Would you step through a wormhole like in scifi series stargate?

[Kriminal99]

I don't know how many people watch the TV show stargate, but I do and like it.

However one thing has always bothered me. Isn't it true that technically whenever someone uses any kind of teleportation in sci fi they die and a clone is created on the other side? And if consiousness is local to the body then every time one of them walks towards the stargate they are walking to their death. And nooone would ever know.

So if any kind of teleportation technology was created it seems the same problem would arise.

My first philosophy teacher once posed a question. Suppose you used a teleportation system at an airport fairly often, but one day when you got to the other side you saw on a camera that an exact copy of you that stepped in the teleporter from where you came was still there thinking the teleporter was broken. The teleport personell told you it was just a glitch, and you saw security guards come and take away your doulbe on the camera as he yelled for help. What would you do? How would this be different from any other time you used the teleport (the part where your are destroyed at the first location before being sent to the second.

[ronthepon]

Even I have had thoughts of teleportation working by that process.

The fact remains that if our body is destroyed before we see the other body, then we shall remain blissfully ignorant of everything till we die. If there is pain, we just consider it normal, in the teleportation process.

Just what happens after we die will determine the rest. For it is also possible that somehow our conciousness slips into that other body.

In that second case where we see the body that had first stood in the teleporter... we will probably be confused, refusing to believe that the other 'double' is ourself... and is more of a 'ourself' than we are. We shall consider it a glitch ourself.

But if we do realise the truth, all that we will be able to do is refrain from using teleporters. Nobody shall believe us, and even we will not be able to prove the fact for ourselves.

See the movie 'the sixth day'. It is so very connected to this.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Or better yet Think Like a Dinosaur

Which address exactly this issue:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

In James Patrick Kelly's 1996 Hugo Award winning story, Think Like a Dinosaur, a woman is teleported to an alien planet, but the original is not disintegrated because reception can't be confirmed at the time. Reception is later confirmed, and the original, not surprisingly, declines to "balance the equation" by re-entering the scanning and disintegrating device. This creates an ethical quandry which is viewed quite differently by the cold-blooded aliens who provided the teleportation technology, and their warm-blooded human associates. This story was subsequently made into an episode of Showtime's acclaimed revival of The Outer Limits. Jack Chalker's Soul Rider series explores similar moral issues.

TFS

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

Isn't it true that technically whenever someone uses any kind of teleportation in sci fi they die and a clone is created on the other side?

Hey, I like that show too!

However, truth in this matter is not currently available to us, as neither is teleportation... Oh well. Let's keep searching. If there is truth in sci-fi, I can think of all manner of super powers I would like, unfortunately, "fi" stands for fiction.


Cheers.

[Kriminal99]

Yeah it is freaky to think about. I once tried to talk about it with other people who watched stargate, and they could not understand what I was saying.

If the consiousness is local to the body and does not transfer to the other body, then every time someone used a teleporter they would die and a new consiousness would be born that just happened to have all the same memories (including stepping through the teleporter)

And like ron said, there would be no way to tell except for that when you stepped in the stargate YOU would suddenly be dead, where here you means not your externally observable person, but your actual consiousness.

[Jay-qu]

Wow I am obsessed with stargate! I had a stargate avatar for a very long time!

I know exactly what you mean, I had already resolved with myself years ago that I wouldnt use any teleportation method that demolecularises you, remembers how it all went together, and then re-molecularises you on the other side, because like you said you would effectivly just be killed and have a clone of you appear on the other side - thing is the clone wouldnt know that, they would just say "nah it works fine"!

[hallenrm]

An interesting thought on this topic,

Suppose we agree that it is our mind (and hence our thoughts) that constitute us (the human beings) and our body is secondary; then the issue takes a different direction all together.

What with mind mapping and wireless communication of the information, we may indeed acheive teleportation.

[KickAssClown]

This high lights a big question. Is the mind, body, and soul different properties? Can they be created, destoryed, or transfered?

A long time (relative to me proper), I decided that if I concidered the quantum duplicated senario as the probable outcome (that is, I concider de-molecularization and remolecularization), I must then conclude that in every passing moment (whatevera moment maybe) consists of the same process.

That is the from moment to moment, I could destroy, and reform and not even know that me previous (as apposed to me proper) ceased.

I then saw that episode of the outlimits and it made me think of what happen if I quantum duplicated but the "original" remained. I realized something, and the best way I can think to communicate it is this:

"To look into his eyes, and to know that he knows,
But to not know what it is that he is thinking."

There is no way to distinguish in this senario who is who. It's a basic property of Quantum mechanics, and where the whole idea of Entanglement comes from.

I have since concluded that if such is the case for teleportation, then such is the case for regular space-time, and therefore I can make no meaningful distiguishment between the senarios.

The stargate thing, as I understand it, functions on the property of a wormhole. Matter in, Matter out. Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, and further what is that goes in, is what comes out, in the same order.

Therefore if you are person A upon going in, and person A defines you as the state of matter upon entrance, and your state of matter upon coming out is Identical in all respects to state A, excepting position, then we can conclude that there is no meaningful distiction between the states. (This is of course in line with the Equivilancy priniciple.)

Siddartha said 2500 years ago, the mind, body and soul are not seperate. That they are one in the same, and a change to one is a change to the other. Transferance of one's state, in whole, is transferance of all those parts.

Just my two cents on it all.

[UncleAl]

All the cgi has our intepid hero progressively entering in one side and progressively exiting the other side. Between entrance and egress, how is he stretched in space and time? I don't fear bold print, I fear footnotes.

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by UncleAl

All the cgi has our intepid hero progressively entering in one side and progressively exiting the other side. Between entrance and egress, how is he stretched in space and time? I don't fear bold print, I fear footnotes.

There seem to be three basic possibilities in response to your question.

1) The person steps in one mouth of the wormhole and instantly steps out the the other mouth harmed or unharmed

2) The person steps into one mouth of the wormhole, and after some time has elapsed comes out the other mouth harmed or unharmed

or

3) The person comes out of the other mouth harmed or unharmed before they've even stepped in.

Then again, maybe a fourth option is they get stuck in some undefined hyperspace during the transit and travel to an alternate universe with attractive females in bunny costumes serving martinis and scotch while attending to my every...

Oopps. Got carried away...

Of course, I failed to acknowledge the collapse of the spacetime continuum, but I never much liked the DeLorian anyway.