@@ScienceAsylum First, thanks to all of my Jewish friends who support my channel. Second, if you want to make your video look scientific, you shall assume that a person has to enter a BBO crystal to create two entangled "halves" persons first! Ridiculous, right? You will not be there anymore! So please study before making videos! Third, quantum entanglement does not mean teleportation, but entanglement! You may be required to study tachyons first, then you will understand that human teleportation is impossible; according to my equations.
My question is can you recreate memories by reassembling atoms? Atoms are just protons, electrons, and neutrons.. Sure you can recreate the brain structure, but can you recreate the memories?
All of us properly sitting or standing and Jabril's like "nope I'm getting comfortable." 😄 Great job with this! As always with your videos, I learned a lot.
I love all your videos. This one is definitely one of your best. The way you combined pop sci-fi, quantum mechanics, philosophical debates about what is a person, and interviews was pretty amazing. Keep up the good work and keep robbing our interest.
i dont think anyone would use teleporter untill nature of consciousness gets revealed,so that this is all done in such a way that your original consciousness doesnt die but instead gets moved to that new body and kicks out the clone ones,thats the only way i think it would be aprooved for people,cause any other way is just murder and clone
You guys all together in one video are definitely the closest thing to a Science Communicator Cinematic Universe there is! Keep up the great work inspiring the next generation of scientists!
I’m happy you made this video. I’ve thought about this a lot. The initial transport that deconstructs you is in fact you being murdered. A copy of you ends up at the transport coordinates. So perfect that the new you experiences the transition as transportation opposed to a recreation. In my very unprofessional opinion every officer in Star Trek is painlessly murdered and replaced with a perfect copy every time they transport. Dr. Pulaski and Reginald Barclay had the right idea.
I agree it can be considered as a murder/suicide. But, about the "replacement", it all depends again on your stance about the ship of Theseus. If, like my, you consider that the "copy" is the exact the same thing, that it's a legitimate example of the original, then the teleportation is more like an actual resurrection instead of a "replacement".
@@shannonlachaise3050 If we are to have the exact plans for the titanic and reproduce it to the exact same specifications without any changes, name it the same thing and behave like it is the same thing, that does not make it the same thing. It is a conceit. A fiction. There is a clear gap in continuity of what made the Titanic what it was and what makes the other thing a reproduction. This reproduction of a person would still be a person and have a right to live. But the first person was certainly killed for the reproduction to live. It is 100% a replicator as energy matter conversion is used and has been proven in universe to fill in the gaps. They could produce an infinite number of reproductions so long as energy persists to complete the process.
@@shannonlachaise3050 Not to the original. It sounds cool, but I'd prefer not to disassembled (sounds uncomfortable), even if a machine can recreate a duplicate elsewhere. The duplicate wouldn't be me, even if he thought he was.
About effin' time they did a collab w you, you're one of my favorite science and physics channel Nick. Although I miss the madness of your earlier videos
Yes! That mind bending madness that broke your brain then rebuilt it around a new understanding of a previously murky topic... I miss that too, but still love the new content
The weird problem is about the transportation of our consciousness... Like, if a person uses the teleportation device, will he feel like he is dying and his particular consciousness is ending or will he see himself in his destination (where he wanted to go with the teleport) and have a sense of continuity. The problem here is that others won't be able to know. Even if you ask the person that reaches the destination, he will surely have the original's memories and certainly would have a sense of continuity, but won't know what happened to the original consciousness after he got teleported. We can consider that the new person was born with all the memories of the previous one, thus having a sense of continuity. But for the original person, for all we know his original life might have really ended. And I don't think we can differentiate between the two scenarios because after the teleportation the only person remaining is the one at the destination who will always have a sense of continuity. I first thought of this paradox while watching Doctor Who: Heaven Sent & Hell Bent. You can check it out
I think we can differentiate. Just think about the movie "the prestige", why it is so different when there are copies? The real guy used to drown, but what if it was electrocuted and died instantly? And remember that you are not your matter, your matter is changed every 120 days or so.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Illusion or not, everyone can relate to the fact that we have a subjective experience, we talk about consciousness but the real point lies there. Of course the clone has an identical yet different consciousness, and of course is an illusion, but what about the subjective experience of that illusion?
That's an interesting question but I think w/o more definite understanding/definition of consciousness it would be hard to say one way or another! But like others mentioned in the video, this problem is similar to sleeping! Does yesterday me die and new me is born today and because only today's me exist, there's no way to verify what yesterday's me felt when falling asleep! My hypothesis is that, if the transporter is painless, which it seems like is, then the teleportation will be similar to sleeping, your consciousness would fade (just like before falling asleep) and then you would "wake up" few seconds later!
@@EdwardChopuryan It's not that simple. While you fall asleep your consciousness disappear but is substituted by your unconscious. You just don't remember falling asleep, but it's a problem of memory, your mind is still there alive and still has continuity with itself.
Seeing Nick, Arvin, Dr. Becky, Michael/Vsauce and Veritasium/Derek all in one video might put ME in the science asylum! All I needed to see was Sabine and Brian Greene and it would be my perfect dream team video (I love Matt from PBS as well, but he doesn't dumb things down enough for me!).
You deliver excellent content to your audience. It's very interesting material. All of your effort put into creating this video is much appreciated. I'm truly grateful for your help!
(Spoiler alert) That movie left the scientific issue in the shadow of the main character's mind boggling decision whom of himselves to kill/keep alive.
I am glad you made this video. This question has been driving me crazy for a long time. The first time was when I was 12 I think. At that time I thought were just stupid teenager questions. That I learned that all the stupid questions I had were the biggest unresolved problem in philosophy.
Ah yeah, you'd probably have to be "injected" into a mould, because just standing on your feet while getting reconstructed would probably result in a lot of movement. 3D printers are the same, you don't wanna move the plate while getting printed, unless you're making "art".
_Technically,_ the transporter is supposed to have a confinement beam that keeps people absolutely still during the process... but I can think of several in-show instances where people moved in the beam anyway.
The fear I have is that in the scanning and deconstructing process, the original you goes through incredible pain and suffering that no one would know about because the copy of you on the other side did not experience that.
So if the new you don't know about the suffering then why would you fear about pain..... I mean if you don't know about the pain would you still feel the pain
Definitely, we already do the same thing just very slowly. The only difference with the transporter is the rate. That gives the illusion of being different and makes people uncomfortable, but if you're okay with living for years and years, then you're already okay with being entirely replaced at the component level and still being yourself.
I was waiting for someone to say this... bone generally does not regenerate, nor do brain cells. But otherwise, yes, much of the matter in our bodies is slowly replaced with new over time.
@@jfbeam Bone cells _are_ replaced over time, to the tune of about 10 years for a "complete overhaul". As you say, though, the brain generally does not, with exceptions being, from what a brief search turned up, brain cells in the hippocampus and subventricular zone.
That is very similar as to asking, "Would you upload your 'consciousness' into a computer?" We see that we ourselves who think we 'exist' have a sense of dread into creating our own different version. I feel like this dread arises out of our realization of the uncertainties that REALLY make us. And naturally we'd end up rejecting it. It's so complex that I can't describe it honestly. Existential crisis is no joke.
Good point. And especially if it turns out possible on classical instead of quantum computers it will remove the "no cloning" cop-out and really mess up people's views. However your claim "And naturally we'd end up rejecting it." is not true for all of us. You already saw in the video above materialists going "hell yeah" and I'm with them.
Less the uncertainty, and more the fact that if there are two yous, only one of you will experience the continuation of consciousness from the original. Tricky thing about this is continuation of consciousness does not mean memories in this situation. You both could have the same memories, but only one would have Continuation of their subjective experience. This is impossible to measure, but one person would know: you. Whichever you that happens to be. Now this is what scares me. A reality where people just... accept this.
@@cortster12 Materialists believe both copies will "experience continuation of consciousness" or in other words think they are you. And if you say it is "impossible to measure" then so do you, without completely understanding it.
@@youtubeforcinghandlessucks I'm a materialist, and I believe only one will experience continuation of conciousness, so clearly not all of them. The only way to make it so both experience it is to split someone's brain in half then copy BOTH hemispheres while keeping the original brains, and 'transport' the two cloned sides to the missing halves. Creating two identical clones who are also the originals at the same time. Otherwise, one or the other isn't truly the original.
@@cortster12 What did you mean by "impossible to measure" then? If you say they'll both act like the original but only one is actual continuation due to whatever hidden unmeasurable astral concept thing, then you are not materialist. Materialists understand the "If it quacks like a duck..."
Among your interviewees, I found it amusing how many "Dr. McCoy" answers you got to the "Would you use it?" question. "Bones" would always express distrust about having his atoms toyed with by 'that contraption.' I think all of us, including your guests, keenly sense that trepidation. Note that when you pointed out that our cells experience material turnover at an atomic/subatomic scale, it's worth noting, too, that many of the cells themselves die and are replaced on daily or weekly timescales. You correctly homed in on the "soul" question here, a matter that has long been a thorny one for science - "What makes you, you?" Science doesn't seem to have a handle on that question yet. Will it ever? All we can say right now is, "stay tuned!" Fred
I don't think I'd use it. The person on the other side has the same memories and feelings and knows it was teleported but I wouldn't see the other side as me, my self would stop existing in that moment but a copy with a new consciousness that thinks it is an original starts. For the teleported version it wouldn't matter one bit but in that moment the true self of you would most definitely die. There wouldn't be any way to prove it either because the teleported version is literally a perfect copy. But I honestly don't think that consciousness could be moved like that. Oddly enough tough I would probably use it if it would be the same atoms since we move all of our atoms every day together and that would just scramble and move them and put them perfectly together again. Idk it's weird.
But then here's the question... how does your own consciousness survive the replacement of your atoms on a regular basis through your life? Unless it really doesn't, and maybe your present is just an illusion created by all the connections your brain has created. Either way, what is the difference? A thought experiment of its own.
I think these are philosophical questions we wrestle with now, but would stop after teleportation tech was around for a while. People would only care for so long.
Generally no, Transporter = Destroyer + Cloning Machine. However, like you said, in an emergency I would, not because it will save me, but because I prefer that a clone of me gets to go on living when I couldn't.
Nice touch with the surprise intro haha, and great topic that so many people philosophize about 👍 Also some surprises about quantum teleportation. 2 questions about it: 1) could you transmute: for example rearrange a few handfuls of silicon into a handful of gold? 2) in real life teleportation of a single particle, how do they destroy the original particle?
1) Conservation of energy shall not be violated! 2) The original is not destroyed, it just pops up in the place it is teleported to. Unless it doesn't, in which case, yea, it is destroyed.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Wouldn't the fidelity required by the transporter actually require an essentially destructive scanning process to achieve the maximum resolution - to measure everything accurately enough at the quantum level would inherently require the scanning beam to change the position of all the particles. Same with uploading a brain, which does appear to use quantum effects, into a computer.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Ok so gold is 14 times the atomic weight of silicon, so could you use teleportation to rearrange the 14 handfuls of silicon into a handful of gold? Hmmm, what would the energy difference be also in the nuclear bonds of silicon vs gold? Might have to add in a bunch of energy as well.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Also, wasn't the whole premise of the video that the original is destroyed and then teleported? And I thought Nick mentioned that they've done the star trek style of teleportation with a single particle?
The only thing I would consider to be a gap in continuity in consciousness would be going under anesthesia. I have been under once for an endoscopy for only 15 to 30 minutes and i had zero concept of any time passing or existing during that time. It is still a bit nerve-racking to think about. When I take a nap or go to sleep there is some level of awareness. Your subconscious filters a lot of it but I know when my dog needs to be let outside in the middle of the night. They don't wake me up directly but I hear them jump off the bed.
Like how when you wake up, you can normally guess the time, so long as you knew about when you went to bed, and be fairly accurate. That proves there is some level of consciousness still. You're rarely perfect with it, but also not off by too much either. Can't do that with anesthesia, at all. I've been under for 4 or 5 surgeries and yeah, that is just a total black out. Nothing like being asleep.
@@thewizard4200 I guess my comment was related to the "Is it the same as sleep" section of the video. I would say it would be more like anesthesia than sleep.
@@MC--- It's a bit the same, your brain activity persist even some minutes after your body is dead, so anesthesia, sleep, being knocked out, are all the same.
But that isn't a "real" gap in continuity. The brain is still active, it's just been forced into really deep unconsciousness by powerful drugs. They aren't really different, just numbers on a scale. It's absolutely possible to fall asleep that deeply outside of anesthesia, just rare. And you can also lack those concepts without even needing to be unconscious, by for example using hypnotic or dissociative drugs. Or your sleep can be so superficial you still have physical, conscious control of your body while dreaming. Point being that while they're subjectively different, sleep, anesthesia and coma are fundamentally the same - *decreased* level of consciousness. Removed level of consciousness requires death - although it may be possible to die and be resuscitated while under anesthesia of course.
The other Gene Roddenberry series, Earth: Final Conflict, also had transporters and there was an episode or two of that where there were some interesting side effects and some interesting criminals also.
Like asking random people three hundred years ago if they'd use a car that rolls along at 70+ mph on balloon tires near to people that are reckless, careless, and in a big hurry. Most people would be horrified by the idea when the real dangers were explained to them. We casually ignore deadly dangers all the time in our everyday life. It's simply the novelty of it that scares us.
Well it's not just a danger, it physicaly kills you and makes another you somewhere else. It's controverse to tell if that's you or if you just died in the process. Since our cells die and get replaced every day I would say it's still you but I would still have a bad feeling using it.
I think the discussion comes down to fear, and the understandable but ultimately irrational belief in some outer-bodily, unknowable soul. It's the same as the God question. It may exist, but due to its untestability, you might as well treat it like it doesn't. Didn't some people believe photographs would zap your soul away, too? And that likenesses like statues are bad? These are all understandable fears for someone raised from a small age with these concepts of soul, disembodied lifeforce, God, etc., not just in the context of religion, but also pop songs, pop culture, etc. But the scientific discussion about these needs to be psychological imo
@@michaelmurdock4607 you can't compare the risk of an accidental to real destruction of your whole body that makes me think that you still don't understand how this thing works, if you do than your comparison is just not so great. If you don't believe in anything outside the material, than this thing is literally killing you and replacing you by a perfect copy that's not you. And even if you believe in more than the material world than you don't know if that what makes you, you is also placed into the new you or not. So yes if we just talk material, than using this machine is legit suicide. You die, and get replaced by an identity chief, and riska of car accidents have nothing to do with this. You won't take a car if you would know that you would have an accidental and die in that ride. Here you know that you won't survive it this thing works by killing you.
Your answer was the best! I would only if I were already in a seriously life threatening situation. Because than it would be like preserving myself for others, even if I weren't preserving myself for myself.
Lawrence Krauss in his book “the physics of StarTrek” really drives the point home. The most efficient way to “atomize” an object or person is to heat it to a billion degrees or hot enough for the particles to lose cohesion. That doesn’t sound pleasant. Besides, in actual quantum teleportation the original is destroyed. I wouldn’t step into that machine.
If I understand how the process is described in the shows, the transporter not only takes you apart particle by particle, it converts those particles into a particular (unspecified) type of energy. That energy is then transmitted to the destination where it is used with the scan pattern to reconstruct you. How this happens without a receiving pad at the destination is something I've never tried to figure out. So since matter and energy are the same thing, and it's the same energy in the same configuration but at a different location, I'd say it was still you.
but the real issue isn't the memories or the fact the body is completely the same,what is issue is the consciousness is it same one or just a new one put in to replace the one that died. sure we replace our own atoms all the time as our body ages,but we don't know what consciousness is and does that also get changed or stays the same.
@@theicyphoenix_7745 You're fundamentally misunderstanding the in universe explanation. The transporters in Star Trek do not replace anything, they convert matter into energy and MOVE that energy from one place to another, then convert that energy back to the SAME matter. This is something that always pisses me off, people conflating the fictional tech of Star Trek transporters with real world teleportation theory which works very differently on a fundamental level.
I still fear that if I step on the transporter and get disassembled that my conscious goes out like a light, and a clone of me lives on. I would not see out my clone's eyes or feel any of his pleasures. I'm just dead.
Also it's never provable whether my own conscious really survived. My clone will always say that it went fine, as he remembers stepping on the transporter and being sent here, having all my past memories. I'm too dead to let you know that i really died.
@@chrisakers3941 Exactly. There is simply no way of knowing whether “you” will continue after transportation. That’s why I would not use it regardless of how many times it may have been used by others who report their own continence of consciousness
Thank you so much! Gave me a handful of new RUclipsrs to follow and watch in between TSA episodes! If they're good enough to show up here, they are good enough for me!
I'm with Jabril; I wouldn't be first in line to try out the prototype, but once transportation tech passed regulatory review and survived a few years on the mass market without industry collapse from liability suits, I'd absolutely beam myself up.
Imagine someone using it everyday to get to work or something completely obliviously destroying themselves everyday and cloning a new exact clone somewhere else. Its like a whole dystopian sci fi plot in there
Cool to see some of my favorite educational youtubers cameo with one of my favorite educational youtubers. I love that kinda thing. It also gave me a few people I didn't know before to check out.
I HAD THAT MANUAL!!! I would go around telling people how a warp engine works. This is also when I realized that startrek is one giant The Prestige. Forgot to answer. No I would not. I will stick to true quantum teleportation where every piece of your quantum state just gets shifted to a new location, or points in space where the distance between the 2 desired points is near 0.
@@ScienceAsylum You will need to cover inertial dampening systems and umm I think the main deflector dish for micro object impact issues. At least the warp bubble itself takes care of mass.
I've had this conversation with my girlfriend and it is a HEATED ARGUMENT. I like your answer. I think generally no, but if it was "You are doing to die right now if you don't transport out of here" I would do it in a sort of "well, I'll be dead either way" sense.
The non cloning rule in quantum mechanics throws a curve ball into this. The original version in Star Trek is equivalent to me to know everything about you, then kill you, burn you, and then at some other place to create something that is indistinguishable to human observation. And in reality a 99% similar clone would look the same enough, because our verification is not perfect.
Oh my, I have my own copy of the Star Trek Technical Manual. I even have the complete NCC-1701D schematics. I used the once to prove to my son that I was not just a Geek, but an Engineering Geek.
2 things: If transportation was a copy paste thing of the superpositions of particles, you can copy as much as you like since position itself is a quantum state. And even if not perfect, just imagine if we would print out food just because you have the information stored somewhere on a pc. Also, in my opinion the boat of Theseus isn't really that complex. Since you shouldn't look at the actual material itself. Only what the combination of those material represent. And yes this may be a stretch but I actually think that even representations are influenced by entropy
If it copies perfectly, and I mean perfectly, then it should be no issue. You'll be "you". I suspect, though, that it will take a LONG, LONG, time to do so. Actually...if it could kinda go through my code and make some improvements, I'd be even more game.
@@ScienceAsylum I'm just looking for 10...maybe 50 IQ points at most. And maybe a 2-3 point increase on a scale 1-10 in physical attractiveness. Maybe bump my resting metabolism just a smidge (technical terms, I know).
If we could pull all the organs out of a person and separate the limbs from the torso, move them to a different hospital and reassemble them, I think most people would think it macabre but still feel like it’s the same person who wakes up in the other hospital. Does the size of the pieces really matter if the end result is identical in every way?
I've literally been talking to my friends about this recently. I don't think transportation of consciousness is possible, I think its basically a clone.
It's a question of the "Closest Continuer" being the real "you" - So long as the original "you" was destroyed at the point of departure, the transporter "you", being the closest continuer of your "self" is, for all intents and purposes, still "you"
Was talking about this the other day, too. We agreed that consciousness is like computer software *while it's running*. I can turn a computer off, move it to another room, and turn it back on. The software code (i.e. memory) is stored on a physical medium and can be moved/transported/duplicated. Consciousness is where stimuli meets memory... when the software is running and processing input/producing output.
@@RedwoodTheElf what if the original you was destroyed and never reconstructed? Wouldnt then be considered dead, disintegrated? What if then you were reconstructed after, say, 5 million years, would that be you? Ressurrected, or were you just temporarily dead? What if you could be reconstructed not once but as many times you wanted, would all of them be the same you? I believe what makes you you is the continuity of your matter, or more specifically the matter of your brain, and that is gone if the original you is disintegrated. You are not even completely you if you lose part of your brain in an accident for example...
@@mazocco The first case, of never being reconstructed, wouldn't apply to a functioning transporter. Montgomery Scott was rematerialized many years after being dematerialized in the TNG episode "Relics" and he certainly seemed to be the same person.
It's a Ship of Theseus situation, but the difference is that in _your_ ship, the engine never gets replaced. Studies show that brain cells are replaced much slower than other cells, and some cells are never replaced at all. It doesn't matter to your consciousness what exact cells your skin is made from, but these cells that stay with you for your entire lifetime, _may_ be very important for the continuation of your consciousness. You will never know whether or not it's safe to use, until you go through it. But what if it isn't safe? You wouldn't be able to tell anyone, because you will be replaced by another consciousness that doesn't know it didn't exist before stepping in the transporter.
I absolutely would use one. There's no reason at all that such a device couldn't reassemble me without the many injuries and defects that make my life a living hell, like in the episodes in which they use it to cure diseases.
Using it to cure all sorts of things makes sense to me. And what about intelligence? Could we ramp up say from a 140 IQ to 200? I have been fascinated with this problem since reading “Flowers for Algernon” in high school. That’s a short story by Daniel Keyes I think.
Imagine they made the defect-free copy, and the two of you (lol) had a nice chat, and then, maybe a few days later, it came time to get rid of the original. Still sounds good?
@@bozo5632 Copying/cloning is impossible, as he explained in the video. But even if the scenario you describe were to happen, a-la Tom Riker... yeah. Still sounds good.
@@dbilyeu Yeah, in a sense it could be like genetic engineering, only it can apply immediately rather than creating all the typical striation and classism depicted in something like Gattaca. That is assuming it's cheap enough to actually _do_ to do it for everybody, of course. I suppose, like anything, it could be used to make the "haves vs have-nots" problem even worse than it already is. On the other hand, on a philosophical level, considering that I consider the continuation of intelligent life to be supremely important above all other considerations, while it would be tragic if the majority died off of old age while a super-race was born of the transporter/editor we're theorizing, ultimately it would still be a net positive in my view. In that way, this isn't very different from a singularity event in which we all (or some of us) upload our consciousnesses to computers, although _that_ option actually has some significant advantages over mere teleportation/editing technology.
I'd use it if it works right. Like if it makes you just with new atoms, I think it's still you. It's like how every 7 years all your cells have been replaced with new ones
@@new_trin0510 However neurons always die, and at your birth you had the same neurons you have now, then they grew in number till you were sixteen, then they died till you where twenty one to twenty five. So, are you for real your neurons?
@@new_trin0510 but it's still possible to copy them. Like on two healthy brains, if you copy the same learnable skills by doing the thing neurons do the more you learn, it should have the same outcome
Great video! I would totally use a transporter. All the cells in our body are replaced every 7 - 10 years, so, in a way we do this already. I would just want to leave behind some of those cells, say 20 - 30 lbs from around the waist area :)
It's not entirely true. Brain cells are typically replaced much less often, and some brain cells are never replaced at all. What if these non-replacing cells hold the key to consciousness? And by replacing them in the transporter, you effectively wipe that consciousness and create a brand new one? You personally would never know what happens after you go through the transporter, because your consciousness has been destroyed. The new one will not be able to tell it's new, because it has all your memories, but it isn't you. For most intents and purposes, that doesn't matter. But it matters to you.
The Stargate is actually just a StarTrek transporter hooked up to a wormhole generator for transport. The gate does the same job as the transporter where it comes to deconstruction, analysis and reconstruction of the individual or object.
I just was talking to my brother over Skype last night. When I think about it. Video Chat is a form of teleportation. It’s not the physical body that is being broken down into its atomic structure and reconstructed elsewhere. But our camera is capturing photons bouncing off ourselves and the background. Our microphone is capturing the air pressure waves created by our vocal cords. This information is changed from an analog signal into digital data in real time transported over the internet from the sending device, then reconstructed on the receiving device. This gives the feel that the person you are talking to is in the same room you are in while many miles away. The most mind boggling thing is that any recorded videos or audio is like that. All they are is information of something that was recorded a long time ago. Anytime they are played back, the device recreates the video or audio as it was recorded those many years ago. Basically information can travel through space and time and be reconstructed any time and anywhere, provided you have the means to process that information.🤯
I'd so often ponder this and I'd always think I'm crazy so I'm so happy there are other people with me on this. It just doesn't feel right to me. I would if it were life threatening not to like you said, but otherwise I'd probably just spend the extra gas money. Love your videos!
To me, using this to escape a life-threatening situation is... redundant, because if the thing simply kills you and then makes a new you, there's not much point...
The particles in our bodies are exchanged all the times. A working transporter could exchange all our particles by new ones found at the target as long as their pattern and the patterns in which they correlate to each other are the same. But it could still be that the result is a corpse, if only "static" patterns are transmitted. Live and spirit are "dynamic" patterns in that sense, and I doubt at least that the scanner could scan any thought I have during the scan and transmit it to the new body without interrupting, disturbing and completely changing my thought processes. And I'm also not sure at all, that the property "living" could be transmitted without any disturbance - I would except the need of a target unit doing not only the reassembling, but also a complete resurrection procedure.
Even though they use the term 'beam' I do not think there is any beaming going on. It would be too much energy consumption to send your particles across many miles. And why? Your particles are nothing special. All they need to do is to reproduce you at the defined destination - and there are plenty of random particles waiting there to assemble you!
Essentially it is like travelling by aeroplane. At first, few people would do it. As more and more people did it and it became normalized, it would become more popular, assuming not too many Tuvixs came out of it. 😂 Philosophically, I agree it's essentially like sleep, or being under a general anaesthetic. Particularly the latter, as you don't even dream. We already are ships of Theseus, like it or not, so that's no issue. I'd like to see you do an episode on why QE forbids cloning, though. I've heard that before, but never seen it explained. If I'm cloned which one is me is a more interesting existential problem. 😉 The bottom line is there is no 'soul'. The notion of 'me' is an analytical abstraction of the brain. It's subjective, and so subject to disagreement. Are you you when you dream? Different people will actually answer this differently.
I said to myself as I clicked on the thumbnail for this video “Hey crazies!” Then the wrong guy appeared with that greeting. Then Jabrils popped up on the screen and I was like wow! I am tripping almost as much as when I watch his videos. You know the tripping feeling you have when his mouth moves and the words just doesn’t fit but they still somehow fit.
Absolutely no hesitation just think of how useful it can be teleport to work and back, a quick jump to Tokyo for lunch, when sitting on the couch teleport to the kitchen and back to grab a beer.
2:28 "But do you want to be the guinea pig for the long term effects, even if there are no short term effects...?" That seems incredibly relevant to our modern world, somehow...
9:57 that's my perspective as well. If consciousness could be looked at as a flame - the result of reactions in your brain, then even as atoms are replaced over time, that flame was never fully extinguished at any point, otherwise it's brain death. It's certainly changed a lot over the years, but that flame is still me. If that flame (along with my body) is snuffed out of existence, and then reassembled perfectly down to each elementary particle, with the reactions at mostly the same points they were at the time of transport, is it still *my* flame that's being transported over? Would *I* feel my own continuity, or would the newly reassembled me feel it, while leaving the old me in the void of non-existence forever? And also, how could anyone even tell? Of course that raises the question: Does sleeping, passing out, or anesthesia essentially do the same thing, and you just don't notice? Also, great video!!
Apart from teleportation, it would be amazing for medicine. Imagine a patient being de-materialised then re-materialised without their cancer. Etc. This would beat gene editing into a soggy pulp.
I'm with Nick in that it would have to be a life threatening situation to give it a try. Otherwise I'm not getting anywhere near your Futurama Suicide Booth. Call it a transporter all ya want.
I brought up this EXACT conundrum with my friend several years ago! My conclusion is I would NOT use a Star Trek transporter as long as we still have these philosophical quandaries to work out.
bruh everybody is concerned with superficial stuff like health side effects. Meanwhile, we don't understand consciousness, so it's totally possible that the transporter could perfectly reconstruct you physically, including memories and all, yet still end your consciousness. And your reconstruction would never know the difference. So people who teleported would tell you it works perfectly fine. No shot I would ever use a transporter that uses the decompose/reconstruct method. Edit: ok nevermind you guys did actually cover this in the video. Michael Stevens never disappoints
I find it amazing that out of all of the possible "Science Educators" on youtube and around the world... I happen to regularly watch most of the ones you spoke with! What are the odds? ...and yes, I would use a transporter. Any other current form of transportation is such a hassle and takes Sooooo Looooong...
Yes. Its interesting that the transporter in Star Trek was created because the model of the Shuttle wasn't ready in time. The boat thing. Its happened. A 1950 racing car was run through a couple of seasons continuously being rebuilt after crashes. Someone collected the old parts and recreated the car. The pristine one is worth millions, but is not the original car.
If consciousness is a process (like an emergent property), then an individual mind is really just a configuration or system-state. By that logic, an individual would be akin to a configuration of objects -- that configuration can be disrupted or destroyed, but it can always be reinstated. That's one of the perks of making individual minds an abstract concept (i.e. a configuration or pattern of interaction). In that way, the teleporter doesn't really kill you, it just puts you "on hold".
My concern with this would come down to the concepts of sensitive dependence on initial conditions that chaos theory describes. James Gleicks book "chaos" outlines the whole butterfly effect where they interrupted a computer model of the weather and only kept the setting one decimal place off what the true calculation was and restarted it. The outcome changed dramatically when they compared it to what it would have been if run from scratch. If you concious is a collective of intricate patterns (whatever model floats your boat) these are constantly changing at a massively fast rate, " fast fast" if you will. If the "scan" is not 100% instantaneous, the copy would be made up various snapshots that are not a contiguously uniform image of the original conciousness. Small differences in the initial conditions means you'll never be what you were, and never become what you would've otherwise. For mine, that's where this really falls down. It's not the atoms etc, it's the "code" that you can't pause and replicate. And that's what makes us..... well.... us.
Great video and great question! I would use a teleporter in the context of the Star Trek universe: that it was tested and deemed to be safe. I use a lot of technologies that have been deemed safe but still have some known risks. I wouldn't want be the *very first* thing ever teleported, though.
Concerning souls, all I can say is that I believed in reincarnation in my last life, but I'm not too sure about it in this one. So I would not teleport.
In the context of teleportation the person is transported to the desired location with the use of the teleportation device. The original is no longer at the origin therefore the original is what is at the destination.
The ship of Theseus problem is purely an emergent semantic problem and you nailed the solution to it 9:28 - "The cells in our bodies replace their own atoms all the time. It's not like we're the same collection of atoms even a year ago." The universe doesn't care about defining something with a label. To the universe, we are not even the same person we were a planck time ago. The answer is that no, the ship is not the same ship. In fact, it's a different ship even if no parts were replaced.
The ship of Theseus is whatever we choose to call the ship of Theseus. To a naturalist the answer is that talking about entities and agents is a useful abstraction. And we can apply that abstraction to the original and the copy equally. But not everybody is a naturalist.
I would, this was reminded me of the book. Ben Bova 'Orion Among the Stars'. They dealt with that too and how some vehemently rejected it because it wasn't the same "you" on the other side.
Identity, or self identity is a subject that's been on my mind for a while now. It's difficult because "I" am the one doing the contemplating. My current conclusion: There's an organism that thinks it's "me" as a matter of convenience. I'm not real, and I can live with that.
5:40 to me this is the best answer. The soul - the part of consciousness that you would consider you - the part that is unchanging whether the body lives or dies - the part that is simply aware is self-determined. This timelessly aware you only experiences itself through the continuity of sequential events bound by fleeting and convincing self-determined limitations. I am that I am.
The other question is whether there is any practical benefit to using it. All of our current experiments in quantum teleportation still require an equivalent mass to be entangled and then classically transported to the intended destination. Possibly it's cheaper to transport a load of dirt than to send me, but you'd want to be real sure that every single atom arrived at the destination, or that you got notified of any loss of material. Miss one, or more likely a few million, without knowing it and some part of you materializes outside your body. If it's a little bit of blood or food or something, no big deal. If it's a neuron or a big enough part of another vital organ, then maybe it's a very big deal.
Hearing Derek say "Hey crazies!" already felt like the result of a transporter accident.
😆
Derrick Dangerheart...
Remember, it’s ok to be a little crazy.
@@veritasium 🤯😂
Not that farfetched, just a "huh? Wtf?" moment
Nice job Nick! Was nice to meet you and some of my other favorite RUclipsrs in NYC.
Love your channel
Thanks Arvin! It was great meeting you too. I'm sure we'll see each other again.
You've a fab channel as well, Arvin. It was good seeing you in the Asylum.
Oh my Mannigfaltigkeit!
Arvin Ash!
😳
Arvin here ❤️
I love how something invented to save on special effects budget in the 60‘s sparked this whole philosophical debate
😂
This is a version of the ship of Theseus paradox and is thousands of years old.
@@ScienceAsylum First, thanks to all of my Jewish friends who support my channel.
Second, if you want to make your video look scientific, you shall assume that a person has to enter a BBO crystal to create two entangled "halves" persons first! Ridiculous, right? You will not be there anymore! So please study before making videos!
Third, quantum entanglement does not mean teleportation, but entanglement! You may be required to study tachyons first, then you will understand that human teleportation is impossible; according to my equations.
They also invented DVDs or CD-ROMs (the episode with the library, and Spock falls in love with Mariette Hartley), and of course flip phones.
My question is can you recreate memories by reassembling atoms? Atoms are just protons, electrons, and neutrons.. Sure you can recreate the brain structure, but can you recreate the memories?
All of us properly sitting or standing and Jabril's like "nope I'm getting comfortable." 😄 Great job with this! As always with your videos, I learned a lot.
😂 Yeah, Michael Stevens lounged a little too, but Jabril _really_ went for it.
I love all your videos. This one is definitely one of your best. The way you combined pop sci-fi, quantum mechanics, philosophical debates about what is a person, and interviews was pretty amazing. Keep up the good work and keep robbing our interest.
I am so happy to see Science Asylum getting it's share of contribution that it deserved for years in RUclips scientific community
i dont think anyone would use teleporter untill nature of consciousness gets revealed,so that this is all done in such a way that your original consciousness doesnt die but instead gets moved to that new body and kicks out the clone ones,thats the only way i think it would be aprooved for people,cause any other way is just murder and clone
Today I learned that most of the "youtube scientific community" has aggressively bad audio and that I should stick with the regulars.
@@bfeezey if you're talking about the ones in the video, they were at a convention or something. They weren't in their normal home setups.
"Getting IT IS share..."? Huh? That doesn't make sense.
its*
You guys all together in one video are definitely the closest thing to a Science Communicator Cinematic Universe there is! Keep up the great work inspiring the next generation of scientists!
I want to hear Fraser Cain's opinion on this
where was electroboom to roast Veritasium? lol
Most ambitious crossover since Infinity War
@@jimwalton8973 If he had been at the event, I would have asked him 🙂
@@ScienceAsylum just think of the entertainment value of him finally capturing veritasium and making him pay supervillain style lol.
Finally the combo we wanted
😍😍😍😍😍
Exactly!
...and needed, and deserved.
There's your 69th like, enjoy it for 5s.
It could be used to clone Bill Gates at every transport👌
I’m happy you made this video. I’ve thought about this a lot. The initial transport that deconstructs you is in fact you being murdered. A copy of you ends up at the transport coordinates. So perfect that the new you experiences the transition as transportation opposed to a recreation. In my very unprofessional opinion every officer in Star Trek is painlessly murdered and replaced with a perfect copy every time they transport. Dr. Pulaski and Reginald Barclay had the right idea.
I agree it can be considered as a murder/suicide. But, about the "replacement", it all depends again on your stance about the ship of Theseus. If, like my, you consider that the "copy" is the exact the same thing, that it's a legitimate example of the original, then the teleportation is more like an actual resurrection instead of a "replacement".
@@shannonlachaise3050 I am gonna be brave enough to risk my life to experience instant travel if teleportation gets invented.
@@shannonlachaise3050 If we are to have the exact plans for the titanic and reproduce it to the exact same specifications without any changes, name it the same thing and behave like it is the same thing, that does not make it the same thing. It is a conceit. A fiction. There is a clear gap in continuity of what made the Titanic what it was and what makes the other thing a reproduction. This reproduction of a person would still be a person and have a right to live. But the first person was certainly killed for the reproduction to live. It is 100% a replicator as energy matter conversion is used and has been proven in universe to fill in the gaps. They could produce an infinite number of reproductions so long as energy persists to complete the process.
@@shannonlachaise3050 Not to the original. It sounds cool, but I'd prefer not to disassembled (sounds uncomfortable), even if a machine can recreate a duplicate elsewhere. The duplicate wouldn't be me, even if he thought he was.
I feel the same
How nice of Asylum to let up and coming RUclipsrs like Jabrils and Veritassium appear in his video!
😆
About effin' time they did a collab w you, you're one of my favorite science and physics channel Nick. Although I miss the madness of your earlier videos
Yes! That mind bending madness that broke your brain then rebuilt it around a new understanding of a previously murky topic... I miss that too, but still love the new content
I’ve been watching since like 2k subs, and I knew he’d blow up eventually. Awesome content Nick and thanks for all your hard work
The weird problem is about the transportation of our consciousness... Like, if a person uses the teleportation device, will he feel like he is dying and his particular consciousness is ending or will he see himself in his destination (where he wanted to go with the teleport) and have a sense of continuity. The problem here is that others won't be able to know. Even if you ask the person that reaches the destination, he will surely have the original's memories and certainly would have a sense of continuity, but won't know what happened to the original consciousness after he got teleported. We can consider that the new person was born with all the memories of the previous one, thus having a sense of continuity. But for the original person, for all we know his original life might have really ended. And I don't think we can differentiate between the two scenarios because after the teleportation the only person remaining is the one at the destination who will always have a sense of continuity. I first thought of this paradox while watching Doctor Who: Heaven Sent & Hell Bent. You can check it out
I think we can differentiate. Just think about the movie "the prestige", why it is so different when there are copies? The real guy used to drown, but what if it was electrocuted and died instantly? And remember that you are not your matter, your matter is changed every 120 days or so.
Consciousness is an illusion. You are not you when you're hungry.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Illusion or not, everyone can relate to the fact that we have a subjective experience, we talk about consciousness but the real point lies there. Of course the clone has an identical yet different consciousness, and of course is an illusion, but what about the subjective experience of that illusion?
That's an interesting question but I think w/o more definite understanding/definition of consciousness it would be hard to say one way or another! But like others mentioned in the video, this problem is similar to sleeping! Does yesterday me die and new me is born today and because only today's me exist, there's no way to verify what yesterday's me felt when falling asleep! My hypothesis is that, if the transporter is painless, which it seems like is, then the teleportation will be similar to sleeping, your consciousness would fade (just like before falling asleep) and then you would "wake up" few seconds later!
@@EdwardChopuryan It's not that simple. While you fall asleep your consciousness disappear but is substituted by your unconscious. You just don't remember falling asleep, but it's a problem of memory, your mind is still there alive and still has continuity with itself.
I love how all my favorite science bloggers seem to know each other. You even have Jade's t-shirt on!
If Jade had been there, she absolutely would have been in the video.
Seeing Nick, Arvin, Dr. Becky, Michael/Vsauce and Veritasium/Derek all in one video might put ME in the science asylum! All I needed to see was Sabine and Brian Greene and it would be my perfect dream team video (I love Matt from PBS as well, but he doesn't dumb things down enough for me!).
Wow, all this awesomeness in one place! Great to see you guys together ❤❤❤. Now I gotta beam out of existence.
You deliver excellent content to your audience. It's very interesting material. All of your effort put into creating this video is much appreciated. I'm truly grateful for your help!
Thanks! 🙂
One of the greatest questions ever asked with some of the greatest science RUclipsrs, awesome!
I was first introduced to this problem by the movie "The Prestige" (2006). Its a great movie, that fits perfectly with the theme presented here.
And that make you realize the real problem here. It does not matter that you vanish before the other is created, you have vanished...
@@thewizard4200 No, I'm still here.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Of course you are, nobody made you vanish.
(Spoiler alert)
That movie left the scientific issue in the shadow of the main character's mind boggling decision whom of himselves to kill/keep alive.
@@dudicrous Wasn't he forced to kill the "starting" himself to be able to transport elsewhere?
It's fabulous to see so many of my favourite RUclipsrs in one video 💞
I am subscribed to about 300 science channels. But Nick is the only one who genuinely personifies the old prototype of a nerd to the full extent!!! :)
I am glad you made this video. This question has been driving me crazy for a long time. The first time was when I was 12 I think. At that time I thought were just stupid teenager questions. That I learned that all the stupid questions I had were the biggest unresolved problem in philosophy.
I recently saw an MRI scan of someone who moved a bit while the scan was being taken. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be “reassembled” like that.
Ah yeah, you'd probably have to be "injected" into a mould, because just standing on your feet while getting reconstructed would probably result in a lot of movement.
3D printers are the same, you don't wanna move the plate while getting printed, unless you're making "art".
It would have to be scanned instantaneously
_Technically,_ the transporter is supposed to have a confinement beam that keeps people absolutely still during the process... but I can think of several in-show instances where people moved in the beam anyway.
@@ScienceAsylum Based on Inertial Damper tech, IIRC.
@@ScienceAsylum Compare teleporter to quantum field theory please.
The fear I have is that in the scanning and deconstructing process, the original you goes through incredible pain and suffering that no one would know about because the copy of you on the other side did not experience that.
So if the new you don't know about the suffering then why would you fear about pain..... I mean if you don't know about the pain would you still feel the pain
Getting pulled apart on the atomic level, spaghettification... mama mia!
Yea, the idea that I die a horrible death every time I use it is a big hurdle to consider for a little bit of convenience
Check out The Prestige (2006 film)
@@valhalla7284 But the new you is a clone of you. Not a continuation of the old you. Basicly the moment you go through the transporter you are dead.
The collab you deserved.
Here's to more in the future, keep doing great work Nick.
Cheers from Vancouver, Canada.
Definitely, we already do the same thing just very slowly. The only difference with the transporter is the rate. That gives the illusion of being different and makes people uncomfortable, but if you're okay with living for years and years, then you're already okay with being entirely replaced at the component level and still being yourself.
This! Someone gets it!
Interesting view on this topic, I'll ponder this one for a while.
I was waiting for someone to say this... bone generally does not regenerate, nor do brain cells. But otherwise, yes, much of the matter in our bodies is slowly replaced with new over time.
Because you don’t die by replacing every cell in your body you do in a teleporter
@@jfbeam Bone cells _are_ replaced over time, to the tune of about 10 years for a "complete overhaul".
As you say, though, the brain generally does not, with exceptions being, from what a brief search turned up, brain cells in the hippocampus and subventricular zone.
That is very similar as to asking, "Would you upload your 'consciousness' into a computer?" We see that we ourselves who think we 'exist' have a sense of dread into creating our own different version. I feel like this dread arises out of our realization of the uncertainties that REALLY make us. And naturally we'd end up rejecting it. It's so complex that I can't describe it honestly. Existential crisis is no joke.
Good point. And especially if it turns out possible on classical instead of quantum computers it will remove the "no cloning" cop-out and really mess up people's views. However your claim "And naturally we'd end up rejecting it." is not true for all of us. You already saw in the video above materialists going "hell yeah" and I'm with them.
Less the uncertainty, and more the fact that if there are two yous, only one of you will experience the continuation of consciousness from the original. Tricky thing about this is continuation of consciousness does not mean memories in this situation. You both could have the same memories, but only one would have Continuation of their subjective experience. This is impossible to measure, but one person would know: you. Whichever you that happens to be.
Now this is what scares me. A reality where people just... accept this.
@@cortster12 Materialists believe both copies will "experience continuation of consciousness" or in other words think they are you. And if you say it is "impossible to measure" then so do you, without completely understanding it.
@@youtubeforcinghandlessucks I'm a materialist, and I believe only one will experience continuation of conciousness, so clearly not all of them. The only way to make it so both experience it is to split someone's brain in half then copy BOTH hemispheres while keeping the original brains, and 'transport' the two cloned sides to the missing halves. Creating two identical clones who are also the originals at the same time. Otherwise, one or the other isn't truly the original.
@@cortster12 What did you mean by "impossible to measure" then? If you say they'll both act like the original but only one is actual continuation due to whatever hidden unmeasurable astral concept thing, then you are not materialist. Materialists understand the "If it quacks like a duck..."
I like your videos and you and CGP Grey are my long-time favourite education RUclipsrs.
I'm in good company then. Thanks 🙂
@@ScienceAsylum And the fact that you have Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer on your bookshelf just cements your good taste. :)
Finally you did a Collab .
One hell of a collab too
Always a good day when Nick Lucid drops an upload. Always 🤙
Among your interviewees, I found it amusing how many "Dr. McCoy" answers you got to the "Would you use it?" question.
"Bones" would always express distrust about having his atoms toyed with by 'that contraption.' I think all of us, including your guests, keenly sense that trepidation.
Note that when you pointed out that our cells experience material turnover at an atomic/subatomic scale, it's worth noting, too, that many of the cells themselves die and are replaced on daily or weekly timescales. You correctly homed in on the "soul" question here, a matter that has long been a thorny one for science - "What makes you, you?"
Science doesn't seem to have a handle on that question yet.
Will it ever?
All we can say right now is, "stay tuned!"
Fred
I don't think I'd use it.
The person on the other side has the same memories and feelings and knows it was teleported but I wouldn't see the other side as me, my self would stop existing in that moment but a copy with a new consciousness that thinks it is an original starts.
For the teleported version it wouldn't matter one bit but in that moment the true self of you would most definitely die.
There wouldn't be any way to prove it either because the teleported version is literally a perfect copy. But I honestly don't think that consciousness could be moved like that.
Oddly enough tough I would probably use it if it would be the same atoms since we move all of our atoms every day together and that would just scramble and move them and put them perfectly together again. Idk it's weird.
But then here's the question... how does your own consciousness survive the replacement of your atoms on a regular basis through your life? Unless it really doesn't, and maybe your present is just an illusion created by all the connections your brain has created. Either way, what is the difference? A thought experiment of its own.
I think these are philosophical questions we wrestle with now, but would stop after teleportation tech was around for a while. People would only care for so long.
Generally no, Transporter = Destroyer + Cloning Machine.
However, like you said, in an emergency I would, not because it will save me, but because I prefer that a clone of me gets to go on living when I couldn't.
Nice touch with the surprise intro haha, and great topic that so many people philosophize about 👍 Also some surprises about quantum teleportation.
2 questions about it:
1) could you transmute: for example rearrange a few handfuls of silicon into a handful of gold?
2) in real life teleportation of a single particle, how do they destroy the original particle?
1) Conservation of energy shall not be violated!
2) The original is not destroyed, it just pops up in the place it is teleported to. Unless it doesn't, in which case, yea, it is destroyed.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Wouldn't the fidelity required by the transporter actually require an essentially destructive scanning process to achieve the maximum resolution - to measure everything accurately enough at the quantum level would inherently require the scanning beam to change the position of all the particles. Same with uploading a brain, which does appear to use quantum effects, into a computer.
@@tycarne7850 You are correct. Physics requires the scanning process be destructive.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Ok so gold is 14 times the atomic weight of silicon, so could you use teleportation to rearrange the 14 handfuls of silicon into a handful of gold?
Hmmm, what would the energy difference be also in the nuclear bonds of silicon vs gold? Might have to add in a bunch of energy as well.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Also, wasn't the whole premise of the video that the original is destroyed and then teleported? And I thought Nick mentioned that they've done the star trek style of teleportation with a single particle?
The only thing I would consider to be a gap in continuity in consciousness would be going under anesthesia. I have been under once for an endoscopy for only 15 to 30 minutes and i had zero concept of any time passing or existing during that time. It is still a bit nerve-racking to think about.
When I take a nap or go to sleep there is some level of awareness. Your subconscious filters a lot of it but I know when my dog needs to be let outside in the middle of the night. They don't wake me up directly but I hear them jump off the bed.
Like how when you wake up, you can normally guess the time, so long as you knew about when you went to bed, and be fairly accurate. That proves there is some level of consciousness still. You're rarely perfect with it, but also not off by too much either.
Can't do that with anesthesia, at all. I've been under for 4 or 5 surgeries and yeah, that is just a total black out. Nothing like being asleep.
That's the point, under anesthesia consciousness is gone, but not the mind, the mind still persist into subconscious.
@@thewizard4200 I guess my comment was related to the "Is it the same as sleep" section of the video. I would say it would be more like anesthesia than sleep.
@@MC--- It's a bit the same, your brain activity persist even some minutes after your body is dead, so anesthesia, sleep, being knocked out, are all the same.
But that isn't a "real" gap in continuity. The brain is still active, it's just been forced into really deep unconsciousness by powerful drugs. They aren't really different, just numbers on a scale. It's absolutely possible to fall asleep that deeply outside of anesthesia, just rare. And you can also lack those concepts without even needing to be unconscious, by for example using hypnotic or dissociative drugs. Or your sleep can be so superficial you still have physical, conscious control of your body while dreaming.
Point being that while they're subjectively different, sleep, anesthesia and coma are fundamentally the same - *decreased* level of consciousness. Removed level of consciousness requires death - although it may be possible to die and be resuscitated while under anesthesia of course.
The other Gene Roddenberry series, Earth: Final Conflict, also had transporters and there was an episode or two of that where there were some interesting side effects and some interesting criminals also.
6:16
"Quantum mechanics forbids this."
Matt of PBS Spacetime
Like asking random people three hundred years ago if they'd use a car that rolls along at 70+ mph on balloon tires near to people that are reckless, careless, and in a big hurry. Most people would be horrified by the idea when the real dangers were explained to them. We casually ignore deadly dangers all the time in our everyday life. It's simply the novelty of it that scares us.
100%. Came here to say this.
Well it's not just a danger, it physicaly kills you and makes another you somewhere else. It's controverse to tell if that's you or if you just died in the process. Since our cells die and get replaced every day I would say it's still you but I would still have a bad feeling using it.
I think the discussion comes down to fear, and the understandable but ultimately irrational belief in some outer-bodily, unknowable soul. It's the same as the God question. It may exist, but due to its untestability, you might as well treat it like it doesn't. Didn't some people believe photographs would zap your soul away, too? And that likenesses like statues are bad?
These are all understandable fears for someone raised from a small age with these concepts of soul, disembodied lifeforce, God, etc., not just in the context of religion, but also pop songs, pop culture, etc. But the scientific discussion about these needs to be psychological imo
@@michaelmurdock4607 you can't compare the risk of an accidental to real destruction of your whole body that makes me think that you still don't understand how this thing works, if you do than your comparison is just not so great. If you don't believe in anything outside the material, than this thing is literally killing you and replacing you by a perfect copy that's not you. And even if you believe in more than the material world than you don't know if that what makes you, you is also placed into the new you or not. So yes if we just talk material, than using this machine is legit suicide. You die, and get replaced by an identity chief, and riska of car accidents have nothing to do with this. You won't take a car if you would know that you would have an accidental and die in that ride. Here you know that you won't survive it this thing works by killing you.
I’m so happy to see Joe Scott in this episode
Personally, I would probably use it, as long as I'm not a tester and it has been proven sufficiently safe for widespread, continuous use.
Your answer was the best! I would only if I were already in a seriously life threatening situation. Because than it would be like preserving myself for others, even if I weren't preserving myself for myself.
I'm just too selfish to go and do a thing like that. c:
Lawrence Krauss in his book “the physics of StarTrek” really drives the point home.
The most efficient way to “atomize” an object or person is to heat it to a billion degrees or hot enough for the particles to lose cohesion. That doesn’t sound pleasant.
Besides, in actual quantum teleportation the original is destroyed.
I wouldn’t step into that machine.
If I understand how the process is described in the shows, the transporter not only takes you apart particle by particle, it converts those particles into a particular (unspecified) type of energy. That energy is then transmitted to the destination where it is used with the scan pattern to reconstruct you. How this happens without a receiving pad at the destination is something I've never tried to figure out. So since matter and energy are the same thing, and it's the same energy in the same configuration but at a different location, I'd say it was still you.
but the real issue isn't the memories or the fact the body is completely the same,what is issue is the consciousness is it same one or just a new one put in to replace the one that died.
sure we replace our own atoms all the time as our body ages,but we don't know what consciousness is and does that also get changed or stays the same.
@@theicyphoenix_7745 You're fundamentally misunderstanding the in universe explanation. The transporters in Star Trek do not replace anything, they convert matter into energy and MOVE that energy from one place to another, then convert that energy back to the SAME matter. This is something that always pisses me off, people conflating the fictional tech of Star Trek transporters with real world teleportation theory which works very differently on a fundamental level.
I still fear that if I step on the transporter and get disassembled that my conscious goes out like a light, and a clone of me lives on. I would not see out my clone's eyes or feel any of his pleasures. I'm just dead.
I'm not letting them scramble my molecules. 😜
I guess you are right. You die in the transport.
Also it's never provable whether my own conscious really survived. My clone will always say that it went fine, as he remembers stepping on the transporter and being sent here, having all my past memories. I'm too dead to let you know that i really died.
@@chrisakers3941 Exactly. There is simply no way of knowing whether “you” will continue after transportation. That’s why I would not use it regardless of how many times it may have been used by others who report their own continence of consciousness
Thank you so much! Gave me a handful of new RUclipsrs to follow and watch in between TSA episodes! If they're good enough to show up here, they are good enough for me!
I'm with Jabril; I wouldn't be first in line to try out the prototype, but once transportation tech passed regulatory review and survived a few years on the mass market without industry collapse from liability suits, I'd absolutely beam myself up.
Imagine someone using it everyday to get to work or something completely obliviously destroying themselves everyday and cloning a new exact clone somewhere else. Its like a whole dystopian sci fi plot in there
Cool to see some of my favorite educational youtubers cameo with one of my favorite educational youtubers. I love that kinda thing. It also gave me a few people I didn't know before to check out.
I HAD THAT MANUAL!!! I would go around telling people how a warp engine works. This is also when I realized that startrek is one giant The Prestige.
Forgot to answer. No I would not. I will stick to true quantum teleportation where every piece of your quantum state just gets shifted to a new location, or points in space where the distance between the 2 desired points is near 0.
So did I!!!! I loved explaining it!
Same.
How does it work though
Warp drive is definitely a topic I want to cover eventually.
@@ScienceAsylum You will need to cover inertial dampening systems and umm I think the main deflector dish for micro object impact issues. At least the warp bubble itself takes care of mass.
I've had this conversation with my girlfriend and it is a HEATED ARGUMENT. I like your answer. I think generally no, but if it was "You are doing to die right now if you don't transport out of here" I would do it in a sort of "well, I'll be dead either way" sense.
100% same.
I don't really know if I would trust identical me with all my business and assets. I know that guy well enough to know he can't be trusted.
It's an interesting reflection on oneself. I'd totally trust myself.
@@I.C.Weiner you have no idea. I have ADHD. Identical me is a fucking flake. 😭
Just saw the video yesterday, and now watching this year's Nobel Prize announcement. What a coincidence that the video is closely related!
Anton Zeilinger (one of the winners) is an author of one of the papers I referenced for this video!
The non cloning rule in quantum mechanics throws a curve ball into this. The original version in Star Trek is equivalent to me to know everything about you, then kill you, burn you, and then at some other place to create something that is indistinguishable to human observation. And in reality a 99% similar clone would look the same enough, because our verification is not perfect.
Joe Scott... I love how these topics really get to him and how he's not afraid to let us know he's shook.
Oh my, I have my own copy of the Star Trek Technical Manual. I even have the complete NCC-1701D schematics.
I used the once to prove to my son that I was not just a Geek, but an Engineering Geek.
Cool! 🤓
Jealous! I wanted the schematics! I had the manual thou
I have been watching this channel for so long, and I am so so happy that you finally get the recognition!
1:13 For f&#*! Real?! Omg! You had the most amazing parents ever!
2 things: If transportation was a copy paste thing of the superpositions of particles, you can copy as much as you like since position itself is a quantum state. And even if not perfect, just imagine if we would print out food just because you have the information stored somewhere on a pc.
Also, in my opinion the boat of Theseus isn't really that complex. Since you shouldn't look at the actual material itself. Only what the combination of those material represent. And yes this may be a stretch but I actually think that even representations are influenced by entropy
If it copies perfectly, and I mean perfectly, then it should be no issue. You'll be "you".
I suspect, though, that it will take a LONG, LONG, time to do so.
Actually...if it could kinda go through my code and make some improvements, I'd be even more game.
Changing the code before reassembly is a much harder thing to do.
@@ScienceAsylum I'm just looking for 10...maybe 50 IQ points at most.
And maybe a 2-3 point increase on a scale 1-10 in physical attractiveness.
Maybe bump my resting metabolism just a smidge (technical terms, I know).
If we could pull all the organs out of a person and separate the limbs from the torso, move them to a different hospital and reassemble them, I think most people would think it macabre but still feel like it’s the same person who wakes up in the other hospital. Does the size of the pieces really matter if the end result is identical in every way?
Good point! But what if it's different atoms that are reassembled, just in the same exact pattern?
I've literally been talking to my friends about this recently. I don't think transportation of consciousness is possible, I think its basically a clone.
It's a question of the "Closest Continuer" being the real "you" - So long as the original "you" was destroyed at the point of departure, the transporter "you", being the closest continuer of your "self" is, for all intents and purposes, still "you"
Was talking about this the other day, too. We agreed that consciousness is like computer software *while it's running*. I can turn a computer off, move it to another room, and turn it back on. The software code (i.e. memory) is stored on a physical medium and can be moved/transported/duplicated. Consciousness is where stimuli meets memory... when the software is running and processing input/producing output.
@@RedwoodTheElf Outer Limits had an episode about that :D
@@RedwoodTheElf what if the original you was destroyed and never reconstructed? Wouldnt then be considered dead, disintegrated? What if then you were reconstructed after, say, 5 million years, would that be you? Ressurrected, or were you just temporarily dead? What if you could be reconstructed not once but as many times you wanted, would all of them be the same you?
I believe what makes you you is the continuity of your matter, or more specifically the matter of your brain, and that is gone if the original you is disintegrated. You are not even completely you if you lose part of your brain in an accident for example...
@@mazocco The first case, of never being reconstructed, wouldn't apply to a functioning transporter. Montgomery Scott was rematerialized many years after being dematerialized in the TNG episode "Relics" and he certainly seemed to be the same person.
It's a Ship of Theseus situation, but the difference is that in _your_ ship, the engine never gets replaced. Studies show that brain cells are replaced much slower than other cells, and some cells are never replaced at all. It doesn't matter to your consciousness what exact cells your skin is made from, but these cells that stay with you for your entire lifetime, _may_ be very important for the continuation of your consciousness.
You will never know whether or not it's safe to use, until you go through it. But what if it isn't safe? You wouldn't be able to tell anyone, because you will be replaced by another consciousness that doesn't know it didn't exist before stepping in the transporter.
That cold open with people like Veritasium, VSauce Michael, Dr. Becky and Arvin was just showing off right? Lucky man.
I absolutely would use one. There's no reason at all that such a device couldn't reassemble me without the many injuries and defects that make my life a living hell, like in the episodes in which they use it to cure diseases.
Using it to cure all sorts of things makes sense to me. And what about intelligence? Could we ramp up say from a 140 IQ to 200? I have been fascinated with this problem since reading “Flowers for Algernon” in high school. That’s a short story by Daniel Keyes I think.
Imagine they made the defect-free copy, and the two of you (lol) had a nice chat, and then, maybe a few days later, it came time to get rid of the original. Still sounds good?
@@dbilyeu Fantastic story, made a gigantic impression on me. I wish more people knew it because I refer to it all the time.
@@bozo5632 Copying/cloning is impossible, as he explained in the video. But even if the scenario you describe were to happen, a-la Tom Riker... yeah. Still sounds good.
@@dbilyeu Yeah, in a sense it could be like genetic engineering, only it can apply immediately rather than creating all the typical striation and classism depicted in something like Gattaca. That is assuming it's cheap enough to actually _do_ to do it for everybody, of course. I suppose, like anything, it could be used to make the "haves vs have-nots" problem even worse than it already is.
On the other hand, on a philosophical level, considering that I consider the continuation of intelligent life to be supremely important above all other considerations, while it would be tragic if the majority died off of old age while a super-race was born of the transporter/editor we're theorizing, ultimately it would still be a net positive in my view.
In that way, this isn't very different from a singularity event in which we all (or some of us) upload our consciousnesses to computers, although _that_ option actually has some significant advantages over mere teleportation/editing technology.
I'd use it if it works right. Like if it makes you just with new atoms, I think it's still you. It's like how every 7 years all your cells have been replaced with new ones
Your neurons are never replaced though. I’d say those are the important cells that make you *you*
@@new_trin0510 Great Job :D
@@new_trin0510 However neurons always die, and at your birth you had the same neurons you have now, then they grew in number till you were sixteen, then they died till you where twenty one to twenty five. So, are you for real your neurons?
@@new_trin0510 but it's still possible to copy them. Like on two healthy brains, if you copy the same learnable skills by doing the thing neurons do the more you learn, it should have the same outcome
Great video! I would totally use a transporter. All the cells in our body are replaced every 7 - 10 years, so, in a way we do this already. I would just want to leave behind some of those cells, say 20 - 30 lbs from around the waist area :)
😆
It's not entirely true. Brain cells are typically replaced much less often, and some brain cells are never replaced at all. What if these non-replacing cells hold the key to consciousness? And by replacing them in the transporter, you effectively wipe that consciousness and create a brand new one? You personally would never know what happens after you go through the transporter, because your consciousness has been destroyed. The new one will not be able to tell it's new, because it has all your memories, but it isn't you. For most intents and purposes, that doesn't matter. But it matters to you.
The Stargate is actually just a StarTrek transporter hooked up to a wormhole generator for transport.
The gate does the same job as the transporter where it comes to deconstruction, analysis and reconstruction of the individual or object.
The gate is also better because it has an endpoint to reconstruct from unlike in star trek
1:36 disappointed fan would have been the best meme to be inserted at this moment.
Two of my favourite science youtubers, honestly.
I just was talking to my brother over Skype last night. When I think about it. Video Chat is a form of teleportation. It’s not the physical body that is being broken down into its atomic structure and reconstructed elsewhere. But our camera is capturing photons bouncing off ourselves and the background. Our microphone is capturing the air pressure waves created by our vocal cords. This information is changed from an analog signal into digital data in real time transported over the internet from the sending device, then reconstructed on the receiving device. This gives the feel that the person you are talking to is in the same room you are in while many miles away. The most mind boggling thing is that any recorded videos or audio is like that. All they are is information of something that was recorded a long time ago. Anytime they are played back, the device recreates the video or audio as it was recorded those many years ago. Basically information can travel through space and time and be reconstructed any time and anywhere, provided you have the means to process that information.🤯
I'd so often ponder this and I'd always think I'm crazy so I'm so happy there are other people with me on this. It just doesn't feel right to me. I would if it were life threatening not to like you said, but otherwise I'd probably just spend the extra gas money. Love your videos!
To me, using this to escape a life-threatening situation is... redundant, because if the thing simply kills you and then makes a new you, there's not much point...
The particles in our bodies are exchanged all the times. A working transporter could exchange all our particles by new ones found at the target as long as their pattern and the patterns in which they correlate to each other are the same. But it could still be that the result is a corpse, if only "static" patterns are transmitted. Live and spirit are "dynamic" patterns in that sense, and I doubt at least that the scanner could scan any thought I have during the scan and transmit it to the new body without interrupting, disturbing and completely changing my thought processes. And I'm also not sure at all, that the property "living" could be transmitted without any disturbance - I would except the need of a target unit doing not only the reassembling, but also a complete resurrection procedure.
Even though they use the term 'beam' I do not think there is any beaming going on. It would be too much energy consumption to send your particles across many miles. And why? Your particles are nothing special. All they need to do is to reproduce you at the defined destination - and there are plenty of random particles waiting there to assemble you!
Awesome video, and great collab of our favorite tubers!
Essentially it is like travelling by aeroplane. At first, few people would do it. As more and more people did it and it became normalized, it would become more popular, assuming not too many Tuvixs came out of it. 😂 Philosophically, I agree it's essentially like sleep, or being under a general anaesthetic. Particularly the latter, as you don't even dream. We already are ships of Theseus, like it or not, so that's no issue.
I'd like to see you do an episode on why QE forbids cloning, though. I've heard that before, but never seen it explained. If I'm cloned which one is me is a more interesting existential problem. 😉
The bottom line is there is no 'soul'. The notion of 'me' is an analytical abstraction of the brain. It's subjective, and so subject to disagreement. Are you you when you dream? Different people will actually answer this differently.
1st
Is your boyfriend impressed?
@@xploration1437 yups as your is impressed by spacex
@@AnshParashar-yr8fi what?
@JZ's BFF thanks! but I have a cat🐱
I said to myself as I clicked on the thumbnail for this video “Hey crazies!” Then the wrong guy appeared with that greeting.
Then Jabrils popped up on the screen and I was like wow! I am tripping almost as much as when I watch his videos. You know the tripping feeling you have when his mouth moves and the words just doesn’t fit but they still somehow fit.
Absolutely no hesitation just think of how useful it can be teleport to work and back, a quick jump to Tokyo for lunch, when sitting on the couch teleport to the kitchen and back to grab a beer.
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S Veritasium AND Vsauce
2:28 "But do you want to be the guinea pig for the long term effects, even if there are no short term effects...?"
That seems incredibly relevant to our modern world, somehow...
Right?!!?!
9:57 that's my perspective as well. If consciousness could be looked at as a flame - the result of reactions in your brain, then even as atoms are replaced over time, that flame was never fully extinguished at any point, otherwise it's brain death. It's certainly changed a lot over the years, but that flame is still me. If that flame (along with my body) is snuffed out of existence, and then reassembled perfectly down to each elementary particle, with the reactions at mostly the same points they were at the time of transport, is it still *my* flame that's being transported over? Would *I* feel my own continuity, or would the newly reassembled me feel it, while leaving the old me in the void of non-existence forever? And also, how could anyone even tell?
Of course that raises the question: Does sleeping, passing out, or anesthesia essentially do the same thing, and you just don't notice?
Also, great video!!
Apart from teleportation, it would be amazing for medicine.
Imagine a patient being de-materialised then re-materialised without their cancer. Etc.
This would beat gene editing into a soggy pulp.
Right?! What an amazingly versatile technology!
I was hoping you’d mention Nolan’s Prestige movie! Excellent example of continuity for one person but not the other!
I'm with Nick in that it would have to be a life threatening situation to give it a try. Otherwise I'm not getting anywhere near your Futurama Suicide Booth. Call it a transporter all ya want.
I brought up this EXACT conundrum with my friend several years ago! My conclusion is I would NOT use a Star Trek transporter as long as we still have these philosophical quandaries to work out.
I'd prefer wormholes; there's a better chance of me being *ME* on the other side, rather than a ridiculously accurate recreation.
bruh everybody is concerned with superficial stuff like health side effects. Meanwhile, we don't understand consciousness, so it's totally possible that the transporter could perfectly reconstruct you physically, including memories and all, yet still end your consciousness. And your reconstruction would never know the difference. So people who teleported would tell you it works perfectly fine. No shot I would ever use a transporter that uses the decompose/reconstruct method.
Edit: ok nevermind you guys did actually cover this in the video. Michael Stevens never disappoints
Nice to see so many RUclips nerds collab-ing.
I find it amazing that out of all of the possible "Science Educators" on youtube and around the world... I happen to regularly watch most of the ones you spoke with!
What are the odds?
...and yes, I would use a transporter. Any other current form of transportation is such a hassle and takes Sooooo Looooong...
" *it takes courage to go into that machine not knowing if i'll be the man in the box or on the prestige* " - Robert Angier, The Prestige.
Yes. Its interesting that the transporter in Star Trek was created because the model of the Shuttle wasn't ready in time.
The boat thing. Its happened. A 1950 racing car was run through a couple of seasons continuously being rebuilt after crashes. Someone collected the old parts and recreated the car. The pristine one is worth millions, but is not the original car.
If consciousness is a process (like an emergent property), then an individual mind is really just a configuration or system-state. By that logic, an individual would be akin to a configuration of objects -- that configuration can be disrupted or destroyed, but it can always be reinstated. That's one of the perks of making individual minds an abstract concept (i.e. a configuration or pattern of interaction).
In that way, the teleporter doesn't really kill you, it just puts you "on hold".
My concern with this would come down to the concepts of sensitive dependence on initial conditions that chaos theory describes. James Gleicks book "chaos" outlines the whole butterfly effect where they interrupted a computer model of the weather and only kept the setting one decimal place off what the true calculation was and restarted it. The outcome changed dramatically when they compared it to what it would have been if run from scratch.
If you concious is a collective of intricate patterns (whatever model floats your boat) these are constantly changing at a massively fast rate, " fast fast" if you will. If the "scan" is not 100% instantaneous, the copy would be made up various snapshots that are not a contiguously uniform image of the original conciousness. Small differences in the initial conditions means you'll never be what you were, and never become what you would've otherwise.
For mine, that's where this really falls down. It's not the atoms etc, it's the "code" that you can't pause and replicate. And that's what makes us..... well.... us.
Great video and great question! I would use a teleporter in the context of the Star Trek universe: that it was tested and deemed to be safe. I use a lot of technologies that have been deemed safe but still have some known risks. I wouldn't want be the *very first* thing ever teleported, though.
Concerning souls, all I can say is that I believed in reincarnation in my last life, but I'm not too sure about it in this one.
So I would not teleport.
In the context of teleportation the person is transported to the desired location with the use of the teleportation device. The original is no longer at the origin therefore the original is what is at the destination.
I'm just impressed that there is an actual technical manual for the star trek transporter, and it covers the Heisenberg uncertainty principle!
The ship of Theseus problem is purely an emergent semantic problem and you nailed the solution to it 9:28 - "The cells in our bodies replace their own atoms all the time. It's not like we're the same collection of atoms even a year ago."
The universe doesn't care about defining something with a label. To the universe, we are not even the same person we were a planck time ago. The answer is that no, the ship is not the same ship. In fact, it's a different ship even if no parts were replaced.
The ship of Theseus is whatever we choose to call the ship of Theseus. To a naturalist the answer is that talking about entities and agents is a useful abstraction. And we can apply that abstraction to the original and the copy equally.
But not everybody is a naturalist.
I would, this was reminded me of the book. Ben Bova 'Orion Among the Stars'. They dealt with that too and how some vehemently rejected it because it wasn't the same "you" on the other side.
Identity, or self identity is a subject that's been on my mind for a while now.
It's difficult because "I" am the one doing the contemplating.
My current conclusion: There's an organism that thinks it's "me" as a matter of convenience.
I'm not real, and I can live with that.
5:40 to me this is the best answer. The soul - the part of consciousness that you would consider you - the part that is unchanging whether the body lives or dies - the part that is simply aware is self-determined. This timelessly aware you only experiences itself through the continuity of sequential events bound by fleeting and convincing self-determined limitations. I am that I am.
The other question is whether there is any practical benefit to using it. All of our current experiments in quantum teleportation still require an equivalent mass to be entangled and then classically transported to the intended destination.
Possibly it's cheaper to transport a load of dirt than to send me, but you'd want to be real sure that every single atom arrived at the destination, or that you got notified of any loss of material. Miss one, or more likely a few million, without knowing it and some part of you materializes outside your body. If it's a little bit of blood or food or something, no big deal. If it's a neuron or a big enough part of another vital organ, then maybe it's a very big deal.
Question Clone's stare was just perfect!