Some people object to teleporting because it is less a mode of transport than a suicide machine.
I, however, am a totally pro-teleport! I'll discuss is with anyone who cares to. It's a given that its an impractical fantasy...
Star Trek Teleporting - for or against?
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8 days later
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@keithprosser
Some people object to teleporting because it is less a mode of transport than a suicide machine.I, however, am a totally pro-teleport! I'll discuss is with anyone who cares to. It's a given that its an impractical fantasy...
The most practical "teleportation" I've heard of involves sending a probe to a distant planet and then conducting a detailed brain-scan of the subject and then transmitting that brain-scan to the distant probe that assembles a robotic proxy (simulacrum) with a copy of the subject's mind. After the encounter/exploration the memories of the proxy robot (simulacrum) could be transmitted back and either viewed on a terminal, or directly uploaded to the subject's mind.
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@3RU7AL
Interesting, but I put this thread in the philosophy thread to avoid discussing practicalities!
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@keithprosser
Well if we agree that StarTrek style teleportation involves creating a copy and destroying the original, I'd be a lot more comfortable with just making duplicates and KEEPING the original.Interesting, but I put this thread in the philosophy thread to avoid discussing practicalities!
I'd be somewhat averse to submitting to the process myself, but if it was commonplace and malfunctions were extremely rare, I guess it would probably seem like no big deal.
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@3RU7AL
I wonder why they would need to be dismantled and rebuilt. Are they somehow conserving irreplaceable elements of Captain Kirk that aren't generally reducible? Are you conscious during teleportation?
Oh no, no no nope.
I'll take the shuttle with Bones.
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@Snoopy
We can suppose you are conscious - presumably what it would feel like is that one's consciousness fades out, like falling asleep or dying.
To make a case against teleporting, imagine a short-range teleport, just from one side of a small room to the other.
As the process starts you feel a strange, but not unpleasant tingle. A moment later, across the room you see the first glimmerings of what will be your teleported self. A few more seconds in and it looks almost solid to you, while you own body seems almost ghost like...
And then you realise that you are about to die, reduced to nothingness only to be replaced by a body you can see being constructed in front of your eyes. In the last half-second of your existence you try to scream to the teleport operator to stop but your body has dissipated too far. The last thing you are conscious of is the new body stepping off the platform and saying 'Well, that went very well.'
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@Snoopy
I wonder why they would need to be dismantled and rebuilt
I believe the hypothesis is that in order to retrieve maximal information about the subject, you must destroy it.
Maximal information insures the copy will have the fewest possible errors.
The only plot-hole with this teleporter hypothesis is that the "transporter buffer" can create multiple perfect duplicates which have very obvious utility.
Why wouldn't you just make 100 Picards? Or even better 1000 Datas? Duplicating Data makes way more sense than duplicating Riker.
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@3RU7AL
I'm sure they left the details of the process unstated to avoid blocking potential story ideas.
Right now I'm interested in a widespread criticism of teleporting in principle, such as this one:
My post above is a brief introducution.
23 days later
I think teleporters would be a good thing, even more so as slicing up the originals provides a renewable cruelty free food source... Oh I mean the originals go to a farm, where they get to run and play...
It raises the question of if there is somehow, for a lack of a better term, "a spirit"?
I mean, if you re-create someone with all the memories, genes, neuro-connections as another, but both exist I can't imagine the self controlling both "people". It seems like a logical impossibility, and in order for it to make sense, we have to consider that the feeling of life and control of such bodies are from two different "people" or "spirits". What makes you, you? What makes the self oneself? If I suddenly were made up of every piece of matter you are, would you control both of us? If the answer is no, it leads to a conclusion that there's something more to us than simply matter. If that's the case, then yeah, teleporting would essentially mean killing the self and creating someone else with your body, memories, and previous neuroconnections.
If you've ever dissociated, you feel like you've lost connection with your body. But it doesn't make complete sense, because you still have a sense of self it's just that self is not present in that body. So what is the self? I'm also assuming you've dissociated before and to this degree. According to psychiatrists, I have some dissociative disorder myself, so this is a semi-normal occurrence for me.