# 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:** 2
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/21 "2013-08-27T15:40:09Z")
As far as housing goes, I could see a scenario where cheap teleportation results in most of the Earth’s surface being treated like a national park. Concentrate all the housing in the world in one small area, maybe underground, and everyone teleports to whatever part of the world they want to spend the day in. Depending on how the teleport tech works, you could have windows that act as permanent teleportals, so while your living room is at the bottom of an abandoned salt mine, your windows look out on a Hawaiian beach. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/22 "2013-08-27T15:54:46Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > When has an invention that makes life easier ever harmed society? Probably every single time, in one way or another. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/23 "2013-08-27T16:02:45Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Probably every single time, in one way or another. I was just thinking how great it must have been to eat spoiled food, until lousy refrigeration was invented and popularized. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/24 "2013-08-27T16:06:49Z")
Of all the stuff in sci-fi, this is one of the least likely to actually happen, as it violates some pretty fundamental physics, at least, as usually invisioned (ucertainty principle being the first to come to mind). Warp drives are only slightly less practical, as I recall. The issues depend on the details, as mentioned above. The OP’s suggestions are valid if it’s immediately available everywhere and cheap. I doubt that’s the case. More likely, as mentioned above, it’d start out rare and expensive (not just to build, but also to operate – the energy costs alone would be astronomical). If it gets phased in over time, the shock to the economy is reduced. For an amusing case study in shocks to economy, read “Business as Usual, During Alterations” – where an alien race gives humanity (lots of) duplicators (which can’t be used on living things). Their goal is to find out whether humans are greedy and unstable (we accept the device, use it, and it destroys society) or wise (we reject it). Of course, the actual result is “none of the above.” If both ends need an expensive terminal, that reduces some of the impacts, because you couldn’t just “go anywhere”. In either case, it’d sure ruin a lot of beautiful remote places, but far more so if terminals aren’t required. It would especially ruin them for the folks who lived there before. But, that’s life, amid progress. > [@Grumman](#): > > The slurry system, the one **Lord Feldon** refers to, cannot ethically be used on humans. You could unmake your luggage and pick up exact duplicates at your destination, but you could not teleport there yourself - attempting to do so would simply kill you. It would then create a doppelganger at your intended destination, but that doesn’t make you any less dead. That depends on what your definition of “you” is, as discussed above. > [@Grumman](#): > > It _is_ cut and dried. Unless you have performed the necessary experiment to establish absolute proof that it maintains continuity of existence (and in Star Trek they have absolute proof that they _don’t_), using a slurry-based teleporter is an act of suicide. Continuity of consciousness is (IMHO) an illusion created by memory. You exchange most of the atoms in your body every 10 years or so. Clearly, it’s not your specific atoms that make you what you are. Every time you go unconscious, your continuity of consciousness is disrupted. Is the “you” that awakes the same “you”? Sure, by convention. With transporter technology, that convention no longer obviously holds. If you believe in a supernatural soul of some sort, well, I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how that works in teleportation. But if you believe (as I do) in the computational explanation for sentience (that our minds are nothing more than data processors with bodies to provide I/O and activity), then “you” is not so easy to define as your current collection of atoms. It’s a startling conclusion, I admit, but one that’s pretty much forced on me based on my confidence in the computational model. If I run a program partway on one machine, pause it, save the internal state, and then continue running it on another machine, is it not stil the same run of the same program? > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > You sure about that? Once an area becomes so overcrowded that people get uncomfortable moving there, people are going to start looking for less crowded areas. The market would self-correct. Sure, large numbers of people are going to move to Florida, but then all the people who think Florida is too crowded can move to the Outer Banks or somewhere else. Once the Outer Banks fill up, then you start filling up the Eastern Shore, then the Jersey Shore, etc. A lot of really nice places will suck, and the suckage would tend to get spread out more evenly. Of course, the places that would suck the most (most overcrowded) would be the most beautiful ones. Sigh. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/25 "2013-08-27T16:11:59Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Prices drop, drastically! When it happens immediately it is a form of deflation and it wreaks havoc on an economy. > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > You sure about that? Yes! Just wait until my nephew builds this thing. Then you’ll see. You will all see! And you won’t be able to say I didn’t warn you! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/26 "2013-08-27T16:12:41Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > As far as housing goes, I could see a scenario where cheap teleportation results in most of the Earth’s surface being treated like a national park. Concentrate all the housing in the world in one small area, maybe underground, and everyone teleports to whatever part of the world they want to spend the day in. Depending on how the teleport tech works, you could have windows that act as permanent teleportals, so while your living room is at the bottom of an abandoned salt mine, your windows look out on a Hawaiian beach. There’s a sci-fi story based on this, except that people have more or less forgotten about the outside: they just teleport everywhere, and think of outside as being unsanitary and dangerous. Meanwhile, robots maintain the “topside”, but nobody really cares. Of course, Our Hero and His Girl discover the amazing outdoors. Or something like that – I forget the details, but it was amusing. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/27 "2013-08-27T16:14:36Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > When it happens immediately it is a form of deflation and it wreaks havoc on an economy. Change causes upset. Any sudden major shift in the economy would cause extreme distress. Many benefit, many suffer, and it’s not guaranteed to be a zero-sum game. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/28 "2013-08-27T16:15:40Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > When it happens immediately it is a form of deflation and it wreaks havoc on an economy. I’m no economist, but deflation is the result of the decline in value of the currency. The _effect_ is a drop in the price level, but that’s not the cause. Also, why would it happen immediately? Previous game-changing innovations, like the steam engine, train, truck, plane, or computer weren’t ubiquitous overnight, so there’s no reason to expect teleportors to be. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/29 "2013-08-27T16:27:51Z")
First, everyone go and read _Rogue Moon_ by Budrys. I don’t buy the housing crisis. Valuable property, which will get more valuable with teleportation, is going to be expensive. That limits overcrowding, since no one wants to pay $2 million for a house right next to its neighbors. ($1 million yes - plenty like that in the Bay Area.) Unless teleportation is so cheap you can teleport water and waste, you still need infrastructure, so there won’t be a lot of houses in the middle of nowhere. Assuming that people will still want to go outside, and walk, there will be plenty of call for living in cities. If teleportation is not so cheap that everyone can have one in their homes (which will need very secure locks!) you will want to live near teleportation centers - which will no doubt have lines at rush hour. And which can enforce security. The economy would be very different, but I don’t think it would crash. Instead of lots of little stores, chains could build very big stores with lots more merchandise to allow browsing before buying. Think of being to browse the shelves of Amazon. Today the web has made lots of stores which used to be local national (like used books stores with Web presences) - teleportation will allow service industries like restaurants to be national also. ---
**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:** [August 27, 2013, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/30 "2013-08-27T16:30:56Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > If I run a program partway on one machine, pause it, save the internal state, and then continue running it on another machine, is it not stil the same run of the same program? Yes and no. With computer programs, we _sometimes_ consider a saved state executed on another machine to be one and the same run. Other times we consider it to be a duplicate. Since it doesn’t really matter, we pick whatever description we’re more comfortable with. The human mind, even if it is just a program (and note that it’s a false dilemma to say we must pick either strong AI or souls), is somehow conscious and has subjective states. This makes it matter whether the teleporter duplicates or genuinely transports, because from my perspective I will either live or die. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/31 "2013-08-27T16:54:40Z")
I bet it will cost extra to check a bag. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/32 "2013-08-27T17:13:10Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > It _is_ cut and dried. Unless you have performed the necessary experiment to establish absolute proof that it maintains continuity of existence (and in Star Trek they have absolute proof that they _don’t_), using a slurry-based teleporter is an act of suicide. This comes up in every teleportation thread, and it always amazes me how many otherwise rational, non-religious folks are willing to argue for the existence of a soul in this one case. The arrangements of atoms in my body, coupled with the pattern of electrical activity in my nervous system is _me._ Duplicate it exactly, and the result is also _me._ You can play labeling games about what to call each of them, but as far as the me’s are concerned, we have equal claim. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/33 "2013-08-27T17:20:02Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > There’s a sci-fi story based on this, except that people have more or less forgotten about the outside: they just teleport everywhere, and think of outside as being unsanitary and dangerous. Meanwhile, robots maintain the “topside”, but nobody really cares. Of course, Our Hero and His Girl discover the amazing outdoors. Or something like that – I forget the details, but it was amusing. Doesn’t quite match your description, but in Isaac Asimov’s “It’s Such A Beautiful Day”, a young boy becomes reluctant to use the house’s teleport Door (capital D to distinguish it from doors that just lead to the other side of the doorframe) after it breaks down one day and he has to walk to school. His mother thinks he’s afraid it might break down when he’s halfway through; it turns out that, having seen the outdoors, he prefers walking. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/34 "2013-08-27T17:27:17Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > . . . Unless you have performed the necessary experiment to establish absolute proof that it maintains continuity of existence (and in Star Trek they have absolute proof that they _don’t_), using a slurry-based teleporter is an act of suicide. > [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Actually, Star Trek included both kinds of teleportation, but the “take 'em apart and put 'em back together” was the most common kind. . . . Does this mean that the episode with Barkley slow-teleporting in order to grab lost people mid-teleport isn’t really cannon? In one of the early episodes, Troi gets to say “For a moment, I thought I had teleported into that wall.” And she points to or looks at the wall. Data later gets to fire a phaser mid-transport. However “take apart” teleportation would actually work, the Trek universe treats it consistantly as a conscious through the whole thing experience, probably for the benefit of the audience. > [@Human\_Action](#): > > I was just thinking how great it must have been to eat spoiled food, until lousy refrigeration was invented and popularized. Think of all the butcher’s delivery boys that were put out of work once customers could rely on regular ice delivery to their ice boxes and thus could buy three or four days worth of meat at once. Refrigeration, in its turn, was resisted by the ice making/delivery industry. My grandfather worked in an ice factory in San Pedro, CA for a few years. I have two or three of the industry newsletters that he kept. The newsletter was called “Ice Picks” and each issue had several testimonials, many from doctors, about the superiority and generally better health benefits of ice cooling over refrigeration. There were articles comparing the “true costs” and articles decrying the drying effect of refrigeration on food, not to mention the way that forced air circulation mixed the flavors of foods. They may have just been benevolently sharing information, but I suspect they had an economic interest in being against it. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/35 "2013-08-27T17:29:53Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > You sure about that? Once an area becomes so overcrowded that people get uncomfortable moving there, people are going to start looking for less crowded areas. The market would self-correct. Sure, large numbers of people are going to move to Florida, but then all the people who think Florida is too crowded can move to the Outer Banks or somewhere else. Once the Outer Banks fill up, then you start filling up the Eastern Shore, then the Jersey Shore, etc. Even if you loved those places, why the necessity of living there? As long as I had heat and food, I could live in Antarctica and then teleport to Florida, the Outer Banks, etc. as much as I would like, from 6am to midnight on days when I don’t work. Businesses could also locate anywhere. The NY Stock Exchange could be in the middle of a deserted field. Workers could teleport from all across the world and be in competition with each other. Workers could also work at any other business in the world, so the new paradigm shift in wages and working conditions would change drastically. ---
**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:** [August 27, 2013, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/36 "2013-08-27T17:37:02Z")
> [@TimeWinder](#): > > This comes up in every teleportation thread, and it always amazes me how many otherwise rational, non-religious folks are willing to argue for the existence of a soul in this one case. > > The arrangements of atoms in my body, coupled with the pattern of electrical activity in my nervous system is _me._ Duplicate it exactly, and the result is also _me._ You can play labeling games about what to call each of them, but as far as the me’s are concerned, we have equal claim. Actually it’s not cut and dried in either direction, and it is definitely one that still taxes philosophers. If I have a coin that is identical to yours, do we say they are one and the same coin? No. We may be happy to swap them, but still this coin is this coin and that coin is that coin. Why should we make a special case of brains? Or, to put it another way; what if the transporter malfunctions and keeps the original alive? In this case we have two entities, and if we stick a pin in one entity, the other will not feel pain. So in what sense was the other entity _me_? If it’s just having the same memories, so what? ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/37 "2013-08-27T17:56:57Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > If I have a coin that is identical to yours, do we say they are one and the same coin? No. We may be happy to swap them, but still this coin is this coin and that coin is that coin. > Why should we make a special case of brains? Certainly after the duplication we’ll go on to be different people, but I’m talking about at the moment of duplication. Specifically, we’re NOT making a special case of brains: like your coins, either will do. Sure, they’ll diverge from that point, but they’re the same in that instant. And even after diverging, neither has a better claim to being the “real” me. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/38 "2013-08-27T17:59:00Z")
I wouldn’t be worried about the soul transferring per say but I would be worried that even though I am reconstituted atom-for-atom, the “spark of life” doesn’t transfer. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/39 "2013-08-27T18:13:27Z")
**pkbites** , the big assumptions you’re making are that teleportation will be unlimited in many ways- volume, time, energy use, locations, etc… You’d have to have some kind of addressing scheme and some kind of designated teleportation areas and gear just to avoid collisions and teleporting into things, and so you would be able to pick your target. The military wouldn’t just be able to teleport bombs willy-nilly; they’d need to either put a teleport homer somewhere by spycraft, or land a missile with one, and then do it. I imagine homes would have their driveways or garages designated as the bulk pad, and some room in the house as the personal one. You’d have to have an indoor and outdoor one; nobody wants 10 bags of cow manure for the garden teleporting inside their house, and nor does anyone want to have to drag a bunch of tree trimmings indoors to teleport it to the mulch company or landfill. Land values would certainly change; really desirable places like Hawaii and California would see a huge influx, and inhospitable places would see a outflow of people. But the market would take care of it to a degree; there’s limited places to live in Hawaii and California, so they would be super-expensive, and the really inhospitable places would be cheap, but I suspect the vast majority of places would be about the same. **jtgain** has a good point about not being tied to roads or rail or anything like that. We’d see sprawl kick into overdrive- small towns would become a LOT more attractive to a lot of people; anyone who ever thought that small town or country life looked good, except for actually living that far from their jobs or families could actually do it with teleportation. I’d imagine the Postal Service or something like it would manage the addressing scheme and any infrastructure. ---
**Author:** ![Crackrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/919ad9/32.png) [@Crackrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crackrat)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2013, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285/40 "2013-08-27T18:44:43Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Actually it’s not cut and dried in either direction, and it is definitely one that still taxes philosophers. > > If I have a coin that is identical to yours, do we say they are one and the same coin? No. We may be happy to swap them, but still this coin is this coin and that coin is that coin. > Why should we make a special case of brains? How closely have you ever examined two coins to see if they were identical? I’m betting you didn’t go any further than a magnifying glass, _ **maybe** _ a microscope. But nothing that would be anywhere close to the resolution required to make a teleporter work. I mean yeah, you can’t just hold up two brains and say, “They’re both human, so they’re identical.” I don’t know how much quantum mechanics you’re familiar with. I have more than the average person (I think), but I’m far, far from an expert. Without reading all of the posts in the sequence leading up to it, this may not make any sense at all, or even seem particularly relevant. From [http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity\_isnt\_in\_specific\_atoms/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/pm/identity_isnt_in_specific_atoms/) > [@](#): > > But the notion that you can equate your personal continuity, with the identity of any physically real constituent of your existence, is absolutely and utterly hopeless. > > You are not “the same you, because you are made of the same atoms”. You have zero overlap with the fundamental constituents of yourself from even one nanosecond ago. There is continuity of information, but not equality of parts. If you have a machine that can duplicate the joint quantum configuration of the particles in your brain and replicate them, then “you” wouldn’t experience any loss of continuation in your consciousness when you teleport. > [@Mijin](#): > > Or, to put it another way; what if the transporter malfunctions and keeps the original alive? In this case we have two entities, and if we stick a pin in one entity, the other will not feel pain. So in what sense was the other entity _me_? If it’s just having the same memories, so what? In what sense are you _you_? That you feel pain when a pin is stuck in the body your brain is wired to? Does that mean an anesthetic makes you somebody else? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teleportation-would-destroy-the-world/667285.md?page=3)