Teleportation Paradox in Materialism

[MM1988]

Assumming there exists nothing besides a material external world, in the far future a teleportation device is constructed that scans the "atoms" of a person (or whatever basic material building blocks are assumed), destroys them and builds them up new in a new location.

Now we assume 2 scenarios to get a person from room A to room B.

The first person uses the teleportation device, a second person simply walks into the other room.

Wouldnt a materialist assume that from the perspective of the first person his conscious experience ends while an exact clone of him is created, yet the second person lives on as usual?

If there exists nothing but material and both persons atoms are in the same place before and after the experiment how is it possible that there is a difference in conciousness? How would it get there, why would it end for the first guy and not the second. Therefore conciousness is immaterial. (debate me)

Edited March 14, 2018 by MM1988

[InfinitePotential]

My thoughts on this are:

so assuming the teleportation device is a contraption the guy walks into which destroys all the information within the teleportation device in room A and then restores the information at the teleportation device in room B... there's a problem with this. 

The problem is, the information in the teleportation device in room A includes that the guy is in room A, and indeed the entire state of the universe with the guy in room A. Like Leo talked about in the QM video and like QM has shown us, you can't separate an object from the rest of reality. 

So, the guy emerging from the device in room B would NOT be a perfect clone of the guy in room A. For all intents and purposes, he might look exactly identical. But if we could look very closely, say at the protons which make up the guy (that, in Nassim Haremein's theory contain all of the universe's information in a 2d surface surrounding the proton), we would see that this is Room B Guy, and we destroyed Room A Guy (sorry Room A Guy) (but then Room A Guy will argue rightly that information cannot be destroyed, so that really all we did was kill him, sorry again Room A Guy).  

If we WERE to create a perfect clone of Room A Guy, we would have to restore the entire universe to the state it was in when Room A Guy pressed the teleport button... i.e. he would still be in Room A and not teleport and nothing would happen (or I guess, the entire universe would travel back in time a Planck time or so, from Room A Guy's POV). 

 

Either way, I'm never stepping in that kind of teleportation device (I'm good with wormholes though). We probably won't be able to ever read the information surrounding a proton, so the guy will just come out saying "wow that worked! This is me, the original", when the original was actually killed in Room A a la The Prestige. 

Edited March 14, 2018 by InfinitePotential

[MM1988]

yes, like I said the first guy would be killled Ala prestige, no one in their right mind would step in that device.

 

But if someone told you to just walk into the other room you would do it without much concern. Either way material gets transfered. If that material was created 30 years or 30 seconds ago, whats the difference? 

Intiuitively there seems to be an enourmous difference in conciousness though.

Edited March 14, 2018 by MM1988

[StephenK]

@MM1988 I created a thought experiment years ago along similar lines to the one you posted. It goes like this:

Suppose you're going into a hospital to participate in a test for a brand new anesthetic entering the market. You walk into the operating theater and lie down on the operating table. An anesthetist walks over to you and administers the general anesthetic. You are told to count to ten, but by the time you get to four, your awareness begins to fade away. You're now unconscious. The anesthetic appears to work.

Unbeknownst to you, a mad surgeon from the future (with futuristic technology) begins to cut open your skull. He has conceptually divided your brain into 1000 different sections. He removes section 364 only, which happens to be a section of your brain in the hippocampus. Several memories are stored in this region of your brain. But fear not! Inside a box labeled B, he has an exact copy of the removed section 364 of your brain, which he then inserts into the area he cut out and connects everything together with his high-tech instruments. You wake up, and since the functionality of the inserted brain region 364 is the same as the removed section, your memories function as expected, not being aware that anything has changed. However, the mad surgeon makes you undergo anesthesia again. This time he removes region 651, replaces it with a copy and wakes you up. You look around and everything seems fine. He then puts you back to sleep, this time removing brain region 123. He repeats this process of waking you up and putting you under 1000 times, until each brain region has been replaced. After the final surgery, you have a completely new brain. In fact, you wake up and see your entire brain lying there in front of you.

So, how is consciousness in your brain?

 

Edited March 14, 2018 by StephenK

[MM1988]

@StephenK this is actually a well known philosophical Problem called the Ship of Theseus.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

[StephenK]

@MM1988 Interesting. All these thought experiments seem to point to the idea that any particular configuration of matter does not give rise to consciousness, but that the perceived set of rules governing this universe are merely a way for consciousness to explain itself (that is, consciousness made the universe we perceive-- not the other way round).