Quote Originally Posted by joeltion View Post
Your way of testing the assumption of self-awareness falls short because it also relies on another assumption: that the machine produces identical copies. We know how disintegration works. We know how machines can produce copies. But saying a copy is "identical" in nature becomes kind of a tautology, according to the perspective you study the case. That's why I insisted on the point that "a copy can't be me". Not because ultimately I believe a person can't be potentially teleported without invoking magic (it may be possible, as far-fetched as it may be) but because that's the last step where I can speculate on science without derailing into mere fantasy. "Identical copies" is more a philosophic definition than a scientific description. It informs too little and at the same time, it is too descriptive (the very fact that they are "identical" makes them essentially the same, thus proving they can't never be different by definition).
Given the positive statements I made earlier about what consciousness realistically could be, you can take the sense of identical to be:

- Take sets S1 and S2 comprised of all (n) particles in regions of the same shape R1 and R2 (but offset in space and time by vector dr and scalar dt), such that for each set the ith particle is of the same type. As necessary add extra quantum numbers for these particles (e.g. electrons have a vector spin but photons don't).
- The wavefunctions of these sets are psi_1(r_1, r_2, ..., r_n, t) and psi_2(r_1, r_2, ..., r_n, t), where the r's are vector positions of each particle, and t is time.
- S2 is the identical teleport of S1 if |psi_1(r_1, r_2, ..., r_n, t)|^2 = |psi_2(r_1+dr, r_2+dr, ..., r_n + dr, t + dt)|^2, and |grad(psi_1(r_1, r_2, ..., r_n, t))|^2 = |grad(psi_2(r_1+dr, r_2+dr, ..., r_n + dr, t + dt))|^2 for values of r_i bounded to region R1, with |dr|>>radius(R1).

So basically: copy only probability densities not exact coordinates/momenta (so no Heisenberg violation, no observation of absolute phase, and no quantum teleportation), within a finite volume (the 'body'). But make sure to copy the distribution of both position and momentum. So if I was careful enough with the math, this doesn't violate any QM constraints (though again, you aren't realistically going to be building a machine that does this due to logistics...).

That's a precise, unambiguous, 'scientific', definition. It's a sufficient definition that I can calculate (using the Schroedinger equation) what happens next, or to simulate it. It's enough to for example show that the time evolution of psi_2 and psi_1 will continue to be identical teleports of each-other up to a phase factor so long as the boundary conditions of R1 and R2 remain identical in the same sense. Also, there is no extra physics or extra interaction that I need to add in order to get this - a situation where you have two subsets of particles with wavefunctions related in this way may be extremely unlikely to happen by chance, but it's perfectly consistent.

Now, independent of the whole teleporter question, if I happen to have two sets of particles that obey this particular relationship, there's no physical way for the state or progression of whatever consciousness they might or might not have to differ.

This is silly. Of course the direct observation of what was hypothesized from math alone counts. It may change the whole paradigma. Direct observation is the ultimate challenge. Not because it's the definitive and last test. It's because that's where assumptions are truly contested.
But your 'direct observation' is not observing the underlying constituents of particles - e.g. whatever kind of objects your quantum gravity/string theory/M theory/grand unified theory of the week calls for. At the same time, the fact that we haven't observed branes or strings or quantum foams or whatnot directly doesn't really impact our ability to do, and understand, basically pretty much every single piece of technology or understanding possessed by modern society. Questions of branes/strings/etc are well-separable from questions of electrons/protons/photons/gravitons, which are in turn well-separable from questions of stress tensors and shear tensors and fabric tensors and other mesoscale materials science stuff (or for that matter questions of proteins or other macromolecules) which are in turn well separated from questions of the orbital motions of planets and stars and spacecraft.

It's not that they're entirely disconnected, but rather it's that there are subsets of questions which can be answered purely within the higher level abstract understanding without any need to reference the lower level features. I don't need to talk about quarks to understand the orbit of Mars.

The fact that people reacted strongly, if anything, it's the indication they have sense of self-preservation. Even the hardest materialist wouldn't try a teleporter without being thoroughly informed of its mechanics if he wasn't a little too reckless.
People don't react so strongly at the idea of, say, going under general anaesthesia, even though that also turns off your consciousness (and in some ways its worse than the teleporter, because it makes no effort of its own to reconstruct your consciousness after it goes away - you're relying on your brain to be able to recover itself). That the teleporter makes a difference means there's some implicit belief in what consciousness is, to make them say 'I have reason to actually consider this out of all other things a credible threat'