My favorite take on this question comes from Existential Comics
i love that one. sometimes it’s a giggle, sometimes it’s a gutpunch, always worth reading.
Oof.
Damn, that’s really good.
That’s a solid one
Star Trek science has always been for non scientists. if you could move a pattern and save a pattern, then everyone would backup to the last healthy copy of themselves.
But they do. On several occasions a ship’s doctor has managed to completely restore a mutated crewmate back to how they were before based on data stored in the medical computers. This is only possible if the medical computer contains a full biological backup, in the form of data.
Episodes like Threshold and that one where the Enterprise crew turn into children come to mind. The latter actually involves transporters.
Episodes like Threshold and that one where the Enterprise crew turn into children come to mind. The latter actually involves transporters.
They don’t usually revert the crew using the backup data, though. They just program it to make changes to their bodies, like removing things. It wouldn’t be any stranger than removing an alien pathogen.
The backup data, I think was only used for Pulaski when she got the ageing disease (where it might have been a reference pattern to correct errors, and they had to actually compare with a known good genome), and for Tuvix.
We do also know that a bad transport can’t just be retried either. The Motion Picture had a transport go wrong, and Starbase One couldn’t just restart the transport with backup data, or repair what they got back. Similarly, Scotty couldn’t just load up Franklin’s backup from the Jenolan’s computers and transport him in either.
I’d also lose all my memories since the backup. With those memories goes the way I make decisions. Not the most desirable way of maintaining youth and health. Kirk made that point in ST:V:
"Damn it, Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves.
I don’t want my pain taken away!
I need my pain!"
But you could still save a copy of yourself each morning and then if you die, recreate your last save point, no? Then you only lose a day.
Maybe a yearly save point too incase theres any long term thing you don’t catch fast enough like cancer…
What if my pain made me a worse version of myself?
The you are a worse version of yourself.
What if my pain made me a worse version of myself?
Then we would restore from backup, right?
Star Trek can’t decide whether it wants to be hand-wavey, “whatever moves the plot along” science or super-serious explained-in-detail science and ends up being the worst of both worlds.
FWIW, you’ve made this, in a thread about scifi transience:
Star Trek… ends up being the worst…
Just sayin’.
My only counterpoint to the “suicide booth” argument is that people have some semblance of consciousness during transport.
It was a TNG episode where we learn that Barkley is able to see an energy monster during transport. If he was totally ripped apart and “dead” then I’d expect there to be a blank part of his memory during the moments the body is turned to energy.
The problem with appealing to episode details is that the transporter is presented very differently in different episodes depending on the needs of the story. That’s fine for storytelling, but it means we can’t pin down a fixed set of rules for how transporters work. To ponder philosophical questions we have to invent rules by picking and choosing presentations of the transporter that seem most interesting, and filling in gaps with our imaginations.
Yes, there’s the episode where Barclay is conscious during transport. But there are contradictory presentations where Scotty puts himself in stasis in the ship that crashed on the Dyson’s sphere, and M’Benga putting his daughter in stasis. In those cases neither has memories of time during transport.
There is the episode where Picard uses the transporter to convert himself into an energy being to try to live in a space cloud. The story is the transporter converts matter to energy, and energy in Star Trek is another possible state of living existence. Thus continuity. But there is a contradictory episode of DS9 where crew members’ physical and neural patterns have to be stored in computer memory, not “pure energy”, and we see holosuite character versions of them.
So there’s either no suicide booth problem, or there is. You get to pick depending on which scenario you feel like talking about.
Since both have been depicted, both must be true. There is no need to pick or choose:
- You are conscious during transport. “You” are actually transported from A to B. This is true because the series shows it to be true. You can overthink it as much as you want, but transporter technology is normal and well understood in Star Trek, and if it would kill you in any way it would not be considered “the safest mode of transport” in-universe. We are looking at transporter technology the same way a neanderthal would look at an aircraft.
- The transporter has an element of technology called a “Heisenberg compensator”. It’s easy to extrapolate that storing a person’s energy pattern into the transport computer is a function of this. The person is still alive, consciously, as energy. But the computer needs a stored reference (or more likely; scanning the in transit energy pattern, store it as data, and then use that data for reassembly) to turn them back into solid matter.
- The above is how humans can be stuck as energy eels. Or how Picard can have a gay merry vacation in a cloud of gas.
- We can infer that directly transporting from point A to point B is very different from sticking yourself into a pattern buffer, because the series treats it as such. That’s not an inconsistency. Scotty is also the first one to have tried this, as Geordi reacted like nobody has ever tried this before, so there are a lot of unknowns involved (let’s leave NuTrek entirely out of this discussion, as it fucks continuity harder than Enterprise ever did).
- Scanning your brain pattern and using it in a hologram is nothing new. This is done a lot in Star Trek, and it doesn’t even involve transporter technology in most instances. The holodeck can create completely accurate personalities based on what is available of those that are still alive, and it’s even how the first EMH was created.
how Picard can have a gay merry vacation
Assuming it’s a particle transfer instead of data transmission, what the transporter does is disassemble things at an atomic scale. But it doesn’t disperse you, that’s what the confinement beam is for.
(This is grizzly, but hear me out.) there’s a 2cm hole. You obviously can’t fit through. But if you were chopped into 1cm cubes you would. What if that chopping didn’t upset you or cause pain, what if those pieces were held inside a stasis field to prevent them from falling apart or leaking? What if they were put back together perfectly in a matter of seconds. Would your body react like it was chopped into pieces? Would it even understand that that’s what happened? If you chop someone’s head off clean enough and fast enough it takes the brain several seconds to realize it’s not connected to the body anymore.
Transporters take this to the nth degree. It cuts you up into pieces so small that you can pass through solid matter as long as you stay within that (stupid strong) confinement beam. Apparently, if you are carefully disassembled without trauma and those pieces are kept in the general vicinity of each other, you don’t die AND you remain aware. And before your body can declare that something is wrong and react, you’re back in one piece.
Maybe your (carefully spaced apart) brain is confused and thinks you’re dreaming so it doesn’t get upset.
Even when you stay within the conservative rules of how a transporter behaves they are still tremendous hacks on a fundamental level.
What if they were put back together perfectly in a matter of seconds. Would your body react like it was chopped into pieces?
yeah i bleed that fast. unless the transporter’s got a pink slime generator…
Then there is Scotty who was caught up in a pattern buffer for almost a century crashed on a Dyson sphere.
If that were the case, Scotty being stuck in the transporter buffer for 100 years would be a nightmare on his subconscious.there has to be a demarcation point where the consciousness can’t function without the brain structures in place. That’d be the death point.
they just put the consciousness on a loop until it gets back. it’s what the buffer’s for
I suppose it could freeze each piece in time so that for it nothing happens
But then how would Barclay have seen the transporter monsters?
Hmmm good point
They make consciousness transfer via transporter canon in the episode where Picard’s consciousness gets lost in a gas cloud for part of the episode due to a transporter accident. Thomas Riker is a replicated clone with a new consciousness created by a freak accident.
It’s not like the concept of a soul isn’t canonically a thing in Star Trek. It’s outside the realm of the federations science, but clearly still a thing the enterprise encounters on multiple occasions.
The dark mountain…
Why is he always smiling?!
My favourite take on this (and my introductory to the transporter problem)
I’m an identical twin none of this scares me. Ive been a duplicate my entire life.
The scary part isn’t being a duplicate, it’s more like if someone killed you and then said “but you have a twin so it’s fine”
Do you have that intoxicating ditto scent?
(Oof, there’s a good chance you’re too young to remember that smell, whereas I’m so old I not only huffed it as a child, I ran off dittos for my pupils as an adult)
Edit for the youths: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MdOjjZK0INM
so you were the kid huffing the mimeo too huh
Until the end I thought you were talking about a Pokémon reference I didn’t get, and I’m old enough that Pokémon wasn’t a thing until I was an adult.
Is there a way to make text indigo on Lemmy? 🤔
Transporters ar le weird. The way Dr. M’Benga keeps people in the transport buffer until there is a cure for their disease (Rukiya) or until medical facilities are no longer overrun (Battle of J’Gal) is presented as a hack. How is it not standard procedure?
Also he has to materialize them from time to time because their pattern degrades. So is it not a digital image of sorts? How can it degrade?
What would happen to the people if the buffer were to lose power or malfunction in any way? Even a small risk of anything adverse plus the degradation while being stored would make this not acceptable from medical viewpoint.
but really though, they have time stopper technology for people with incurable diseases. that’s absolutely something that people would take a risk on in the face of certain death. put up a few redundant fusion reactors and battery backups and people would take up the offer.
I have to wonder why the pattern must be lost in the process of materialization. I’m not saying they should keep them forever, but if they can just not delete the patterns when sending people on a dangerous away mission, they’d leave open the option of restoring them to a back up state if they get killed (or worse).
Of course, while that would raise a lot of questions to be explored in a single episode, it would lower stakes and fundamentally changes the stories they can tell, so I’m not surprised they writers don’t do it.
I can imagine the Klingons having a kind of special forces unit where they do copies like this and if the copy makes it back, the two versions fight to the death to see who the “real” one is.
No DNA fixes either, I guess to not break the universe, but still wtf.
I’d imagine the eugenics wars have something to do with why they don’t except in extenuating circumstances.
There are loads of examples where they edit the image before rematerializing. Like removing an illness or fixing age or splitting Tuvix.
Kinda implies it’s an analogue process. More like an AM radio than a digital image.
I’d guess that’s not exactly in the manual. And given the inherent danger and any legality issues, that’s something people don’t often share if they figure out how to do it.
My question is, what if say, Wolverine went through it.
Would his healing factor overcome the molecule destruction and leave a copy?
Oo nice!
Why can’t we accept that the transporter “moves” matter, but warp travel does. I always saw it as similar things at the end of the day.
I get you. I want it to be that too.
But there’s a difference. Don’t read on if you prefer your version of reality (it’s all just made up anyways… to a large extend, at least).
Transporters don’t technically “move” matter in the traditional sense. They dematerialize a person or object into an energy pattern, transmit that pattern to a destination, and then rematerialize it using stored molecular data.
Philosophically, this raises questions about continuity of consciousness. Some argue it’s more like copying and deleting than moving.
The Warp Drive on the other hand manipulates spacetime. It creates a subspace bubble around the ship, allowing it to travel faster than light by distorting the space ahead and behind it. This means that matter isn’t converted or transmitted. It stays intact and is carried through warped space.
So yes, both are “movement” technologies. One is teleportation via disassembly, and the other is locomotion via spacetime manipulation. But they are inherently different.
I will geek out for the rest of my day after this.
Then yes, they’re mercifully killing the originals and replacing them with clones.
I wonder if there ever has been someone in the ST universe that didn’t want to be teleported due faith or ethics reasons.
By the Law of Theseus, does it matter?
It’s less Theseus and more Humpty Dumpty.
By Grabthar’s Hammer, by the Suns of Warvan
By the beard of Zeus!
Great Knights of Columbus!
Sweet llamas of the Bahamas!
Sweet guinea pig of Winnipeg!
It’s barbados slim!
By Jaal’s infected arsehole!
It would be interesting to have a series where they take the best of the best Starfleet personnel, intentionally copy them with a transporter, and stick them on their own ship to do an extra dangerous, super difficult mission.
Since Picard 3 it’s canon that the transporter is a meat printer that relies on cached DNA to do shallow copies.
Hacking that cache was the big plot reveal of how the borg-changelings infiltrated starfleet.
Transporters are made by Creality. Ender 1387 models.
Here’s what I don’t get.
Okay. All that is true. Yet they clearly still retain a certain sense of self. The same memories, experiences, personalities and such.
Remember reading about a guy who cloned several generations of cats, all the same stock. Each cat was clearly unique.
Maybe the distinction is that the experiences are basically the same going though it.
In any case. Why can’t they keep generic information on hand and and clone up a fresh body and plant the bits relevant to memory and experience and stuff?
Cloning is very different though. In cloning you aren’t exactly copying the neurons and their connections. That means the cloned cat will learn different things, be different, just from that very fact. All it takes is one or two small daily differences in routine as the kitten grows and bam, different personality.
It’s the classic struggle of how much is nature (genetics) and how much is nurture.
With teleportation the neutral pathways are copied. It becomes more of a question of what makes you “you”. Is there some spirit that gets left behind? Is it the memories that do get copied? Is it merely enough that you believe you’re you?
The issue is with the conscience and the soul. Essentially the question is: “If your whole body is taken apart atom by atom, does the soul get taken along with it?”
In this case, the soul can just mean ‘you’. The ‘you’ that is seeing through your eyes right now, and is giving you the current experience you are now experiencing. To give an easier example, let’s say you are copied exactly four feet to your right. Your copy will look exactly like you, have all your memories, yadda yadda yadda. It seems pretty obvious that ‘you’ won’t all of a sudden be seeing through your copy’s eyes, no? If you get vaporised, then, your conscience is not going to just teleport into your clone, right? At least there’s nothing to suggest that would happen.
Teleportation is just a fancy version of this in a different order. You are vaporised first, then your atoms are moved real fast to the new location, then your copy uses those atoms. There’s zero reason to think that the ‘you’ which was vaporised is ever coming back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, or at least that’s the idea.
Whether you believe in the spiritual concept of a soul, or that your experience of the world is just a specific instance of electrical charges in some fancy meat, both seem to suggest that once the anima departs, it will never return. A new anima must instead be made.
Except, in your final statement that’s kinda false? The “Anima” is just the electrical signals of the meat suit. That’s it, that’s the “you”. There is 0 evidence that’s ever been produced of any kind that there is any existence of a soul or spirit beyond “trust me bro.”
In this case you have 2 exact copies of “you” and milliseconds later those two copies diverge as new neurons are formed. As soon as they start forming their own experience at that point each one is different, their own “me” (from their points of view). No need to make up some higher level of meaning such as a soul.
We are all just brains riding around in an electrical meat suit, listening to chemical signals from the bacteria in our guts and some how finding meaning and purpose in an uncaring universe. That’s a helluva a lot more amazing and meaningful then a cosmic space daddy giving us “us”
You say there is zero evidence, but there are, just use introspection, you are you. Cogito ergo sum.
Make 2 “copies” it’s obvioys they aren not both you. Maybe neither.
I’ll walk 😁
Cogito ergo sum. Latin for the internal “trust me bro”
They are each themselves perfectly “you” until the first neuron forms independently.
There isn’t some nebulous soul they are sharing, no “I have a soul and those two don’t”.
They are all the same “Chemical impulse”machines until their split experience causes different neurons to form.
Well let’s turn the table, you can’t prove the opposite either.
You can’t prove a negative. But we know how neurons work -
There’s no evidence that continuous consciousness isn’t an illusion due to memory being good enough.
Sure, and if ot is so, then teleport is ok. But if it isn’t, which can’t be disproven, teleport is nono.
What does it matter if there’s new “anima”. I am me. It doesn’t matter if it’s my original body or another body. It’s whatever is my current frame of reference for the corresponding meat bag that I inhabit.
I really don’t understand the whole “well I died, and this isn’t me”… are you conscious? Lucid? Retain your memories? Then what does it matter?
“Well what if the original is still around or there are two copies?” Again, it doesn’t matter, because at that point they are two physically distinct entities. You only inhabit one of them and the moment you start experiencing different stimuli, you’re two separate people. Granted at that point there are some legal and logistical issues, but it’s not a metaphysical one.
The transporter only works due to a magic box called the Heisenberg Compensator. It does some kind of end run around the fact that you can’t precisely know both the position and momentum of a particle. The question of “how does it work?” is answered with “very well, thank you”.
Anyway, neurons are known to rely on quantum mechanics for part of their signalling. You do have to copy them very exactly or you won’t have the same person on the other side. The Heisenberg Compensator seems to be a tech that only works with transporters and nothing else. Whatever magic is happening inside there, you wouldn’t be able to use it to copy a neural pattern, store it away for an extended time, and stick it in another body.
Except when it happens, like in strange new world, or the next generation.
They store living beings for extended periods in the pattern buffer.
In Strange new worlds it was a hyper advanced thing, in TNG it was Scotty.
Your question pretty much answers the other. If they were destroying and making a copy at the destination, then there could be 20 Piccards, or they could always bring the dead right back to life at any age they’d want. They could just re-maie a person any time.
Since that never happens, it means they must be converting them into energy or something like that, and then reassembling, and not making a copy
The cat thing is basically the difference between reinstalling the same application on a different computer vs doing a RAM dump save state and moving all the data to another computer and running it there.
If you duplicate all the existing neural pathways, they behave the same even if it’s a copy. If you allow new pathways to form from the same exact genetic codebase, it still ends up slightly different due to random chance and the experience of the copy compared to the experience of the original.
Transporters are save state backups. Even if it exclusively rebuilt you from different molecules, everything would still behave the same as the original would have. Ergo, Thomas Riker, who is exactly the same (memories, preferences, desires, etc.) up until the transporter accident - where the vastly different experiences resulted in vastly different personal growth.
Given the discussion surrounding this, anyone who’s into gaming should check out Soma; as it tackles a lot of the questions/scenarios in this thread but with robot host instead of clones. Minor spoiler:
Tap for spoiler
Including one of the copies still being there (and conscious) after you transfer to a new “body” and the protagonist freaking out at the implications of this occurring.
The discussion around Soma always annoys me because people tend to get really worked up and take its premise as fact, like this must be the way it would really work and there’s no other possible way for things to go.
Like, for example, what would it be like if they maintained a perfect shared stream of consciousness between the original and the new body with the new body also having a copy of your memories up to that point?
spoiler
They do show the main character being able to inhabit another body like his at the same time, but never really expand on it iirc
Would you lose your sense of “self” and experience something like phantom limb but it’s an entire body? What would “you” experience if the original body died during this hypothetical experiment? Who knows. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Your body replaces most of its cells over the course of about a decade, give or take a few years (except for brain cells, which admittedly throws a wrench in my point). What’s not to say it didn’t kill the version of you 10 years ago?
Further more, think of yourself from 1 day ago. Can that exact version of yourself still act on the world, or is that version effectively dead as the result of your mind changing over time? That exact version of you isn’t somehow carried on by soul.
In some sense, the very continuity of consciousness could be viewed as a continual process of death of the old self; all the transporter does is create a brief gap in that continuum.
In a nutshell, we’re always dying in some form as a product of the nature of time itself. Why should we get mad at the transporter?
Maybe the soul is how we transcend these deaths; maybe there’s no such thing as a soul.
