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[excelsiorlef]

But how is that scenario any different from what happens to you every minute? Right now, you're a guy who looks and thinks like the guy that started this conversation in the first place. But that guy who started the conversation is gone. Dead. Now it's just you. So what property is present in one scenario (you aging from younger you to older you) that is absent in the other scenario (you moving from Earth to the spaceship)? How can you know the difference?

What? You think there's no difference between killing you and creating a new you that is a distinctly separate being and simply growing up?

Like I said neurons in the brain exist from birth to death, some die, some are created but it is still part of one continuous biological process.

Change is not death, me from yesterday was not a distinctly separate being as me from today. Total disintegration is death. If I am disintegrated and a distinct being is materialized elsewhere to continue my life, it is still a new distinct being living my life.

Why is it you admit that a clone is a distinct being but somehow insist the death of the original somehow is meaningless

Again I'm only arguing it is death if teleportation doesn't result in my physical self being actually moved through space to a new location and is more of a sort of cloning process.

 

[Violet_0]

honestly there are few topics as frustrating to talk about as consciousness, mainly because pretty much everything is up for interpretation

 

[excelsiorlef]

honestly there are few topics as frustrating to talk about as consciousness, mainly because pretty much everything is up for interpretation

I think on some level it's pretty simple, some people just like to over complicate it as some sort of game

 

[Gotchaye]

What? You think there's no difference between killing you and creating a new you that is a distinctly separate being and simply growing up?

Like I said neurons in the brain exist from birth to death, some die, some are created but it is still part of one continuous biological process.

Change is not death, me from yesterday was not a distinctly separate being as me from today. Total disintegration is death. If I am disintegrated and a distinct being is materialized elsewhere to continue my life, it is still a new distinct being living my life.

Why is it you admit that a clone is a distinct being but somehow insist the death of the original somehow is meaningless

Again I'm only arguing it is death if teleportation doesn't result in my physical self being actually moved through space to a new location and is more of a sort of cloning process.

Again, the idea here is not that teleportation via dematerialization is not in some sense like killing a person and creating a new one. It's that we have every reason to think that that's what's going on all the time anyway. And while you've occasionally expressed incredulity at this you're not really providing any reason to think otherwise. Sure, neurons are created and disappear all the time but it's still linguistically reasonable to talk about a single brain existing through time in a ship-of-Theseus sense. What does that have to do with the continuous existence of a single consciousness that experiences things like punches?

I'd add to what Joe's saying that obviously the intuition that bodily continuity provides continuity of consciousness is something we should be incredibly suspicious of. Caring about what happens to our bodies in the immediate future is an attitude that's going to be strongly selected for over just about any time scale regardless of whether or not it's actually true that I, as a subjective consciousness, have reason to care about what happens to my body in the immediate future.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

What? You think there's no difference between killing you and creating a new you that is a distinctly separate being and simply growing up?

Like I said neurons in the brain exist from birth to death, some die, some are created but it is still part of one continuous biological process.

Change is not death, me from yesterday was not a distinctly separate being as me from today. Total disintegration is death. If I am disintegrated and a distinct being is materialized elsewhere to continue my life, it is still a new distinct being living my life.

Why is it you admit that a clone is a distinct being but somehow insist the death of the original somehow is meaningless

Again I'm only arguing it is death if teleportation doesn't result in my physical self being actually moved through space to a new location and is more of a sort of cloning process.

Yeah, so with aging and with teleportation, you have one being, identical (well, less identical for aging) down to the atomic level, with consistent memories to the being that started the process. What was your proof earlier that a clone was distinct? That if I punched one, the other would react? Well, if I punch you now, does past you react? Or is past you distinct from future you?

 

[Relceroi]

I was using it in reference to the paragraph I quoted. Still, in terms of relevance to Star Trek, it's already shown that that chain everyone thinks is somehow broken isn't actually broken at all by conscious persistence during transport. So it is the same thing, except for the duration of time between when a "part" is removed and replaced.

I did notice that. My message didn't have very much do with Star Trek at all because, as you said, consciousness does seem to persist throughout the teleportation process. The way I'm interpreting this is that the characters are not actually parsed together in the end, but are somehow phased from whatever place that they do exist during transportation to the real world almost instantly. It’s just not quite as interesting as considering the consequences of having to destroy the original and creating an exact copy of them in the process, which is why I took the discussion towards a little different direction.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Yeah, so with aging and with teleportation, you have one being, identical (well, less identical for aging) down to the atomic level, with consistent memories to the being that started the process. What was your proof earlier that a clone was distinct? That if I punched one, the other would react? Well, if I punch you now, does past you react? Or is past you distinct from future you?

If we travled back in time and you permanently scarred my past self it would appear on my current self.

Because we aren't distinct.

Same is not true for you and a clone.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

And if you scarred yourself before the duplicating process, both clones would be scarred. So is neither distinct from the guy the started the process?

 

[excelsiorlef]

And if you scarred yourself before the duplicating process, both clones would be scarred. So is neither distinct from the guy the started the process?

If I did it before there's only one distinct being at that time. Second one doesn't come into reality until the cloning process is done, so not even comparable.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

If I did it before there's only one distinct being at that time. Second one doesn't come into reality until the cloning process is done, so not even comparable.

Fine. Then get rid of one of the copies the moment the process is done making a copy. Now you've teleported by copying and are still passing the test that you determined as a way to indicate distinct beings.

I scar you, scan you, the scarred guy on earth is taken apart and a scarred guy is built on a spaceship. By your test, the one on the spaceship is not distinct from the one that started the process, because he's still scarred. But yet, your claim is that the guy on the spaceship is distinct from the guy who stepped in to the teleporter. But in what way?

 

[excelsiorlef]

Fine. Then get rid of one of the copies the moment the process is done making a copy. Now you've teleported by copying and are still passing the test that you determined as a way to indicate distinct beings.

I scar you, scan you, the scarred guy on earth is taken apart and a scarred guy is built on a spaceship. By your test, the one on the spaceship is not distinct from the one that started the process, because he's still scarred. But yet, your claim is that the guy on the spaceship is distinct from the guy who stepped in to the teleporter. But in what way?

If you teleported my clone in my teleporter = cloning theory then what would happen is the creation of a third fourth, fifth.. whatever distinct being on the other side, a clone of a clone. Regardless if the one that enters the teleporter is destroyed instantly or not the one that arrives on the spaceship (in my theory) is a distinct being from either the original or the first, second, third, fourth... how ever many clones. I've said if physical matter rather than information is moved between teleporter pad to teleporter pad then teleportatin is just essentially moving from point A to point B, it is in the theories that teleportation destroys your self on one side and constructs a new one via a essentially data teleportation where this suicide box comes into play.

Each clone is a distinct being with identical memories and looks sure but also with the innate ability to form new memories and with no direct connection with any of the others in terms of bodily autonomy ie kill one doesn't kill the others.

If once that new clone appeared on the spaceship I ripped its eye out, none of the previous iterations would be effected, hell if I ripped out the eye of any clone or the original not of the other iterations would be affected.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

I guess it all depends if it's gonna be proven that all the quarks, strings, atoms and whatnot that appear on the other side are the same exact ones that came in, and not newly created ones. If they are, there shouldn't be reasonable doubt that the actual person is just being moved by teleporting, not disassembled and copied.

 

[excelsiorlef]

I guess it all depends if it's gonna be proven that all the quarks, strings, atoms and whatnot that appear on the other side are the same exact ones that came in, and not newly created ones. If they are, there shouldn't be reasonable doubt that the actual person is just being moved by teleporting, not disassembled and copied.

Yep

 

[Orbis Tabula]

If you teleported my clone in my teleporter = cloning theory then what would happen is the creation of a third fourth, fifth.. whatever distinct being on the other side, a clone of a clone, regardless if the one that enters the teleporter is destroyed instantly or not , is a distinct being from either the original or the first, second, third, fourth... how ever many clones.

Each clone is a distinct being with identical memories and looks sure but also with the innate ability to form new memories and with no direct connection with any of the others in terms of bodily autonomy ie kill one doesn't kill the others.

If once that new clone appeared on the spaceship I ripped its eye out, none of the previous iterations would be effected, hell if I ripped out the eye of any clone or the original not of the other iterations would be affected.

Of course not. Just like, if you ripped your eyes out now, you from an hour ago wouldn't be affected. Because even though current you has memories of old you, thinks that he was the old you, and is atomically identical to the old you, current you is just as distinct from old you as the post-teleporter you is distinct from pre-teleporter you.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Of course not. Just like, if you ripped your eyes out now, you from an hour ago wouldn't be affected. Because even though current you has memories of old you, thinks that he was the old you, and is atomically identical to the old you, current you is just as distinct from old you as the post-teleporter you is distinct from pre-teleporter you.

Except if you took the eye out of my past self, my present self loses said eye, same if you take my eye out in the present my future self won't have an eye.

But if I cloned you with two eyes and then took out your eye, your clone keeps both eyes.

Also I exist as a singular being. Only through time travel wherein changes to my past self affect my present self can both versions of my self exist. Or changes to present self affect changes on future self if I'm in the future.

Not true for cloning. There becomes two of "you" the minute a clone is made and once that clone is made no changes affected on it have any effect on younand vice versa.

A clone is more akin to a twin than a past or future self.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

Except if you took the eye out of my past self, my present self loses said eye, same if you take my eye out in the present my future self won't have an eye.

But if I cloned you with two eyes and then took out your eye, your clone keeps both eyes.

Well sure. But I never claimed the copy is somehow psychically connected so that share all experiences. Just that they're both legitimate instances of whatever we can define as "you."

 

[linid0t]

I guess it all depends if it's gonna be proven that all the quarks, strings, atoms and whatnot that appear on the other side are the same exact ones that came in, and not newly created ones. If they are, there shouldn't be reasonable doubt that the actual person is just being moved by teleporting, not disassembled and copied.

So do you believe there's some mystical "soul" that attaches to atoms/matter which is what constitutes a "self"?

Also note that the atoms that make up a body are constantly changing via interactions with the world, so under your view your "self" ceases to exist instantaneously when your specific atomic makeup changes, which is constantly.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Well sure. But I never claimed the copy is somehow psychically connected so that share all experiences. Just that they're both legitimate instances of whatever we can define as "you."

From the point of view of society sure. But from the individual each is a separate you and once the original dies that's it. It is the other you that carries on and forms new memories and if they are teleported in the teleporter= cloning theory then that other you is dead and the third you continues on and so forth and so forth

So do you believe there's some mystical "soul" that attaches to atoms/matter which is what constitutes a "self"?

Also note that the atoms that make up a body are constantly changing via interactions with the world, so under your view your "self" ceases to exist instantaneously when your specific atomic makeup changes, which is constantly.

Yet as I said we die with most of the neurons we are born with.


Anyway this has been fun but we're going around in circles. Cheers folks and happy holidays.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

From the point of view of society sure. But from the individual each is a separate you and once the original dies that's it. It is the other you that carries on and forms new memories and if they are teleported in the teleporter= cloning theory then that other you is dead and the third you continues on and so forth and so forth

See, you keep saying this, but you still haven't really outlined what feature it is that makes one copy of you "the real one" and one "the clone."

 

[Trojan X]

That episode was completely messed up and speaks out many peoples fear of transportation.

 

[Coriolanus]

But why would the clone not be you (too)?


Also assuming a clone made with perfect memory (or as perfect as a copy of human memory can be, anyway), that would wreak havoc with quite a large section of civil law, holy hell. Marriage, inheritance, businesses, heck, the other you would feel the exact same love for your children and partner as you do.

No I get what they meant by it.

Spoiler

New one goes in but the old one's still there with the coin toss being that the odds weren't in your favor to be the new one so you're screwed right off the bat pretty much.

There was never any coin toss.

 

[Unai]

By the way, the Stargate is actually closer to the teleportation of Star Trek than to actually physically moving through a shortcut in time/space. It disassembles you, turn your matter into energy, move it then reconstruct it in the other end. The cool difference is that it even preserve the momentum of your atoms.

 

[Khoryos]

By the way, the Stargate is actually closer to the teleportation of Star Trek than to actually physically moving through a shortcut in time/space. It disables you turning your matter into energy, move it then reconstruct it in the other end. The cool difference is that it even preserve the momentum of your atoms.

I've always felt that made the science worse, not better - momentum is a vector, and unless your two planets are synchronised in an incredibly unlikely way your galactic angular momentum, if preserved, should send you flying in a random direction.

 

[Relceroi]

From what I can tell all throughout my life I have been myself. What that means has changed and continues to change at all times, but who I am now could theoretically be traced back to the moment I, or rather the version of me I was then, came into being. There has been a linear and causal chain that links the latest state of my existence to that of the earliest. One that has not been, to the best of my knowledge, broken in any way that I would consider meaningful.

If I am then placed into a teleporter and destroyed in the process, the continuity of my consciousness and existence has come to an abrupt end. To the new version of everything I had been up to that point it would presumably appear as if nothing at all had happened, other than them arriving at their destination. As I said in my first message, I would not go on into becoming that other version of me, unlike the way I do now.

This becomes the most apparent if the original version of the person who is being teleported is not destroyed, and both versions exist spatially as two different beings. I don’t currently see how the original being destroyed would change this process in any meaningful way.

By the way, the Stargate is actually closer to the teleportation of Star Trek than to actually physically moving through a shortcut in time/space. It disables you turning your matter into energy, move it then reconstruct it in the other end. The cool difference is that it even preserve the momentum of your atoms.

There was even an episode were Teal'c was essentially stored into the stargate or the DHD, I don't remember exactly which.

 

[Gotchaye]

From what I can tell all throughout my life I have been myself. What that means has changed and continues to change at all times, but who I am now could theoretically be traced back to the moment I, or rather the version of me I was then, came into being. There has been a linear and causal chain that links the latest state of my existence to that of the earliest. One that has not been, to the best of my knowledge, broken in any way that I would consider meaningful.

If I am then placed into a teleporter and destroyed in the process, the continuity of my consciousness and existence has come to an abrupt end. To the new version of everything I had been up to that point it would presumably appear as if nothing at all had happened, other than them arriving at their destination. As I said in my first message, I would not go on into becoming that other version of me, unlike the way I do now.

This becomes the most apparent if the original version of the person who is being teleported is not destroyed, and both versions exist spatially as two different beings. I don’t currently see how the original being destroyed would change this process in any meaningful way.

You come pretty close to the key point here but you don't quite make the connection. Here you are, in 2016-almost-2017, telling me how you're confident that when you grow older you're still in every sense the same person you were years ago. There's a single consciousness that existed the whole time.

Then you acknowledge that if you underwent teleportation-via-dematerialization, a person would step out the other end who would tell me exactly the same thing - the person would report that "nothing at all had happened, other than them arriving at their destination". If the teleporter was cleverly disguised so that the person didn't know they had just been teleported, they'd never suspect a thing.

So, again, what's the difference? The key question is not whether you feel like you're the same person you were years ago but whether you actually are, in whatever sense, and how you feel is not a good guide here because what we're concerned about is people being replaced with duplicates that have all of their memories.

You're right that it's easy to imagine a teleportation process that copies instead, and that this gives us reason to think that in some sense the experiencer who went into the teleporter isn't coming out the other end, but I'm not sure who in this thread has been saying otherwise recently, and that people keep bringing up this "copy problem" makes me think that they don't understand what the people they're talking to are saying.

Of course as we move through time we don't happen to produce copies, but this is just a contingent fact, surely. Imagine a species with remarkable healing powers and bilateral symmetry/redundancy. Their brains function as single units that store everything twice so each hemisphere is capable of working just fine when separated from the other except that maybe they think a little more slowly because they can't parallel process. And then like lizards if you cut parts off of them they can grow it back, and if you cut them exactly down the middle each half is going to regenerate on its own, resulting in two individuals, both of whom remember existing before and getting cut in half and have no gaps in awareness at all - as far as they can tell they've been continuously awake and experiencing all along. This is obviously pretty sci-fi but we're talking about teleportation, and I don't see where any of this would be physically impossible. Actually I bet we come up with artificial intelligence and robots that can behave this way before we come up with teleportation. So surely this suffices to show that regular moving through time is still perfectly consistent with producing duplicates, and actually in this case it's pretty clear that neither of the two has a great claim to being the only original while both can point to an unbroken chain of experience and bodily continuity with the original. By the logic of people embracing the copy problem for teleportation the mere possibility of this would seem to prove that you can't be the same consciousness you were five minutes ago.

I guess it all depends if it's gonna be proven that all the quarks, strings, atoms and whatnot that appear on the other side are the same exact ones that came in, and not newly created ones. If they are, there shouldn't be reasonable doubt that the actual person is just being moved by teleporting, not disassembled and copied.

Again, to the best of our knowledge this is not even wrong. It's just total nonsense to talk about "the same exact" quarks and strings. Like I said earlier, if I set up a programmable string of Christmas lights to create the illusion of moving lights, and I have two of these illusory movers collide and then move away from each other, there's not even an in-principle answer to the question of which post-collision light corresponds to which pre-collision light. It's just not meaningful to ask whether they bounced off or passed through each other, and how we talk about it is pure convention. Likewise it's just not meaningful to ask whether a quark is the same as some other quark.

 

[Coriolanus]

Actually I bet we come up with artificial intelligence and robots that can behave this way before we come up with teleportation.

Huh. True enough. Now wondering if AI would care about losing its unique status by spawning several copies of itself.

It'll most likely not have a choice, obv, since whoever creates it will almost certainly replicate the experiment. And then you'd have an intelligence chatting with its exact copy.

 

[Orbis Tabula]

I don't know what I bother, Gotchaye explains it so much more clearly!

 

[herod]

It's like how a chromecast can play a 2 hour HD movie

 

[zeemumu]

There was never any coin toss.

Hence the "screwed from the beginning" thing.

 

[Relceroi]

I'm not sure if it's frowned upon but I felt I needed to quote different part your post separately. Apologies about that.

You come pretty close to the key point here but you don't quite make the connection. Here you are, in 2016-almost-2017, telling me how you're confident that when you grow older you're still in every sense the same person you were years ago. There's a single consciousness that existed the whole time.

It may be that I’m not expressing myself as clearly as I would hope. I don’t mean to say that there has only ever been a single consciousness that at all times constitutes me. There have in fact been several, but I consider them to form a collective whole that shares internal continuity through memories and also through what I have referred so far as a continuous linear/ causal chain. For me consciousness is an emergent phenomenon and only exists in the present. I am aware of my past selves through memories but only really exist consciously at a single moment.

That continuity would end if I was teleported in a way were I was killed in the process. To try and put it more clearly, I don’t see what connects the me that exists before being teleported to the pointedly other me that pops into existence afterwards. It’s a distinction that I currently can’t help but make.

Then you acknowledge that if you underwent teleportation-via-dematerialization, a person would step out the other end who would tell me exactly the same thing - the person would report that "nothing at all had happened, other than them arriving at their destination". If the teleporter was cleverly disguised so that the person didn't know they had just been teleported, they'd never suspect a thing.

So, again, what's the difference? The key question is not whether you feel like you're the same person you were years ago but whether you actually are, in whatever sense, and how you feel is not a good guide here because what we're concerned about is people being replaced with duplicates that have all of their memories.

It could theoretically be that, unbeknownst to me, I am in fact nth occurrence of myself (through teleportation, not through the passage of time). I don't know otherwise, so it is reasonable for me to assume that I have never gone through a process like that. You are right that it only really matters to the original person. From the perspective of everyone else there would be no discernible difference between the so-called original and the newer occurrence of the same person. But again, I can't shake the very strong feeling that I would not go on into becoming this other me and that they are as separate from me as any other person is to me right now, despite being indistinguishable to others. However I don't feel that way about the me that possibly will exist 20 years from now.

It could be that I'm missing something but currently I feel like I'm expressing myself inadequately. Perhaps it’s both.

Of course as we move through time we don't happen to produce copies, but this is just a contingent fact, surely.

I think you are right about that. It was an effective thought experiment, by the way.

 

[funkystudent]

Could you plug the transporter into the replicator and have the machine from the prestige?

 

[Freshmaker]

well there's also the fact that his son got stuck in some kind of subspace whatever in a certain region of space for years, after a transporter accident, and they were able to complete the transport later and bring him out of whatever transporter energy form he was in.

If transporters were just making a copy and destroying the old person, there wouldn't be any person in-between. We've seen over and over again in Trek that the transporter instead converts you, moves you, then reconstructs you.

It's a situation the writers never explained consistently. Barclay saw slugpeople in the transporter stream.

Scottie put himself into a transport buffer for 50 years. If he was conscious the whole time...

 

[Deleted member 10571]

So do you believe there's some mystical "soul" that attaches to atoms/matter which is what constitutes a "self"?

.

No? Not at all, in fact.

If you'd copy me, there would be multiple "me", the now conscious one and multiple others.

If you'd then kill the "real" me, for me personally, I'd stop to exist. The others would also be "me", but the awareness of the original "me" would die and stop. I would die. Other me's would still exist, but I wouldn't magically live on in their bodies.

If you'd transport me, and in the process destroy my current conscious me and build up a new one with all my memories and personality intact, it would be the exact same situation, with only one "copy" and one "original".

If you'd transport me, and it's proven that 100% of what makes up my body is actually physically moved, not created newly, then we can rule out copies in that picture.

This has nothing to do with ghosts, soul, afterlife, jesus or magic, I'm sorry. But if you want to read that into what I mean, have fun with it

 

[Gotchaye]

It may be that I’m not expressing myself as clearly as I would hope. I don’t mean to say that there has only ever been a single consciousness that at all times constitutes me. There have in fact been several, but I consider them to form a collective whole that shares internal continuity through memories and also through what I have referred so far as a continuous linear/ causal chain. For me consciousness is an emergent phenomenon and only exists in the present. I am aware of my past selves through memories but only really exist consciously at a single moment.

That continuity would end if I was teleported in a way were I was killed in the process. To try and put it more clearly, I don’t see what connects the me that exists before being teleported to the pointedly other me that pops into existence afterwards. It’s a distinction that I currently can’t help but make.

I think we basically agree on the end result, then, but I don't understand the significance you're ascribing to the "collective whole" of the set of past consciousnesses of your body. You use words like "consider" and later "feeling". I think the intuition you've got here is pretty natural, as I argued earlier. If biology was ever going to predispose us to a belief, the top item on the list would be something about caring what happens to our bodies five seconds from now. And it'll do that regardless of whether or not it's true that we have great reasons to care about what happens to our bodies in the immediate future - bodies that give rise to minds which don't care what happens to them in the immediate future don't last long enough to post here.

So your word choice says to me that you recognize that this is basically just an intuition you have which doesn't necessarily correspond to anything real. I don't have a problem with that. I too would be pretty reluctant to make use of a duplicating machine that disintegrates the body that walks in. But I think we have lots of reason to believe that this is basically just an aesthetic preference. We like the same bodies existing, even though this whole notion of two objects at different times being the same is physically not very sound and only makes sense in terms of un-real folk physics. We like our linguistic conventions. You're using one where we talk about your body now and your body from 30 minutes ago as being the same body, and this is a pretty useful convention for the sorts of things we typically want to communicate to each other. If I'm talking about a string of programmable Christmas lights I'm just going to talk in terms of "the green light" moving to the right, bouncing off "the red light" and then moving back the other way. That just feels to me like a natural way to describe it, and it's not wrong to describe it that way, but everyone knows that there is not actually a continuously-existing green entity moving along the string of lights.

 

[All Possible Ways]

As always, Wait But Why has an excellent dicussion on What Makes You You.

I also found this comic on a Teleportation Machine that talks for instance about how the consciousness interruption might be no different from what happens when you go to sleep.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about is how "teleportation" works in real life, that is, Quantum Teleportation. In this process what is moved is not matter, but the information on the exact quantum state of a system of particles, that can then be reproduced on another identical system.

Basically one needs a particle (or many) whose state one wishes to teleport plus an additional entangled pair of particles. One particle of the entangled pair is kept at the original location and the other is sent to the receiver. The entanged pair of particles are in crude terms, like a pair of socks, if you know one is right, the other must be left, so even though they are separated by a large distance, learning the state of one of them means you also learn the state of the other.

In order to teleport the state of a particle, the person who wishes to do so makes a measurement on its state and also on his or her half of the entangled pair. Because of the entanglement, what happens is that the other particle of the pair, that is in the location you wish to teleport to will be put in a particular state, which is not yet the state you wanted to teleport, but is related to it. The first person then beams the result of their measurement to the the receiver (this is the step where actual transfer of information happens, and it is necessarily not faster than light), and this is enough information for them to reconstruct completely the state of the particle you wanted to teleport, by simple operations.

I'm sorry if the explanation was too confusing, you may find many more details (as well as a precise mathematical description) in the Wiki article. What I wanted to say that is relevant to this debate is that the processes of learning the state of the system you wanted to teleport necessarily destroys it, in an irreversible measurement. That means that at no point are there two copies of the system, as at the moment the measurement is made, the original is effectively destroyed, but all the information that specified its state is preserved. The result that you cannot make a copy without destroying the original is amusingly enough called the No-cloning Theorem

As others have said elementary particles in nature are not distinguishable, not even in principle, so if you put two identical systems in the same state, they are completely identical, and no measurement can tell them apart. Since there is no remaining copy, per the last paragraph, that means that for all intents and purposes, the person on the other side is as much "you" as it can be, and there' nothing you can do to disprove that.

That said, I agree that it still feels as though you died and then where recreated, this seems to just be an icky feeling we have, not a rational conclusion. As all the information that makes you you (and there should be nothing else) is preserved, and "printed" in a identical body. I certainly would be still be afraid to use such a machine even though logically there's nothing to fear, because it seems to be an innate thing, a fear of losing continuity or something.

Anyways, at this point I'm just babbling so I will just stop here and hopefully someone finds something interesting in this wall of text haha.

 

[DarkKyo]

So is it more apt to say that "I won't exist tomorrow" or that "there is no 'I' to exist tomorrow"?

Or is it more like "I am a body that will experience a succession of different 'I's"?

 

[Relceroi]

I think we basically agree on the end result, then, but I don't understand the significance you're ascribing to the "collective whole" of the set of past consciousnesses of your body. You use words like "consider" and later "feeling". I think the intuition you've got here is pretty natural, as I argued earlier. If biology was ever going to predispose us to a belief, the top item on the list would be something about caring what happens to our bodies five seconds from now. And it'll do that regardless of whether or not it's true that we have great reasons to care about what happens to our bodies in the immediate future - bodies that give rise to minds which don't care what happens to them in the immediate future don't last long enough to post here.

So your word choice says to me that you recognize that this is basically just an intuition you have which doesn't necessarily correspond to anything real. I don't have a problem with that. I too would be pretty reluctant to make use of a duplicating machine that disintegrates the body that walks in. But I think we have lots of reason to believe that this is basically just an aesthetic preference. We like the same bodies existing, even though this whole notion of two objects at different times being the same is physically not very sound and only makes sense in terms of un-real folk physics. We like our linguistic conventions. You're using one where we talk about your body now and your body from 30 minutes ago as being the same body, and this is a pretty useful convention for the sorts of things we typically want to communicate to each other. If I'm talking about a string of programmable Christmas lights I'm just going to talk in terms of "the green light" moving to the right, bouncing off "the red light" and then moving back the other way. That just feels to me like a natural way to describe it, and it's not wrong to describe it that way, but everyone knows that there is not actually a continuously-existing green entity moving along the string of lights.

I went back and read through your Christmas lights analogy to make sure I’ve understood it correctly. I at least think I have, but do feel free to correct me if that’s not the case. But to continue along those lines, and in an attempt to further clarify my stance, teleportation as I currently see it would essentially be like cutting the cord between where the light currently is and next light bulb in the sequence, and then connecting the new cord to a power outlet. Afterwards the first light will turn on and the sequence will continue as if nothing had ever happened, except the last light of the first half of the wire has now turned off. One linear continuity has come to an end and another one has started.

So I do agree with you that it would be pointless to consider whether the lights collided or passed each other, and as I’ve previously said the teleported person would presumably both appear indistinguishable and feel exactly like themselves. They would actually in a very real way be themselves, but I do still maintain that, unlike in the case of new consciousness’ emerging as time goes on, they would not be a newer instance of their previous selves in a linear sense. Although I do have to add that I feel more than a little less certain about my conclusions than I did previously. It may very well be that I'm not quite making the right connections at the right places.

Either way the relevant aspect about all of this is, I suppose, that the new instance does not linearly follow from the previous instance of its (I’m referring to the collective whole here, but I honestly have to spend more time thinking about this to form a clearer picture of what exactly I mean with that concept) existence. What I’m essentially trying to say is that it all comes down to perspective.

As others have said elementary particles in nature are not distinguishable, not even in principle, so if you put two identical systems in the same state, they are completely identical, and no measurement can tell them apart. Since there is no remaining copy, per the last paragraph, that means that for all intents and purposes, the person on the other side is as much "you" as it can be, and there' nothing you can do to disprove that.

I guess the thing that currently prevents me from making the final commitment to thinking otherwise is that, while elementary particles and the person before and the person after being teleported are identical and therefore indistinguishable from one another, they are as I see it still separate. Identical but not the same.