# Teleportation would destroy the world. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 27, 2013, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285 "2013-08-27T08:53:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/201 "2013-09-02T17:36:56Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Yeah, but _no one in the entire universe_ can tell the difference, except for the (unfortunately deceased) Capt. Kirk. > > If you did this to me, everyone - my wife, my friends, my cat, God - would say the doppelganger is still me, _except me._ > > How come I get to be right, and the entire universe is wrong? What makes me so damned special? > > Not a rhetorical question. I’m actually wondering. Because reality is not a popularity contest. If you build a computer that passes the Turing test, that convinces a hundred million people that it’s a real human being, that still doesn’t mean it’s a real human being. A real _person_, perhaps, but not a _Homo sapiens sapiens_. And God _would_ have incontrovertible proof that he wasn’t you - because your soul would be with God, and not in the doppelganger’s body. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/202 "2013-09-02T17:42:42Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Because reality is not a popularity contest. If you build a computer that passes the Turing test, that convinces a hundred million people that it’s a real human being, that still doesn’t mean it’s a real human being. A real _person_, perhaps, but not a _Homo sapiens sapiens_. > > And God _would_ have incontrovertible proof that he wasn’t you - because your soul would be with God, and not in the doppelganger’s body. Yes, particularly where consciousness is concerned. If you jab me with a pin, I experience pain. Yet the entire rest of the universe does not. And it’s hard to see how there could ever be a third-person, objective description of this experience. So it’s not a question of arrogance, it’s the whole nature of the phenomenon we’re discussing. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/203 "2013-09-02T18:04:58Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I don’t think this can be correct - in order for us to be aware of something, it has to have happened. Or to put it another way, (and maybe someone will correct me on this) I don’t think there is any process in the universe where effect is exactly simultaneous with cause. I don’t think there can be. Well, there will, of course be a latency period for the signals to hit and engage the cortical neurons, but that’s about as real-time as we can expect in this universe. It’s still different from referencing something that has been perceived by a brain in real time (including latency), then imprinted in storage. It does not, IMO, change the premise. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/204 "2013-09-02T18:07:14Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > And God _would_ have incontrovertible proof that he wasn’t you - because your soul would be with God, and not in the doppelganger’s body. Or God makes a new soul for the copy, which is identical to the old one. Or God splits the soul in half, then magically makes the halves whole, like the trick with the loaves and fishes. Or the soul remains half the metaphysical size, and gradually grows to its full extent (whatever that is) over time. Or God picks one at random to get the original soul, an makes the other one earn a new one by good deeds. Or both the copy and the original forfeit their soul because of excessive hubris. Or there is no such thing as a soul. And so on. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/205 "2013-09-02T19:08:56Z")
> [@Tibby or Not Tibby](#): > > Well, there will, of course be a latency period for the signals to hit and engage the cortical neurons, but that’s about as real-time as we can expect in this universe. It’s still different from referencing something that has been perceived by a brain in real time (including latency), then imprinted in storage. It does not, IMO, change the premise. I reckon it does - because it places all experiences/observations/etc in the past - no matter how minutely. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/206 "2013-09-02T19:31:47Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I reckon it does - because it places all experiences/observations/etc in the past - no matter how minutely. To expand on this: what should be considered “real-time” for a conscious mind, with regard to cause and effect? Should it be the exact instant of “cause”; the instant of particle/wave hitting the sense receptor; or the chemo-electric signal reaching the neuron? I believe it is the latter. It certainly can’t be the instant of “cause”. Imagine a cosmologist (or even an enthusiastic cosmetologist ;)) with angina looking through a telescope. All of a sudden, _Bam!_, he witnesses a star go supernova and the stress of that vision causes him to have a heart attack and die. It can be argued that the “cause” of his heart attack was the super nova, but that occurred, say, 100 million light-years away. If we consider real time for the dead guy’s mind to be the instant of “cause”, then he would have died ~100 million years before he was born. What really was the cause of this guy’s heart attack, the supernova, or the chemo-electric signal of his optic nerve hitting his cortex? So, it takes 100 million years for the photons to reach the guy’s eyeball, and then a few more m/s for the action potential to reach the guy’s cortical neuron. That is the point of “real-time” for that particular biological brain. A technological brain may have a slightly different point of “real-time” (e.g. 100 million year for the photons to hit the video monitor, and then a few m/s for the electrical current to hit the hard drive. Conclusion: “real time” for a mind should be calibrated to the exact instant the signal hits the cortical neurons, the hard drive…or whatever; not the instant of “cause.” ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/207 "2013-09-02T19:34:07Z")
I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘real time’, no matter how short the interval. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/208 "2013-09-02T19:54:10Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘real time’, no matter how short the interval. Is it a matter of semantics? I agree, there is no universal “time.” How about simply, “in the present” or “in the here and now”, or simply “live”? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/209 "2013-09-02T20:34:42Z")
> [@Tibby or Not Tibby](#): > > Is it a matter of semantics? I agree, there is no universal “time.” How about simply, “in the present” or “in the here and now”, or simply “live”? Your argument appears to hinge upon there being a fundamental difference between what we call the present moment and what we call the past. In terms of our perception and the cause/effect function of our biology, I do not believe there is any such fundamental distinction - all of the things we experience are in the past - only differing by degree. ---
**Author:** ![Crackrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/919ad9/32.png) [@Crackrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crackrat)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/210 "2013-09-02T20:35:19Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > You are not telling Captain Kirk he is dead, you are telling a deliberately manufactured doppelganger of Captain Kirk that Captain Kirk is dead. You’re telling someone who thinks he’s Captain Kirk, who has always known himself as Captain Kirk, who remembers reprogramming the Kobyiashi Maru, that Captain Kirk is dead. And that he’s just an impressive duplication. ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/211 "2013-09-02T20:40:44Z")
The problem with the thesis that Captain Kirk dies nearly every episode of ST:TOS is that he usually wears a yellow shirt, not a red one. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/212 "2013-09-02T20:51:31Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > If you jab me with a pin, I experience pain. Yet the entire rest of the universe does not. > And it’s hard to see how there could ever be a third-person, objective description of this experience. > > So it’s not a question of arrogance, it’s the whole nature of the phenomenon we’re discussing. But if you jab me with a pin, then send me through the teleporter real quick, my duplicate would be the one jumping up and down, rubbing his butt, yelling “that hurt”! If someone else has my subjective experience of being me, how is this different from my experience of being me? Or is the subjective me-ness different from other subjective experiences? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/213 "2013-09-02T21:21:08Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > This is an argument from ignorance: it is the equivalent of claiming a hoax is only a hoax after someone sees through it. If you’re going to base your opinion on someone’s subjective observation, there is only one that matters: the man who was disintegrated. Not his doppelganger’s, his. No, it’s a classic burden-of-proof problem. You’re making a distinct claim. Okay, back it up. All you have ever offered here are your heart-felt assertions, delivered with gusto – molto furioso – and not a single actual testable proposition. > [@](#): > > To put it another way, imagine that your boss is an asshole who doesn’t care about his employees. One day, you are hit by a train and killed. But that’s okay, your boss was able to find someone with the same skill set to replace you. Does that mean that you and your replacement are the same person, just because the subjective opinion of an outsider says you’re interchangeable? If the replacement has all of my memories, including my childhood memories, and the personal memories that only my very closest friends know about, and has all of my skills, not just the job skills, but my exact writing habits, my personal physical traits, my tendency to exhale loudly before going down stairs, and all other physical qualities that I have, then, yeah, he’s me. If he’s some jasper they picked up from Tawdry’s Temps, then not so much. > [@](#): > > You are not telling Captain Kirk he is dead, you are telling a deliberately manufactured doppelganger of Captain Kirk that Captain Kirk is dead. So you say. Demonstrate why. What, specifically, is missing from the Kirk duplicate? We’ve already established he has the same memories, and, indeed, the same consciousness of self. What’s missing? Your imprimatur? He can get by without that. Talk science, not magic. ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/214 "2013-09-02T21:32:57Z")
I have to agree with **Trinopus** here: either someone’s identity/personhood is a definable in objective terms, in which case (even if we admit that objective definition may be beyond us) we can still fairly strongly argue that it is carried over into the teleported Captain Kirk because objectively (i.e. by any test we may choose to perform) is the same person as the original Captain Kirk; unless that identity is somehow dependent on continuity of location. Or it isn’t an objective thing, in which case it is a matter of opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/215 "2013-09-02T21:36:32Z")
> [@Tibby or Not Tibby](#): > > Ask a schizophrenic if he believes he’s Napoleon and he may answer yes, but that doesn’t make him right. Schizophrenia is easily diagnosed. The person coming out of a transporter is, by the terms of the thought experiment (and the tv show) not diagnosed with schizophrenia. Your argument is circular: you’re beginning with the assumption that the person who comes out isn’t “really” Captain Kirk, and then declaring that he must be schizophrenic because he believes he is. But if you’re wrong, and the guy who comes out is Captain Kirk, then there’s no schizophrenia involved at all. So: show me the other symptoms? > [@](#): > > You asked the wrong question and the wrong guy. Ask Captain Kirk if he was alive before he was transported and he will still say yes, but he too would be wrong. He didn’t exist before transportation, he’s simply referencing someone else’s memories. As with your confrere, you are making this as an assertion, but providing no evidence for it. The guy has Captain Kirk’s memories. You say “someone else’s.” I say “his.” Okay: show me an evidence-based reason that you’re right and I’m not. > [@](#): > > [Hammy Kirk Voice] _“it…was…horrible…nothing but a dark…abyss. Scotty…don’t beam me…anywhere…from now on…just…drive us away…slowly.”_ [/Hammy Kirk Voice] That would be interesting evidence. Do you claim, then, that the transporter must necessarily involve a period of awareness of the breakdown of bodily and mental integrity? The conventional depiction involves, instead, a period of stasis, during which there is no consciousness of time. (Okay, yes, this is actually violated in one Star Trek episode…) > [@](#): > > Many of you are still confusing memories with self awareness (SA). They work together, but they are separate entities that can be handled separately. . . . I have never conflated the two. I know the difference. As you note, they work together. I agree that they are distinct phenomena, and I have not made any argument, ever, that depends on swapping or bridging or confusing the two. Show me where I have. > [@](#): > > Discussion of original vs. non-original is a red-herring. . . . Then please stop making positive declarative assertions that the transportee is “not original.” Everything I’ve written here has been nothing more than to question your certainty that the matter is definitional. It’s your red herring! > [@](#): > > Things we agree on (I think) when comparing A and B (2 conscious beings with identical particle arrangements): A and B are both valid individuals who believe they came from the same person because they are referencing the same memories; A and B are indistinguishable to all outside observers; A and B look at each other and know that they are not the same person. A and B are constructed of two sets of particles that do not occupy the same space. . . . Pretty much, yeah. Slight disagreement with the phrase “not the same person,” because some of us are arguing that the word “same” needs to be re-defined in a world with transporters. Both men may look at each other and say, “I am not standing where he is standing,” but they may also both admit, “He is Captain Kirk exactly as much as I am.” > [@](#): > > No matter what method of replication you choose, each replicate’s consciousness has resided on different sets of particles separated in space, and they always have. . . . So…you aren’t the same person you were ten seconds ago, because billions of the atoms that make up the neurons which generate your consciousness are different than they were. The phosphorus, calcium, etc., now, are different. That means you aren’t really you, but are dead, and your heirs get to divide up your stuff. Not! ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/216 "2013-09-02T21:43:02Z")
The only difference is his location; one is in the original location, the other is somewhere else. That is why the writer Robert Bloch placed Kirk [on a spinning table](http://www.orionsarm.com/im_store/kirkspin.png) when he was duplicated in the episode _What are Little Girls Made of_. If no-one who was watching could tell which was which, how could the participants hope to know the difference? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/217 "2013-09-02T22:20:38Z")
> [@Tibby or Not Tibby](#): > > So if a critical mass and arrangement of matter persists over time, should not that which emerges from it persist, too? No, I think it probably doesn’t - any more than the light emerging from bulb is persistent while the switch is on. It has the superficial appearance of persistence, but in fact, it’s never the same light twice. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/218 "2013-09-02T23:12:21Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I don’t think this can be correct - in order for us to be aware of something, it has to have happened. Or to put it another way, (and maybe someone will correct me on this) I don’t think there is any process in the universe where effect is exactly simultaneous with cause. I don’t think there can be. > [@Mangetout](#): > > I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘real time’, no matter how short the interval. I think you’re right… But it doesn’t really matter at the level of reality explored in this thread. We can stipulate, without losing anything, that consciousness and self-awareness are “present” phenomena, things that are happening “now.” In the deeper levels of quantum physics, this can matter. And, indeed, in neurology is starts to kick in, because consciousness is a thing that takes time to generate! The brain doesn’t just instantly create your self-awareness. It seems to take about half a second in actual time. (Among other things, this means our consciousness is always about half-a-second in the past. Your autonomic nerve cells can react faster than your consciousness can become aware of it. This is why, for instance, the standard hammer-to-the-knee reflex test always feels kind of surprising. Your knee has jerked before you have any consciousness of it.) (Obvious joke about knee-jerking in philosophic treatises alluded to here.) > [@eburacum45](#): > > The only difference is his location; one is in the original location, the other is somewhere else. That is why the writer Robert Bloch placed Kirk [on a spinning table](http://www.orionsarm.com/im_store/kirkspin.png) when he was duplicated in the episode _What are Little Girls Made of_. If no-one who was watching could tell which was which, how could the participants hope to know the difference? And the true brilliance of that scene was Kirk’s conscious manipulation of himself to introduce a bias into the duplicate that didn’t represent his “real” viewpoint. Thus, the duplicate failed an actual concrete test. People who knew Kirk knew that he would never actually use the phrase “half-breed” when talking about Spock. It wasn’t a good copy; a test could serve – and did! – to distinguish the flawed duplicate from the original. (The double brilliance of it is Kirk’s knowledge of those ugly emotions in his psychological make-up. Even a good man has some nasty shit floating around in his mind. Kirk knew the concept of “half-breed” and could never fully eliminate it from the deep sewers of his mind. But he made intelligent use of it – even if Spock, at the end, chided him gently for it.) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2013, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/219 "2013-09-03T02:07:09Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > But if you jab me with a pin, then send me through the teleporter real quick, my duplicate would be the one jumping up and down, rubbing his butt, yelling “that hurt”! > > If someone else has my subjective experience of being me, how is this different from my experience of being me? Or is the subjective me-ness different from other subjective experiences? First of all, I was replying to the point of what makes my viewpoint “special”. I was just saying that when it comes to consciousness, it is inherently selfish. With regards to this new point: the two entities are in the same physiological state, and that state induces the same conscious state. But so what? If we knew for sure that you and I experience exactly the same pain when jabbed with a pin, does that mean if we both got jabbed we had a single, shared experience? Or two experiences that happen to be qualitatively the same? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2013, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/220 "2013-09-03T05:29:52Z")
[Timely comic strip relevant to this thread.](http://news.yahoo.com/comics/wizard-of-id-slideshow/) (Strips of Sept. 2 and 3, 2013.) Be sure to do your calculations right, and use the right units of measure! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285.md?page=12)