There's nothing new here, but it's nicely told.
Note: I make no claim to originality in this thought experiment. A very similar sort of question was raised in 1775 by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid...
Bah, Plato got to the heart of it in Cratylus :
Names would have an absurd effect on the things they name, if they resembled them in every respect, since all of them would be duplicated, and no-one would be able to say which was the thing and which was the name.
The concept of me being me, and not some weird collection of different parts with no intrinsic meaning, is something that I will cling to despite whatever fancy-schamncy arguments you want to bring to the table. Like the idea that time flows, I'm not prepared to consider anything else. Time is an illusion ? I'm not really me ? Pffft, whatever. Still interesting to think about though.
A toggle switch allows me to decide whether the ‘old me’ on Mars is preserved or destroyed after I teleport back home. It’s this decision that is causing me to hesitate.
I’m just the result of the activity among my 100 billion neurons and their 100 trillion distinctive connections. And, what’s more, that activity is what it is, no matter what collection of neurons is doing it. If you went about replacing those neurons one by one, but kept all the connections and activity the same, I would still be me. So, replacing them altogether at once should not matter, so long as the distinctive patterns are maintained.
So: if I put the toggle in the ‘destroy’ setting, I should survive the transfer just fine. What would be lost? Nothing that plays any role in making me me, in making my consciousness my own. I should step in, press the button – and then walk out of the receiver back on Earth.
On the other hand, what happens if I put the toggle in the ‘save’ setting? Then where would I be? Would I make the trip back to Earth, and then feel sorry for the poor sap back on Mars (the old me), who will be facing slow death by starvation? Or – horrors! – will I be that old me, feeling envy for the new me who is now on Earth, enjoying the company of friends and family?
[My answer : the experience of being you is non-physical and non-replicable. This does not necessarily imply any kind of ghost in the machine (although I don't disregard that possibility) - if consciousness is an emergent, relational property, it must be relational between specific physical things. The neurons in the copy of you that emerges from the teleporter have no direct causal connection to the original neurons in your brain. Hence they're not you and you don't share their experiences : pressing the "destruct" button will kill you. The really interesting question is what the copy of you experiences. Do they emerge thinking that they're still you, as though they've teleported millions of miles in a few seconds with an unbroken awareness ? Or are they, somehow, aware that their experience is a different one from the original you ? A very serious and intelligent examination of this problem can be found here.]
https://aeon.co/ideas/if-i-teleport-from-mars-does-the-original-me-get-destroyed
It's not something that can be reasoned out, so it's basically the life after death question slightly transposed. Are we just meat or not? We have no idea. (Anyone claiming to know is kidding themselves.)
ReplyDeleteObviously it depends upon the mechanism the teleport unit uses.
ReplyDeleteIf it creates a wormhole, the original you does not get destroyed.
The method described in the article is more problematic.
They also avoid opening the can of worms: the method in the article is also a replicator. It can crank out as many copies of you as desired.
Obligatory Atomic Rocket reference:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/transmat.php
There's also the no-cloning theorem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem. One consequence of this is that a teleporter that teleports everything about you, down to the quantum level, necessarily destroys the original.
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org - No-cloning theorem - Wikipedia
The one retroactive...an undoubtedly controversial...change I would make to Star Trek would be to do away with the matter-conversion method of transporters in favor of a transporter technology that bends space. My in-world argument would be that the same technology that gives us warp drive allows us the limited ability to tunnel through space over a limited distance. You step onto a platform, a very localized warp bubble forms around the protected area, and for a moment you're in two places at once. Very subtle calculations are made by the computer to match the surface "target frame" so that you stay on your feet, then when the frame is locked...SNAP...the bubble inverts and you're standing on an alien world. Meanwhile back on the transporter pad, they're sweeping up bits of dust and leaves from the brief momentary exchange.
ReplyDeleteThis method would also be a little more dramatic and less "neat and tidy" because the warp bubble essentially has to expand at the target location, causing some cavitation in the environment. It would be kind of cool and dramatic, almost like a boom tube. Instead of the gentle hum of a digital transporter twinkling into place, there would be a visual distortion followed by fiery, symmetrical aurora and then a loud POP...and the sudden appearance of an away team.
I'd keep the idea of replicators, because that's just building things a molecule at a time. But the idea of completely converting every particle of an object into energy and then reconstituting it on a planet and having ensign Ricky still remember his name...we know enough now to know that really no part of this makes sense.
Christopher Butler That sounds a bit like the Battelstar Galactic spatial tear, coupled the magical method of transportation of the Discworld (in which Rincewind the Wizzard is unwittingly exchanged for a live cannon).
ReplyDeleteThe part that bothered me the most about transporters was there's no need for pads on both or either ends. Converting oneself into energy and re-assembling it on the other side by mechanical means - that I'll buy, with a very large dollop of handwavium. But converting that energy back into matter with nothing around to do it... how does that work ? How can you send a beam of energy down to a lifeless rock and have it get re-assembled into a person with no equipment around ? And why bother having a transporter room at all, if site-to-site transport is a thing ?
Rhys Taylor yeah, I mean sometimes people forget that we're talking about 1960s science fiction, and in light of the modern world, Trek really should evolve a bit.
ReplyDeleteThe transporter problem (our original topic here) has bugged me since I was a kid. Eventually I realized that despite my love for Trek, in reality you'd never get me into a transporter because breaking me apart into my constituent sub atomic particles, storing me in a buffer, and reassembling me 1000km away seems wrong. Now that I'm older and wiser (ha!) I'm certain that what came out the other end of the transporter stands a good chance of not being me at all. It's going to garner some eyerolls, but I'm not convinced that all there is to "me" is some epiphenomenological electrochemical buzz that just happens to bubble up out of a certain arrangement of meat.
This argument also carries over to the notion of immortality via upload.
This may not necessarily make sense, but as a wise woman once said "not everything does. Not everything has to." ;D
Christopher Butler
ReplyDeleteI ran into the Trek Transporter problem at a tender young age, when I read James Blish's novel SPOCK MUST DIE (1970).
The initial hook was McCoy complaining to Scotty that the transporter was a murder-machine. So Scotty made a new type of transporter which didn't have that flaw, but of course hilarity ensued.
Winchell Chung I think I might have to find that one. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWinchell Chung update: found it...order.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny...I had a moment's frustration that I wasn't able to instantly download a book and would have to wait an excruciating two days to get it in the mail. Strange how quickly we forget that we're living at a time of technological marvels.
There's also the issue that if you convert a 75 kg person "to energy" to beam them down to the planet's surface, that's roughly 2,000 megatons equivalent. Forget photon torpedoes, just start to beam up some rock from the place you want to obliterate, and then stop beaming so the rock stays as energy. KABOOM! Do shields stop you from beaming stuff through? No problem, load a bunch of the crew's trash and sewage and Wesley Crusher into the transporter and beam it up against the shield - and then just conveniently forget to reassemble everything. The result would be better than a photon torpedo strike. See, that's the problem with Trek's transporters - they make the rest of the tech obsolete.
ReplyDelete