Why Teleportation Would Kill You
CGP Grey2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2016–2020
explainer · general · evergreen · 2016–2020 on HN
CGP Grey asks whether Star Trek-style teleportation would kill you and recreate a copy, working through the philosophy of identity and the Ship of Theseus. It is a short animated explainer.
Pointed to in threads about mind uploading and teleportation as a good, accessible look at personal identity.
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6 comments from Hacker News
This question descends from an ancient philosophical question; see the Ship of Theseus[0]. CGP Grey has a good look at the question wrt Star Trek teleportation[1]. [0] link [1] ▶ this video
That’s a great question that’s been pondered by philosophers for a while: link Here’s a fun video talking about the same thing: ▶ this video
> a YouTube video CGP Grey: The Trouble with Transporters ▶ this video Steve Shives: Is Star Trek's Transporter Actually a Murder Machine? link > why wouldn’t they just link For purpose of storytelling, these powerful side effects of transporters need to be restricted. Hence, as an in-universe explanation, a pattern buffer ∙ is a physical phenomenon that cannot be (fully) expressed as information ∙ deteriorates over time, so needs to be rematerialised soon. For the exception, see link
Even if we are just mass and particles, then what happens if you just skip the vaporizing part. ( ▶ this video )
This runs into the question of whether you're a single person. ▶ this video link If you transplant half your brain into another body, and both of you wake up, which one is you? If you start swapping your atoms one by one with someone else, and neither of you die, at what point do you become the other person? Unfortunately questions like that are necessary in order to address the idea of a simulation afterlife. If our bodies are literally who we are, and our bodies disperse, it may not make sense to say that we can still be simulated after our bodies disappear.
> The original photon was in fact destroyed, and only the information about its state was transmitted. Isn't that how teleportation works in, for example, Star Trek? ▶ this video