Template:Ak:Is teleportation possible?
From Bellybuttonporn
There's two main ideas here as far as teleportation goes:
- Some kind of fold/warp of spacetime where you step into one "end" of the fold/warp and step out of the other "end" somewhere else.
- A method for deconstructing a person, sending the information elsewhere, and reconstructing the person at the remote location. (Star Trek-style)
This question stemmed from this conversation on Strangetalk, so I will focus on the second idea after briefly discussing the first.
Warp Pipes
Yes and no. According to general relativity several weird things are possible with spacetime. Stretching and compression of spacetime are well-known and proven. Wormholes, if they exist, would probably be too small and too short-lived for any practical use. Quantum Mechanics allows for particles to appear and disappear all the damn time, to experience reverse causality, and "spooky action at a distance". I'm not really a QM expert, but I'm sure you could devise some degenerate situation where you could teleport something.
Star Trek Transporters
Ok so here's the plan: We disassemble you atom-by-atom and store that information, then reconstruct you exactly as you are elsewhere.
There's plenty of philosophical issues here:
- Is the person reconstructed "you", or merely a copy leaving you dead?
- What does identity mean?
At first blush one might think that such a system would be a mere copy. However, there's several reasons to think otherwise. First, the atoms making up objects are not static. And second, our idea of "self" is not intrinsically tied to the make-up of our bodies.
Molecules, atoms, and particles all move around quite a bit. This is especially pronounced in biological organisms, which by the very nature of being alive take in external material and release external material.
The Leaky Ship
Thought experiment: Spain sent a ship to the new world, but it never arrived. It was destroyed in a storm. You are sent to find out if there are any survivors. Upon departing Spain you discover that your ship has a horrible termite infestation. However, you are in luck. Each time the termites eat a board on your ship you find a piece of driftwood from the wreckage of the first ship and use it to patch up the hole. You continue in this manner all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, replacing every board on your ship on your way to the new world.
When you replace the first board on the ship, are you still riding on the same ship?
What about when you replace the second board? Same ship still, right?
At what point does it become a different ship? Does it?
Suppose you were a passenger on the ship, and the crew always replaced the parts when you were asleep. You'd arrive in the Americas thinking nothing changed. Would you be right? Why or why not?
I argue that each time you change the composition of the ship, that becomes the new ship. The ship isn't defined by the boards; it's how they're put together, what it's used for, etc. Ultimately, identity is a mental construct that we project onto parts of the universe.
People operate the same way. The food we eat becomes part of our bodies. The wastes we excrete were formerly part of us. We are not different people from moment to moment, so there must be some metaphysical capacity for continued identity. I think that capacity is simple due to the fact that, again, identity is a mental construct used to explain the universe.
More Later!
