[ExI] essentialism and/or continuity

scerir scerir at libero.it
Sun May 23 18:50:23 UTC 2010


Stefano:
OTOH, as to ordinary teleportation, I posit that
a) philosophically there is no real way to decide whether to describe
it as "moving yourself from point A to point B" or "killing yourself
in point A and have a perfect copy created at point B"; [...]

------

There is a good and readable paper about "What is actually teleported?"
by Asher Peres here: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0304158 .

In general it is possible to say that the (quantum) state is "teleported"
and not the stuff itself (matter, energy, etc.). As Asher says: "Not the
body, only the soul." The reason for that is the linearity of the theory
called quantum mechanics, and the related impossibility of
'cloning' (copying) a quantum state (which, in turn, obviously protects
the uncertainty principle.)

Notice that, according to the many-worlds theory (or interpretation)
it is even possible there is no 'teleportation' of quantum states,
i.e. from Alice to Bob space-like separated, because the state
to be 'teleported' is already there since when Alice performs
her measurement and creates the famous 'more or less instantaneous 
splitting'. This, in turn, is interesting because the theory called special
relativity forbids a faster-than-light travel of stuff, or information.

In other words, according to the orthodox view, no stuff is 'teleported',
only a quantum state. According to the many-worlds theory it is 
possible to say that nothing is 'teleported'. Only a split occurs.
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9810089








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