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Very interesting. If I understand correctly, does this mean cloning is a functionally impossible task? I've always been entertained by the paradoxes where some
by sebmellen 6y ago
Very interesting. If I understand correctly, does this mean cloning is a functionally impossible task?
I've always been entertained by the paradoxes where someone is teleported ala Michael Crichton's Timeline, and is then (due to some glitch) "duplicated", leading to interesting quandaries about "who is who".
If Penrose is right about consciousness [0], this means all these fantastical paradoxes are just fantasy, right?
[0]: https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/why-a-genius-scientist-thinks-our-consciousness-originates-at-the-quantum-level https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/why-a-genius-scientist-thin...
- pontus 6y agoCorrect, cloning in even the simplest sense of a single particle state (let alone a whole human) is impossible in quantum mechanics.
- tomrod 6y agoIt sounds like state send is partial using the "phone" analogy. Can there be triplicates of entanglement?
- vez- 6y agoYup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W_state
- pontus 6y agoThere are limits to how much three systems can be entangled with each other. It turns out that one system cannot be maximally entangled with two different systems. In fact, these types of arguments are often used in studying information paradoxes in black holes.
- FeepingCreature 6y agoThough cloning a human may be possible if the brain does not rely on quantum state. Obligatory "warm and wet" objection.
- comfyinnernet 6y agoI don't think you would need exact duplication for these situations to arise.
- chrisweekly 6y agoHey yeah I remember reading Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" in maybe 1998?, an interesting take on the nature of consciousness... fascinating stuff.
- drdeca 6y agoIndeed there is a “no cloning theorem”. Iirc it essentially comes from the fact that time evolution is linear, and a function that sends stateOfIntetest \otimes constantState to stateOfInterest \otimes stateOfInterest for all values of stateOfInterest would be quadratic?
- pontus 6y agoYes, it's a direct result from the linearity of time evolution in QM. Like you say, if state1 x raw_material -> state1 x state1 (i.e. we are able to take some raw material and clone state1) and also state2 x raw_material -> state2 x state2, then linearity forces us to also have (state1 + state2) x raw_material -> state1 x state1 + state2 x state2. This is not the same as (state1 + state2) x (state1 + state2) which is what we'd want in order to clone arbitrary states.