like just assume for the instant that its possible to for the machine to identify all the atoms at some location and make them leap instantly to several feet in front you, no matter how far away they initially were, in the exact same configuration as they were, or at least at the speed of light (to make sure this totally plausible scenario doesn't run into any relativistic weirdness). What would happen if you like were knee deep in mud? would it transport full on gallons of mud as well? Just a small covering of mud over your pants and shoes? Would ALL the mud be left and you'd have super clean pants (Fuck doing laundry, just transport somewhere to clean your clothes)? Further, how does it know what's "you" and not? By DNA seem the obvious choice, but even if you found a way to get your skin and hair and toenails and etc to transport along with you, you'd probably be dead before you even realized it because your cell's mitochondria would probably be left behind. Once that's figured out, you'd be stuck starving to death without your gut flora. Although that would be a neat way to cure infection, transport someone and keep all the virons/bacteria behind. If anyone is still reading this inane post, is there a term for this sort of problem? Where in a wide forest view its beyond obvious easy to identify what is part of a person and what isn't, but once you start trying to actually draw the boundary about which specific trees it is, it becomes impossibly hard? That's really why I made this post, I'm trying to figure out a term to use to refer to that sort of thing and google is NOT helping.

    • Mouhamed_McYggdrasil [they/them,any]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      Very similar, except instead of the ant stay infitessimally close to the coastline, the ant notices that it isn't considered coean and what is considered land, as the beach goes from solid dry sand, to wet sand, to sand with a couple puddles in it, to sand where just the top of the grain is sticking out of the water, to finally open ocean. It can tell the coastline is "somewhere" between the two extremes, but its impossible to draw the line that actually divides it.