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Why Teleportation Would Kill You

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  1. 0:00 In Star Trek, the transporter moves you from one spot to another, saving on shuttle fuel .
  2. 0:06 In-universe, it's 'the safest way to travel'.
  3. 0:09 Yes, *sometimes*, two guys die horrible, mutilated deaths under rare circumstances...
  4. 0:13 ...but trillions of individuals transport to work every morning without a hiccup.
  5. 0:18 But, what if the transporter isn't as safe as claimed...
  6. 0:20 ...what if the death rate isn't point almost nothing percent, but one-hundred percent...
  7. 0:24 ...because the transporter is a suicide box.
  8. 0:27 First, how does the transporter work?
  9. 0:29 There are technical manuals, with pages and pages of hilariously over-specific details...
  10. 0:34 that yet say *so little*.
  11. 0:36 Star Trek is nothing if not consistently inconsistent, but, taking the most common elements:
  12. 0:41 First, the transporter scans you down to the quark, takes apart your atoms and sends the pieces of you to the destination for reassembly.
  13. 0:48 But, is it *you* on the other end?
  14. 0:50 Or a copy that thinks it's you?
  15. 0:52 Well, who *is* you?
  16. 0:54 That's a hell of a big question, but let's try to be good scientists about it: ...we don't assume there's a magic part of you that can't be measured.
  17. 1:01 After all, if it can't be measured, that means by definition it can't affect anything.
  18. 1:05 So Occam's Razor it away and we take you as you seem to be: a collection of atoms arranged to think they're you.
  19. 1:11 And because the arrangement of atoms in post-transport you is exactly the same as pre-transport...
  20. 1:16 ...you must be you.
  21. 1:17 Case closed.
  22. 1:18 But…
  23. 1:18 You might still have this nagging feeling that your experience of stepping into the transporter will be...
  24. 1:23 ...a funny sound, a bright light -- then nothingness eternal..
  25. 1:26 ...while down on the planet, a brand-new life, complete with all your memories up to the moment before your death ...popped into existence and assumed it's you...
  26. 1:34 *How could it otherwise?* It lives a life as short as the mission...
  27. 1:37 ...and a new creature with the memories of you both makes it back to the ship.
  28. 1:41 If true, multiply this by all the life forms in all the ships in all the star systems...
  29. 1:45 ...and this transport technology is a silent holocaust...
  30. 1:49 ...which makes an average episode of 'Trek rather grim watching.
  31. 1:52 And it's a small mercy when a crew member takes the turbolift rather than site-to-site transport.
  32. 1:57 But again, the measurements check out so perhaps we're being paranoid and we're already late for our holiday on Risa so just step inside already.
  33. 2:03 But atom reassembly is the optimistic version and can't be how the transporter really works...
  34. 2:09 ...because sometimes accidents combine two crew into one - or split one into two.
  35. 2:15 There aren't enough atoms in you to make a second you, so the transporter has to be turning atoms into energy and energy into atoms.
  36. 2:22 You are destroyed, used to charge a battery, then recreated anew.
  37. 2:26 This really seems like death.
  38. 2:28 But the philosophy majors in the room are *dying* to bring up "The Ship of Theseus" now -- so fine.
  39. 2:33 You take this ship on an adventure.
  40. 2:36 As parts get worn, you replace each until eventually no piece is original.
  41. 2:40 When you return is the "Ship of Theseus" still the same "Ship of Theseus" you left on?
  42. 2:45 Seems so - and this is what your body does daily via eating and excreting .
  43. 2:52 Compare to the "The Cutty Sark", a colonial tea ship burned down and restored with new parts.
  44. 2:58 Is it still the same "Cutty Sark"?
  45. 3:00 The result is the same: all new parts - only the time it took is different.
  46. 3:05 If you're happy "Ship of Theseus"-ing through life , ...
  47. 3:09 ...then getting "Cutty Sark"-ed by transport shouldn't matter.
  48. 3:12 Right...?
  49. 3:13 However...
  50. 3:13 step into a working transporter with a broken disassembler - and death is revealed: ...pre-transport and post-transport you can disagree on who is you.
  51. 3:23 And when Scotty tells pre-transport you "Sorry, the disassembler is broken, give us a minute to fix it", you aren't going to wait around.
  52. 3:30 That a copy of you made it to the destination is no consolation.
  53. 3:35 The transporter has to be a suicide box.
  54. 3:38 OK, so why worry about the metaphysical implications of fictional technology?
  55. 3:42 Because the transporter points us to the problem of consciousness.
  56. 3:46 We were quick to cut out the idea of the unmeasurable before -- because everything we can measure about the copy is identical...
  57. 3:53 ...but there is something unmeasurably different.
  58. 3:56 The transporter forces confrontation with the possibility that there's something about being a conscious creature that isn't measurable from the outside.
  59. 4:05 Did we not contain conscious brains ourselves, how would we know that other brains are conscious?
  60. 4:09 Truth be told, you can really only know that *you* are conscious...
  61. 4:13 -- and it seems polite to give other people the benefit of the doubt.
  62. 4:17 But were a computer to claim that it was conscious, how would you know?
  63. 4:21 Your continuous stream of consciousness is your life.
  64. 4:24 And you are the only one who can experience it, who can know if it *exists* and if it is continuous.
  65. 4:31 And transporters are scary because they cause breaks in that consciousness.
  66. 4:35 Making a copy that lives the life that you have left, with no one the wiser.
  67. 4:39 With no one able to be wiser.
  68. 4:41 And while transporters aren't real, breaks in consciousness are.
  69. 4:45 If you go for surgery, when they put you under, you can't be sure if it's you that woke up.
  70. 4:51 For that matter, your bed might be a suicide machine.
  71. 4:54 Every night's slip into unconsciousness, the warm embrace of the reaper...
  72. 5:00 ...and every morning the first and only day of a new creature's conscious life.
  73. 5:06 It's impossible to know.
  74. 5:08 Sleep well tonight.
  75. 5:15 Thanks for watching.
  76. 5:16 If you enjoyed this episode's artwork there are special wallpapers over at Patreon.
  77. 5:21 So click here to get access to the Star Trek wallpapers...
  78. 5:25 ...and thank you for supporting the channel to help get this kind of custom artwork made.
  79. 5:41 Still here?
  80. 5:42 You can't stay awake forever.

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