Teletransportation paradox The teletransportation paradox or teletransport paradox (also known in alternative forms as the duplicates paradox) is a thought experiment on philosophy of identity that challenges common intuitions on the nature of self and consciousness. It was formulated by Derek Parfit in his 1984 book Reasons and Persons. It prompts the question: If a person is somehow re-created, say by teletransportation, is the re-creation the same person? ## The paradox Derek Parfit and others consider a hypothetical "teletransporter", a machine that puts a person to sleep, records their molecular/atomic composition and relays the recording to Mars at the speed of light. On Mars, another machine re-creates the person (from local stores of carbon, hydrogen, and so on), each atom in exactly the same relative position. Parfit poses the question of whether or not the teletransporter is actually a method of travel, or if it simply kills and makes an exact replica of the user. Then the teleporter is upgraded. The teletransporter on Earth is modified to not destroy the person who enters it, but instead it can simply make infinite replicas, all of whom would claim to remember enteri