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[D] Taxonomy of teleportation models @ Things Of Interest

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• u/Chronophilia:

  Splicing yourself through another solid object wouldn't cause a nuclear explosion, but I do think it would produce an enormous amount of heat. Bonds between atoms are on the order of hundreds of kJ/mol - I'm not sure exactly what happens if a new atom suddenly materialises between two carbon atoms in a protein, but it's got to produce a sizeable amount of energy. Enough to cook a person, perhaps?
  

• u/xamueljones:

  The section under **"Nothing at all": Fraudulent Teleportation** sounds like the story by Philip K. Dick, *The Unteleported Man*.
  

• u/thecommexokid:

  > If used successfully on a human, this is simultaneously murder and something significantly more legally and ethically complicated; the production of a new living human from thin air, one who is unquestionably not the original.
  
  Grr.
  

  • u/None:

    [deleted]
    

    • u/traverseda:

      Not really any ELI5, but you might consider reading over http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 .
      
      The obvious argument is that you already go to sleep. You could, if you stretch the situation a bit, consider that death in the same way you consider copying someone to be death. You don't continue consciousness.
      
      You have a weird definition of something, somewhere, I think. A hypothetical that needs to get [dissolved](http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/).
      
      So imagine that you're a digital entity. You've had your organic brain copied into a computer, in a safe way that you consider to be kosher.
      
      Now, we shut down the process that is *you*. Are you dead? Is that horribly different from sleeping? Is it horribly different from getting crygenically frozen?
      
      Now, we start you back up. But we start you back up twice, from the same data, on two different computers. Which one of you is the original?
      
      The idea of "original" doesn't really make sense when you're dealing with software. My answer is that *you* experience two different lives, because there's two *you's* now. You are something that can be copied, and your assumption of death only makes sense if you presume that you're, well, special in some way. That you behave differently then any other turing machine.
      

      • u/Zeikos:

        I really dislike the sleep analogy. It's a *really bad* analogy while you sleep the brain doesn't cease to function. Signals go arround and do their biologically programmed thing, consciousness is suspended not terminated.
        
        I see any process which could allow the continuity of existence of the original ad muder-copying.
        Could ,in hypothetical not practice,  you be copied and still continue your existence? If yes and you get killed, well you get killed.
        
        
        I find that believing that subjective experience could continue after the interruption of the process that enables it a body-mind dualism kind of thought. Something i don't subscibe to.
        
        Now, i think the only honest answer is "we don't know enough" ; if/when faced with something that mah ne an existential threat if it's avoidable i would suggest to avoid it.
        

      • u/None:

        [deleted]
        

      • u/CCC_037:

        > My answer is that *you* experience two different lives, because there's two *you's* now. You are something that can be copied, and your assumption of death only makes sense if you presume that you're, well, special in some way. That you behave differently then any other turing machine.
        
        And in the scan-and-destroy teleporter, one of those two *you*s is destroyed (presumably instantly, before it can produce any memories, but nonetheless destroyed).
        
        That is, I think, why it is reasonable to describe it as "essentially murder". Because if you take away that destructive step, then there would be an extra person, alive and well and walking around. (The fact that you've *also* created an exact clone does not prevent the destruction part from being murder).
        

        • u/None:

          [deleted]
          

          • u/CCC_037:

            True.
            
            Imagine for a moment that I have a piece of paper, showing - say - a blueprint. I make a photocopy, then I tear up the original. Once again, no information is destroyed, yet I have still torn up a piece of paper.
            
            The copy ensures that the information continues to exist. It does not prevent the destruction of the original paper.
            

  • u/LiteralHeadCannon:

    It's common dogma on LW that this way of thinking is irrational, but frankly, I don't see why.  Eliezer said it was so, but I don't think he satisfactorily showed it.  He basically just waved his hands and said "quantum mechanics" in a mystical voice.
    

    • u/thecommexokid:

      Fine. Sam doesn't buy into the quantum-mechanical reductionist philosophy as espoused by, e.g., Eliezer (and many, many others—this was hardly a brand-new idea of his) regarding this debate. But “***unquestionably***”? He's going to dismiss the mere *possibility* of disagreement on this issue?
      
      Sam’s entitled to his opinion. But he’s not entitled to *my* opinion, too.
      

    • u/AugSphere:

      That's a bit harsh, isn't it? It's hardly accepted just because Eliezer said it was so. Really, the viewpoint is just a direct consequence of treating the mind as something fully determined by the hardware it runs on. Quantum mechanics is only relevant to the discussion as a counterargument to one of the more bizarre positions, which attempts to tie identity to individual atoms making up the body, as far as I can see, and that can be dealt with without resorting to quantum mechanics anyway. Calling a fairly mainstream reductionist view 'LW dogma, justified by Eliezer waving his hands and saying "quantum mechanics" in a mystical voice' is pretty ridiculous. In fact, it makes the whole comment look more like bait for defensive LW folks, rather than a statement of honest disagreement.
      

    • u/OutOfNiceUsernames:

      LW doesn’t have to do anything with it.
      
      >I don't see why
      
      For me, at least, it’s a non-issue as long as 1) the teleporter is guaranteed to make a copy indistunguishable from the original and 2) the original gets destroyed once the copy is made.
      
      This is because I perceive exact copies of the same consciousness to be the same person up to the moment when their experience start to diverge; and death as a human concept\illusion.
      
      So as long as there aren’t different instances of the same person to create a resource scarcity problem for them (e.g. who’ll be staying with their family and who’ll be leaving) and to cause stress to the people that know them, it shouldn’t be considered a problem at all.
      

    • u/None:

      [deleted]
      

      • u/alexanderwales:

        It's interesting to me that people are answering the question of "is the teleported thing you" when what Sam said was "it is unquestionably not the original". You can make an argument that the term "original" is meaningless here, but I'm skeptical that you can make the argument that the copy is "the original".
        

        • u/Quillwraith:

          Contextually, it looks like he's saying it's not the original person, and thus is a different person. I'd argue that it's trivially a different set of atoms (and a different instance of the person) but that it isn't necessarily a different person.
          

• u/696e6372656469626c65:

  Okay, so there's a big debate going on in the comments here about whether destructive teleportation counts as murder. I'm going to weigh in and, if not settle the debate, at least get everyone on the same page (hopefully). So, here we go:
  
  The main thrust of this debate (as I see it) is that some people are convinced destructive teleportation results in subjective death, whereas others disagree. So let's take a look at what sort of reasons one might have to take this stance (that destructive teleportation == death).
  
  It seems to me that this position basically boils down to a very simple assertion: that there are certain things that are essential to your identity (fairly uncontroversial), and that destructive teleportation fails to preserve one or more of these things (somewhat more controversial). But what are these things? Well, there have been a bunch of philosophical debates on what constitutes identity, and I don't want to retread that ground, but luckily we don't have to: since we're just talking about the question of whether teleportation preserves identity (and not what identity is as a whole), all we have to do is look at what teleportation does *not* preserve and ask ourselves if one of the things it doesn't preserve is central to identity. So, what does teleportation not preserve about you?
  
  1. It doesn't preserve your physical location (it'd be kind of dumb if it did, since that would remove the whole point of teleporting).
  2. It doesn't preserve the particles making up your body.
  
  And... that's it. So far as I can tell, those two things (your physical location, and the identity of the particles in your body) are the *only* things about you that destructive, "scan-and-reconstruct" teleportation fails to keep the same. So with that out of way, the obvious next question is: is your identity tied to one of those things? If the answer is "no", then clearly destructive teleportation does *not* fail to preserve your identity, and it cannot be considered death. If the answer is "yes", then scanning someone through a destructive teleporter should rightly be considered murder.
  
  Well, first off, I imagine most people would be hard-pressed to argue that physical *location* is a key ingredient to identity; if I walk down to the Starbucks across the street, am I a different person? Probably not. (Some people might argue that I formed new memories in the process of doing so, so technically I *would* be a different person. My response to these people would be to [flip them the bird](http://lesswrong.com/lw/bwp/please_dont_fight_the_hypothetical/).)
  
  So that leaves us with the other thing that destructive teleportation fails to preserve: the particles making up your body. There are a number of ways to reply to this, not least of which is the fact that [at the most fundamental level, there seems to be no such thing as "distinct particles"](http://lesswrong.com/lw/qx/timeless_identity/). But even if you don't accept this (although you should!), it's common knowledge that [98% of the atoms in your body get replaced by new atoms every... single... year](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936455,00.html). If you consider yourself the same person as you were last year, then you shouldn't have any problem with destructive teleportation. (People who don't consider themselves the same person as they were last year because they made a New Year's Resolution or something get the finger again.)
  
  So it seems we've reached a conclusion. Unless I missed something in my list of things that teleportation does not preserve (quite a short list, all things considered, so maybe I have), or else you have a perverse theory of identity that relies somehow on physical location and/or identity of particles (and also you reject quantum mechanics), *destructive teleportation is not death*. This seems like a fairly airtight conclusion to me. Anyone want to try and poke holes in it? I welcome arguments.
  

  • u/thecommexokid:

    I am the one who started said argument, so I'm obviously on your side here, but I suspect some people might find "98% of my atoms are replaced gradually over the course of a year" and "100% of my atoms are replaced simultaneously all at once" to be a false equivalency. I don't think this objection is defensible, but I would still anticipate hearing it.
    

  • u/feha92:

    To me it looks like you made a well-formulated argument as for why constituting out of an assuredly different... 'hardware'/'unit'/'vessel' (in lack of better terms) should not be considered as having died. While your arguments are quite good, you focus too much on the axiom that the copy is identical. Any such reconstruction is bound to introduce slight errors if the technology existed in reality. Why I bring this up is not because it disproves your arguments (if it did, it would just be the kind of stuff you want to flip the bird at), because it really doesn't. I bring this up because you are not far from addressing this issue with your existing arguments.
    
    Even when not focusing on the specific particles, a body that is different to a lesser degree should still be considered identical in the perspective of human identity. If the change was major, such as changing ones fitness, then sure there would be a debate to be held. But for example slightly elevated iron-levels in the blood? I would argue that you don't become a different person just because you eat (and as has been mentioned before, lets ignore the fact you gained new memories and say you ate something in a fraction of a second without realizing), so minor errors to the vessel should be tolerable on this topic.
    
    However, that was just an aside to what I actually wanted to address. And this is a proper flaw in your argumentation. What you are trying to argue is that just because you still exist, you can't have died. However, let me give you a hypothetical:
    > You enter the teleporter, get scanned and subsequently reconstructed elsewhere. However! The destruction of the... 'original' somehow went wrong. Now there are two of you in existence. Is it really not murder just because you would still exist? And following the same reasoning, is it really not murder when the automated destruction works?
    
    I would argue that no, it is in fact murder. What is happening is that a sentient being, albeit one which is identical to another, is removed from existence. One that would continue to exist had it not been destroyed. The question should not be whether it is murder or not, but rather whether such murder is moral or not.
    
    I would argue that yes, it is moral. Rather, not killing the copy would just create too many complications (shoutout to /u/LiteralHeadCannon s comment about legal complications to ownership), be they legal, moral, logistic, or simply the fact that the person wanted to *teleport* and still finds themselves at the source, probably trying again and again making the mess bigger.
    
    In a similar fashion, how would one consider teleportation where the scan itself destroys the subject simply from it being a necessity for it to function? There will never be a copy killed after the teleportation which could have been given the right to live on (and this is the important difference), so my intuitive answer would be that no, its not murder.
    
    However, if one considers the fact that there is a brief moment of time in-between the scan and the reconstruction (or even between the moment you die and the end of the scan, so 'you' don't even exist in its memory banks all of this period of time) where the subject simply does not exist due to being obliterated by the teleporter, is it not a fact that for at least a period of time it murdered you? Is what it is doing not effectively actually killing you and subsequently resurrecting you, except at another location. Again, morally I don't see any issues with such a murder (only a concept of souls would really make it a possible issue).
    
    But what if the teleporter malfunctions and doesn't resurrect you until a significant amount of time later? Is it about as morally wrong as a cab-driver arbitrarily deciding on forcing you on a 1-hour trip around town (without taxing you extra)? Or is there bigger moral implications in ceasing to exist for a significant period of time? What if it is significant enough to not be a mere inconvenience and rather something like decades?
    

  • u/Mabus101:

    One of the issues that gets brought up outside this sort of rationalist arena has to do with souls.*Purely as a thought-experiment*, let us suppose hypothetically that identity resides in some "nonphysical" entity that has escaped our detection.  Immediately we find that exactly the same problem exists regarding destructive teleportation.  While the conventional stance is certainly "you died;  therefore your soul departed; therefore what arrived at point B is just a copy", one could just as easily argue "your soul is the important part; it is not tied to the body; so barring experimental signs of degeneration we can presume it transmigrated".
    
    The point of this is that questions of reductionism would seem to be a red herring, since reductionist and nonreductionist hypotheses lead to equally equivocal results.  In short, a new approach is needed.
    

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