Echoes of Apollo blog. Submitted for your approval in its entirety below:
Teleportation? Thanks but no thanks!
Teleportation
A Thought Experiment
Teresa E. Tutt PhD
A popular science fiction motif is teleportation. Despite having different forms (booth, beam, portal, disk, etc.), they all work the same. You disappear one place and re-appear in another.
Though it is highly unlikely that such a device a device will be invented in our lifetime, recent advances in quantum physics suggest that such a thing may eventually become possible. All engineering issues and discussions of "the soul" aside, there are certain philosophical and metaphysical issues involved.
The most serious of such issues is the one of continuity of existence. To illustrate, let us digress slightly by assuming that it becomes possible to make an exact copy of a person, right down to the quantum states of the individual atoms. The duplicate would be indistinguishable from the original. The duplicate would have all of the memories of the original. In fact, the duplicate would believe him/herself to be the same person as the original. Yet the original still exists. This gives rise to several disturbing scenarios:
Scenario 1:
A device makes an exact copy of you. The duplicate, for all practical purposes , is you. Yet you exist separately from your duplicate. Now the duplicate leaves, and the two of your never have contact with each other again. The duplicate has a completely different life, as if you had a completely separate second life following your duplication. Yet the original "you" has no knowledge, experience, or sense of it.
Scenario 2:
The device makes a copy of you as before. This time, the copy is created on the other side of the world. As before, you never have contact with each other, and your duplicate with your memories lives out a completely different life on the other side of the world. And you never know about it.
Did you teleport across the world? Or did you stay home?
Scenario 3:
Same as Scenario 1 with a disturbing twist. The device makes a copy of you. The duplicate "you" appears, then immediately fetches a disintegrator and proceeds to vapourise you. The duplicate has all of your memories and is essentially "you". From the point of view of the duplicate, "you" have teleported into another location and then destroyed a copy of "you" that "you" found left behind. But did you?
-OR-
did you inadvertently commit suicide by having a copy of yourself made, that then proceeded to kill you?
Scenario 4:
Same as scenario 2 with the following change. Your duplicate is created in a far away location, but unfortunately it is necessary to destroy you in the process of creating your exact duplicate. Your duplicate will appear at the remote location with all your memories. From your duplicate's point of view, "you" have teleported, plain and simple. Or did you?
-OR-
did you simply destroy yourself in order to create a duplicate at a remote location, one whose life of which the original "you" will never have any knowledge or experience?
Fortunately you or I are unlikely to have to face this issue in our lifetime. But in the unlikely event we do perfect a teleportation machine in our lifetime, please understand my reluctance to ride in one.
Edited by Mermaid Lady, 31 January 2010 - 08:39 AM.
