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[Immortal]

One-Dimension.. I'll never understand that either.

[umiman]

And all my dreams of space warfare come crashing down with much nomenclature. Sigh... I have to wonder though. Imagine if man were able to do interstellar travel like they do driving, what would happen to all the stupid people? Especially those stupid people who want to avoid aging.

We had to do a lot of discussion about teleportation in my phil classes. I never really considered it a big problem, but that's because I have an inherently big ego. My solution is quite simple. I have enough confidence in myself to know that I am myself and no one else can be myself. If there happens to be someone who resembles me in every way, he is still not me because only I can be myself. He is fooling himself if he thinks otherwise. It's the same reason why we treat Elvis impersonators to not be Elvis. We are confident enough to know that they are not Elvis. Same way we are confident that guy using your credit card number to buy $10,000 dildos is not you.

It's not the perfect answer but it works for me. Most philosophy comes down to finding an answer that works for you and only you anyway.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Acutally, Einsteins Theory of Relativity is just that: a Theory. The truth is, we don't know for sure that light speed is the fastest we can travel.

I take exception to people doing this. "It's just a theory" they moan, rolling their eyes and giving you aknowing grin. Wrong-o. When a scientist comes with with an unproven idea, it's called an hypothesis. After rigorous testing by the entire community, they get up the courage to call it a theory. So the theory of evolution? Theory of relativity? Scientists are just as confident in these things as you are that the sun will come up tomorrow.

Here's how I look at it though. I'm in a car, idling. There is a fly buzzing by my ear, hovering next to me. I start traveling, and hit 65 mph. The fly is still hovering next to my ear. Is he now flying 65 mph? No, he's moving at the same rate he was before, the car is somehow also carrying him as well.

When your car accelerates, your body tries to stay in the same place. You're pressed back against your seat, which forbids you from staying where you are, and so the forward momentum of the car is transferred to you. This is made quite obvious when you suddenly stop - your car stops but your body is hurled forward until the seat belt or the windshield stops you.

Using your fly example in a different way, say you're holding a marble on your fingertip. The car accelerates. The car pulls you along, accelerating you. The marble falls off toward the back seat and the cars's movement begins accelerating it too once it lands somewhere.

Your fly is accelerating to 65 just like you are. And if you were to somehow stop instantaneously, it would continue zipping forward at 65 mph and bonk on the windshield. 

I theorize that light acts the same way. It travels at the same speed the observer travels at. Therefore, though I may experience 10 years of travel getting to my destination, reality has experienced one hundred years, because I was moving 10x faster than the rest of the light in the universe.

Actually it works more like this. The faster object experiences less time. So if you're going based on some universal clock that is unmoving, and you time Earth which is moving and your spaceship which is moving faster, your spaceship clock will be a little behind. They've proven this with sattelites - at first they thought their clocks were off, but in reality the extra speed of the sattelite was causing it to experience just slightly less time than the Earth control clocks.

It has absolutely nothing to do with light in relation to you, in the same way it has nothing to do with a potato in relation to you.

Also your "theory" as I said earlier is really just the barest hypothesis. Thanks.

This all, of course, assumes that light and time are bound together, and that as light speeds up so too does time.

Nope. Light has nothing to do with time distortion. It's just a handy example to use. We could just as easily say that moving at the speed of a potato (which happens to be a very fast speed) has a time distortion effect. Your velocity is what matters, not some odd effect that light itself has upon you. Light is just a bit of fluff.

[rickvoid]

Okay, so about the teleporter thing. Let's take the Star Trek transporters. Apparently, they take you, tear you into your constituent pieces, store them somewhere, and then put you back together at a different location.

So, the question. Does this, in fact kill you? I think so.

Imagine it this way. Someone figures out a way to replicate someone. The person created would not only be 100% genetically identical to them, but also shares the very same memories and personality. In essence, there are now two of the same person. Only not, because the two are not sharing the same consciousness. This means that the instant after the second is created, they are no longer the same person.

In the transporter situation, the first is torn apart, and a second is created from the pieces. Is the first still the second, or is the first dead and a new one in it's place?

And here's what turns Star Trek into a horror fest: The second really doesn't know if the first is dead, because as far as they are concerned they remember entering the transporter, then appearing somewhere else. As far as they know, it worked.

Here's a reference for you; in one episode, as a result of a transporter accident two Riker's are created. One continues his life in Starfleet, while the other is trapped on a planet for 5(?) years. They become two wholly different people.

My conclusion: screw transporters, it's cryosleep for me!!

Note: Appologies if the above is a little hard to follow.

EDIT: Just noticed the new post correcting my previous one. I take exception to people who hold up "science" as being the end-all-be-all of the universe. Someone who is a true scientist should be constantly questioning what they "know" as truth. After all, at one time we "knew" that not only was the Earth the center of the universe, it was flat. And you could fall off the edge. And thar be dragons down there.
My point is that a real scientist doesn't get mad or annoyed when their theories (or hypothesis's) are called into question, but are just as excited to be wrong as to be right.
Your argument is the same argument "scientists" use when they claim there is a consensus on "Global Warming". (Which reminds me; didn't a bunch of those morons almost get killed when the ship they took to the North Pole to look at the "melting" cap, struck an iceberg? And how about the lower yield of the Strawberry crop in Finland this year, due to lower temperatures? How about the long winter we had in the States this year? And the relatively low temperatures world-wide, lower than the average? Oh, right, consensus. Move along then...  )

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Also one interesting point.

Our galaxy is moving through space. It has a velocity. (Alternately, space is expanding, which negates this source of momentum)
Our galaxy is spinning. This velocity means our solar system is swinging through space in a different direction maybe than the galaxy is rolling along.
So our solar system is moving through space pretty fast. But our planets also orbit the Sun. Woo hoo!
On the planet of course we also spin. That's speed.

So if you add all that together, we're virtually zipping through the universe.

So we can't look at Earth and say that's a zero speed to which we can compare a spaceship. We can compare them, and say less time is experienced on the spaceship because it's faster than Earth. But Earth has a pretty hot velocity right now. We just don't notice, for the same reason we don't notice our velocity when we're in a car or airplane. We do notice acceleration. But not velocity. Skydivers? Once they hit terminal velocity it doesn't feel like they're falling anymore.

Anyway.

Point is, if we start with this Earth speed, and add to it, we see less time happen in the faster object. But what if we slow the object down instead? What if we figure out Earth's direction of movement and accelerate opposite that? Logically we would actually be decelerating, in the same way you decelerate if you run toward the back of a moving bus while you're on it.

Would that mean the ship would experience more time than Earth? It makes sense. But what exactly is the time distortion? Does it look like an exponential curve on a graph so this deceleration doesn't have much effect? Or is it a straight line, and we can decelerate eventually down to a zero speed?

If we move fast enough for the spaceship to experience 1/100th the amount of time as Earth does, can we decelerate enough so the almost-stationary ship experiences 100x the amount of time as Earth? It would suggest that you could decelerate, compute something huge, and accelerate again to meet up with Earth, slowing to Earth speed when you arrive. That way your computer is able to perform 100 years worth of calculations in just one year.

And what is our current speed? How far can we decelerate?

Also, oddly enough, light is found to travel at the same speed regardless of the speed of the observer. Hence calling it a constant (that's the "c" in E-mc²). But that creates weird problems that I have no clue how to deal with. If you had a ship that went at the speed of light, and fired a laser behind it back to Earth, the laser should not be able to reach Earth because the ship has a forward momentum equal to the speed of the light. The same thing happens if you're driving really fast and you toss a ball out the back. The ball is already traveling forward at 10 mph, and your throw accelerates it toward the rear of the car at 10 mph. This gives it a net velocity of zero, and it drops soon after your throw.
But light in this case would appear to shoot backward at light speed from the ship, and Earth would see the ship simply disappear and a laser beam shoot back to them moments later. In this case, the light should stand still after being thrown out the back of the car. But light doesn't do that.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Just noticed the new post correcting my previous one. I take exception to people who hold up "science" as being the end-all-be-all of the universe. Someone who is a true scientist should be constantly questioning what they "know" as truth. After all, at one time we "knew" that not only was the Earth the center of the universe, it was flat. And you could fall off the edge. And thar be dragons down there.
My point is that a real scientist doesn't get mad or annoyed when their theories (or hypothesis's) are called into question, but are just as excited to be wrong as to be right.
Your argument is the same argument "scientists" use when they claim there is a consensus on "Global Warming". (Which reminds me; didn't a bunch of those morons almost get killed when the ship they took to the North Pole to look at the "melting" cap, struck an iceberg? And how about the lower yield of the Strawberry crop in Finland this year, due to lower temperatures? How about the long winter we had in the States this year? And the relatively low temperatures world-wide, lower than the average? Oh, right, consensus. Move along then.

I'll take this a step at a time.

1: science is the best tool we have. Science is the proposition of an idea, the testing of that idea, and the refinesment of it. Please suggest a course of action that would come up with better results, and I'm pretty sure enough scientists would try it and we'd find out.

2: "what we know" is based on observation and testing. You do this every day. If your coffee comes out hot, you eventually realize that machine is set to make hot coffee and you accept that as a reality. Bringing up things that people used to think were wrong only shows the strengths of science. The specific examples you used show how scientific thought triumphed over religious dogma and gave us a more realistic picture of reality. Science gave us a better truth. Scientific thought overcame the failure of religion to adequately provide for humanity. If scientific thought had been banned, you'd be scalding yourself on your morning coffee with no idea what to do but pray about it and hope it gets better.

3: Global Warming. Not everywhere will get warmer. Sometimes the effect is drier or wetter, warmer or colder, in specific locales. But the overall effect is because of heating in our atmosphere. Seasonal variance can disguise it, which is why you sometimes see cooling trends even though global warming is accelerating.
3A: Scientists and iceberg crash. I didn't bother looking this up. Let's give you this one and assume the story actually happened. All it proves is that ... there is still ice in the arctic? If anything, warming causing more and larger icebergs to shear off and threaten shipping supports the theory of global warming.
3B: consensus. There is a scientific consensus on this issue. If you look carefully at which studies were funded by people with an interest in lying to us, and take them less seriously, there isn't a debate on whether global warming is happening.

Finally, I take exception to use of humor, in the style of a spam email, to make a vapid point that is not supported by anything. Example:
Email reads "Scientists researching global warming get lost in the snow"
Hick laughs "hur hur stupid science, what has science ever done for me?"

I see this ALL THE TIME and it's crazy. It's just like political statements like "we want freedom" or "we care about our communities". Someone will say that, and because it rolls off the tongue easily and is easy on the ears, we just accept it and whatever else goes with it.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I always considered light to be energy travelling at a ridiculous speed, and being visible and having mass and other effects only due to the speed, and inherent mass of the energy which is ridiculously low. Since energy has mass, and light is, however you put it, energy travelling at the speed of light, therefore the statement that any object travelling at the speed of light would have infinite mass is incorrect. The speed of light is not the limit - it's just a barrier like the speed of sound. Since sound can only travel so fast in the atmosphere, any object reaching the same speed will encounter the same limit the sound does. It's not the same, but similar with light. Granted, it may not be possible for a physical object to actually move through space at the speed of light (space isn't empty, and not because of trace gases - energy at that speed gains mass, and since most energy in space also travels at that speed, the total contact speed is higher that the peed of light, so contacting even a wave of space radiation at the speed of light will tear a spaceship apart), but it isn't the end-all limit of the universe.

p.s. I even had a concept about the photons - since energy is virtually massless, but still has mass, then as it gains mass at the speed of light, it starts forming energy "droplets" via gravitic forces. The droplets have a specific size because of the said inherent non-emptyness of space, so they keep their shape just as droplets of rain do in the atmosphere.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Transporters:

I remember that Two Rikers episode. There was also one about how Scotty from TOS saved himself in a shuttlecraft transporter and was "transported out" when TNG enterprise found him.

This suggests three things. First, that you can create a person if you have a computer file of that person saved. Second, that both will be identical. Third, that after transporting the subject is mentally and spiritually okay, which means any metaphysical or spiritual component is transported along with all the physical data that's scannable. If your soul couldn't be scanned, the computer would "transport you out" without one.

So why not take someone who is smart, hardworking, nice to be around, mentally stable, and skilled - scan him - and then "transport out" a few hundred copies?

Why not send a probe out at super speed with nothing but a transporter, the pattern buffer with his image saved, and a lot of stored energy to transmute into matter (or just stored matter to transmute into other matter).

But why not change the physical state without changing the mental state? I'm sure the computer could differentiate between the two in the file. After all, if the computer eliminated a skin cell, it would be the same thing as you scraping off that skin cell. So why not use the transporter to overlay the pattern taken of you that month with the pattern scanned in when you get injured, so you can "transport out" a completely healed person who is incidentally one month younger in all respects except memories?

Heck, just go in for rejuvenation every ten years. They scan your current body, match that with a scan from a decade ago, and use your latest mentality scan overtop your older physical scan.

This pretty much replaces a doctor with an engineer who has access to a transporter. heck, it looked like all you had to do was push those two handles up at the same time. I'd weld them together and have a barber push the button.

[Kagus]

I believe that I should not pay any attention to global warming.  If it is happening, and humans are causing it, and humans can stop it, what power am I in exactly to help stop it?  Why should I need to know?  If it is happening, and humans are causing it, and humans can't stop it, what am I going to do about it?  If it is happening, and humans are not causing it, and can't stop it, same deal.

I believe that there are too many conflicting theories, from too many respected/respectable sources, to firmly believe in any of the proposed viewpoints.  When things settle down a bit and people can start agreeing with each other, then an obvious choice will remain and we can all strongly believe in that.


As for transporting...  I don't really believe in a soul.  Our personalities are linked to our physical bodies, because the brain cells that power our thoughts and reactions are physical objects.  Sending someone through a teleporter would create an exact replica on the other side, and thus the same person in all senses, unless it's a take apart/reform teleporter, wherein the only way the person wouldn't be the same would be the fact that it's no longer the original, in a very loose sense.

Storing that data and using it to create numerous copies would create the exact same person, with the exact same personality and mannerisms.  Why?  Because all that information is stored in the brain.

However, it would only remain the same person for a very short amount of time.  Our personalities are strongly defined by our experiences, and since the various copies would almost certainly be having different experiences, they would change into different versions.  But they would all start out at the exact same spot.

There's nothing particularly fantastical about personality...  It's just a bunch of synapses that have been exercised over the years and become stronger and more frequently used than the others.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

QFT

And of course after 10 years our admirable subject would have grown in different ways than his trans-clonal mates. But if he entered the transporter with the strong desire to learn the guitar, I'd expect that many of the 100 copies woulf have at least dabbled in the guitar over the next decade.

[umiman]

Kagus - You just defined John Searle's biological naturalism. I  personally don't particularly like it as I think it's quite hypocritical. Basically attempts to justify a belief in something after death but while remaining completely materialist. It's also very, very vague in its concepts (since it relies on saying that there exists something in the brain that could store a personality / soul but no one knows what that is).

You should read it though if you haven't, since it's basically the same thing as your beliefs. Could solidify your argument against those nasty property dualists.

Also, not to rain on your parade, I'm surprised you can't pick out the rhetoric as there aren't conflicting theories, there are only conflicting spheres of interest based on profitability. Everywhere else in the world, people are "attempting" to go green. They attempt, but the efforts are almost nonexistent anyway. I was until recently on the side of just flying into space and living there when things got too bad, but now that plan has been shot down...

[Glaughdram]

A theory is a solution that seems to solve a problem. (If it can be proven experientially and consistently then it becomes a law.) But new information is constantly being discovered -- sometimes strengthening our solutions and sometimes conflicting with them. When new information arises, a person can either look away or look deeper.

If you're too attached to your beliefs, you'll cling to ignorance in spite of reason. That's why I think this is the best point made in this thread so far:

...a real scientist doesn't get mad or annoyed when their theories (or hypothesis's) are called into question, but are just as excited to be wrong as to be right.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, from a bystander's point of view (I'm not proficient in relativistic science or any of those matters arising with teleportation), the person who entered the teleporter is more or less dead. The "Waystation" novel deals with the same matters, only unlike the Trek teleporter, the body of the creature in question was left devoid of life, though the exact principles are not detailed, and afterwards dumped into a large tank of acid to dissolve it. The body is reconstructed over at the target end, and goes on living.

Now, with all this, there's still some matters to take into account. It's more or less proven that some people can sense other people, including dead people. Which means that on a certain level of existance, there is a "spirit" of a person, whether it's a projection from the brain itself, or an imprint in the "psychosphere", relayed through all forms of life - a form of Primary Perception. So, the body that is created at the receiving end - does it, being a storage of data and essentially the source of the personality, create a new imprint in the psychosphere, another "spirit", or does the "spirit" transfer into it, as its memories and all other parameters are identical to the body that was just left? Or maybe neither, and the spirit passes away, leaving behind but a mindless shell, ready for occupation by a rogue paranormal being?

[rickvoid]

Well, from a bystander's point of view (I'm not proficient in relativistic science or any of those matters arising with teleportation), the person who entered the teleporter is more or less dead. The "Waystation" novel deals with the same matters, only unlike the Trek teleporter, the body of the creature in question was left devoid of life, though the exact principles are not detailed, and afterwards dumped into a large tank of acid to dissolve it. The body is reconstructed over at the target end, and goes on living.

Now, with all this, there's still some matters to take into account. It's more or less proven that some people can sense other people, including dead people. Which means that on a certain level of existance, there is a "spirit" of a person, whether it's a projection from the brain itself, or an imprint in the "psychosphere", relayed through all forms of life - a form of Primary Perception. So, the body that is created at the receiving end - does it, being a storage of data and essentially the source of the personality, create a new imprint in the psychosphere, another "spirit", or does the "spirit" transfer into it, as its memories and all other parameters are identical to the body that was just left? Or maybe neither, and the spirit passes away, leaving behind but a mindless shell, ready for occupation by a rogue paranormal being?

I was kinda hoping somebody would go there. I would suggest that either a new spirit is created, as the old one has died, or the new body has no soul. Which kind of bothers me. The only evidence I have for a new spirit created is that new spirits must be created all the time, since even if souls are reborn, a constantly growing population means used souls are in short supply.

[Kagus]

[Umiman's quote]

Never even heard of it.  Nifty.  I'll read it later on, when I've got time.

Also, I could swear there was a guy who used to be around here called "rain on your parade"...


Heh...  All this talk of soulless bodies makes me think of gingers...