# Willing to be teleported as in Star Trek? I'm not. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 23, 2013, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544 "2013-09-23T21:19:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/241 "2013-09-27T22:45:12Z")
> [@Sterling\_Archer](#): > > So what if you had no friends and family, and you believe that your existence is a net negative for the rest of the world, would you end your life then? Can you imagine some other reason you might not want to, like you would like to keep having experiences? > > Good Lord, man! That’s crazy talk. > > No because your stream of consciousness is continuing to have experiences. If you define consciousness as existing in a single point of time, you’ve missed the point. Hence the word “stream”. > > It is the same from the perspective of the original you. In both cases, the original you’s brains are splattered against the wall. No I would not continue to exist if nobody cared whether or not I lived, and if I felt I was a net negative to the world, I’d kill myself. No, it’s not crazy talk. And I find the fact that you are calling my arguments crazy frankly insulting. Yes, because there is no such thing as a stream of consciousness. Time is but a series of moments. It is probably not continuous, and even if it is, we’ll never know it, so we might as well just treat it as discrete, because at a fundamental limit we are never going to be able to measure anything smaller. You’re correct that from the perspective of "the original me"POV, there is no difference between a teleporter and a bullet to the head. The difference of course is that in the case of the teleporter, I continue to exist elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Sterling\_Archer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Sterling\_Archer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterling_Archer)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/242 "2013-09-27T22:57:46Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Because that person doesn’t have my memories, he has a description of my behavior supplied by a third party. Again, my identity, who I am as a person, is a _fantastically_ complex pattern of ideas and memories. That’s not something that can be transmitted through normal human communication, or adequately duplicated by playacting. But what if it could be communicated? ---
**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:** [September 27, 2013, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/243 "2013-09-27T23:22:42Z")
> [@Sterling\_Archer](#): > > But what if it could be communicated? If you could perfectly record my memories, and download them into the head of another person? Assuming I have sole tenancy, that would be “me,” just as much as in the teleporter scenario. Not sure how well that would work if the original occupant is still in the premises, though. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/244 "2013-09-28T00:47:25Z")
> [@Sterling\_Archer](#): > > . . . This is where language fails us. He is you 2.0. . . . Agreed. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/245 "2013-09-28T00:49:26Z")
> [@Sterling\_Archer](#): > > . . . Are you OK with being disintegrated now? Your place in the universe is secure… held by a very talented actor. If this isn’t OK with you, explain why not. . . . Does the talented actor know the passwords to my online banking? Does he know my old college nickname? Does he know the twist ending I’m planning for my next story? Does he know where I buried my mother’s ashes? No. He isn’t even close to “me.” The guy who steps out of the transporter can answer “yes” to all of these. I’m sorry to be short, here, but you’re asking very foolish questions. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/246 "2013-09-28T00:54:47Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > If you could perfectly record my memories, and download them into the head of another person? Assuming I have sole tenancy, that would be “me,” just as much as in the teleporter scenario. . . . Jack Vance had an interesting take on this is one of his sci-fi stories: a person’s mind is scanned, and the thoughts and memories are impressed upon the brain of another body entirely. The guy walks around with the mind (in every respect) of another man. The TV series “The Prisoner” also had a (rather foolish) mind-swap episode (very much the “hip” thing in that era, from Star Trek to the Flintstones. When Kirk’s mind is in Dr. Janet Lester’s body…is it really “his” thoughts that “she” is thinking? I think that you and I would agree – with certain reservations – that the answer is yes. The four questions I just asked, above: does the person know those specific things, which only I, of all the humans on earth, know? If he does, he has a pretty damn solid claim to be me! ---
**Author:** ![aNewLeaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@aNewLeaf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aNewLeaf)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/247 "2013-09-28T01:00:00Z")
> [@](#): > > So how come you can’t take that pattern and a pile of matter and make one copy, then take that same pattern and more matter and make a second copy? Are you asserting that, by virtue of making one copy, you destroy the pattern? There’s no way to save that pattern information? Apparently that’s how Star Trek transporters work, they read out the info from the pattern buffer and don’t keep a copy. 60’s era computer memory did this (some forms of it) so that’s probably the basis of that facet of the procedure. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/248 "2013-09-28T02:26:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Sterling Archer** : > > Oh come now, surely when your body is decomposed and transmitted as DATA, and then rebuilt, the thought of duplication must occur as a possibility? The transporter isn’t moving you physically, one atom at a time. > > Of course it wouldn’t be an issue when you’re crossing the room, but then you’re never transformed into DATA in that scenario are you? I’m never transformed into data in any scenario. I am _always_ data. > [@](#): > > Quoth **Irishman** : > But wait a minute. You have the pattern - the full pattern to make a person, whatever that means. Quantum, field, “soul”, whatever. You also have the ability to construct that person with whatever matter is around, not the exact matter that you took the pattern from. So how come you can’t take that pattern and a pile of matter and make one copy, then take that same pattern and more matter and make a second copy? Are you asserting that, by virtue of making one copy, you destroy the pattern? There’s no way to save that pattern information? There is a way to save the pattern information: Don’t transfer it to another medium. The information is conserved: When the information enters the new body, it leaves the transporter. What you are asking for is like asking why you can’t pour the water into a glass from a pitcher, but leave it in the pitcher. The water leaves the pitcher, and the information leaves the transporter. It’s not just that the pitcher is designed to not retain the water after pouring it: That’s just the way things work. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/249 "2013-09-28T04:04:48Z")
And, who knows? Maybe the Star Trek transporter could be trivially converted into a people duplicator. Maybe the Federation simply banned that, because it leads to legal snafus. The Will/Thomas Ryker farrago could lead to regulation of that sort. Or, maybe, on the other hand, duplication can’t work except under the most extreme of unnatural circumstances, and cannot be repeated. Maybe the transporter necessarily erases the data when it reconstitutes the subject. Who the hell knows? This is one of the reasons the discussion is abstract and debatable. We can’t examine the matter scientifically. We’re stuck using the philosophical method, and that is altogether too much like going to the elves for advice. ---
**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 28, 2013, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/250 "2013-09-28T07:42:50Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m never transformed into data in any scenario. I am _always_ data. Easy enough to say, but what does that actually mean? If I have an entity over here 99.9% identical to you (and 0.1% identical to me), are you him? Am I him? If you should now die, does your subjective experience continue? > [@](#): > > The information is conserved: When the information enters the new body, it leaves the transporter. What you are asking for is like asking why you can’t pour the water into a glass from a pitcher, but leave it in the pitcher. The water leaves the pitcher, and the information leaves the transporter. It’s not just that the pitcher is designed to not retain the water after pouring it: That’s just the way things work. I don’t understand what you’re getting at with this. Information is not consumed in this way. ---
**Author:** ![markroth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@markroth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markroth)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/251 "2013-09-28T08:11:47Z")
If someone built a machine that opened up a wormhole between Point A and Point B so that I can look between the two distance points and then step through, I would happily step in… If someone managed to find a way to make every particle of simultaneously make quantum leaps from Point A to Point B, I would consider using it. But if someone told me they want to break me down piece by piece by piece, UPS my atoms to somewhere else and then rebuild me, I would say no thank you the firs time and be distinctly less polite the second. There is one clear and simple world for being chopped up into teeny tiny bits and that word is death. Disassembling a person kills that person even if there is a 100% chance of putting him back together. You may believe differently, but you have no right to make that decision for me. On the same level, I think I would have problems with a Stargate style stargate that smooshes your atoms down to size to fit through the tiny wormhole. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/252 "2013-09-28T08:59:54Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > And, who knows? Maybe the Star Trek transporter could be trivially converted into a people duplicator. This was the basic premise of _The Price of the Phoenix_, where an adversary first produced transporter-based technology to reproduce someone when they were killed and then went the extra step by duplicating them while they were still alive. Legal snafus weren’t the half of it, especially when the person being duplicated was [spoiler]Kirk, supposed to have been killed trying to rescue someone from a house fire, except that not only did nobody die except an incomplete duplicate, but the resurrected Kirk being offered back to Spock for a price was himself a duplicate, and the villain was planning to keep the original Kirk around for his own ends. And then in the sequel some more ramifications popped up: a chimera that was Spock’s body (duplicated) carrying the villain’s consciousness, and some other duplicates each aware of the existence of the other and seeing them as a threat. The ending of the book is [/spoiler]not what you’d expect. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/253 "2013-09-28T12:14:34Z")
The big problem is that there’s no way to test it. There’s no way to tell via experiment whether the teleported duplicate has had a continuous consciousness to the original. Sure, you can come up with reasons why it should be, but you have no experimental proof. The only person who would know is the person going through the teleporter. The one test we can do is in keeping the original copy around, and seeing if that original had a transfer of consciousness. But, the thing is, I’m pretty sure we all agree that that answer would be no. And if all it takes is a finite amount of time between copy and deletion to make the duplicate a separate person, why would I assume an instantaneous copy and delete would produce the same person? Even if you disagree, the scenario is at least possible, and, as long as it is possible and untestable, we can never do it ethically. BTW, I still do wonder if the people who think the duplicate would still be the same person experience consciousness differently, as they constantly talk about the whole thing from an external perspective, as if the external reality is the same as the internal reality. That, for me, is what makes being consciousness unique. I am actually able to have a world in my head that doesn’t correspond to the outside world. Just because the duplicate appears to the outside world to be me doesn’t mean it actually is me in my internal experience. It seems to me that, for the purpose of your opinion, you are having to pretend you aren’t conscious, that you do not have a sense of self. I also wonder why people never seem to notice the difference between the gradual change we go through as humans over time and the sudden change that would be required in a teleporter or brain transfer machine. Why do you assume that what holds for a gradual process holds for an instantaneous one? And, again, how do you plan on proving it? No ethical scientist is going to create a machine that might be killing people. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/254 "2013-09-28T12:31:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m never transformed into data in any scenario. I am _always_ data. Okay, so you can consider matter a form of data, treating the universe as some sort of computer simulation. But it’s not the same type of data as is being transferred, by definition. Because if we were just sending the matter over, that would just be simple movement, and said movement would be restricted to the physical laws of space and matter. It couldn’t go through walls, couldn’t be accelerated beyond its tolerance, etc. What you seem to be talking about is more like a wormhole, which is a completely different idea. You seem to be thinking that the transported object remains matter the entire time, maintaining all its same properties, save for its location in space. Somehow the matter is moved from one location to another without going through the intervening space. And while this is an interesting way to make the transporter work in Star Trek (and one I’ve tried to fanwank myself), it is definitely not what we are told of shown on screen. And this thread is about teleportation “as in Star Trek,” not some completely different type of transport that I admit would actually preserve continuous consciousness, since no conversion was ever made. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/255 "2013-09-28T12:46:51Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Call it “inherent sense of self”, or “consciousness”, or “identity”, or whatever, instead of “soul”, if you like, but the argument is the same. The pro-transporter people are just as much arguing for the existence of a soul, something that somehow maintains continuity between two different entities. Well, except for you, who are, as I pointed out, arguing something completely different, something that most people would not define as teleportation, and is definitely not the form shown in Star Trek. The problem with your interpretation is that, while we have computers and scanners and can hypothesize measuring and then duplicating ourselves, we have no way to even begin with your idea. There just is no concept of being able to just change your location parameter. Like I said, the closest concept we have is the wormhole–and the gravimetric forces in those are not suitable for sending any coherent matter, let along living, conscious beings. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/256 "2013-09-28T13:03:44Z")
The Culture universe by Iain Banks had a teleportation style method of travel called displacement. Basically the person or object was enfolded in a sphere of space/time and moved whole and bodily to a new location wrapped within it. Just as much sci-fi goobledegook as teleportation in Star Trek but it removes the problem of continuity of conciousness etc. I’d use Culture style displacement but not Star Trek style teleportation. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/257 "2013-09-28T15:04:14Z")
No, I’m talking about the same sort of teleportation that others in this thread are: Convert the subject into a form that can pass through barriers and be quickly moved to another location, move it, and then convert it back. > [@](#): > > Quoth **Mijin** : > > I don’t understand what you’re getting at with this. Information is not consumed in this way. No, it’s not consumed. Water isn’t consumed when you pour it from a pitcher to a glass, either. It’s conserved. This might be confusing because we’re all so used to what computers do: You can copy a computer file from one computer to another, and still have it on the original computer. But that’s only copying a vague shadow of the information. That’s not nearly good enough for a transporter, where we need to transfer the full quantum state. The information in a quantum state can be moved from place to place, or transferred from one medium to another, but it cannot be duplicated. ---
**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:** [September 28, 2013, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/258 "2013-09-28T18:16:44Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Jack Vance had an interesting take on this is one of his sci-fi stories: a person’s mind is scanned, and the thoughts and memories are impressed upon the brain of another body entirely. The guy walks around with the mind (in every respect) of another man. There’s a great cyberpunk novel by Richard K. Morgan called _Altered Carbon_ that covers some of the same ground. They have the technology to copy, store, and re-install human consciousness. The plot is about a guy who’s hired to investigate a suicide, by the guy who committed suicide. He killed himself right before his regularly scheduled back up, and when he was reinstalled into a new body from his previous back up, he has no idea why he’d have done it, so he suspects foul play. ---
**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:** [September 28, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/259 "2013-09-28T18:17:32Z")
Also, one of the few novels that opens with the protagonist dying that isn’t told largely in flashbacks. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544/260 "2013-09-28T19:17:32Z")
A couple people make the claim that sleep, or drugged anesthesia,are breaks in consciousness equivalent to being transported. Cite? You might as well say that someone who is drugged has had their personality destroyed. Just because I don’t have conscious recall of events during sleep or anesthesia doesn’t mean my consciousness ended and restarted. It was there all the time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/willing-to-be-teleported-as-in-star-trek-im-not/669544.md?page=14)