[ExI] red shirt humor again, was: RE: Is a copy of you really you?

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] Is a copy of you really you?

>...Imagine that Star Trek -like teleportation is discovered: A technology
able to make you disappear from here and appear there. I guess initially
there would be those who insist that the teleported version of you is not
you but "only a copy." But then, if everyone starts using teleporters all
the time, the objections would just die out...


Ja.  The Star Trek teleporter notion creates all manner of paradoxes.  Since
the person is teleported at the speed of light, they are information at some
point.  The original is read destructively, so a lot of carbon atoms are
removed somehow and something else is reassembled at the destination,
presumably from indigenous materials.  Paradoxes abound: if a Star Trek red
shirt teleports to a place with insufficient anything to assemble a copy,
well, OK the red shirt is dead Jim, we can get on with the story.  They
always hafta kill a red shirt when they go to do anything dangerous on Star
Trek.

If the teleporter is a yellow shirt (so we know he will survive) and they
are information (so they can travel at the speed of light) then we could
make arbitrarily many copies at multiple destinations.  

You know some joker will eventually try to do that, probably Scotty, who
already knows he can duplicate red shirts down there and get away with it,
since they will get killed anyway.

spike