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Comment by trsohmers | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand why people get hung up on this (with the assumption of the impossible guarantee that it is 100% safe, or "bullet proof" as you put it). I am perfectly fine with a Prestige/Star Trek transporter, as long as it is a perfect copy, I don't really care if it is the "original" meatsack or the 100th... all I would want is to make sure the original dies quickly and painlessly (preferably after it is confirmed the copy was transported safely).

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Unless the laws of physics require the quick and painless destruction of the original in order to get the information to send to the other side, I wouldn't count on it being quick and painless.

All I'd count on is that it would be the cheapest method that does the job. If soundproofing the booth and killing you slowly and painfully saves them money over quick and painless, you are probably getting slow and painful.

Personally, my threshold question for whether or not I would consider using a transporter is: can this technology be tweaked to make a duplicator instead of a transporter?

If the answer is "yes", I'm not riding.

I've seen similar arguments to yours (against the deconstruct-reconstruct matter teleporter), and they never seem to understand the real dilemma:

It kills "you". Not the objective "you" of course, that lives on in the copy. It kills the subjective "you".

By terminating the stream of consciousness, the person going into the matter teleporter dies. There's no way for the stream of consciousness to continue after that point.

It's not ---------------X------------------

It's

-------------------XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXX---------------------------

If you're comfortable dying so that a copy of you can live the rest of your life, that's your business. But most people don't have that sort of objectivity.

Well put! This is what I am most afraid of.

You are just carefully arranged to respond that you are afraid of it.

We don't even know if there is such a thing as subjective "you". It's purely speculation. It seems humans would desperately like to think there is such a thing though.

I agree that the base notion of a subjective "you" is problematic. But I enter discussions like these with the assumption that the person on the other end is, like me, experiencing their life subjectively. "I think, therefore I am" and such.

If we reject the subjective assumption, then this whole discussion is moot (and I need to re-consider my life and become a Zen Buddhist monk off in the hills somewhere)

I tend to agree with your conclusion but I think the reasoning is still incredibly complex and not really sound. Sleep is an obvious and frequent discontinuation of consciousness.

constructing a copy, and destroying the original is not True teleportation. it is just mimicking teleporation. You are destroying the original just so you can call it teleportation? A true form of teleportation will be where the original goes from point A to B, without any copy. I am not saying it is possible, just saying that copying+destroying is not Teleportation

How do you create a test that distinguishes between the two?

There's a good science fiction story which has copying-type teleportation. Everybody recognizes it's being copied and then dying, so people are reluctant to use it. But many do, because it's required by their career.

> There's no way for the stream of consciousness to continue after that point.

How can you know that? How can you even know what that means? :)

What is a stream of consciousness? Why wouldn't it be replicated along with the physical body? If it's separate from the physical body, why doesn't it move from the original body to the new one? If you know the answers to these questions: how do you know them?

Do you die when you go to sleep? Go under anaesthesia?

But you're unconscious...

consciousness is not a "thing" it is a careful arrangement of matter and energy that is unique to you. replicating that arrangement does not move your consciousness, it creates a new one.

Your stream of consciousness is interrupted when you sleep, so with that logic you technically die every night.

> But most people don't have that sort of objectivity.

Where did you get that idea from?

> If you're comfortable dying so that a copy of you can live the rest of your life, that's your business.

You will eventually die and (hopefully) a partial copy of you(children) will continue living on and you don't even have a choice about it.

Because it shatters the meaning of what it means "to be." Am I a meatsack that houses consciousness or am I a complex stream of consciousness that controls a meatsack?

In which case, if consciousness can be streamed, can that consciousness be hijacked? Or do I stop existing the moment it's transported?

Too many uncertainties.

I definetly think the latter, and I'd ditch my body for a newer one in 30 years if I could. Would be pretty great if a transporter also did "tune up" of all of the frail biological bits as part of the copying process (without messing with the brain hopefully)

Of course, I think that this is extremely impractical so it isn't a decision that I actually have to face. In this hypothetical scenario though, I'd much rather use the "transporter" as a cloning machine... having two of me would be pretty awesome.

The irony, as I see it, is that immediately after the transfer, the "you" that doesn't get transported might still be aware of your surroundings and understand completely what "your" fate will soon be (killed quickly).

That would require an enormous amount of bravery and belief in the technology.

Your comment reminded me of a old Outer Limits episode, "Think Like A Dinosaur" where the teleportation "equation had to be balanced." After a delayed confirmation, the technician had to kill the original woman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Like_a_Dinosaur_(The_Out...

That was a great show - but I haven't seen that episode. Maybe Netflix will revive it someday.

For shows like that there are usually unlicensed copies on YouTube.

Try to find it. This is probably my favorite episode and one of the best fictional explorations of the problems involved with teleportation.

I've read the short story this was based on. If memory serves it was the first time I encountered the concept of throwing someone out an airlock.

Would you feel the same way if someone cloned you as an exact copy (genes, memories, mental state) and then tried to kill you? There's no difference between that and teleporting except the order of operations.

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