This is essentially the Star Trek Transporter discussion all over again. (Yes, I AM a nerd.)

Arguments can be made both ways:

Yes, in that if the atomic set is indeed identical even considering quantum flux and such, then it would be YOU again. This raises some more questions, though, such as what if you had two output machines and all of a sudden YOU would be two places or more?

No, in that you would have to die so that the "copy" could be made. The machine here would in fact kill you and make a new you on Alpha Centauri.

The inherent difficulty in actually placing the "you" in a person is what makes this weird. To everybody else you would still be you, but to yourself, you would have died on earth - very quickly - and sprung back to life on AC.

I am on the way to the transporter on Alpha Ceturai, the cab driver says: Hey Mon, you gonna DIE when you get erased in that box. I say "Nonsense, I have been doing this for ten years now, almost daily. I step into the box, and then step out and I'm on Earth. I don't die. If I have a small cut from shaving, it is still there on my cheek when I step out on Earth. I don't even have a break in my thoughts as I am transported."

I just stepped into the box and now I'm stepping out. WHAT? I'm still on Alpha Centurai. I ask the operator: "What happened?" The Box operator says, "Don't worry, we are having a small problem with the eraser. You are already on Earth. You will dissolve here in about five seconds!"

--- This is the question of consciousness. If there is no break in stream of consciousness and consciousness continues to flow, could the person be considered to have experienced death? ---

This all comes down to whether or not one believes that the mere composition of our atoms is everything that necessitates life and our existence.

I remember an artsy cartoon that covered this topic.

Well, I guess the run head long into the Ship of Theseus Paradox, doesn't it. How many planks on the ship can be changed out to it still be called the same ship? More important, how do we define identity; Either of an object or a person.

On BBC News today (10/19/09) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8310420.stm

The theory: Going from here to somewhere else without passing through anywhere in between.

The science fiction: Beam me up, Scotty.

In practice: Take two particles of light and entangle them - now you can teleport quantum information - such as what their spin is - from one to the other, instantaneously.

The layman's explanation: Photons, particles of light, have a property called "spin". This can be up, down, or a mixture of the two. Alice has a photon, and she wants Bob to have one with the same spin. She can't send him hers because the Post Office is on strike, and she can't measure her spin and phone him, because the measurement can change the spin.

Fortunately, the last time she met Bob she gave him one photon from an entangled pair, and kept the other. "Entangled" means that the two photons were prepared so that their states were related in a special way. Alice lets her photon interact with her other photon from the entangled pair. This instantly teleports information about the spin to Bob's half. However, he can't "read" that information until a message arrives by more conventional means. A quick call on Alice's mobile, telling him some measurements she has made, now puts his entangled photon into the desired state.

Quantum "teleportation" destroys the original state and can't be used to send messages faster than light. It doesn't actually teleport matter - just quantum information.

Coming to a store near you?: In 1998, the quantum optics group at Caltech used "squeezed light" to teleport the state of a photon in a laboratory. It's now been done with atoms, too. In 2004 Austrian physicists teleported the state of a photon across the Danube river. Within another century it will be an amoeba. But be warned: when you are teleported, your body will be ripped to shreds and rebuilt at the other end.

Hmm, quantum entanglement. Perhaps not that useful for moving living things around, if only for the philosophical debates and imminent smear campaign that would be undertaken by FedEx and the airlines.

Nevertheless, quantum entangling could be applied to data in a way that allows limitless network connectivity over any distance. Would be great for instant communication with our deep-space outposts (and might be ready to solve that problem at about the same time in the future.)

Slightly tangent Slashdot has an article up concerning a story about why 'brain uploading' can't happen. Which would necessary, I'd think, for us to be able to fully teleport via any method.

So many different things running through my mind...

1. Laura, you are fucking wonderful.
2. I agree with what most are saying
3. If I were torn apart by atom, and I was reassembled somewhere else.... seems to me it would have to be the exact same and that there would not be any duplicates of me made. It would only be a transport machine...unless somewhere in the transportation my DNA was damaged and things about me changed. Then, I might as well be someone different. A mutated copy of myself.

Sorry, but I'm going to go with ol' Leonard McCoy on this one. The last thing I'd want is to be in "mid-stream" when the computer decides to have a divide by 0 error. Same reason I don't like fly-by-wire aircraft.

This reminded me of this short: http://videosift.com/video/To-Be-John-Weldon

Duplicate, I think.

But who can say?

Where do I go when I'm asleep and not dreaming?

*discard

Discarding this post - discard requested by original submitter laura.