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It wouldn’t matter what part of your body moves if your whole body retains its shape (as in, doesn’t stretch or deform in any way). If you stay the same shape, you moving 7" means the whole of you (front, middle, and back) moving 7".

If your body stretched during teleport, then you’ll probably have other problems aside of the displacement issue.

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TheMauveAvenger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It matters what part of the body the measurement is tied to for start and finish. If it has to be the same point on the body then it’s a problem, but if the anchor point can change then there are greater possibilities.

I can put my hand on the door and extend my foot backwards. If my hand is the anchor point to start and my foot is the anchor point to end, then certain parts of my body have teleported more than 7", but in the aggregate at least one part of my whole body is always within a 7" distance from anchor to anchor.

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- zeppo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Thanks, this helps. I had to think about it for a while. I think what I envisioned was “teleport me past any obstacle less than 7 inches”.
  
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- BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Now you’re thinking with portals
  
  … wait, wrong power
  
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- Decoy321@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Fair, but at that point you’re just arbitrarily redefining the rule of “teleport 7” away" to cheat this thought experiment.
  
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  - TheMauveAvenger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Not cheating anything, just asking questions to define the parameters of the power.
    
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- GnomeKat@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The more important question is, what is the cool down? If you can just spam it really fast you can essentially move at (7inchs/teleport) * (teleports/second)… if you can spam that multiple times a second you could actually move really fast, even fly.
  
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- BowtiesAreCool@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  That makes no sense
  
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  - wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Pre teleport hand position is A.
    
    Post teleport foot position is B.
    
    The distance between A and B is 7 inches.
    
    “You” teleport 7 inches, but if “you” is a relative concept thats so far undefined (are your clothes “you”? The contents of your stomach? The air in your lungs? What chemicals dissolved in your blood count as “you”?), and A and B are both “you,” technically youve teleported 7 inches while sort of fudging the actual distance.
    
    As with all magic, the interpretation of the rules is more important than the rules themselves.
    
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    swab148@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I think we’d have to figure out at what part of the brain consciousness originates before we could implement teleportation, because you’d (almost) always want to travel exactly 7" from your point of view.
    
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    I_Has_A_Hat@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    No, that’s fundamentally breaking the 7 inch limit.
    
    In that scenario, both your hand and foot would have traveled more than 7 inches. They would have traveled 7 PLUS the pre-teleport distance between your hand and foot. That’s the same distance every part of your body would have traveled.
    
    It doesn’t matter how you cut it, or how you define “you”. You would be teleporting more than 7 inches.
    
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