If as Bruce claims, the clone is exactly the same as you, then if you were destroyed immediately as your clone was created, and your clone lived, then you haven't died. You continue on, making this type of teleportation possible. He even claimed if you don't believe this you must believe in a soul.

[x] Discussed in SMP
[x] By smart people (you, chezlaw)
[x] Controversy; i.e. you didn't agree

I tend to rely heavily on reflection when I post (reflection in the sense that I use the terms/phrases/grammatical structure that other people use because it's usually the most efficient way to get anywhere), but this technique doesn't work that well when I reflect something from one post, and the person seemingly does a 180 in the next post. For example, in your previous post you said, "Before there was a car, there were some components that weren't the car, and after the components are done being a car, there will be no car. So I responded, "After the components are done being me, there will be no me." I did the clever thing where I substituted "me" for "a car". Where did I go wrong? Should I have said "the components are not a me" or should I have said, "The components aren't a car. A spark plug is not a Maserati"?

What's the friendliest nicest don't-mean-to-hurt-your-feelings-let's-talk-about ducks-or-w.b. yeats-or-gang-up-on-matt-or-something way to say I'm getting tired of this act? Yasser doesn't exist. The as clause is superfluous because he doesn't exist as anything else.

What's the difference between a clone in the case where you are killed and a clone in the case where you are not?

Branching memories don't mean ****-all, we can put you and your clone into identical rooms and control for identical stimuli and invent devices that scan your brains and make sure that all your thoughts are perfectly coincident over decades. You will still be you and your clone will still be a clone. Why?

...because we each have a soul?? Because of something we have yet to understand about conciousness?

I think your statement is true, but I don't know that it is. Maybe if we are identical in every single way and share the exact same experiences, we are a single identity, ie, the same mind- no different from if you were to consider each half of my brain/body separately. There are a lot of directions we could take this.

A soul is a red herring, it doesn't explain anything and it annoys people. You can bite the bullet and say pi is an illusion, and then try to make sense out of why you care whether some one stabs you in the eye next Thursday. Chezlaw's answer was, you guessed it, evolution. It's better for your genes if present you cares about future you because you share genes but not identities.

I'm glad to say we simply don't understand, and we don't know what or why we don't understand, that's how not understanding usually works. But most people here seem to think it's a non-problem, so it's my humble task to suggest to them that they're off the mark.

I must take a breather, some one claiming to be me will be around a little later.

*grunching as usual*

I saw two points made in the OP that I think i can reply to in good faith:

1) You spoke a few times about a cap or limit and I personally think you went over that claim too quickly. I dont see any reason to say that such a cap exists or that such a cap must exist. I mean maybe it does or maybe it doesn't but if the existence of this cap is integral to your argument, I think you should have dedicated at least a few lines to arguing why it does / must exist. I honestly have no idea if there is or isnt so I was just a little surprised that you glossed over that.


2) About humans ability to make stuff on the atomic level:

I remembered this imagine made by IBM (those dots you see are atoms, btw).
Check this out for more info: http://teachingkidsnews.com/2013/05/...made-of-atoms/

First of all, with teleportation, you must destroy the original in order to create the copy. That's how it works. Cloning is different, and quantum cloning is impossible to do perfectly. It can be done imperfectly, in which case you're creating 2 people, and each one will very much care if you try to kill it at any time. Why would you think differently? What's the big problem that you don't understand?

There was a really cool show about this on Outer Limits, or Twilight Zone, or some similar show. They were using teleportation to send people to other planets that they could never get to by conventional means. But the prime directive was that the original person had to consent to be destroyed. This was a huge deal, and if someone refused, the officers in charge were sworn to shoot the person. The directive was always followed until one woman refused, and the officer couldn't shoot her because he had fallen in love with her, so it screwed the whole thing up with a second copy of this woman coming back.

1) Do I think caps exist today on certain technologies? No.

I suppose what I'm saying is that if you think in terms of "Where is this going?" with respect to an industry, or even an object like the combustion engine, then you try to play it out as far as it can go.

Storage of Information Cap: I see that being incredibly large at one point. In 200 years, I can't even imagine how much information can be stored, I would say that the ability to store every person on Earth's "atom and bond set" (no idea what to call it) would be possible.

Combustion Engine Cap: I think some would say that the combustion engine will be replaced by X in 200 years so does that mean this has a cap long before then? I don't know, but we're closer to this cap than Information Storage's cap.

3D Printing Cap: This is what even started the OP. I thought further down the line of the things we can do, and began thinking that if we could build at the atomic level, and if we had the "blueprints" to do so, blah blah blah, OP is written.

The cap on anything, I guess, is where people see it going to it's limit. And, maybe we could say usefulness. We've kind of capped out on home based phones, I'm sure they could have made them more technologically advanced, but people hardly use them anymore.

2) Yes, I had seen that before as well. It's a "start' I suppose. If anything it says, "Well, yeah, we can build on the atomic level, it's going to take a while to build anything of consequence."

But, let's say that teleportation is done in the manner that I'm suggestion where there is a machine at the destination point that receives your atom set and constructs you.

Now think of how it looks. Obviously if at the origin it looks like someone is set on fire, and they're screaming or something, yeah, no one goes for that. But, if there's some calm blue light and pretty swirl in both areas, no one is upset.

If they're told, "Yeah, we kill you here, and reconstruct a copy of you there," then no one is going for it.

If they're told, "Your atoms are disassembled here, and reassembled there," then they're fine with it.

There will be people opposed to being teleported. And, there will be people that will do it daily.

thanks for telling us how something that's yet to be invented works!

The assumption is that we have an exact clone, like what we imagine should be at the other end of the teleporter. What is it about the teleportation device that allows it to make a perfect copy only if the original is destroyed, but otherwise this is impossible?

It has been invented, and it's even been implemented on a very small scale (like photons and atoms).


The no cloning theorem of quantum mechanics prohibits making a copy without altering the original. In teleportation, the quantum measurement process destroys the quantum state of the original.

No cloning theorem

Quantum teleportation

The teleportation device always destroys the original. I mean, otherwise, we'd keep duplicating everyone!

Here's another thought for everyone:
If we can "build" a person as discussed very early in this thread, then we're obviously building from a blueprint using specific atoms.

What if, on the build, "some" of the same atoms were used?

What if, on the build, 95% of the same atoms were used? 100%?

Had heard about that. It's a start, but obviously not anywhere close to what we're talking about.

While I'm reading up on this, are you claiming that though no exact copy can be made according to the no cloning theorem, an exact duplicate (I'll differentiate between a "copy" because the original does not exist) could be made as long as the original were destroyed in the process?

Yes, in theory you could recreate an entire quantum state in a new location, but the process of measuring the original will destroy the original.

It's the same principle that has been implemented for photons and atoms, so doing it on large scale is an engineering problem rather than a conceptual one, though it's a gigantic engineering problem. It hasn't even been done for small molecules yet, but there was talk of trying to teleport viruses. Imagine the possibilities, you could catch a cold from across the country.

[x]you stepped on my joke
[x] fyp

His argument that it is an illusion rests on mereological essentialism being a requirement for identity.

In certain cases, mereological essentialism is a perfectly acceptable way of looking at the world. "Audre Hepburn is hot" requires some amount of it. If Zeno said he had a date with Audre Hepburn scheduled for this weekend, we'd be a bit disturbed. There are even cases where it is correct to think of Chezlaw that way, such as deciding whether he is the sort of person that can't wipe his own butt.

I'd be willing to bet that if Chezlaw even answers by name from time to time, and rarely, if ever, gets confused when someone says "see you at the next reunion in ten years" (that he isn't planning on attending).

"213 North Main Street, Apartment #4" (the place where Bruce lives) or "smrk2" exist as a mereological thing whether or not Bruce brings in some groceries or takes out the trash (things that certainly change his apartment) or whether you clip your toenails or eat something or have a different idea than you did yesterday (things that change in you) or say, "I'll see you next Thanksgiving."

It isn't a question of whether it is an illusion. It is a question of what questions are you trying answer.

"After the components are done, collectively, being you." Apologies for the poor wording.

Yasser is no different than Hurricane Katrina. He is something that happened and is no longer happening (except for in the rotting corpse sense he doesn't exist in the present tense).

"He" (now an "it," except for necrophiliacs) does exist as a thingamajig that needed to be buried. I'm sure you have been to funerals. In that sense, "he" still needs to be identified.

When you say "destroy," what exactly do you mean? We aren't converting my atoms to energy, I assume. What do you think my original body looks like after teleportation... couple bruises, slightly scrambled, puddle of muck?

Your molecules wouldn't survive since the quantum states of the electrons holding the atoms in place would change.

So you're thinking grey goo?

Curious what actually would happen when the quantum state changes. Are we talking spin? Not sure if a change in electron spin, for example, would cause a molecule to fall apart.

The quantum state and spin determine the s,p,d, etc. electron distributions which in term determine the shape of your molecules. You may not even be grey goo. Maybe just a gas. Maybe just particles.

Just from observation, ie, collecting the information?? I get that when we look at these properties on the quantum level, we interfere and they change, but I'm still having trouble understanding why that necessitates the molecules completely fall apart. For example, in X-ray flourescence, we bombard molecules with x-rays which causes their electrons to jump into different orbitals, emitting photons (flourescing) which allows us to identify the elements present. This in no way breaks the bonds, or changes anything about the molecule's structures.

They're cheaply made in China.


That's a much more specific process affecting individual electrons and specific energy levels. Imagine turning the p-orbitals required for the 108 degree shape of water into some other electronic configuration that could only be supported by separate atoms. Imagine what happens to the shape of macromolecules like proteins and DNA if you change ALL the electronic quantum states.

It isn't clear if it is necessary to teleport the quantum state of the nucleus, but if it is, then your protons and neutrons could fall apart into quarks, or turn into pions or something.

Hmmm, you're close to convincing me. Okay, so assuming this happens, and lets say we've perfected the teleportation device to the point it works as it should 99.9999999% of the time, much more often than our cars and aeroplanes. And it's just as affordable. Do you take it, Bruce?

If I understand it correctly, quantum teleportation is just the transmission of the information about the particle (the state of the wee particle), not the particle itself.

Correct if my understanding is off.

The information about the state of the particle is in qubits rather than classical bits (0 or 1), and the end result is to move those qubits from one place to another. This is done by sending a combination of another particle like a photon plus 2 classical information bits (0 or 1) per quibit. Qubits are a superposition or linear combination of 0 and 1 at the same time, and the coefficients of the linear combination are complex numbers which give a vector that can lie anywhere on the surface of a sphere (0 and 1 would correspond to the north and south poles).

To transfer a quibit, the particle we send corresponds to one half of an entangled pair. That is, a pair of particles who's quantum states are inextricably linked no matter how far apart they are in space. The other half of that pair is used at the transmitter, and we make a measurement of 2 qubits, that of the entangled particle and the particle we want to teleport. We actually measure one using the other as a basis. That's called a Bell-state measurement, and it causes entanglement between the particle we are teleporting and the particle that is already entangled to the particle at the receiver. When we do that, the qubit of the receiver's entangled particle changes simultaneously, no matter how far away it is, in a way that is correlated with it's partner's qubit which depends on the measurement. The result of this measurement is 2 classical bits (0 or 1) which are sent over a conventional information channel. At the receiver, the classical bits from the conventional channel tell us how to convert the qubits of the entangled particle to the same qubits as the original particle that we measured at the transmitter by selecting from 1 of 4 possible qubits.