Forums » Smalltalk » Teleportation - Cyborgs

INTERESTING discussion.

What are your feelings on teleportation, cloning and cyborgs? Cyborgs, meaning replacing body parts or organs with synthetic ones, even transferring your consciousness into a machine (not sure what exactly the term for that is.)

I've been with my SO for over two years, last summer we had our first serious, pissed off at each other argument. It so happened to be an argument over the use of teleportation (such as in Star Trek) and the use of synethtic organs, limbs, or even completely transferring your mind to a machine or the internet.

I believed that teleportation would be a legit and excellent means of transportation. An example- in Star Trek. My boyfriend's stance is that he would try his damndest to stop me from using a teleportation device (in this argument I used the type of teleporter in Star Trek) as I would essentially be killing myself. He believes that if my body is broken down into millions upon millions or billions of molecules I am no longer me and am effectively dead (this also brings in the discussion of what is death? What is my conciousness is still intact?) He would morn me as if I were dead, and the person who is at the other transporter site is not me as I have been rearranged and must be somehow different from the previous me.

The argument about transferring ones mind, cloning oneself or using cyborg like implants came down to me being discriminating against machines and not knowing if I could love a man living in a machine. When I look back on my own stance on this discussion I think it was (and maybe even myself) a bit silly. He'd still have his mind but he might be looking like a cyborg. No doubt I would try to make it work, but really, who wants to hug cold metal at night?

Long story short, would you use a teleporter? Would you use cybernetic implants or organs? Under what circumstances, if any?
I mean, hell, teleporters are cooool. Or even portals.. like from the game Portal.

Where I come from we call that a good old fashioned NERD FIGHT.

Whenever the cyborg issue comes up, I feel compelled to remind people that definitionally, a cyborg is a person wherein ANY aspect of their physiology is replaced, augmented by or filtered through technology. That means, glasses, contacts and hearing aids make you a cyborg. They're gateway drugs.

Obviously whether or not a relationship between a full human and a cyborg could succeed would depend upon the degree of replacement, and the quality of said replacement.

On the other hand, arguably if you've transferred the contents of your brain into a computer, you've passed from cyborg into robot territory. There's nothing left to augment, you are essentially reduced to a program running on entirely new hardware. If you've transferred your brain into a computer, you shouldn't expect to have a relationship with another pure human, or even a minor cyborg. That'd just be selfish. Humans need actual social and physical contact.

Besides; going through a star trek transporter is essentially a process of having your brain and all its memories copied into a new copy of your own body, whereas transitioning into a digital mind would involve having your brain copied and your body just destroyed. If your SO supposedly wouldn't speak to you after you went through a transporter, why should you consider him the same person after he's gone through the same process, only in a more incomplete way than you?

You only don't exist for a few milliseconds in that technology as presented. This seems to me like having a heart attack, recovering, and then having your SO keep on acting like you died.

Transporter technology as presented is fascinating when combined with the hypothetical ability to download and upload your brain, because it would allow you to "save" copies of your physical self at a younger age and keep moving your mind into it when your original body starts breaking down due to old age.

Star Trek says they can't do this because there isn't enough space in their computer to keep backups of that size, but that's bunk. I bet with enough external hard drives you could save a copy of yourself today. And if the question at hand was immortality, do you think you'd really hesitate to save up to buy yourself a computer farm as your retirement plan?

If working cybernetic pancreases were available, I'd be all over that like Popeye on spinach.

I think the teleportation question has a little bit too much unansweredness about it - for example, as Dylan's boyfriend assumed, would it really be a totally different person? What measure makes you 'you'?
I think so long as one's memories and personality are intact, the body doesn't matter so much, so I'd have no problem with teleporting myself so long as that stuff stayed the same. (I guess that also solves the brain-in-a-jar/can/robot question for me, too.) If somehow it did change who you were at the core, I'd be much more hesitant.
It's also possible for someone's memories and personality to change, and their body stay the same. That doesn't make them 'not them', either. My uncle actually just had an aneurysm last week, and while he's still alive, he's got some obvious brain trauma. When I was talking to my mom this morning, she mentioned that his personality seems to have totally done a flip-flop and he's not acting like himself. It's a pretty common thing after people have strokes or serious concussions, too. I... am honestly not sure whether this all contradicts what I said above, hehe.

If a human keeps their consciousness but discards their body, Kim, you say they'd be a robot through and through - but why should the augmented robot not have contact, either? If it's a human brain, I think they would probably still want contact and even closeness with others - emotion's all handled within the brain, after all.

Besides, you know they can do fantastic things with silicone these days! Who says you'd have to be snuggling up to cold hard steel?

Edit: Also -

But then you're transferring into some kind of robotic body, not just putting your brain into a computer. That's a whole different question.

If you become a hard drive, it's unrealistic to expect normal humans to connect with you fully. You might still crave physical contact, but the cold hard fact is, you can't have it. Better to go find another hard drive to fall in love with, because then you will both get your emotional needs met without robbing someone who still has the capacity for physical needs to be met.

Aaah, okay. When I hear 'robot' I automatically think of something with a motion-capable body. I suppose if you were just data in some cloud of consciousness on a computer or the internet or something, it would make having interpersonal relationships a biiiiit harder.

...Truth be told, I can't even imagine what 'living' like that must be like, the thought's so alien, hehe.

It'd be like being Stephen Hawking times a thousand, but not necessarily with the same level of genius.

Although maybe. Because if I'm going to give up my body, I see no reason to keep my consciousness limited to what used to fit there.

And then I might find regular humans a bit tedious.

Transporting oneself in Star Trek was never viewed as death and the personality of those who did it never changed after beaming from one location to another (not counting the occasional transporter accident episode).

Dr McCoy and LT Barclay are the only two characters I can think of who had transporter fear.

As for the real world, I don't think transporters would be used if a major personality change was going to happen as a result. Would I use it? Most likely, it would be so much easier to get about.

If someone was stored in a hard drive, would they even crave physical contact? The way I see it, part of that need is from the body more than the mind. For social contact, Kim already suggested finding another hard drive. You could even load yourself into a virtual world, something like Second Life is going to seem more real than the real world because you won't even be aware of the real world unless someone hooks up a webcam and mic to your storage unit.

Actually, the body/mind connection is vastly more powerful than people give it credit for. Your state of mind is so heavily linked to the health and general makeup of your body, I'm not sure it's realistic to expect a person to remain the same over long periods of time in a hard drive. I expect to survive they really would have to transition to something alien.

Not really sure I fancy that. A robot body would be fine though, I can be a Cylon!

I have to address that before I read any other responses.
The boyfriend used the exact same logic. But it isn't a copy! It is the original, you cannot make a copy when it IS the original with nothing left behind. A copy, essentially, is a duplicate which your body, when transported isn't a duplicate, triplicate, so on, and you don't leave your original body behind.

That's assuming, if they uploaded themselves to a game like Second Life that they couldn't somehow recreate the feeling of touch?
There is more I want to add to this but I have a headache and that isn't helping my organize my thoughts very well. I also need to avoid bringing this topic back up to the boyfriend. ;P

I've heard a rumor that there is someone from Germany that is getting a cyborg part made for them. Cost a hefty amount of quid. However, I am not sure if it's entirely true since I've yet to find it through Google.

As for my thoughts, I think we are a society headed towards the direction of engineering cyborg parts for wars made entirely of clones that teleport to various hot spots throughout the world called Stargates.

Long summary short, I find them rather spiffy.

I wear glasses, so I am a cyborg.

This.

I am now your overlord, the world will obey my commands. Failure to comply will result in destruction. Resistance is futile.

I am already a robot. Teleportation is for fleshies. /End