Valhalla Legends Archive

Quote from: Adron on September 12, 2003, 05:51 AMThe concept of making 1 copy and destroying the original is known as "teleportation". By enhancing that into producing two copies, you will have two you's that wake up in the teleport receivers, both thinking and feeling that they are you. And both will be as similar to you as you yourself are when you wake up in the morning and resume control of your body.

Yup, and they will both "know" that they are the ones with the "soul", so the other one must be a soulless clone.

Quote from: iago on September 12, 2003, 08:25 AM
What to do with the original body is a good question.  It would seem to make the most sense to break down the atoms and use that energy in the transporter reaction.

That sounds likely. Producing matter from energy requires enormous amounts of energy. By destroying matter and turning it into energy in one end, then turning it back to matter in the other end, you'd be in balance.

Quote from: Adron on September 12, 2003, 08:55 AM

Quote from: iago on September 12, 2003, 08:25 AM
What to do with the original body is a good question.  It would seem to make the most sense to break down the atoms and use that energy in the transporter reaction.

That sounds likely. Producing matter from energy requires enormous amounts of energy. By destroying matter and turning it into energy in one end, then turning it back to matter in the other end, you'd be in balance.

There's no perfect process in energy transformation, so there will be energy loss.  But yes, all the original mass-energy will be needed to make the first copy or the process would be very expensive.

I guess the question that you have to ask someone, which would be pretty decisive in terms of finding out what they truly think about this subject is:

Would you be prepared to test a transporter that worked on this principal?

I wouldnt.

No matter how identical the copy was, no matter if it had the thoughts and memories, reactions and opinions of me, it wouldnt be "me". It might be -a- me, but me, myself, the being to which I refer when I use the term "I" would be no more.

I was discussing this with my brother in some depth, and we decided the crucial question which would decide the whole debate, would be:

If the transporter malfunctioned (as already mentioned) and failed to destroy the "original" me, would I have "awareness" of both entities, or still just awareness of this one?

Personally I'm gonna hold out for controlled-wormhole teleporter technology before I volunteer to test.

It seems the best chance at a transporter would be one that converts mass to energy, transmits the energy to the new location, and uses that energy to convert back to mass.

During this process you would not have sufficient neural pathway cohesion to have thought, so wouldn't be "I" at all.

Quote from: j0k3r on September 12, 2003, 06:33 AM

Quote from: Soul Taker on September 11, 2003, 09:56 PM
Uh... You might want to watch Swordfish again.  And not be on acid.

I saw it two years ago in theatres before my graduation... All I remember was the guy was blown up in a helicopter and there was a frozen version of him in a freezer or something.

No, the frozen corpse was just a body that looked like him and had fake records, etc.  He escaped unharmed, and the corpse was on the helicopter to make people think he was dead.

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It seems the best chance at a transporter would be one that converts mass to energy, transmits the energy to the new location, and uses that energy to convert back to mass.

I'm not sure I agree with you there. The process of mass->energy conversion would be comparatively simple (assuming the  technology existed)... however the conversion of energy->mass in the correct proportions, producing the correct particles in the correct places would first require that you knew exactly where those particles were to begin with in order to reconstitute them.

This analysis would be theoretically impossible without contravening the uncertainty principal.

However, the folding of space, or the creation of a wormhole allowing you to "step" from one location to another would fit within the bounds of current theoretical physics, and would offer a lot less in the way of "runtime" complexity.

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During this process you would not have sufficient neural pathway cohesion to have thought, so wouldn't be "I" at all.

This is, of course, making the assumption that the answer to the question "Do we have souls?" is no.

Quote from: EvilCheese on September 12, 2003, 12:22 PM
If the transporter malfunctioned (as already mentioned) and failed to destroy the "original" me, would I have "awareness" of both entities, or still just awareness of this one?

If the transporter malfunctioned, then depending on what parts of you were transferred, you might have control of one part or the other, or both to some extent. Like, maybe it had transferred the left part of you and not the right... You probably wouldn't live long though.

A soul question: If your brain is split in two, you can still live on? Which part of the brain holds your soul, left or right? If you move the parts away from each other, which part will be you?

A soul is not bound by a piece of matter, it exists within your mental being I think, but once again I am not sure (nor do I think anyone is).

QuoteIf the transporter malfunctioned (as already mentioned) and failed to destroy the "original" me, would I have "awareness" of both entities, or still just awareness of this one?

Is it just me, or would it make more sense to transfer it all at once and not have this risk? Convert matter to energy inside the machine, THEN transfer it all at once (we should be able to do this by the time we can do what we are discussing...), and have the recieving end convert it back. They will probably need to have backup power, incase the energy get's interrupted on the way to the other machine. Not only backup power, but they would have to backup the person's DNA and information about the molecules and everything too just in case something were to go wrong...

QuoteWould you be prepared to test a transporter that worked on this principal?

With something of this magnitude (the 'teleportation'), I'm sure they would test it on simple organic beings, such as flies, then move to a rat, dog, horse, monkey (or along those lines atleast), and THEN a person.

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With something of this magnitude (the 'teleportation'), I'm sure they would test it on simple organic beings, such as flies, then move to a rat, dog, horse, monkey (or along those lines atleast), and THEN a person.

Ah hah, but to rats, dogs, horses and monkeys have the "soul" in question? How do you know you the dog you reassembled has the same ( or any? ) "soul" as the one you broke down?

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With something of this magnitude (the 'teleportation'), I'm sure they would test it on simple organic beings, such as flies, then move to a rat, dog, horse, monkey (or along those lines atleast), and THEN a person.



Ah hah, but to rats, dogs, horses and monkeys have the "soul" in question? How do you know you the dog you reassembled has the same ( or any? ) "soul" as the one you broke down?

Also, though the person who comes out of the transporter may walk the same, look the same, talk the same and have the same memories as the person who went in....how can you be sure it IS the same person?

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A soul is not bound by a piece of matter, it exists within your mental being I think, but once again I am not sure (nor do I think anyone is).

A soul is an abstract idea, it cannot be proven existant yet so of course no one can be sure.

Well, I haven't read this whole thread but I get the idea...
I believe that if you make a clone of yourself, and in this case looks like you, acts like you, but in the end; it just isn't you right? In my belief of this theory is its all about the person experience of how his life was. The clone apparently can't be you or ever replace you because he hasn't been through what you have. Now I know this might sound weird, but I dont believe in religion; matter of fact I don't even believe in god. Do you see a dog with a halo over his head in a church window? Obviously not, anyways im off topic. But the fact is it's all about the persons life, experiences, things you've been through. God feels like im repeating myself.

To make it brief and to stop my babbling.
It's all about ones journey. My theory. I dont know if anyone has already said this, but  feel free to bash or disagree with my idea on this post.

Quote from: Hitmen on September 12, 2003, 08:02 PM

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A soul is not bound by a piece of matter, it exists within your mental being I think, but once again I am not sure (nor do I think anyone is).

A soul is an abstract idea, it cannot be proven existant yet so of course no one can be sure.

Or, more likely, which is the idea I'm somewhat arguing: A soul is nonexistant in the way people who believe in souls believe that it exists.

I mainly think about souls in the way that Descartes describes the "Mind".  To summarize Descartes' theory, there are two types of substances: body and mind.  The body has extension (Length, Width, and Depth), but doesn't think and isn't the entire person.  The mind has NO EXTENSION (no length, no width, and no depth), and thinks.  Somehow, the body and the mind are joined (he had theories about how this worked which I'm not too famalier with).

According to Descartes, corpses and animals don't have minds; that's what seperates them from humans.

Having a mind would imply an afterlife, since the mind doesn't age with the body, only the connection wears down.  When the body ceases to function, the mind is disconnected from it.  Perhaps it joins another body (ie, reincarnation) or it stays disconnected (ie, afterlife).  If the afterlife works like that, then Pratchett's idea of the afterlife is probably the most true: that you go where you think you're going to go.  If you think you'll end up in Heaven, you go there.  If you think you'll end up in Hell, you'll go there.  This is why it's important to kill missionaries on sight. :-)

And in terms of EvilCheese's idea about it malfunctioning, there are a couple points about that.  First, he didn't say that you would end up as half a person, he said that it fails to destroy the original, and this is the point that I was trying to get at.  Second, if Descartes' "Mind" is the same as the "Soul" I'm talking about, then if an exact copy was made the original "Mind" wouldn't be copied over, since it has no extension, it's not actually made up of atoms.  The new version would either not have a mind, and therefore would no longer be a human (would probably just die), or a new mind would be joined and, while the person wouldn't realize it, it would be some one else.  

In terms of EvilCheese not wanting to test it out, and using a space-folding technology instead, that technology would consume so much power it doesn't seem to be possible.  And I agree with him, no matter whether animals or even other people went through, I still wouldn't want to.  It just seems like the chances of losing your soul or mind would be too great.