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Stupid teleportation topic.

Dylab

Critical Thinker
D
Joined
Nov 28, 2002
Messages
313
I'm sure most of you are familiar with the issue. You have the ability to teleport to any location you want with out any danger. The problem is that the teleportation actually just destroys you and creates a replica at another location. Do you enjoy your great new life teleporting anywhere you want to go or do you let dopey philosophical concerns ruin your life?
 
Dylab said:
I'm sure most of you are familiar with the issue. You have the ability to teleport to any location you want with out any danger. The problem is that the teleportation actually just destroys you and creates a replica at another location. Do you enjoy your great new life teleporting anywhere you want to go or do you let dopey philosophical concerns ruin your life?
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Huh what?

I can't teleport. So i have no knowledge of the dangers involved.. or lack of same.. :/
 
I dunno. If you have an identical twin and he dies, do you become your twin?

If the identical twin survives while you die, do you become your twin?

And if that twin is instantaneously manufactured on the spot, and he survives while you die, why should the result be any different from the last one?

And if you are an instantaneously manufactured p-zombie who shows up on the spot because some random dinosaur cloned Philip K. Dick in your coffee maker and plugged him into the superstring manipulator thingy you had lying around the house...

But, at this point, nobody's going to know the difference, nobody is going to care that you're a p-zombie. And hey, you won't know any different either! Problem solved! Go back to your houses, robots. All of you. Go download your heads into some more copies or something.

...

Shut up, Rucker! I know what you want me to do!

And if Iacchus should try to interject with his solipsism, where he thinks he's everybody, kill me now and send my p-zombie to unplug his internet. You solve two problems at once that way.
 
Dylab said:
I'm sure most of you are familiar with the issue. You have the ability to teleport to any location you want with out any danger. The problem is that the teleportation actually just destroys you and creates a replica at another location. Do you enjoy your great new life teleporting anywhere you want to go or do you let dopey philosophical concerns ruin your life?
Click to expand...

You notice how he emotionally loads his question? It's clear he's in the suicide camp, isn't it?;)

We went through this, Dylab. I'm sure somebody can find you the relevant threads. Until someone can prove to me that my continual, dynamic awareness-of-self, from point of origin continuous, can spontaneously transfer across spacetime from one set of matter to another instantly, I'll remain in the 'scramble someone else's atoms' camp.
 
zaayrdragon said:
We went through this, Dylab. I'm sure somebody can find you the relevant threads. Until someone can prove to me that my continual, dynamic awareness-of-self, from point of origin continuous, can spontaneously transfer across spacetime from one set of matter to another instantly, I'll remain in the 'scramble someone else's atoms' camp.
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So you don't fly in airplanes or very fast trains? As everyone knows, the soul cannot travel faster than 50.78 mph. Go any faster than that, and you've got lag.

(edited to correct minor typo)
 
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Melendwyr said:
So you don't fly in airplanes or very fast trains? As every knows, the soul cannot travel faster than 50.78 mph. Go any faster than that, and you've got lag.
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:dl:

That's funny! Where did you get that one from? Or did you make that one up? I'm going to use that.
 
zaayrdragon said:
That's funny! Where did you get that one from? Or did you make that one up? I'm going to use that.
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Made it up. Possibly other people have thought of it as well, but AFAIK it's all mine.

While I would worry about the accuracy of a teleportation machine in practice, in theory I would have no objections to being teleported. Even if human consciousness were somehow affected by things other than the arrangement of known subatomic particles, we'd just have to make a machine that could teleport all of the material properties. "Souls" in the traditional sense simply don't make any sense - and there's really no reason at all to think that consciousness is linked to structures that cannot (in practice) be copied. We're too resilient for that.
 
Yes, but the real question here isn't 'can consciousness be copied' but 'is a copy the exact same as the original in all aspects'? Would the continual and dynamic awareness from the point of origin continuous still continue into the duplicate, in such a way that the awareness (original) didn't simply cease?

I look at it like this: if I copy a program on my computer, I'm making a duplicate somewhere else. Then, I have two copies of the same thing. Naturally, I could delete the other copy with no ill effect for anyone or anything - but suppose the duplicate were flawed, and I didn't know it (this happens, you know) - or suppose that these programs had self-awareness. Now, whether I duplicated the program or not, whether it was a perfect copy or not, would have no effect whatsoever on the original. As long as I didn't delete the original, it would still have life and limb and whatever else it has. But if I delete the original, the duplicate doesn't suddenly become the original; the 'self' isn't magically transferred, only copied.

If I 'move' a file on my computer, all I'm doing is copy and delete, really. Same problem.

But if I move a person, I'm not copying a deleting.

....

OK, I'm rambling. Sorry.
 
Its like faxing a document and then destroying the original. Didn't we have this discussion with Ian oh so many month's ago?
 
Why not let the trolls decide?

[iacchus]But you ARE the copy. You are everybody. Because durka durka durka unrelated incomplete metaphor.[/iacchus]

[kilik]The Atlanteans did it all the time, and they came out okay. Graham Hancock has proof! Have some pictures of chinese characters and magic cards! Don't they just scream related?[/kilik]

[1inChrist]If you teleport you will burn in the Hellfire! [/1inChrist]

[iamme]I can pick my nose with quantum flapdoodle because I'm 4 dimensional.[/iamme]

[the alchemist]NEVER the sufficient vindication of TELEPORTS it out to support African Americans the MULTIPLEX of various IMMORTALITY construes the butter of ethiops goes round ABOVE my hands are gargantual[/the alchemist]
 
zaayrdragon said:
Yes, but the real question here isn't 'can consciousness be copied' but 'is a copy the exact same as the original in all aspects'?
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In all respects? Of course not.

Neither is the 'you' of now, compared to the 'you' of half a second ago. Does that mean that your consciousness should be regarded as being continually created and destroyed, and that there really is no 'you'?
 
Melendwyr said:
In all respects? Of course not.

Neither is the 'you' of now, compared to the 'you' of half a second ago. Does that mean that your consciousness should be regarded as being continually created and destroyed, and that there really is no 'you'?
Click to expand...

But is the duplicate connected in a continual and dynamic fashion?

Apparently not.
 
Well, I've always considered this a proxy problem. The real problem is defining self. Once that's done this question becomes much easier.
 
c4ts said:
Why not let the trolls decide?

[iacchus]But you ARE the copy. You are everybody. Because durka durka durka unrelated incomplete metaphor.[/iacchus]

[kilik]The Atlanteans did it all the time, and they came out okay. Graham Hancock has proof! Have some pictures of chinese characters and magic cards! Don't they just scream related?[/kilik]

[1inChrist]If you teleport you will burn in the Hellfire! [/1inChrist]

[iamme]I can pick my nose with quantum flapdoodle because I'm 4 dimensional.[/iamme]

[the alchemist]NEVER the sufficient vindication of TELEPORTS it out to support African Americans the MULTIPLEX of various IMMORTALITY construes the butter of ethiops goes round ABOVE my hands are gargantual[/the alchemist]
Click to expand...

Where do I send the bill for a new keyboard?
 
Been discussed before in a very memorable thread, the title of which I've now inadvertently forgotten (wouldn't make any difference if I remembered as it was irretrievably lost in one of the purges).

I do remember that the thread ran at least 10 pages and that the crowning moment was when Win (a non-materialist, BTW) finally convinced BillyJoe (a materialist, yet ardently against using the teleporter) that he could use the teleporter without loss of self. Man, those were good times.... :)

Win's argument ran along the lines of comparing a person cryogenically suspended, physically transported to its end destination and thawed, to a person stepping into a transporter and momentarily being recreated at the destination. Yes, a lot of discussion had preceeded this. :)

I'm not sure I want to be engaged once again in this discussion. Suffice it to say that I would have no qualms using the teleporter.
 
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