Wayne Throop wrote:
: Alan Anderson
: I choose to indulge in the semantic shortcut of considering the act of
: moving the quantum state from one object to another to be just as good
: as moving the object which has that state. I further choose to believe
: that we can disagree on this topic without either of us being
: objectively wrong.

Well OK, but note that the only novel thing is the xfer of *quantum*
state; classical or nigh-classical states could be moved in that way
(ie, an atom emits a photon, another one somewhere else absorbs it and
gets the "same" excited state the original had), but nobody says they
"teleported" the atom. I don't quite see why quantum-ness deserves the
upgrade in terminology.

Assuming that tech wasn't a major issue and extremely high (but finite)
effort can be applied to the task, does this actually allow a perfect
copy ?

My (limited) understanding of the process is that it is a method to
just bypass Heisenberg. However, the copy is not perfect as it is a
digital process. In effect, what it allows is that the position and
velocity of every particle in a person's body to be "measured" to any
finite accuracy (though the measurement doesn't actually require
observing the particle directly). This position and velocity can then
be applied to the target atomic particles.

Presumably, the amount of classical bits transmitted and entangled bits
required are equal. Also, the number of bits is equal to the
"measurement" resolution.

In principle, the process could be applied directly to quarks rather
than dealing with protons and neutrons. In fact, the lower down the
particle scale, the more accurate the reproduction.

OTOH, it is likely that a person's personhood is based purely on the
configuration of atoms in the brain and EM fields (maybe). Maybe there
is a need to also copy any photons floating around in the brain . In
fact, it is not really the atoms, people have no problem with the fact
that the atoms that make up their bodies are constantly changing. It
is the patten that counts.