Teleportation Terrifying?

[Milk]

Does anyone else find the idea completely terrifying in Science Fiction?
Its used a lot in various stories, but I usually have to stop and think about it, and then I find the idea really scary.

Teleportation:
You are scanned by some device which takes your information (all the information to build you, including memories) then this device sends it to some far away location where an entirely new 'you' is created. This new you is a near or complete 100% copy. Then the old you is killed,blown to bits, disintegrated, at that exact instant the new one is made.

Now this is usually used to avoid faster/equal to light speed dilemna's so that charactors can scoot around the galaxy at fast speed. But see.. think about the concept a bit its really scary.

To an outside observer (or person reading the book), its walk like a duck,fly like a duck, look like a duck, quack like a duck= it must be a duck--meaning that person doing the traveling is indistinguishable from the one that was blown to bits. but what about the person themselves.... the old copy is dead it cant say "Hey wait I died that copy isnt me!!!" What if real death happens and theres no real link between the two. and the new person emerging from the teleportation device is just a new person.. no fluid consciousness is transferred.


What are your thoughts?

[j. d. worthington]

I'll take a run at this. For one thing, we aren't the same, anyway. From microsecond to microsecond, the chemicoelectronic patterns that make up us in the brain are being reproduced; so the personality is being reassembled literally millions of time a day. Should anything -- a blow to the head, an illness that effects the tissue, a chemical imbalance -- interfere with this process in such a way as to seriously derange the impulses following their usual channels, it can and often does cause complete personality displacement. Voila; the person you knew isn't there anymore. So, in that way, it's no scarier than any other possibility of such derangement.

Also, over a period of time, quite literally no part of our bodies remain unreplaced by new atoms/molecules/cells/tissue/what-have-you; so we don't even retain the same body; it's just that it takes a period of time instead of being done so quickly.

However, it still can be a scary concept, of course -- and that's been dealt with briefly in a couple of places (in Star Trek, for instance, with McCoy's distaste for the transporter, and then seeing two crewmen destroyed when the thing didn't work properly). So, to me, it is both fascinating/exhilirating and scary at the same time.

Interesting idea. And for anyone who wants it: what happens if a teleportation device (or, for that matter, a power that allows teleportation) is deliberately (or even accidentally) interfered with, so that the personality is changed. How can that person be "reassembled"? An idea for a story, I suppose; could have possibilities, anyway.

[BookStop]

Medically, it'd be great because you could irradicate lots of mutations, assuming you could pick out those particles during teleportation. But then, you could also cause one to mutate doing it in reverse. I don't know. I think I'd rather take the stairs.

Ever read 'The Jaunt' by Stephen King?

[Milk]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

I'll take a run at this. For one thing, we aren't the same, anyway. From microsecond to microsecond, the chemicoelectronic patterns that make up us in the brain are being reproduced; so the personality is being reassembled literally millions of time a day.

Also, over a period of time, quite literally no part of our bodies remain unreplaced by new atoms/molecules/cells/tissue/what-have-you; so we don't even retain the same body; it's just that it takes a period of time instead of being done so quickly.

Yes, I have always thought that using a strange intepretation of thermodynamics, it could be envisioned that all information/matter of the past in this universe is destroyed completely to make way for the new information/matter of the present, and at each quantum second, and at every quantum second, everywhere, and all the time. For the simple question of 'where would all the old information be stored?' because I dont think that subatomic particles contain extensive libraries of their history around with them.

Or put simply "the past doesnt exist." The idea that nothing from past can exist in the present. A tuatology, but a mindblowing one if you think about it.

But back to teleportation. Its one thing to have a charactor in a book use it. All the reader has to go on is the charactors dialogue and descriptions. To the outside reader that charactor remains consistent, and is the same person. But we as the reader are external to the charactor.

Every other witness to a teleportation of a person is external to that person even the person emerging from the teleportation chamber on the other end. That person who was scanned, copied and destroyed is gone and can't verify if he, in fact died, or was transferred without error into the new copy.
The new person might just be a copy, and the old one dead forever. Without a real transferance of consciousness. If even consciousness exists which it might not which is another arguement.

Allowing yourself to be killed with the trust that a new copy of you will be made that retains the 'real' you (whatever that means) is a scary premise for me.

[heron]

what might be more scarey is the thought that someone could build a telaporter and instead of teleporting themselves they telaport the entire planet but add a few tweaks to the reintergration program, how would we know

[steve12553]

Assuming there exist an essense to the human being (that can be referred to as a soul or a ka or a katra or a spirit) this soul must also be transferred for the teleportation to succeed. If it is transferred successfully than it must be compose of some sort of matter and/or energy that is measurable and recreatable. If not, then the whole idea is a mute point. If the soul is something that only God can create, the body at the other end will be dead. If we can't transfer it, we certainly can't create a new one. If God (or the Great Spirit or the Force) allows the soul to be transferred teleportation will work. My assumption has always been that animals have some sort of soul also. I would be very surprised if a human is the first living , breathing creature to be teleported. If anything living can be teleported we shouldn't have anything to worry about.

[Denie Alconn]

Anyone seen "The fly" ?
Do I need to say more?

[Foxbat]

I've always thought that a teleporter would make a fantastic military weapon....just think what could happen if it were more like a photocopier. You could send one soldier into a conflict....along with hundreds of copies of himself and therefore effectively limit the expected casualties on your side to just one man.

[Rahl Windsong]

Well with the high cost of fuel for my car I think if they develop transporters it would be a good thing. I mean think about it, get up for work and beam in all within 5 minutes!

Rahl

[j. d. worthington]

Incidentally, for those interested in a different sort of teleportation story, try Algis Budrys' Rogue Moon (the novella is a bit more lean and taut in writing than the novel); the original isn't destroyed outright, but retains a connection with his copy which puts him through hell (imagine yourself dying day after day as you try to go through a totally alien environment, knowing that you have that to look forward to again tomorrow....)

[Cobolt]

A ground hog day and Teleportation!!!! Now that is scary!

[chrispenycate]

There are several varieties of teleporter on the market, and only a few of them use instantaneous scanning, destruction of the original and reconstitution elsewhere. (Unlikely to work according to Heisenberg, requiring raw materials at the receiver {since only information makes the trip}, giving great scope for interference, both human and electronic, attaching a recorder, party lines ; I digress) Probably light speed limited, it’s really a planet scale transport net, but doesn’t involve any major energy or momentum contradictions. Still. Instantaneous scanning and instantaneous reconstruction are essential ( you wouldn’t enjoy it at all if it took a few milliseconds to rebuild you) and glitch free error correction. (much more complicated than a computer, but that’s all right, we all know computers never get bugs)

The oldest form, which still occurs fairly frequently, is the psychic or spiritual (or psi-power) version. A medeival saint, or someone possessed by some (presumably nonalcoholic) spirit, would sodenly find himself some distance from where he started, (though watch out ; teleportation, in the absence of the scientific method, was frequently used to describe what we would now refer to as “levitation“ or sometimes “telekinthesis“) Since saints and psychics didn’t have the concept of “air“, the fact they were arriving in a space already occupied by a certain quantity of it didn’t upset them (more modern teleporters would have to rematerialise from the middle out, so as to avoid fizzy blood, a great opportunity for high speed medical photography.) Mountain tops, pillars, floating in to land ; mystics are beyond potential energy or other minor laws of physics.

“Matter transporters“ generally tie knots in spacetime, making a bit of matter that was a great distance away temporarily contiguous with the bit on which you are standing, so you can step across. It is generally better to use an enclosed booth, to avoid air pressure and temperature problems, and frequently the booths handle the “one step“ part of the problem, either by the entire booth travelling or exchange of contents of two identical booths (I leave it as an excercise for the student demonstrating that the internal volume/shape of the booths must be standardised) The “knots“ involve wormholes, or higher dimensions, or just plane magic, and occasionally precise alignement can’t be achieved, leaving a short transdimentional subway ride, or a pleasant outing through unimaginable realms inhabited by beings who do not apreciate trespassers (and, in the best colonial tradition, will be wholesaley slaughtered for this inhospitable attitude).In fantasy, large numbers of standing stones and arches have been pre-ensourcelled to act as “portals“ or “gates“ for the same purpose ; that of getting characters from A to Ø without wasting multiple chapters on horseback. They don’t worry about draughs.any more than the saints.

Still, though we can drive truckloads of grain through (or, in wartime, put a tactical nuclear weapon in the enemy leader’s toilet), over any major distance on a planet, velocity differences between the two ends make for some pretty impressive accellerations, and booths should be a standard distance from the center of the Earth (tough if you live in Denver) Or we could transport identical masses in each direction (the booth weighs you as you get in, sends the information to the receiver booth as you dial your number, and exactly the same mass of water is put into the booth at the other end to balance the equation) Better than having to have the raw materialsto make a man and anything he might be carrying at the other end, anyway. The problem only gets worse with interplanetary or interstellar transport.

Quantum pairing seems better for information transfer than rush hour humans, and measuring the velocity of every particle in your body (yes, clothes and luggage too, if we must) so accurately that you could be anywhere in the universe, then collapsing the wave front and :- “Ah, well, only missed by a couple of light minutes, that’s nothing in cosmic terms. Pity it was underground, though, but it will save on the burial“

[The Ace]

Journalist; "How do the Heisenberg compensators work ?"
Star Trek tech; "Very well, thank you."

[jackokent]

Originally Posted by BookStop

Medically, it'd be great because you could irradicate lots of mutations, assuming you could pick out those particles during teleportation. But then, you could also cause one to mutate doing it in reverse. I don't know. I think I'd rather take the stairs.

Ever read 'The Jaunt' by Stephen King?

I was just going to mention this. I found the Jaunt really disturbing. I'm not saying I wouldn't do teleportation if it proved safe but I'd need some convincing.

[carrie221]

In theory it doesn't bother me but if there was one next to me the first time I used it I might be nervous but I like the idea of them