in teleportation (like star trek) dont you die?

Question

The teleport works by breaking a person up into sub-atomic matter, beaming the matter to the location and then reassembling it into the original form. If thats the case hasnt the target been killed and then remade? It seems similar to making a clone of someone and killing the original, the clone would have all memories before death but the original has died and the new version has taken its place. If theres an afterlife theres a dead Captain Piccard in there for each time hes used the transporter? I hope they never manage to make one and it goes mainstream because this scared me

Answer 1

The cells and constituents in your body die and/or are replaced on a basis that is not quite as rapid as teleportation, but in an otherwise similar fashion.



Yet no one says the 12 year version of you died because your older version has had a complete change out of physical constituents.



It's more a question of continuity of personality and memory than it is physical structure. So in comparing this fictional substitution of physical constituents to the real life version, I'd say no, you do not die simply because you've replaced your body cells. Otherwise, you'd have a new death certificate every few weeks.



And you should get ready for it. While they won't likely invent a transporter per se, you will probably see a computer that can store all that makes you "you" in perpetuity. You will then be able to live long and prosper as a program that powers either a robot, or a computer avatar.

Answer 2

For further information, see the 'Ship of Theseus paradox'.



Let's try a thought experiment:



Suppose an evil genius straps you to a table and starts removing parts of you. He cuts off your hand. Are you still you? Lots of people lose a hand and they usually claim to be the same person. The same might be said for arms and legs, sensory organs, and even important things like hearts, lungs, and so on.



That just leaves us with your brain. A brain-in-a-jar might think it was you, even without a body, and if our evil genius manufactured an artificial body that was just like your old one, we might not even notice much of a difference. But perhaps we could do the same with your brain. People kill brain cells with drugs and alcohol all the time and still say they are the same. Again, we might imagine that if every cell in your brain were replaced by our evil genius one at a time with an artificial duplicate, it might still be 'you', even though none of the original physical parts of you were there.



What is 'you', then, could be said to be the mind - the construct of the brain. A system instead of a physical thing. Something which might be duplicated on a computer, perhaps, or in some other way exist without a physical form of any kind. Not entirely inconceivable.



Now suppose our evil genius takes all those parts he took off of you and reassembles them in exactly the way he took them. The artificial you - which has had a continuous conception of being you - would be confronted by a new you made of the physical material of the old you. Yet if the new you's brain took up operating from where it left off, it might not know it wasn't you except for a few missing minutes of thought. Or put another way: if we introduced people to the two of you, how would they know which one was 'real'? It could be argued that when there is no measurable difference, there is no actual difference. And at no point did anything really die, per se.



Interestingly, we can take it in the opposite direction as well. You think of yourself as 'you' because you have a continuity of consciousness. But in the same wise, you don't think you are the same person as you were when you were six years old. You remember being that person, but that person is not who you are now. Even when the evil genius cuts off your hand, you are different. If he also cut off your memory of having a hand, you might be very distinctly so.



If we expand this out to all things which have an effect on who you think you are and how you behave, it ends up including almost everything. Instead of being just a mind, you become a conscious node of much of the local universe. Every change changes you to some extent, and every second in the past is another you which is gone and never likely to ever return. And again, because 'you' isn't necessarily some specific biological creature, 'you' may exist long after that creature is disassembled atom by atom.



It all depends on how you think about things. I don't think either answer is necessarily more correct than the other; rather they are different perspectives on the same thing. My two cents.

Answer 3

Of course this is the fiction part of science fiction. They never bothered to explain how Beaming worked but lots of scientists have taken a crack at it in hindsight. Since there is no way that the physical particles, subatomic or not, can actually be physically transported at all, one scientist suggested that only the actual "life force" of the creature is being beamed and that that life force instantly takes matter from its environment to reconstruct the physical body.



Any way you slice it, beaming is an impossible thing that enables them to have better stories - not unlike Warp-factor speeds which are also physically impossible.

Answer 4

i suppose. i think you have to start at the beginning of life to understand. we are just an accumulation of energy over time and evolution. at the base of every lifeform is the center that started it all. when we die the same energy that made our bodies will be digested and made part of something else. when something is eaten it doesnt dissappear. everything that made that being has become a part of the being that ate it. even the parts that are excreted become part of the land and is constantly in cycle. so i suppose when a person is teleported he/she is broken apart into its most basic elements and the energy is transported to another teleported where it is reassembled perfectly.

Answer 5

in case you seem on the unique in call for human being Trek and the numerous products that they got here up with for it, you'll hit upon we've already surpassed the numerous technologies. seem on the verbal replace gadgets. initially, they were about the dimensions of massive cellular phones. Motorola actually bought the rights to apply the layout for his or her first sequence of turn phones, if i bear in mind wisely. we've verbal replace gadgets even smaller than the badges they positioned on in the subsequent technology and later spin-offs. some might want to assert it truly is going to take forever to attain the point of technologies that seems in in call for human being Trek, yet they could be incorrect. we've already attained that element in some parts. something else are particular to stay with.

Answer 6

Fascenating conclusion, You have just answered one of the biggest questions of all time, Does man have more lives than a cat. Kirk must have had hundreds of lives. Hey, Beam me up Scottie, I don't like this life I wish to try another.

Answer 7

that's the theory, i guess.



we talked about this in my philosophy class in high school.



i believe that you are broken down into that sub-atomic matter, that information in its entirety is downloaded into a computer, the computer sends that information to another location, and the computer uses that information to reassemble you.



but a question: how does it reassemble you? does it pull matter out of the air? it cannot just create the matter out of nothing......... interesting.....



sorry if that doesn't help, but i say yes to your question: the original you dies and the copy lives on.

Answer 8

You aren't your atoms.

You are your forumula.



Your consciousness itself is an illusion of memories and actuality.

So, you are then just composed of the body, mind and memories you were before being broken down.

Answer 9

if you cut off your finger, drive across town, and the doctor reattaches it; it is still your finger. i think that the same principle would apply. you are broken into pieces and then put back together in a different location.

Answer 10

You don't have to worry; that won't be happening anytime soon... LOL