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It's a funky version of relativity. From the perspective of the original consciousness life was terminated as soon as the machine started up, from the perspecti
by coldcode 5y ago
It's a funky version of relativity. From the perspective of the original consciousness life was terminated as soon as the machine started up, from the perspective of the duplicate on the other end, you continued without any issues. Make a hundred copies, and each thinks itself as the original.
Of course if you instead build a transporter that uses some funky form of a wormhole, you simply move from one frame to another. In that case you are still the original.
Maybe it's not so much a paradox as a headache inducer.
- BoardsOfCanada 5y agoAnd perhaps we "die" every moment, even without entering a teleporter, the consciousness existing a moment at a time but with memories of the previous consciousnesses.
- booleandilemma 5y agoI feel like functional programmers would love this.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoThey're too busy being excited about "timeless physics".
- nautilius 5y agoWhy would creating a copy necessarily destroy the original? That's an additional assumption you put in there. And I see zero connection to relativity. And it's fundamentally different from just moving through a wormhole.
- adrian_b 5y agoIt might be impossible to obtain enough information about the original without destroying it, e.g. by instant freezing and then removing and identifying the molecules one by one. However once you have the complete information, it should be possible to make any number of copies, all of them starting with identical memories until the moment when the original was destroyed.
- nautilius 5y agoThis is a philosophical, not a technical 'paradox'. In your model, why would the ability to make copies, based on the complete information you have successfully gathered, stop the instance you destroy the original?
- adrian_b 5y agoI have already said that once the information is obtained destructively, making any number of copies should be possible. All the copies would start with the same memories the original had before being destroyed, but after that they would all live different experiences. I have replied to the question why the destroying of the original might be necessary. With the currently existing techniques we can imagine how complete information may be obtained destructively. We do not know any method that could allow us to obtain complete information about a body non-destructively. All the known imaging and spectroscopic methods can determine partial information about the internal composition of a solid body but even when using all of them there is no chance of obtaining complete information.
- nautilius 5y agoYour sentence “it should be possible to make any number of copies, all of them starting with identical memories until the moment when the original was destroyed.” is not unique, but now I understand what you want to say.
- zuminator 5y agoBecause there's a principle of quantum mechanics called the "no-cloning theorem"[0] which results from not being able to determine the exact quantum states of particles. If you can't determine them, you can't clone them and you can't teleport them. With the essential caveat that you can use quantum entanglement to transmit the information from one particle to another and thereby destroying the original quantum state of the first particle. So the mechanism of perfect teleportation requires destroying the quantum state of the original. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem (As far as I know this doesn't really cover whether or not we can do "good enough" cloning/teleportation, meaning, good enough to preserve all our bodily functions and memories, even if not perfect at a quantum level.)
- nautilius 5y agoFirst, really this is a philosophical rather than a technical paradox. Second, how do you know the requirements of a teleporting machine that doesn’t exist? Seems like a cheap way out of the discussion to simply declare that the technical implementation will have certain properties that make the discussion simple. Maybe the resolution you mention is not necessary. I can obtain all relevant information in a printed text by taking a picture, the exact quantum state is not necessary at all. Also: clones are already created routinely.