Teleportation. It isn't you that comes out the other side. Or is it? - by SubJeff
LarryG on 25/9/2012 at 00:07
Quote Posted by scarykitties
Though the reason that we can't know the location and velocity of a fundamental particle at the same time isn't due to any mystic qualities of the particle being everywhere at once--it's simply because the only instruments we have for detecting fundamental particles involves using particles, so we contaminate the result by taking measurements.
I think you may be confusing the (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29) observer effect with the (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle) uncertainty principle.
Quote:
Historically, the uncertainty principle has been confused with a somewhat similar effect in physics, called the observer effect, which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the systems. Heisenberg offered such an observer effect at the quantum level (see below) as a physical "explanation" of quantum uncertainty. It has since become clear, however, that the uncertainty principle is inherent in the properties of all wave-like systems, and that it arises in quantum mechanics simply due to the matter wave nature of all quantum objects. Thus, the uncertainty principle actually states a fundamental property of quantum systems, and is not a statement about the observational success of current technology.
While I am taking extreme liberties in my postulation of a super-scientific ability to take advantage of the uncertainty principle, I am in no way relying on the observer effect for my proposed teleportation mechanism. :p We had better have bloody precise tools to try this out! ;) Oh, and we had better understand just what "everywhere" and "at once" actually means.
Phatose on 25/9/2012 at 00:21
Er...isn't that Douglas Adam's lead in to the infinite improbability drive? Used primarily to make the hostesses undergarments jump 5 feet to the left at dinner parties?
ZylonBane on 25/9/2012 at 00:21
Quote Posted by faetal
How would you dispose of the body too, since I'm guessing a funeral for all of your copies would get expensive and consume too much space.
Inline Image:
http://ferrellgummit.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/soylent_green07.jpgOf course he is. There's a reason it's not called the Heisenberg Butterfingers Principle.
LarryG on 25/9/2012 at 01:11
Quote Posted by Phatose
Er...isn't that Douglas Adam's lead in to the infinite improbability drive? Used primarily to make the hostesses undergarments jump 5 feet to the left at dinner parties?
No, I don;t think so. Douglas Adams, IIRC, was using an extension of (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation) Many-worlds uncertainty hypothesis, I believe, and not the the underlying quantum uncertainty principle. The (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Infinite_Improbability_Drive) infinite improbability drive is something entirely different. Hmm. Well, maybe not. I thought it was, but maybe that was in a parallel universe and not this one ... It's so hard to keep all the parallel universes straight in your head when you start getting old ...
faetal on 25/9/2012 at 08:44
Quote Posted by scarykitties
The question is--can you "pour" one consciousness from one mind into an exact duplicate while maintaining that single consciousness? I would suggest no, because as soon as the electrical activity is removed from the mind, it loses to pattern that was made by it being bound to a mind. Unless one brain could be literally instantaneously swapped for another--and I mean faster than the energy that makes up consciousness could change from the brief absence of a brain, then one single consciousness could not be transported from one brain to another.
Of course, the unique qualities of the more primitive parts of the brain that regulate emotions and primal urges also play a strong and separate role from consciousness per se, yet they still shape one's personality, as does any signal that the body sends to the brain.
The electrical energy of the body is 100% chemical in origin. The number of sodium, potassium or calcium ions on one side of a membrane compared with another, is what determines the membrane potential, so if you perfectly copy everything without any temporal stutter, the electrical activity would be identical too. There is no "power source" per se, just polarisation.
faetal on 25/9/2012 at 08:51
Yes ZB, I was thinking of Soylent Green when I posted that :)
Great film by the way - worth a re-watch some time I feel.
Larry, have you read about (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle) Holographic principle?
Is is basically the position that the entire universe is basically just information and that every aspect of physics is just a function which is emergent from the data. Dimensionality, as experienced by humans is just the logical order of how those data interact as makes sense to our consciousness, which is itself an emergent property of these data. It is interesting from the perspective of humanity essentially just being a brief dream had by the universe existing as a complex function of information which, among almost (let's say) infinite data, is capable of self-referencing.
I did enjoy how someone once asked at a Star Trek science geek fair Q&A how transporters got around the Heisenberg principle, to which some bright spark (I don't know who was running the Q&A) replied "they use a Heisenberg compensator" or similar.
demagogue on 25/9/2012 at 09:18
Not to be confused with the holographic theory of mind or knowledge, where items of knowledge are stored in the brain in the holographic phase information of pulsing neuron waves, and "written" and "recovered" with interference reference waves, very similarly to how actual visual holograms work... The advantage being that if you had a brain injury, you do not lose discrete information but rather it's all gradually degraded, like when you cut a hologram in two you still see the whole image but it's more fuzzy.
faetal on 25/9/2012 at 09:25
Quote Posted by demagogue
Not to be confused with the holographic theory of mind or knowledge, where items of knowledge are stored in the brain in the holographic phase information of pulsing neuron waves, and "written" and "recovered" with interference reference waves, very similarly to how actual visual holograms work... The advantage being that if you had a brain injury, you do not lose discrete information but rather it's all gradually degraded, like when you cut a hologram in two you still see the whole image but it's more fuzzy.
Our brain is insanely good at filling in the gaps. Starting with the blind spot. If no one has ever tried this before - it is a very quick and easy way of demonstrating it: (
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chvision.html)
SubJeff on 25/9/2012 at 11:08
Quote:
The electrical energy of the body is 100% chemical in origin.
Yeah, this was what I wasn't thinking about. I was, as scary is (I think), divorcing the electrical pattern component of the brain from the actual physical reality of the electrical generation which is indeed 100% dependant upon the chemicals. I don't know that it's correct to say it is "chemical" in origin though, or even if trying to describe it that way gives us any useful concepts - it's enough to say that it is intrinsically bound to the particulate composition of the brain and therefore exact replication of all those particles will result in exact replication of conciousness.
This is really interesting to me because I sometimes deal with people with head injuries, massive blood loss, etc. They are in dire physiological states that we must rescue them from and this had got me thinking about the boundary that the brain crosses which then results in symptomatic damage. It's usually hypoxic (though occasionally direct force trauma) at which point the electro-chemical maintenance fails. Given the surprisingly delicate status quo in the brain it is surprisingly resilient, all things considered. I haven't yet encountered someone with a hypoxic brain injury, that isn't cerebral palsy from birth, who had severe motor disfunction without cognitive/personality changes. This suggests that hypoxic injury is global or that any compensatory mechanisms are completely bypassed by the severity of the injury. I'm supposing here that the brain would attempt to maintain oxygenation of the personality/conciousness parts of the brain because that would seem to advantageous in an evolutionary sense.
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Just curious, what kind of fighting you talking about?
Over the years it's been a mixture; Aikido, Ju-Jitsu, streetfighting/grappling, dabbles in Wing Chun and other Chinese martial arts, most recently Krav Maga and Savate. I've moved away from "traditional" martial arts to purely practical useful combat skills. Krav and Savate share a lot of similarities where it comes to stand-up, toe-to-toe combat; stance, footwork, strikes. Of course Krav is much, much more wide ranging and Savate explores the stand-up fight to a much greater depth. I've sparred during different "phases" of my training over the years. A lot of it was wasted time, Krav and Savate are not - my old self would never be able to beat the new one despite being fitter and faster.
