[whataretheysaying] Mary Madigan: Beam me away

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Posted by Mary Madigan:
Beam me away
http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1164913566.shtml


   [1]transporter 

   Scott Kirwin posted [2]this teleporation thought experiment (thanks to
   the New Scientist):

     Imagine being teleported. A special scanner records the state of
     every cell in your brain and body and digitally encodes the
     information for radio transmission. Your body is destroyed in the
     process but reconstructed as soon as the signals are received and
     decoded at your destination. You "arrive" in precisely the same
     condition that you "left", identical in body, brain and patterns of
     mental activity. Your memories, beliefs, plans, skills and emotions
     are perfectly intact and you go about your business feeling and
     believing that nothing about you has changed in the slightest. It's
     just like waking from a dreamless sleep and getting on with the
     day.

     If you are comfortable with this scenario then you should be
     comfortable with bundle theory. You appreciate that the observing
     "I" is no more than patterns of energy and information, which can
     be disrupted and reconstituted without destroying the self -
     because there is no self to destroy. The patterns are all. If, on
     the other hand, you believe that some essential "you" would be lost
     in the process then you are an irredeemable ego theorist. You
     believe that the reconstituted body is not "you" but a mere
     replica. Although the replica will know in its bones that it is the
     very person who stepped into the scanner at the start of the
     journey, and friends and loved ones will agree, you insist it could
     not be you because your body and brain would have been destroyed.

     Incidentally, we see here a neat inversion of conventional
     thinking. Those who believe in an essence, or soul, suddenly become
     materialists, dreading the loss of the "original" body. But those
     of us who don't hold such beliefs are prepared to countenance a
     life after bodily death.

   Scott concluded that he was "an irredeemable ego theorist":

     ..because I don't believe that I would awaken in the replica. The
     destruction of my body would somehow sever the link between "me"
     and my body that could not be repaired through the reconstruction
     down to the finest detail of the latter. I would be dead, but what
     about my replica? Would it have its own consciousness - or would it
     be a zombie-like automaton?

   I guess I'm a bundle theorist. Since every cell in the body is changed
   over a period of seven years, this process would just be a little
   faster.

   After every seven years, our souls, if they exist, are still
   consistent with what we call our selves.

   A machine that could digitally store and restore human life could do
   more than just transport people - it could possibly guarantee eternal
   life. When someone dies, just re-transport them. If the process worked
   without any virus or "The Fly" effects, it would be one of the
   greatest inventions ever. I'd do it.

   I often wondered why anyone was allowed to die in the Star Trek
   universe. They didn't have to.

References

   1. http://www.daviddarling.info/archive/2006/archiveFeb06_1.html
   2. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1164813755.shtml