arrive and find that half an hour has passed and there are six dead copies of you scattered around the landing site. | |
| Dec 23, 2023 at 11:56 | comment | added | Slarty | @JBH LOL :o) Well yes I'm inclined to agree mostly. Assuming that teleportation is possible it presumably would result in two conscious entities (or souls) which should be identical. But as you say the story writer can make up what they want. All I would add is that the story teller generally needs to be consistency and add limitation on powers to make things interesting. | |
| Dec 22, 2023 at 23:51 | comment | added | JBH | @Slarty Amen brother! I belive there's a lot of post 1995 science that could rationalize teleportation. As for whether or not duplicates/murder/anything-else occurs to the body, that's more often than not a story issue. "There have always been ghosts in the machine. Random segments of code, that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul." That's one of the best "there's no science here so we're going to hand wave it" statements I've ever heard. | |
| Dec 22, 2023 at 23:05 | comment | added | JBH | @Ray Please read my last paragraph. I am NOT trying to scientifically express any idea about teleportation (which was the point of the entire soapbox section). In other words, you're absolutely correct and it's entirely irrelevant. | |
| Dec 22, 2023 at 22:45 | comment | added | Slarty | I think the whole idea of teleportation is impossible as the uncertainty principle would scramble some of the data (and there are obviously vast other issues). But if we want to consider teleportation as a brute fact that needs explaining, there is no point in looking at the ramshackle remains of the physics we use looking for that explanation. | |
| Dec 22, 2023 at 20:06 | vote | accept | user1181399 | ||
| Dec 22, 2023 at 18:52 | comment | added | Ray | "$e=mc^2$ Accelerate the human body to the speed of light and it becomes pure energy" That's not what that equation means. $m_{rel} \; c^2 = m_0 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)$ is the energy possessed by the mass. When we take the Taylor expansion, we end up with $m_0 c^2 + m_0 v^2/2 + 3m_0 v^4 / 8c^2 + ...$. Since $m_0 c^2$ is the only term that's nonzero at v=0, that's the "rest mass energy". The rest is the kinetic energy (and is basically just $m_0 v^2/2$ when $v << c$). We don't "become pure energy" when moving near the speed of light any more than we do when driving a car at 40 kph. | |
| Dec 22, 2023 at 4:19 | history | answered | JBH | CC BY-SA 4.0 |