Can You Survive the Disintegration?

Tesha 9: chessofzion 7

Corwin: Ah yes. The Star Trek teleporter.
This question is of course purely hypothetical. We don't know if teleportation is even remotely possible.

Keep in mind, that you've overlooked a fundamental step in this fictional technology -- the teleporter isn't "disintegrating" the traveller per say -- it analyses the subject, then converts them into raw energy and information stored in the teleporter's "buffer" -- then the energy is transported, and with the buffered information converted back into normal matter reconfigured in precisely the same way.

A rotting dead animal undergoes "chemical" changes (from living biological matter to inert organic matter) -- the teleporter operates on a level of matter/energy conversion and stored information.

But this brings up other questions. Is the person that materializes at the other end "really" you, or merely a "copy" that thinks it's you? A continuity of memories, but actually a brand new person, and the previous you died in the teleporter?
And if that were the case, how could it be proven one way or the other?

Then another problem -- hypothetically, one could use that "buffered" information, feed more raw energy into the system, and make as many copies of you as they wanted. This happened by accident to Will Riker in TNG. Two Rikers.
Are they both actually Riker, but now there's two of them that will follow separate memory continuity beginning from the point of duplication? Are neither one of them actually Riker, but two new Rikers, and the original is deceased?

And this is all ignoring the fact that it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't be errors in duplication. Essentially, each time you teleport, you're becoming a copy of a copy of a copy. The Law of Entropy would suggest that this would occur, at least on some microscopic level, and these errors would increase each time, and your original "self" would degrade. Possibly manifesting itself as a strange form of cancer.

Tesha 9: Mr. Corwin, thank you for the precise details.

Tesha 9: I understand that you mean another copy of a person, put not the same person.

That is how the teleporter works for living beings like us.

harpalycus47: Did you ever hear the story of the 'designers of the Enterprise' were told that the teleporter would not be able to reconstitute the quantum states of the transportee. So they 'invented' 'Heisenberg compensators' Some smart alec at a press conference asked them how these worked . They looked at one another then one said, 'Very well, thankyou.'

Corwin:

Corwin: A good ol' bump to this forum thread.

Imagine that... a science thread about "science", not about how evolution is nonsense.

Corwin: But yeah... in response to the original thread... being "disintegrated" sounds pretty "lethal" to me.

I would choose NOT to be a tellaportee.

Corwin: Regardless of 'Heisenberg compensators'.

Corwin: Of all the angry beavers in the world, you are definitely my favourite.

I love you, man.