They are both copies. They explain that the guy operating the transporter was losing him, so he used a second beam to try to compensate. On beam made it through, the other bounced off the st uff in the atmosphere that was causing the problem and rematerialized him on the planet. I'm pretty sure this explanation was in the episode in order to establish that both Rikers are equally real.
Except that that explanation means Tom was made with the original Riker materials and Will was made from matter reserves on the ship using the original Riker as a template.
Both beams were pulling in genuine Will Riker. Presumably they are both a mix of the original material and additional material formed by the transporter. That or the transporter is violating the law of conservation of energy.
I imagine a decent amount of Riker is spread across the atmosphere any time he beams through a storm cloud. I assume Enterprise D has spare Riker bits stores somewhere to fill in any gaps.
This is a semantics argument. The way the person you're talking to means it, two things being equally fake also means that they're equally real, because they are both just as real as the other (that is, not).
I am neither an emergent property nor atoms, I simply am.....
I personally never took much seriousness in the whole "What if your bed is a death machine!?!" idea
There's too much continuity for that to make sense, I mean, I remember most of my dreams, so I can basically account for everything... And many of my dreams are effected by outside stimuli...
Yeah, the comic's story and message are beautiful, but the "sleep kills you" argument is poorly thought out, and based on a shallow understanding of what continuity actually means. It's not about consciousness, it's about continuity. The processes in the brain that make up your mind don't stop as soon as you fall asleep.
There's an argument to be made about how you're never the same person that you were even just a moment ago, because you're constantly changing. That's also shallow and lazy, and ignores the continuity we're talking about.
There's an argument to be made that from your perspective, continuity isn't broken. That's also shallow and lazy, because it treats the perception of continuity as if it's the same thing as real continuity. As far as your clone is concerned, continuity wasn't broken. But I was never worried about whether my clone will die when I go in the teleporter, you know?
No, we do know that the brain makes the mind. Physical changes to the brain can make predictable changes to the mind, but your thoughts don't change the structure of your brain.
While your first point is true, your second is not. It's actually been found that if you change the way you think about stuff, your brain actually changes. It's this little thing called neuroplasticity and it's fucking wild. - https://www.healthline.com/health/rewiring-your-brain
We've also observed intelligence and seeming awareness from things like fungus, which don't even have brains.
Yeah, I'm aware of that. Vasanas are a related topic. But these are results of physical interactions between neurons in your brain. There's nothing nonphysical about your mind that creates or alters matter supernaturally. My point stands, the mind is, as far as a naturalistic philosophy is concerned, an emergent property of complex interactions in the brain.
It's not about consciousness, it's about continuity.
The philosophical point is that if I accept kinship with myself of yesterday and myself of tomorrow without proof - then I can learn to accept kinship with all other living things, in the same way.
There's a peace in that acceptance - if I lived my life investing equally in the future of any other life I encounter, then perhaps I will pass on from my current arrangement of atoms feeling confidence in the future rather than fear.
I'll let you know how that works for me. Or rather, I suppose I will not.
Everyone remembers his irascibility in the film but ignores that, for the three original years, he transported without complaint in nearly every episode. And it was a reliable, proven technology that apparently only got worse and more twitchy a couple of decades later.
Plenty of folks become more irascible as they age. It's one thing to do something under orders when you're young, and quite another thing to do them when you're retired.
Also, he would have seen more and more incidents as time went on
I'm going through another cycle of binging EVERYTHING. Yes he did transport regularly, but he also certainly complained about it multiple times. Orders are orders in the end. Sometimes the hardest part of keeping a job is bottling up and repressing all those little existential horrors.
I think I've explained this too many times to do it again, but: teleportation doesn't have to be "destroy and reconstitute" any more than going through a door necessitates killing you and reconstituting you on the other side of the door. The key is establishing continuity of your mind across the intervening space, which is mostly an engineering problem.
Star Trek transporters are "destroy and reconstitute" though. They are explicitly described as such. The whole Thomas Riker situation even requires it to be the case.
Star Trek just throws all its rules out from one episode to the next. The Star Trek franchise is the McDonalds of sci-fi; you don't choose it because it's good, you choose it because it's available.
It's not all that different to a fax machine, the way it's described in st.
You just need to be able to accurately scan and place atoms to achieve the 'teleportation' being discussed here.
Thinking about it even that is probably not possible, as you'd need to know both the position and momentum and state of every sub atomic particle in the body.
Heisenberg compensators are Star Trek's answer to that. It's physically impossible to do that in the real world, but in Star Trek they've figured it out
I felt like they hinted in some episodes that there was some rule of nature they were exploiting to get it to work. Like imagine trying to tell someone in the 11th century that humans made machines that can fly, they imagine some mechanical thing flapping wings. They imagine it because they don't know what air does when it passes over a fast moving surface. It isn't like the transporter really stores your pattern down to every particle, there was something that they found that made it a lot easier problem to solve.
No, unfortunately. the closest we've come with that is proving that the universe isn't locally real. Three physicists just won the nobel prize for proving it. Which is mind boggling in it's own right
The real problem with all of this is that people can't get away from the idea of a soul. Something intangible unmeasurable that is really "us" riding around in a meat-robot. It's hard for people (me included) to realize that the meat packaging is all that we are. If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am. There is no "me" outside of that... And that's a really hard concept to accept and internalize.
If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am.
If you perfectly recreate your body without destroying the original, the original doesn't start seeing and hearing through the clone. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, there's no difference between the you that steps into the transporter and the you that steps out of it, but you do actually die when you're "transported." You don't get to see what's on the other side of the transporter, another being that shares your exact memories does.
I dunno even if there is no you in a metaphysical sense the deconstruction method still ends your personal subjective experience of being you which sucks. Sure the next you might be just as much you as the first one but you don't get to be around to enjoy that.
I dunno even if there is no you in a metaphysical sense the deconstruction method still ends your personal subjective experience of being you which sucks. Sure the next you might be just as much you as the first one but you don’t get to be around to enjoy that.
But it doesn't and that's the point. You are not the collection of atoms that make up your body, YOU are the software program that is running on your brain-computer. The software program can be transferred (or copied) and you are still you. There is no "you" outside of that software.
Your idea of what constitutes "you" Is wrong. Your subjective experience ends when you get dismantled. We can say this definitively, because when the transporter fails to dismantle the original, they don't get to see through their copy's eyes. If they don't get to see what the transporter clone sees when both are alive, then it stands to reason that if they get dismantled, they still don't get to see what their clone sees. Their subjective experience ends.
I disagree with you, but I don't know that I can explain it anymore clearly than I already have. There is no metaphysical "you" that exists outside of the software running in your head. You would experience perfect continuity if your body was dismantled and reconstructed. There is no real "you" except the software program that is running on your meat CPU.
Like I said, this is a hard thing to wrap your head around.
There is no metaphysical "you" that exists outside of the software running in your head.
100% agreed.
You would experience perfect continuity if your body was dismantled and reconstructed.
I'm going to explain it a different way.
This is Bill.
🕺⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
I'm going to transport Bill over here.
☁️⬜⬜⬜⬜🕺
That's still the same Bill, right? There's continuity?
Now I'm going to do a Tom Riker, and unsuccessfully transport Bill.
🕺⬜⬜⬜⬜🕺
Which one is the real Bill?
If I'm understanding your argument right, you seem to think both of these are Bill. Which they are, but they're not the same Bill. Despite both of them subjectively feeling a sense of continuity, only Left Bill has existed for more than a few seconds. If I correct my mistake by shooting Left Bill in the head, his subjective experience of being Bill is over. If I never made the mistake, and successfully dismantled him, the same would occur. For him, continuity is not maintained through the transporter.
I was never concerned with whether the me that steps out of the transporter experiences continuity. I'm only concerned with whether the me that exists right now does.
You understand me correctly and correctly predicted my response. Your last paragraph is the interesting part however.
Imagine you have an AI. It's a fully functional self aware AI. Let's call this software "Bob". From one instance to the next, this software is just memory and processing inside a computer. It is aware of it's place in the universe to the same extent we are. Let's say you pause the CPU. Did you just kill the AI? Of course not. Now lets say you make a perfect copy of the AI on two separate computers in two separate locations. The AI asks me "which one is the 'real' me?" My answer is their both the "real you," but one moment they start processing independently, they're now two different individuals that deviate from the moment of the copy.
Now lets say you change a stick of memory in the original AI, is that the same entity? If you unplug the memory cards and fly them to another location and plug them back in, is that the same entity? If you FTP the entity from California to Germany and install it on another machine, is that the same entity? It's all the same answer as making a copy.
We humans are only the sum of the software in our heads. There is no real us, only the code executing line by line in our biological processor. That's why there is no "real you" in this discussion, only software, and the person on the other side of the transporter is just as much the real you as the copy that's destroyed. You are just a self-aware program.
I would be hesitant to get on a teleporter even if they were proven "safe". It could be possible that from my point of view, that'll be the last thing I ever see. But from everyone else's point of view Im alive and I walked out the other end without breaking a sweat. But this is a different instance of "me". From my point of view, would I be "dead" forever or would I be able to witness myself going out for drinks later that day?
Maybe it turns out that if you make an exact backup of a brain, reconstruct and restore the biologic equivalent of ram and system registers back to their original state (sort of how operating systems do multitasking), then it all works out. But maybe turning the brain completely off or whatever is enough to put the "system" in an "off" state and when it restarts, it'll be a new instance. Maybe you don't remember the part where you stopped existing so it doesn't matter.
Really makes you wonder if humans had a soul and an afterlife what exactly happens when the last copy of you finally dies naturally.
Like you go to heaven and meet some version of you that lived for a fifteen minute coffee run, and boy is he missed that from his perspective he died at 19 years old because you just had to beam down and try the new Starbucks drink. All the other teleported yous are there.
Shit what about your spouse? There could be like 900 of you but only 400 of her. Now you all have to spend eternity together.
Because the process of chemical reactions in my brain never stopped. I suppose if, without my knowledge, I was killed and replaced with a clone that has all my memories, there would be no way for me to tell, but the sleeping isn't what kills me there
There's no gap in continuity when I'm asleep. The chemical processes comprising my mind don't stop. The mind is a process of chemical reactions, regardless of whether it's conscious at any given time. My mind Is my mind regardless of whether it's aware of its surroundings at any given time. If the product of the physical interactions between the neurons in my brain.
Putting aside the whole problems with maintaining continuity in a civilization that laughs at all the problems of FTL and relativity why is continuity important?
This is why I hate using the word consciousness in these debates. It's too ill defined, and isn't really what I mean anyway. The process of chemical reactions in my brain is my mind, regardless of whether it's aware of any external stimuli.
It's also irrelevant to the discussion about teleportation. Whether or not you're the same person after you've gone to sleep and woken up is debatable, but whether or not the person who steps into the transporter is the person that steps out of a transporter isn't. Like I've said too many times in this thread, if you step into the transporter and it fails to dismantle you when it creates your copy, you and your copy are two distinct individuals. You don't get to see through your copy's eyes. So when the one who stepped into the transporter dies, that individual's subjective experience ends. This is the same whether they die before the copy is made, as the copy is made, or after the copy is made. They never get to see the other side of the transporter.
For the iteration who came out the other side of the transporter, this is a meaningless distinction. But for the iteration who stepped into the transporter, the distinction is quite literally life and death.
Not only that, but they‘re also literal bombs. Remember E=mc^2? With a technology capable of converting 100% of matter into usable energy, you‘d have a pretty scary bomb bomb.
Pascal's wager argues that if there are 2 different and non provable outcomes to a belief, you should believe the one that has better consequences for you.
In this case there are no divine consequences of being destroyed and reassembled in another location.
This is probably more of a ship of Theseus question.
The point of Pascal's wager is how non provable beliefs can't be logically reasoned one way or the other. Like how there is no objective original and duplicate ship of theseus.
People arguing over the danger of the transporter is a lot like trying to reason any unsolvable paradox, and especially like arguing over having faith. Better than roko's basilisk, though, that's pascal's wager for scuzzy tools.
...takes the you matter and dissolves it into a stream of particles which are reassembled in a different location, so when transport is 50% done, you're in two places at once (whilst the "plan" for you is in the pattern buffer, don't know where the matter is exactly)... i mean, it forms you into a beam of molecules right? Beams you up.
At one point there's a Barkley episode and he seems conscious for most of the process, just in a kind of super position.
After the half way point, there's more "you" in the destination than in the original location...so who are you? Where are you?
Then again, we know that accidents and reflections can be produced... So maybe I'm wrong and new matter/particles are being introduced otherwise how would Tom Riker exist...
...I mean, after all, Tuvix wasn't twice as dense as your average crew member.
Anyways, Dr. Polaski supposedly has McCoy's attitude towards transporters. However I think even she gave in here and there, as did McCoy.
Good use of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principal of quantum mechanics near the end of your comment (the more we can know about speed, the less we can know about position)... And of course it's always fun to see the word qualia being used.
Personally I think we're a meat glitch. That is to say, the survival of our biology is aided by having predictive models of threats, pattern seeking and problem solving capacities (what to do about such threats), and some sense of mappable logic/reason (which solutions are best), all of which requires coordination (a story to help make choices)... But we're essentially a meat glitch.
This internal illusion of possessing consciousness may have evolved in order to aid long term survival, and perhaps to reproduce and do the other things life forms do... I think Data and Dr. Crusher discuss the definition of life at some point, detailing the requisite processes.... Having an identity isn't listed as one.
I believe it's been theorised that some species seem to act more as hives, there have even been some examples of humans being able to act in hive like ways. The technologist Kevin Kelly wrote about some of this in the 90s giving an example where a crowd could hold up a red or green sided paddle to play a game of ping pong on a big screen... One side of the room vs the other... Green paddles being a way to beckon the on-screen paddle to that location. The game was playable and seemingly coordinated just by having the feedback loop of the screen and the crowd, that was enough to create an overwhelming sense of shared willful and purposeful behaviour.
Most of us place our identity within ourselves as individuals, some learn to place it within their families. Richard Dawkins seems to believe it's actually at the level of the genes (makes that case in his book the selfish gene)... But the fact that we can to some degree place identity in different ways and locations suggests something of its unreality... Of course whose in control of that, and whether shifting it can be willful and comfortable, let alone controlled by a transporter chief is another question.
can you prove you're the same continuous entity that was aware of the universe a moment ago?
I certainly don't feel like the person from 20 years ago whose memories I hold. It seems like a completely different person lived those experiences. I know him, but I do not feel like him. Too much has changed about my personality, my body, and my life.
My hot take of the day is that sleep is not truly unconsciousness, because you're still to some extent aware of your surroundings. If you weren't, then you wouldn't react to light, or alarm clocks, or cold water on your face, or any number of other external stimuli
My second hot take of the day is that Last Thursdayism is a fun idea, but is disruptive to actual conversations about reality
But if that's how it works, how can we account for the duplication scenarios? The matter for the duplicate would have to come from somewhere. I think it's more likely to be that the information for construction is trasmitted, especially with how often they use the concept of the tranportation buffer. But they dont ever specify I dont think so it's all speculation
The point in question is whether the matter/energy is directly transported and used to reconstitute someone, or if the information for reconstitution is transmitted and local matter used to reconstitute the thing being transported. A "ship of theseus"-esque query
All that could have been avoided by having a drop pod launched to the surface containing a mechanical avatar. The crew member just sits down in a chair to remotely control the avatar using an FTL link for instant control. Of course the avatar has a hologram projector so it looks exactly like the crew member. But that would be too safe and not dramatic enough.
That would make for an interesting story concept. It'd be cool to see the avatar, after exposure to various people occupying their body, begin to form it's own consciousness with shared traits.
Not quite. The avatar being used is a blank slate, whereas in Dollhouse they added personalities over the existing minds. What you've suggested is more akin to what the hirogen did on Voyager.
Something went really wrong with computers after humans for warp. That's why you can break any evil one by acting crazy or telling it to calculate pi. Also why Data doesn't just wifi.
I'd like to know or see a Star Trek series about the development of Star Trek technology.
Like the history of flight or the first ancient sea captains, .... when it comes to the history of the humble teleporter, how many freakin people did they have to reconstitute, recombine, turn into a puddle of goo, teleport into a wall, remove their brains, reconfigure their organs, teleport into a bulk head or reanimate into empty space before they perfected the technology.
The thing about transporters is that if we had them right now, people would use them for everything. Transport me to the toilet. Transport the TV remote into my hand. Transport a fork into my hand. People would never get out of bed.
Transport the nutrient and vitamin mix into my stomach.
I'm kinda with you, but pizza. Gyros. Tacos. Street food. I really don't see people giving up deliciousness for convenience. For necessity? Yes. Not for convenience.
Tbh the same logic can be applied to sleeping. If our consciousness is akin to computer ram and sleep is the brain cleaning up that ram, how can you know that when you wake up you're still the same person that went to sleep last night?
This is a cool thought because it's not about being copied but more about the Ship of Theseus.
Why do we sleep?
"The body needs sleep."
No, the body needs rest. Our physical self just needs down time and relaxation and then it's good to go again. Our BRAIN needs sleep. Specifically, REM sleep to process all the new data that was taken in. Converting short-term memories into long-term memories. Sorting and organizing data. A kind of hard drive defragmentation.
Our sleep is normally presented like a sine wave. We regain base level consciousness cyclically several times a night, which is why we dream. Which is why our dreams are usually tied to recent memories. The more good sleep we get, the more our brains can deal with recent experiences.
When we wake up, it's like rebooting a device after an OS update. It's us, but with altered software. We are as much the person we were yesterday as the Ship of Theseus is still the Ship of Theseus after having pieces fixed and replaced. The whole is who we are, not the bits that changed.
Because brain activity doesn't stop when I'm sleeping, it's more like the brain is just idling.
If we wanna go with computer terms, sleeping isn't shutdown. Sleeping is sitting on the desktop with no active windows. All the background processes don't stop when you're just sitting there and admiring your sick wallpaper.
This is why I don't like the word "consciousness" in these discussions. It has too many different but similar meanings. Our minds are, as far as we can tell, a property of the interactions between neurons in our brains. Sleep doesn't stop those interactions, even if we are "unconscious" during sleep.
how can you know that when you wake up you're still the same person that went to sleep last night?
Because you are composed of 99.99999% the exact same molecules. When you transport, you are literally ripped apart and recreated with new molecules at the destination site. That's how the transporter works. Your bed does not work that way.
The best take on transporters was in a 'Buzz Lightyear' cartoon.
Buzz tells his team that a scientist has developed a transporter. The farm boy says that it sounds like a great invention; with a transporter the ship can stay up in orbit and the crew can teleport to the surface.
I liked the method described in "Old Man's War." It wasn't teleporting exactly, but the premise could be used here too. The consciousness of the person was being transferred to another body and during the process, The singular consciousness was aware of being in two places for a short while.
Dark Matter (the other one: the Canadian sci-fi show) had something called Transfer Transit kinda like that.
They scan you and rapidly grow a clone at your destination with all your memories. Clone has like a 3-5 day lifespan, but is otherwise "you". It goes and does whatever you planned to do at the far end.
The main you stays behind and does whatever until the clone returns to a Transfer Transit pod on the far end. It's memories are then uploaded to you and the clone disintegrates. You now " remember" everything the clone did on your behalf as if you did it personally.
I really liked that for how it allowed for interesting story telling. The clones can die without actually sacrificing the characters but there's still fairly high stakes because the originals won't know what happened while their opponents do.
Really sucks that the show got cancelled, especially on that huge cliffhanger.
Personally, as long as it's provably safe, I'm fine with it.
As far as I'm concerned, if my consciousness is intact, and my body is a carbon copy, that's me. I place more weight on my consciousness being me than those specific atoms being me.
Besides, we all shed all of our atoms and replace them with new ones dozens of times throughout our lives. So we've already died in that way, I guess? But then again, it doesn't happen all at once, it's more of a Ship Body of Theseus type of thing.
99.9% of the time you’d be right. But what if it accidentally made a copy of you. You can argue that you’re still you and rhe other is an independent person, but who gets the rights as the “real” you? All your possessions, bank accounts, debts, job, etc. ?
I see what you mean, but in my mind the chances of that would be so astronomically low that I personally wouldn't be put off by it. To me it's a bit like asking "what if the plane blows up?" or "what if the plane gets taken over by terrorists?"
Like yeah it's a possibility, but if the risk is low enough I'm still gonna go ahead with it for the convenience factor.
Not to mention, if we have the technology to construct human bodies and minds on the other side of that teleporter, what is to stop them from modifying the machines to change your brain (or body). I have lost any trust I once had in any government or company to believe them if, hypothetically, they tell me they have the know-how to change my opinion of Coca Cola upon reconstruction.
Can't remember the exact story, but Larry Niven used that idea. Basically, you teleported from one side of the room to the other, but left all the poisons your cells had built up behind. The hero does this accidentally, then notices himself growing healthier over time.
In another universe, Relg phased Silk through stone and found the cure for the common cold as the illness couldnt pass through with them...for some reason
Might want to check out this series. Jackie Chan meets the Godfather meets the Green Lantern. One a planet that's reached 1950s level technology, one small nation has a monopoly on a substance called 'jade.' It enables a few people to perform extraordinary feats.
Well we know the pattern buffer can hold a person indefinitely (SNW doc’s daughter) and they have bio filters that remove any bug changing the genome pattern you beamed down with…that’s all defensive, I’m sure the tech could be turned up to 11 but then you’re flying near Khan’s territory
My kid and I have discussed this at length. It's true, Bones and a few others live in a universe where they're the only soulful humanoids, surrounded by digital facsimiles. It must be depressing.
I'm firmly on the anti-transporter side, but I'm also super into the concept of artificial personhood. The people that step out of those transporters have just as much of a soul as the people who stepped in, even if they are separate people
I never understood the problem people seem to complain about here.
A perfect copy, is perfect. There's no detectable, no measurable, no identifiable difference.
So what are you talking about? Unless you don't think perfect is actually perfect.
Because it's still a copy, so you still die. Imagine if there was a delay between the copy being produced and the original being destroyed, long enough for them to see each other if transported within the same room.
You are a different person than you were yesterday.
You have all sorts of new and different experiences from that person.
You're even a different person reading the last word in this sentence, than you were when reading the first.
::: spoiler spoiler
That machine was much more than a transporter. It didn't have to destroy the matter to duplicate it.
Angier was stupid to keep killing the other versions of himself. He could have created a much better trick, being in several places at once.
And they each would have felt they were the original Angier. Who could say they were wrong? They all were, and are still, the original. Just different versions of him, with different experiences. No different than you, being the same person who was different yesterday than you are today.
:::
You are a different person than you were yesterday.
In some senses, yes. In other senses, no. Since my birth, there has been an uninterrupted set of reactions between neurons in my brain. Individual neurons may be added or removed, various inputs and chemicals may change this reaction, but this ongoing reaction between them has never stopped. If you show me another person with the exact same pattern of neurons in their brain, with the exact same pattern of reactions happening within it, then they are for all intents and purposes a perfect copy of my mind. But if you shoot the me that's typing right now in the head, then the me that's typing right now doesn't get to see what happens tomorrow, even though for all intents and purposes there is still a starman2112 in the world.
I fundamentally disagree. As I said, my mind is a continuous ongoing process of reactions between neurons in my brain. Even while I'm asleep, this process continues. Even as neurons die and are replaced, this process continues. I am the same starman that I was yesterday, and that I will be tomorrow.
That's getting into ship of Theseus territory which is similar, but slightly different than the transporter paradox. It gets closer when you do the whole build another ship out of the replaced parts thing, but with the transporter there's something that gets destroyed and that something is where your consciousness is.
Even a "perfect" copy is still a copy, and the fact that the second consciousness doesn't rely on the first to exist (they could simultaneously exist ala William Riker) it's a separate instance so a separate person.
It mainly depends if you believe in a soul that is never copied that makes it "you", or a purely mechanical view of consciousness that says if all parts are copied there is no difference.
no.. that's not sufficient. There's a new me that was not me that is now me, yes, but the original me is gone. Story ended from my point of view, from the new me's point of view it was all fine but they will end in the next transport.
If it can be undeniably proven exactly the same as sleeping or anesthesia, fine. If consciousness provably persists all the way from de-materialization, transport, and re-materialization, like Lt. Barkley. fine. But if there is any doubt that consciousness ends, and a new consciousness is created, that is where the problem lies, and why many, like McCoy, won't use one willingly.
But consciousness doesn't persist through sleeping or anesthesia. It stops, then starts again some time later. The continuity of memory seems persistent to the consciousness, so it can't really tell the difference. Because it would be impossible for a consciousness to perceive it's own down time.
And it's not really accurate to say a new consciousness is created. It would be more accurate to say the same consciousness is recreated.
From an outsider's point of view sure, but does your consciousness dies when dematerialized, only to have a copy of your consciousness going on in the rematerialized body as if nothing happened?
That is only an actual issue when you are some sort of spiritualist. From a materialist point of view, the entirety of you is "just" a very complex interplay of elementary particles.
I don't think this is true. Even if consciousness is only a product of our physical bodies, there's still the issue of who's experiencing it.
When this body dies, I'm dead. I don't care if there are a million other perfect copies of this body or my mind out there, if this mind won't be the one to experience it.
A copy of me can be fundamentally perfect, but simply as a product of being physically separate meat our consciousnesses will be separate. If instead of teleporting, both perfect copies stayed alive and had a chance to talk to each other, this would be apparent. I will continue to experience life from the eyes of my old body, not the clone. We could then go on to live our lives separately, and we would diverge. Because we'd both be separate simply by the physical nature of our existence, we're not interchangeable, and it wouldn't make sense to kill one of us and assume that now it's "teleportation". We didn't see out of the other's eyes before, so why would we see out of the other's eyes when we're dead? No, we'd just die.
The only way I can see this not being an issue is if the awareness somehow transfers, which requires some sort of technomagic beyond our comprehension, or outright rejection of the existence of consciousness, which is a bold claim.
It's true that the entirety of a person is "just" a very complex interplay of elementary particles, but I don't think it's only an actual issue if you're a spiritualist. I'm a naturalistic determinist, there's no such thing as souls or spirits.
My line of thinking is this. Let's say I step into the machine, and it makes a perfect copy of me at another location, but fails to dismantle my body. Since we're talking about the transporters in Star Trek, there is precedent for this happening. I step out of the transporter entrance, and another me steps out of the transporter exit. I don't see through that person's eyes, I don't hear through that person's ears. They are separate entity, no matter how similar they are to me.
If the transporter had successfully dismantled me, I still wouldn't see through that person's eyes or hear through their ears. I would be dead. Another person with my memories would step out of the exit. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, that person is me. But I don't care about the rest of the universe, I care about my own brain, which has been destroyed. Why would I agree to be transported, if I don't get to see what happens after?
ITT people who think they’re only themselves only if they’re completely continuous. Any number of them could have been replaced with a clone while sleeping and not know the difference. I am me, and that’s all the matters to me.
Of course I wouldn't know. But the former me who got dragged off is dead. That's the whole point, the clone has no way of knowing and simply continues on life while the original dies.
And because we only exist in the present, we rely on our memories of the past to tell who we are. Our memories tell me I'm me, so I think I'm me.
Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but the reason I don't want to die is because I want to be aware. If I am never conscious again, but a copy of me is, good for them I guess, I wish them the best, but it's not what I want. I'm not conscious of waking up in the morning, even if they're me. I'm dead.
And you would have known you’d been swapped how? What if someone came up to you and said that they have irrefutable proof that you were replaced with a clone of yourself a few years ago. How would you know the difference unless told. And even once told, what does it matter if you can’t pinpoint the exact day?
If it already happened, there's nothing to be done. But if I find out that there's a thing that I'm doing every single day that's killing me and making a copy, I'll simply stop doing that thing
I guess that’s where I’m confused like OP is. What difference does it make at that point? You’ve been going through it countless times, nothing has changed, you were no different, so what does it matter?
It’s like the people that are anti-vaxxers, they’re freaked out with no basis that “it’s changing who I am!” even though there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary (I would assume general transporter tech wouldn’t be available to the masses if it wasn’t in this scenario)
Strictly speaking, I've never used a transporter before. It's important to nail down specific definitions and concepts here. What do I mean when I say I? I'm referring to the human using the alias starman2112; the individual entity typing right now. I've gone more in-depth in other comments, but essentially I am the ongoing chemical reactions between the neurons in my brain. This reaction has been perturbed, interfered with, but never stopped.
In what way am I still "me" after being transported? I'm precisely the same person, right? But I'm not. I'm a perfect copy of the last person. Say the transporter failed to dismantle him when he stepped into it. Does he see what I see? Hear what I hear? No. We are separate people. So if it had dismantled him, would he see what I see, hear what I hear? Still no, of course. He's gone. He doesn't see or hear anything anymore.
Now that I understand that, despite having countless memories of stepping into and out of transporters, how could I possibly bring myself to step into one "again?" In reality, it would be the first time for me, and I would be dooming myself to never see or hear again, unless it malfunctions and fails to dismantle me.
I don't appreciate the comparison with anti-vaxxers. The problems with transporters are not based on lies or incorrect assumptions, it's based on the fact that it kills you and creates a copy.
It only matters in that a person died. A person with their own subjective experience that they no longer get to experience. It doesn't matter that in this case I inherited their memories, and it doesn't matter when it happened other than out of curiosity. I'd mourn them the same.
And as for how I would know... If I'm the clone? Obviously I would never have any way to know, short of someone coming up to me. On the other hand if I were the original, I would "know" because I would be dead. (Or rather, I wouldn't know anything, because the dead don't experience or think)
Edit: It matters that I inherited their memories in that it might influence the way I see the world, my identity, and their death, but it wouldn't change the fact that I mourn them. I am a distinct person from other versions of me, regardless of whether I'm a clone or they're a clone, and if they die it's just as much a tragedy as any other human death.
Imagine the machine makes one such perfect copy of you without successfully dismantling you. That person stands in front of you. Do you see through their eyes? No. If you die, do they die too? Of course not. It doesn't matter how perfect the copy they are, they are not the same person as you. If the biological processes in your body end, you die. The you that steps into these teleportation machines never gets to see what happens on the other side of them.
But I'm not looking from my copy's point of view, am I? And if you posit that I may be the copy in the first place, then the original isn't looking from my point of view.
Both my clone and I feel like we are starman, but both of us would acknowledge that we are not the same starman. We're two almost perfectly identical sets of neurons and chemical reactions between those neurons, but even ignoring the fact that we stopped being identical the moment we start receiving different inputs from our senses, the fact that we do not occupy the same space means that we are separate entities. If one of us dies, they don't get to keep living on in the form of the other.
But a perfect copy is more like the you who stepped onto the pad, then then you are like the you who went to sleep last night.
All sorts of changes happened, while you were sleeping.
All sorts of changes happened while you were typing your last comment.
The you of now is a very different person then the you of 5min ago.
Fundamentally, no. It doesn't matter if the copy is identical in every way, it's physically separate.
The fact that one is the "original" and one is the "copy" doesn't matter. The fidelity of the copy doesn't matter. It's literally just the fact that it's different meat.
The copy will believe it's me, and will for any outside observer be identical to me, but I will still exist as a separate entity. Up until the next instant, where the clone-and-kill machine enters the next phase, kills me, and I'm gone, and there's a new copy of me out there with a new consciousness, living my life. But the version of me who was me is dead.
What happens if it doesn't kill me instantly? What happens if I get to look my transporter clone in the eyes? We won't have the same consciousness, we'll have two separate copies of the same consciousness. And then it kills me. And I watch myself die.
Yes. You watch yourself die, and you continue being you.
You're always doing exactly that already.
Every moment of every day. You replace yourself, with a new self.
Except the person who died is dead, and they stay dead. The person who died's final moments will be seeing their clone standing over them, and their memories will diverge.
They're clearly different meat, different consciousnesses in that moment. They won't know what the other is thinking, they will have to speak to communicate.
Think of it like this. I have a computer hard drive. I can make a perfect clone of this computer hard drive. Every single one and zero accounted for on a separate disk. While these hard drives contain the same information, changes to one do not cause changes in the other. While they contain the same data, they are not the same hard drive.
If you have two drive in a RAID 1 array. They have the same data. If one dies, it doesn't matter. Everything important is preserved without interruption.
But I'm not in a RAID array with my teleportation clone. As far as the data contained within my brain goes, nothing is lost if I die the very instant that my clone is made, but I posit that what makes my mind my mind isn't just the data held within it.
I don't think transporters in star trek kill people, I just think they move them through subspace and the transporter malfunctions are subspace oddities
They shred your body down to its atoms, and re-assemble it somewhere else. If we have any sort of soul, or inner ghost, it almost certainly dies when your body is shredded.
I'm on the fence: pro-transporter, anti-disintegration. If transporter technology existed without the suicide booth aspect and I could just send a copy of myself halfway around the globe in an instant I'd do it. Biggest problem I see is funding all the new clones of me running around. If there was somehow a way for us all to sync our memories occasionally without melting our consciousness that would be cool too.
Fuck it, kill me. My mind is the part I care about anyway. If you get that where it's going, I'm not bothered. You could even make some improvements on my meat housing before you replicate the next one, I don't mind. Go wild
What if you wake up in hell, or on the next plane of existence, knowing that a soulless likeness of you is carrying on with your friends and family as if nothing happened, and nobody will mourn for your death?
If the transporter kills you, then whatever "you" are is gone. What is replicated at the end of the transporter is just a facsimile. It acts like you, and thinks like you, but it is not you. You are dead.
Sure it is. My current specific conciousness won't get preserved, but guess what, I lose consciousness every night. From the perspective of the me that arrives on the other end, it'll be just like waking up. They have all my memories, mannerisms, personality, there are no differences between them and me besides the fact that my conciousness doesn't continue. From their point of view, they have continuity of existence. From their perspective, and from outsiders perspective, there's no difference, for all intents and purposes they are me. Why would I feel bad about them living our life? "You are dead". When I go to sleep, my conciousness ends, and in the morning someone who has my memories and personality and mannerisms gains consciousness. I really don't see the difference.
The theory doesn't work if you don't believe that you are more than the sum of your parts. If there is no soul, then the transportation or duplication presents no issues. But if there is a soul, and it dies when your body is shredded at an atomic level, then whatever comes out the other end is not "you". Your soul goes on to whatever the next plane of existence is. Unless somehow the soul is also able to survive the transportation event, in which case it's fine. The issue Bones and others like him had is that they didn't believe that the soul survived the event.
Whether or not you lose consciousness entirely during sleep is kind of hazy. Like, you are to some extent aware of your surroundings. Even people in comas can react to external stimulus. If we fully lost consciousness whenever we went to sleep, it would be impossible to rouse someone to wake
The fact that two Rikers existed is all the proof I need to be full Luddite. Save your death machines for the next person, thanks!
And they treat the one on the planet like he's a copy when he'd logically be the original with the one on the Enterprise being the duplicate.
They are both copies. They explain that the guy operating the transporter was losing him, so he used a second beam to try to compensate. On beam made it through, the other bounced off the st uff in the atmosphere that was causing the problem and rematerialized him on the planet. I'm pretty sure this explanation was in the episode in order to establish that both Rikers are equally real.
Except that that explanation means Tom was made with the original Riker materials and Will was made from matter reserves on the ship using the original Riker as a template.
Ship of Theseus
No, USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D. But I can see why that would be confusing.
Both beams were pulling in genuine Will Riker. Presumably they are both a mix of the original material and additional material formed by the transporter. That or the transporter is violating the law of conservation of energy.
I imagine a decent amount of Riker is spread across the atmosphere any time he beams through a storm cloud. I assume Enterprise D has spare Riker bits stores somewhere to fill in any gaps.
I think that makes both Rikers equally fake, not real.
Equally fake and equally real are the same thing.
Equally fake and equally real are equal?
Beg to differ.
The Queen gives birth to twin boys. It's a stormy night and the midwife isn't sure which is older. They are equally the 'real' king.
Two counterfeit dollar bills are equally fake.
If one counterfeit dollar buys a soda, does it matter who's king?
This is a semantics argument. The way the person you're talking to means it, two things being equally fake also means that they're equally real, because they are both just as real as the other (that is, not).
This one Trinitys
Well shoot! I’d never thought about that and now I’m mad!
Give Tom Riker his promotion!
This is why I want monsters Inc style linked door-wormholes. It's less... Reconstituted flesh.
Less room for duplicates, more room for halfsies I guess
I'll take the small chance of being cut in half over the guaranteed murder box, thanks.
Good news, I'm pretty sure holes in reality are more likely than the reconstitution beam.
I hear the testers for those get cake.
With mint frosting
Or Portal's... well, portals.
That's the Iconian gateway system, and it's pretty boss.
Existential Comics' "The Machine" feels highly relevant here
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
That comic really came out with a banger on day 1
Damn right, goes hard!
I am neither an emergent property nor atoms, I simply am.....
I personally never took much seriousness in the whole "What if your bed is a death machine!?!" idea
There's too much continuity for that to make sense, I mean, I remember most of my dreams, so I can basically account for everything... And many of my dreams are effected by outside stimuli...
Yeah, the comic's story and message are beautiful, but the "sleep kills you" argument is poorly thought out, and based on a shallow understanding of what continuity actually means. It's not about consciousness, it's about continuity. The processes in the brain that make up your mind don't stop as soon as you fall asleep.
There's an argument to be made about how you're never the same person that you were even just a moment ago, because you're constantly changing. That's also shallow and lazy, and ignores the continuity we're talking about.
There's an argument to be made that from your perspective, continuity isn't broken. That's also shallow and lazy, because it treats the perception of continuity as if it's the same thing as real continuity. As far as your clone is concerned, continuity wasn't broken. But I was never worried about whether my clone will die when I go in the teleporter, you know?
We don't even know that the brain makes the mind, it could easily be the other way around.
No, we do know that the brain makes the mind. Physical changes to the brain can make predictable changes to the mind, but your thoughts don't change the structure of your brain.
While your first point is true, your second is not. It's actually been found that if you change the way you think about stuff, your brain actually changes. It's this little thing called neuroplasticity and it's fucking wild. - https://www.healthline.com/health/rewiring-your-brain
We've also observed intelligence and seeming awareness from things like fungus, which don't even have brains.
Yeah, I'm aware of that. Vasanas are a related topic. But these are results of physical interactions between neurons in your brain. There's nothing nonphysical about your mind that creates or alters matter supernaturally. My point stands, the mind is, as far as a naturalistic philosophy is concerned, an emergent property of complex interactions in the brain.
If my thought moved the neurons as opposed to my neurons making the thought as demonstrated by neuroplasticity, than the brain cannot be the origin.
The philosophical point is that if I accept kinship with myself of yesterday and myself of tomorrow without proof - then I can learn to accept kinship with all other living things, in the same way.
There's a peace in that acceptance - if I lived my life investing equally in the future of any other life I encounter, then perhaps I will pass on from my current arrangement of atoms feeling confidence in the future rather than fear.
I'll let you know how that works for me. Or rather, I suppose I will not.
There are parts of your sleep that you're basically unconscious and nearly impossible to wake.
The dreams could be a whole life being uploaded to your brain, hence the weirdness, until it's initialized and you wake up.
A whole life uploaded from... where?
From them of course! :D
Everyone remembers his irascibility in the film but ignores that, for the three original years, he transported without complaint in nearly every episode. And it was a reliable, proven technology that apparently only got worse and more twitchy a couple of decades later.
About the time O'Brien was born.
The plot thickens
Plenty of folks become more irascible as they age. It's one thing to do something under orders when you're young, and quite another thing to do them when you're retired.
Also, he would have seen more and more incidents as time went on
"In other words: They DRAFTED me!"
Maybe it was kind of like getting B. A. Baracus into a helicopter- they had to drug him first.
I'm going through another cycle of binging EVERYTHING. Yes he did transport regularly, but he also certainly complained about it multiple times. Orders are orders in the end. Sometimes the hardest part of keeping a job is bottling up and repressing all those little existential horrors.
Yeah, but once you think it you can't get it out of your head.
I assume the subtext was that it was a reliable proven technology being operated, in his option, by an incompetent idiot too young to be trusted.
Which is as good an explanation as any for the other transporter scene...
I think I've explained this too many times to do it again, but: teleportation doesn't have to be "destroy and reconstitute" any more than going through a door necessitates killing you and reconstituting you on the other side of the door. The key is establishing continuity of your mind across the intervening space, which is mostly an engineering problem.
Star Trek transporters are "destroy and reconstitute" though. They are explicitly described as such. The whole Thomas Riker situation even requires it to be the case.
Star Trek just throws all its rules out from one episode to the next. The Star Trek franchise is the McDonalds of sci-fi; you don't choose it because it's good, you choose it because it's available.
I think we are still in the realm of a physics problem for teleportation lol
Fusion is an engineering problem. the sun does it. We've done it. We just suck at it.
Teleporting is not possible as far as we know ....unless I missed something huge in science news
It's not all that different to a fax machine, the way it's described in st.
You just need to be able to accurately scan and place atoms to achieve the 'teleportation' being discussed here.
Thinking about it even that is probably not possible, as you'd need to know both the position and momentum and state of every sub atomic particle in the body.
It's definitely not because the more you know about an electrons position, the less you know about it's speed and vice versa.
Heisenberg compensators are Star Trek's answer to that. It's physically impossible to do that in the real world, but in Star Trek they've figured it out
For sure. I wish they would've given that to us instead of the molecule in that movie about the whale. (Sorry I'm not well versed on star trek
I felt like they hinted in some episodes that there was some rule of nature they were exploiting to get it to work. Like imagine trying to tell someone in the 11th century that humans made machines that can fly, they imagine some mechanical thing flapping wings. They imagine it because they don't know what air does when it passes over a fast moving surface. It isn't like the transporter really stores your pattern down to every particle, there was something that they found that made it a lot easier problem to solve.
Yeah someone mentioned the Heisenberg compensators to me in a different comment and I'm betting that's what you are referring to.
Does quantum entanglement count? Probably depends on your definition of "teleportation", I'd assume.
No, unfortunately. the closest we've come with that is proving that the universe isn't locally real. Three physicists just won the nobel prize for proving it. Which is mind boggling in it's own right
The real problem with all of this is that people can't get away from the idea of a soul. Something intangible unmeasurable that is really "us" riding around in a meat-robot. It's hard for people (me included) to realize that the meat packaging is all that we are. If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am. There is no "me" outside of that... And that's a really hard concept to accept and internalize.
If you perfectly recreate your body without destroying the original, the original doesn't start seeing and hearing through the clone. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, there's no difference between the you that steps into the transporter and the you that steps out of it, but you do actually die when you're "transported." You don't get to see what's on the other side of the transporter, another being that shares your exact memories does.
I dunno even if there is no you in a metaphysical sense the deconstruction method still ends your personal subjective experience of being you which sucks. Sure the next you might be just as much you as the first one but you don't get to be around to enjoy that.
But it doesn't and that's the point. You are not the collection of atoms that make up your body, YOU are the software program that is running on your brain-computer. The software program can be transferred (or copied) and you are still you. There is no "you" outside of that software.
Your idea of what constitutes "you" Is wrong. Your subjective experience ends when you get dismantled. We can say this definitively, because when the transporter fails to dismantle the original, they don't get to see through their copy's eyes. If they don't get to see what the transporter clone sees when both are alive, then it stands to reason that if they get dismantled, they still don't get to see what their clone sees. Their subjective experience ends.
I disagree with you, but I don't know that I can explain it anymore clearly than I already have. There is no metaphysical "you" that exists outside of the software running in your head. You would experience perfect continuity if your body was dismantled and reconstructed. There is no real "you" except the software program that is running on your meat CPU.
Like I said, this is a hard thing to wrap your head around.
100% agreed.
I'm going to explain it a different way.
This is Bill.
🕺⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
I'm going to transport Bill over here.
☁️⬜⬜⬜⬜🕺
That's still the same Bill, right? There's continuity?
Now I'm going to do a Tom Riker, and unsuccessfully transport Bill.
🕺⬜⬜⬜⬜🕺
Which one is the real Bill?
If I'm understanding your argument right, you seem to think both of these are Bill. Which they are, but they're not the same Bill. Despite both of them subjectively feeling a sense of continuity, only Left Bill has existed for more than a few seconds. If I correct my mistake by shooting Left Bill in the head, his subjective experience of being Bill is over. If I never made the mistake, and successfully dismantled him, the same would occur. For him, continuity is not maintained through the transporter.
I was never concerned with whether the me that steps out of the transporter experiences continuity. I'm only concerned with whether the me that exists right now does.
You understand me correctly and correctly predicted my response. Your last paragraph is the interesting part however.
Imagine you have an AI. It's a fully functional self aware AI. Let's call this software "Bob". From one instance to the next, this software is just memory and processing inside a computer. It is aware of it's place in the universe to the same extent we are. Let's say you pause the CPU. Did you just kill the AI? Of course not. Now lets say you make a perfect copy of the AI on two separate computers in two separate locations. The AI asks me "which one is the 'real' me?" My answer is their both the "real you," but one moment they start processing independently, they're now two different individuals that deviate from the moment of the copy.
Now lets say you change a stick of memory in the original AI, is that the same entity? If you unplug the memory cards and fly them to another location and plug them back in, is that the same entity? If you FTP the entity from California to Germany and install it on another machine, is that the same entity? It's all the same answer as making a copy.
We humans are only the sum of the software in our heads. There is no real us, only the code executing line by line in our biological processor. That's why there is no "real you" in this discussion, only software, and the person on the other side of the transporter is just as much the real you as the copy that's destroyed. You are just a self-aware program.
I would be hesitant to get on a teleporter even if they were proven "safe". It could be possible that from my point of view, that'll be the last thing I ever see. But from everyone else's point of view Im alive and I walked out the other end without breaking a sweat. But this is a different instance of "me". From my point of view, would I be "dead" forever or would I be able to witness myself going out for drinks later that day?
Maybe it turns out that if you make an exact backup of a brain, reconstruct and restore the biologic equivalent of ram and system registers back to their original state (sort of how operating systems do multitasking), then it all works out. But maybe turning the brain completely off or whatever is enough to put the "system" in an "off" state and when it restarts, it'll be a new instance. Maybe you don't remember the part where you stopped existing so it doesn't matter.
Really makes you wonder if humans had a soul and an afterlife what exactly happens when the last copy of you finally dies naturally.
Like you go to heaven and meet some version of you that lived for a fifteen minute coffee run, and boy is he missed that from his perspective he died at 19 years old because you just had to beam down and try the new Starbucks drink. All the other teleported yous are there.
Shit what about your spouse? There could be like 900 of you but only 400 of her. Now you all have to spend eternity together.
But the mind does not have continuity. You mind ends and a new copy starts and thinks it has continuity.
Yes? How does that break continuity in your mind? You go "unconscious," but the chemical reactions that make up your mind are still going
Does it matter? If so, why?
I'm confused here. No, it doesn't matter that I've gone to sleep. I don't have a new mind when I wake up.
How can you tell if it is the old mind of a new mind with the memories of the old one?
Because the process of chemical reactions in my brain never stopped. I suppose if, without my knowledge, I was killed and replaced with a clone that has all my memories, there would be no way for me to tell, but the sleeping isn't what kills me there
Right so why does a gap matter?
There's no gap in continuity when I'm asleep. The chemical processes comprising my mind don't stop. The mind is a process of chemical reactions, regardless of whether it's conscious at any given time. My mind Is my mind regardless of whether it's aware of its surroundings at any given time. If the product of the physical interactions between the neurons in my brain.
Putting aside the whole problems with maintaining continuity in a civilization that laughs at all the problems of FTL and relativity why is continuity important?
Because I want to see where I'm going, and if my consciousness ends, I don't get to see it
I just don't understand why a gap matters. I had to get knocked out for surgery once and I woke up the same person, sans appendix.
This is why I hate using the word consciousness in these debates. It's too ill defined, and isn't really what I mean anyway. The process of chemical reactions in my brain is my mind, regardless of whether it's aware of any external stimuli.
It's also irrelevant to the discussion about teleportation. Whether or not you're the same person after you've gone to sleep and woken up is debatable, but whether or not the person who steps into the transporter is the person that steps out of a transporter isn't. Like I've said too many times in this thread, if you step into the transporter and it fails to dismantle you when it creates your copy, you and your copy are two distinct individuals. You don't get to see through your copy's eyes. So when the one who stepped into the transporter dies, that individual's subjective experience ends. This is the same whether they die before the copy is made, as the copy is made, or after the copy is made. They never get to see the other side of the transporter.
For the iteration who came out the other side of the transporter, this is a meaningless distinction. But for the iteration who stepped into the transporter, the distinction is quite literally life and death.
Tell my creditors that
Typical McCoy. Calls turbolifts elevators and transporters teleporters.
"Old man yells at matter stream."
I still can't believe we are this many years out from ebaumsworld and still people are putting fucking watermarks on memes.
I get watermarking with your username, or if the platform automatically adds a small one (ifunny), but holy cow this is covering like 1/4 of the text
Not only that, but they‘re also literal bombs. Remember E=mc^2? With a technology capable of converting 100% of matter into usable energy, you‘d have a pretty scary bomb bomb.
"But what if it kills you, but no one can tell?"
this is pascal's wager for nerds
Pascal's wager argues that if there are 2 different and non provable outcomes to a belief, you should believe the one that has better consequences for you.
In this case there are no divine consequences of being destroyed and reassembled in another location.
This is probably more of a ship of Theseus question.
-A man can't step into the same teleporter twice.
Proverbs for the 24th century
The point of Pascal's wager is how non provable beliefs can't be logically reasoned one way or the other. Like how there is no objective original and duplicate ship of theseus.
People arguing over the danger of the transporter is a lot like trying to reason any unsolvable paradox, and especially like arguing over having faith. Better than roko's basilisk, though, that's pascal's wager for scuzzy tools.
Assuming the first time is voluntary there's potentially divine consequences to suicide.
Doesn't it Galileo's transporter you?
...takes the you matter and dissolves it into a stream of particles which are reassembled in a different location, so when transport is 50% done, you're in two places at once (whilst the "plan" for you is in the pattern buffer, don't know where the matter is exactly)... i mean, it forms you into a beam of molecules right? Beams you up.
At one point there's a Barkley episode and he seems conscious for most of the process, just in a kind of super position.
After the half way point, there's more "you" in the destination than in the original location...so who are you? Where are you?
Then again, we know that accidents and reflections can be produced... So maybe I'm wrong and new matter/particles are being introduced otherwise how would Tom Riker exist...
...I mean, after all, Tuvix wasn't twice as dense as your average crew member.
Anyways, Dr. Polaski supposedly has McCoy's attitude towards transporters. However I think even she gave in here and there, as did McCoy.
Good use of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principal of quantum mechanics near the end of your comment (the more we can know about speed, the less we can know about position)... And of course it's always fun to see the word qualia being used.
Personally I think we're a meat glitch. That is to say, the survival of our biology is aided by having predictive models of threats, pattern seeking and problem solving capacities (what to do about such threats), and some sense of mappable logic/reason (which solutions are best), all of which requires coordination (a story to help make choices)... But we're essentially a meat glitch.
This internal illusion of possessing consciousness may have evolved in order to aid long term survival, and perhaps to reproduce and do the other things life forms do... I think Data and Dr. Crusher discuss the definition of life at some point, detailing the requisite processes.... Having an identity isn't listed as one.
I believe it's been theorised that some species seem to act more as hives, there have even been some examples of humans being able to act in hive like ways. The technologist Kevin Kelly wrote about some of this in the 90s giving an example where a crowd could hold up a red or green sided paddle to play a game of ping pong on a big screen... One side of the room vs the other... Green paddles being a way to beckon the on-screen paddle to that location. The game was playable and seemingly coordinated just by having the feedback loop of the screen and the crowd, that was enough to create an overwhelming sense of shared willful and purposeful behaviour.
Most of us place our identity within ourselves as individuals, some learn to place it within their families. Richard Dawkins seems to believe it's actually at the level of the genes (makes that case in his book the selfish gene)... But the fact that we can to some degree place identity in different ways and locations suggests something of its unreality... Of course whose in control of that, and whether shifting it can be willful and comfortable, let alone controlled by a transporter chief is another question.
I certainly don't feel like the person from 20 years ago whose memories I hold. It seems like a completely different person lived those experiences. I know him, but I do not feel like him. Too much has changed about my personality, my body, and my life.
My hot take of the day is that sleep is not truly unconsciousness, because you're still to some extent aware of your surroundings. If you weren't, then you wouldn't react to light, or alarm clocks, or cold water on your face, or any number of other external stimuli
My second hot take of the day is that Last Thursdayism is a fun idea, but is disruptive to actual conversations about reality
But if that's how it works, how can we account for the duplication scenarios? The matter for the duplicate would have to come from somewhere. I think it's more likely to be that the information for construction is trasmitted, especially with how often they use the concept of the tranportation buffer. But they dont ever specify I dont think so it's all speculation
Matter is energy. You'd turn energy into matter.
But that doesn't account for the transporter clones. You can't make two men out of the matter/energy of one
The problem is we're taking about something that's physically impossible in our universe. So at some point it breaks down..
That's why they have a magical device called a Heisenberg compensator. To remove quantum effects from the universe...which is obviously impossible.
The point in question is whether the matter/energy is directly transported and used to reconstitute someone, or if the information for reconstitution is transmitted and local matter used to reconstitute the thing being transported. A "ship of theseus"-esque query
Me with brain chip implants, especially those with non-libre software
I think McCoy was more afraid of accidents than existential factors.
All that could have been avoided by having a drop pod launched to the surface containing a mechanical avatar. The crew member just sits down in a chair to remotely control the avatar using an FTL link for instant control. Of course the avatar has a hologram projector so it looks exactly like the crew member. But that would be too safe and not dramatic enough.
That would make for an interesting story concept. It'd be cool to see the avatar, after exposure to various people occupying their body, begin to form it's own consciousness with shared traits.
This is almost the plot of a doctor who episode
Right, the goo people. I knew the idea had to come from somewhere.
Ohh man! You're right!
I completely forgot about that episode.
I don't know why, but I feel like I've seen/read something similar to what you proposed... maybe because of 'The Island' to a degree?
I agree though, it would be a fascinating story for sure.
Was a central aspect of the story in Xenoblade Chronicles X.
Isn't this Dollhouse?
Not quite. The avatar being used is a blank slate, whereas in Dollhouse they added personalities over the existing minds. What you've suggested is more akin to what the hirogen did on Voyager.
That's kinda how a piece of technology in Dark Matter works! Not the new show, the one that came out in 2015.
Something went really wrong with computers after humans for warp. That's why you can break any evil one by acting crazy or telling it to calculate pi. Also why Data doesn't just wifi.
McCoy is a doctor, not an engineer
I'd like to know or see a Star Trek series about the development of Star Trek technology.
Like the history of flight or the first ancient sea captains, .... when it comes to the history of the humble teleporter, how many freakin people did they have to reconstitute, recombine, turn into a puddle of goo, teleport into a wall, remove their brains, reconfigure their organs, teleport into a bulk head or reanimate into empty space before they perfected the technology.
*"...I teleported home one night, With Ron and Sid and Meg. Ron stole Meggie's heart away, And I got Sidney's leg." *
Teleportation Blues, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Maybe that's why there are so few Indians and Pakistanis in the Trek universe.
Someone had to be the first Porthos.
The thing about transporters is that if we had them right now, people would use them for everything. Transport me to the toilet. Transport the TV remote into my hand. Transport a fork into my hand. People would never get out of bed.
Transport the waste out of my bladder right into the matter recycler.
Transport the nutrient and vitamin mix into my stomach.
Transport the fat from my body.
I'm kinda with you, but pizza. Gyros. Tacos. Street food. I really don't see people giving up deliciousness for convenience. For necessity? Yes. Not for convenience.
Can we transport the excess calories worth out of my stomach? Eat too much? Transporter assisted bulimia.
I would like to be a food critic and just transport the food out of my stomach so I can spend all day eating. 8 gajillion calories a day
disapparate the shit from my arse
You jest, but the only reason I would step into one of those infernal machines is if they can specifically target things like poop, or cancer, or MRSA
"Devil's Elevator" hahahaha, have an upvote
Tbh the same logic can be applied to sleeping. If our consciousness is akin to computer ram and sleep is the brain cleaning up that ram, how can you know that when you wake up you're still the same person that went to sleep last night?
This is a cool thought because it's not about being copied but more about the Ship of Theseus.
Why do we sleep?
"The body needs sleep."
No, the body needs rest. Our physical self just needs down time and relaxation and then it's good to go again. Our BRAIN needs sleep. Specifically, REM sleep to process all the new data that was taken in. Converting short-term memories into long-term memories. Sorting and organizing data. A kind of hard drive defragmentation.
Our sleep is normally presented like a sine wave. We regain base level consciousness cyclically several times a night, which is why we dream. Which is why our dreams are usually tied to recent memories. The more good sleep we get, the more our brains can deal with recent experiences.
When we wake up, it's like rebooting a device after an OS update. It's us, but with altered software. We are as much the person we were yesterday as the Ship of Theseus is still the Ship of Theseus after having pieces fixed and replaced. The whole is who we are, not the bits that changed.
Because brain activity doesn't stop when I'm sleeping, it's more like the brain is just idling.
If we wanna go with computer terms, sleeping isn't shutdown. Sleeping is sitting on the desktop with no active windows. All the background processes don't stop when you're just sitting there and admiring your sick wallpaper.
Well we are obviously aware of our consciousness and I don't think mine 'died' last night.
This is why I don't like the word "consciousness" in these discussions. It has too many different but similar meanings. Our minds are, as far as we can tell, a property of the interactions between neurons in our brains. Sleep doesn't stop those interactions, even if we are "unconscious" during sleep.
Because you are composed of 99.99999% the exact same molecules. When you transport, you are literally ripped apart and recreated with new molecules at the destination site. That's how the transporter works. Your bed does not work that way.
My boi doesn't sweat, breaths, spends ATP or has active metabolic processes while sleeping DAMM
What would happen if I were able to put your brain in a blender and then rearrange everything exactly as it was? Would you be the same?
It wouldn't work.
That's a copout. They didn't ask whether it was possible; in the scenario they posed, it is possible, and they do it
The best take on transporters was in a 'Buzz Lightyear' cartoon.
Buzz tells his team that a scientist has developed a transporter. The farm boy says that it sounds like a great invention; with a transporter the ship can stay up in orbit and the crew can teleport to the surface.
Everyone just looks at him like he's an idiot.
Explain.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/34/d6/1f/34d61fc285c92f3f6c7b83556d5b4e0f.jpg
If you don't know by now, don't mess with it.
Counterpoint
I'm even more confused now
Admitting confusion is the first step on the road to wisdom.
Not sure what the second step is
I liked the method described in "Old Man's War." It wasn't teleporting exactly, but the premise could be used here too. The consciousness of the person was being transferred to another body and during the process, The singular consciousness was aware of being in two places for a short while.
Dark Matter (the other one: the Canadian sci-fi show) had something called Transfer Transit kinda like that.
They scan you and rapidly grow a clone at your destination with all your memories. Clone has like a 3-5 day lifespan, but is otherwise "you". It goes and does whatever you planned to do at the far end.
The main you stays behind and does whatever until the clone returns to a Transfer Transit pod on the far end. It's memories are then uploaded to you and the clone disintegrates. You now " remember" everything the clone did on your behalf as if you did it personally.
I'd rather just use a remote controlled robot.
What is a clone but a flesh robot?
The first word in Dark Matter's name was apt for the show. Very apt.
I really liked that for how it allowed for interesting story telling. The clones can die without actually sacrificing the characters but there's still fairly high stakes because the originals won't know what happened while their opponents do.
Really sucks that the show got cancelled, especially on that huge cliffhanger.
"Altered carbon" had a similar logic
Personally, as long as it's provably safe, I'm fine with it.
As far as I'm concerned, if my consciousness is intact, and my body is a carbon copy, that's me. I place more weight on my consciousness being me than those specific atoms being me.
Besides, we all shed all of our atoms and replace them with new ones dozens of times throughout our lives. So we've already died in that way, I guess? But then again, it doesn't happen all at once, it's more of a
ShipBody of Theseus type of thing.99.9% of the time you’d be right. But what if it accidentally made a copy of you. You can argue that you’re still you and rhe other is an independent person, but who gets the rights as the “real” you? All your possessions, bank accounts, debts, job, etc. ?
I see what you mean, but in my mind the chances of that would be so astronomically low that I personally wouldn't be put off by it. To me it's a bit like asking "what if the plane blows up?" or "what if the plane gets taken over by terrorists?"
Like yeah it's a possibility, but if the risk is low enough I'm still gonna go ahead with it for the convenience factor.
I am not. You are already a process, a continuous state of going in and out of existence.
And yet despite this being philosophically sound my student loan people do not agree.
I'd prefer the interdimensional travel they use in Earth: Final Conflict.
Personally, I'm hoping for a future where actually traveling anywhere is entirely optional.
Not to mention, if we have the technology to construct human bodies and minds on the other side of that teleporter, what is to stop them from modifying the machines to change your brain (or body). I have lost any trust I once had in any government or company to believe them if, hypothetically, they tell me they have the know-how to change my opinion of Coca Cola upon reconstruction.
You might like Glasshouse by Charles Stross.
Cory Doctorow vibes.
Dunno if this is just the millennial in me but I'd use one even if I was directly told it clones and kills me. Better than TSA.
Also I don't fear going to sleep or general anesthesia.
Ask commander Sonak if the transporter is a completely safe method of travel.
Or, um... what's left of him...
Didn't live long... Fortunately.
Like I believe in death in the first place, let's beam on down.
Ever wonder if that transporter tech was used to rebuild you better, stronger, smarter, faster?
Can't remember the exact story, but Larry Niven used that idea. Basically, you teleported from one side of the room to the other, but left all the poisons your cells had built up behind. The hero does this accidentally, then notices himself growing healthier over time.
In another universe, Relg phased Silk through stone and found the cure for the common cold as the illness couldnt pass through with them...for some reason
No idea what series/game you are talking about.
Enlighten us
The Belgariad books by David Eddings
Thanks.
Might want to check out this series. Jackie Chan meets the Godfather meets the Green Lantern. One a planet that's reached 1950s level technology, one small nation has a monopoly on a substance called 'jade.' It enables a few people to perform extraordinary feats.
Thanks ill look it up!
Enjoy
Better, stronger, smarter, faster?
More than ever Hour after hour
Work is never over.
Well we know the pattern buffer can hold a person indefinitely (SNW doc’s daughter) and they have bio filters that remove any bug changing the genome pattern you beamed down with…that’s all defensive, I’m sure the tech could be turned up to 11 but then you’re flying near Khan’s territory
My kid and I have discussed this at length. It's true, Bones and a few others live in a universe where they're the only soulful humanoids, surrounded by digital facsimiles. It must be depressing.
Bones beamed up and down multiple times. He's a simulacrum as well.
Dang it!
Good news: Transporters in Star Trek do transmit matter, not just data. There is no original that dies.
I'm firmly on the anti-transporter side, but I'm also super into the concept of artificial personhood. The people that step out of those transporters have just as much of a soul as the people who stepped in, even if they are separate people
IDC, I'm using the teleporter.
I feel like this requires a Gurgeh reference.
I never understood the problem people seem to complain about here.
A perfect copy, is perfect. There's no detectable, no measurable, no identifiable difference.
So what are you talking about? Unless you don't think perfect is actually perfect.
Because it's still a copy, so you still die. Imagine if there was a delay between the copy being produced and the original being destroyed, long enough for them to see each other if transported within the same room.
To Be
Jesus Christ, existential crisis for the morning.
You are a different person than you were yesterday.
You have all sorts of new and different experiences from that person.
You're even a different person reading the last word in this sentence, than you were when reading the first.
But you're no less you, are you?
::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas :::
Yes! Great movie!
::: spoiler spoiler That machine was much more than a transporter. It didn't have to destroy the matter to duplicate it.
Angier was stupid to keep killing the other versions of himself. He could have created a much better trick, being in several places at once.
And they each would have felt they were the original Angier. Who could say they were wrong? They all were, and are still, the original. Just different versions of him, with different experiences. No different than you, being the same person who was different yesterday than you are today. :::
::: spoiler spoiler asdfasfasfasfas :::
In some senses, yes. In other senses, no. Since my birth, there has been an uninterrupted set of reactions between neurons in my brain. Individual neurons may be added or removed, various inputs and chemicals may change this reaction, but this ongoing reaction between them has never stopped. If you show me another person with the exact same pattern of neurons in their brain, with the exact same pattern of reactions happening within it, then they are for all intents and purposes a perfect copy of my mind. But if you shoot the me that's typing right now in the head, then the me that's typing right now doesn't get to see what happens tomorrow, even though for all intents and purposes there is still a starman2112 in the world.
But the Starman typing today, doesn't get to see tomorrow any way. They get replaced by the next Starman.
I fundamentally disagree. As I said, my mind is a continuous ongoing process of reactions between neurons in my brain. Even while I'm asleep, this process continues. Even as neurons die and are replaced, this process continues. I am the same starman that I was yesterday, and that I will be tomorrow.
That's getting into ship of Theseus territory which is similar, but slightly different than the transporter paradox. It gets closer when you do the whole build another ship out of the replaced parts thing, but with the transporter there's something that gets destroyed and that something is where your consciousness is.
Even a "perfect" copy is still a copy, and the fact that the second consciousness doesn't rely on the first to exist (they could simultaneously exist ala William Riker) it's a separate instance so a separate person.
No, we replace our external skin cells and blood a bunch of times but our major organs and muscles stick aroubd.
But is the copy me from my conscious point of view? I don’t care that it looks the same externally. Will I still be inside the ship?
It mainly depends if you believe in a soul that is never copied that makes it "you", or a purely mechanical view of consciousness that says if all parts are copied there is no difference.
Yes. The copy is you as far as it can tell.
And the original you doesn't exist anymore to be able to tell anything.
So "you" continue, from your point of view.
no.. that's not sufficient. There's a new me that was not me that is now me, yes, but the original me is gone. Story ended from my point of view, from the new me's point of view it was all fine but they will end in the next transport.
If it can be undeniably proven exactly the same as sleeping or anesthesia, fine. If consciousness provably persists all the way from de-materialization, transport, and re-materialization, like Lt. Barkley. fine. But if there is any doubt that consciousness ends, and a new consciousness is created, that is where the problem lies, and why many, like McCoy, won't use one willingly.
But consciousness doesn't persist through sleeping or anesthesia. It stops, then starts again some time later. The continuity of memory seems persistent to the consciousness, so it can't really tell the difference. Because it would be impossible for a consciousness to perceive it's own down time.
And it's not really accurate to say a new consciousness is created. It would be more accurate to say the same consciousness is recreated.
I'm not trying to be combative, just to illustrate the point: "cite your sources."
Definitive research is needed.
From an outsider's point of view sure, but does your consciousness dies when dematerialized, only to have a copy of your consciousness going on in the rematerialized body as if nothing happened?
That is only an actual issue when you are some sort of spiritualist. From a materialist point of view, the entirety of you is "just" a very complex interplay of elementary particles.
I don't think this is true. Even if consciousness is only a product of our physical bodies, there's still the issue of who's experiencing it.
When this body dies, I'm dead. I don't care if there are a million other perfect copies of this body or my mind out there, if this mind won't be the one to experience it.
A copy of me can be fundamentally perfect, but simply as a product of being physically separate meat our consciousnesses will be separate. If instead of teleporting, both perfect copies stayed alive and had a chance to talk to each other, this would be apparent. I will continue to experience life from the eyes of my old body, not the clone. We could then go on to live our lives separately, and we would diverge. Because we'd both be separate simply by the physical nature of our existence, we're not interchangeable, and it wouldn't make sense to kill one of us and assume that now it's "teleportation". We didn't see out of the other's eyes before, so why would we see out of the other's eyes when we're dead? No, we'd just die.
The only way I can see this not being an issue is if the awareness somehow transfers, which requires some sort of technomagic beyond our comprehension, or outright rejection of the existence of consciousness, which is a bold claim.
It's true that the entirety of a person is "just" a very complex interplay of elementary particles, but I don't think it's only an actual issue if you're a spiritualist. I'm a naturalistic determinist, there's no such thing as souls or spirits.
My line of thinking is this. Let's say I step into the machine, and it makes a perfect copy of me at another location, but fails to dismantle my body. Since we're talking about the transporters in Star Trek, there is precedent for this happening. I step out of the transporter entrance, and another me steps out of the transporter exit. I don't see through that person's eyes, I don't hear through that person's ears. They are separate entity, no matter how similar they are to me.
If the transporter had successfully dismantled me, I still wouldn't see through that person's eyes or hear through their ears. I would be dead. Another person with my memories would step out of the exit. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, that person is me. But I don't care about the rest of the universe, I care about my own brain, which has been destroyed. Why would I agree to be transported, if I don't get to see what happens after?
ITT people who think they’re only themselves only if they’re completely continuous. Any number of them could have been replaced with a clone while sleeping and not know the difference. I am me, and that’s all the matters to me.
Of course I wouldn't know. But the former me who got dragged off is dead. That's the whole point, the clone has no way of knowing and simply continues on life while the original dies.
And because we only exist in the present, we rely on our memories of the past to tell who we are. Our memories tell me I'm me, so I think I'm me.
Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but the reason I don't want to die is because I want to be aware. If I am never conscious again, but a copy of me is, good for them I guess, I wish them the best, but it's not what I want. I'm not conscious of waking up in the morning, even if they're me. I'm dead.
And you would have known you’d been swapped how? What if someone came up to you and said that they have irrefutable proof that you were replaced with a clone of yourself a few years ago. How would you know the difference unless told. And even once told, what does it matter if you can’t pinpoint the exact day?
If it already happened, there's nothing to be done. But if I find out that there's a thing that I'm doing every single day that's killing me and making a copy, I'll simply stop doing that thing
I guess that’s where I’m confused like OP is. What difference does it make at that point? You’ve been going through it countless times, nothing has changed, you were no different, so what does it matter?
It’s like the people that are anti-vaxxers, they’re freaked out with no basis that “it’s changing who I am!” even though there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary (I would assume general transporter tech wouldn’t be available to the masses if it wasn’t in this scenario)
Strictly speaking, I've never used a transporter before. It's important to nail down specific definitions and concepts here. What do I mean when I say I? I'm referring to the human using the alias starman2112; the individual entity typing right now. I've gone more in-depth in other comments, but essentially I am the ongoing chemical reactions between the neurons in my brain. This reaction has been perturbed, interfered with, but never stopped.
In what way am I still "me" after being transported? I'm precisely the same person, right? But I'm not. I'm a perfect copy of the last person. Say the transporter failed to dismantle him when he stepped into it. Does he see what I see? Hear what I hear? No. We are separate people. So if it had dismantled him, would he see what I see, hear what I hear? Still no, of course. He's gone. He doesn't see or hear anything anymore.
Now that I understand that, despite having countless memories of stepping into and out of transporters, how could I possibly bring myself to step into one "again?" In reality, it would be the first time for me, and I would be dooming myself to never see or hear again, unless it malfunctions and fails to dismantle me.
I don't appreciate the comparison with anti-vaxxers. The problems with transporters are not based on lies or incorrect assumptions, it's based on the fact that it kills you and creates a copy.
It only matters in that a person died. A person with their own subjective experience that they no longer get to experience. It doesn't matter that in this case I inherited their memories, and it doesn't matter when it happened other than out of curiosity. I'd mourn them the same.
And as for how I would know... If I'm the clone? Obviously I would never have any way to know, short of someone coming up to me. On the other hand if I were the original, I would "know" because I would be dead. (Or rather, I wouldn't know anything, because the dead don't experience or think)
Edit: It matters that I inherited their memories in that it might influence the way I see the world, my identity, and their death, but it wouldn't change the fact that I mourn them. I am a distinct person from other versions of me, regardless of whether I'm a clone or they're a clone, and if they die it's just as much a tragedy as any other human death.
Imagine the machine makes one such perfect copy of you without successfully dismantling you. That person stands in front of you. Do you see through their eyes? No. If you die, do they die too? Of course not. It doesn't matter how perfect the copy they are, they are not the same person as you. If the biological processes in your body end, you die. The you that steps into these teleportation machines never gets to see what happens on the other side of them.
And that happens naturally all the time.
The person you were yesterday, or even a minute ago, never gets to see who you are now.
It's like VHS!
Then it's not perfect.
Betamax, perhaps.
Because you won’t be the copy, the copy will be the copy.
From the copies point of view, it is you.
But I'm not looking from my copy's point of view, am I? And if you posit that I may be the copy in the first place, then the original isn't looking from my point of view.
Both feel they are you. And it's only one point of view, during the time you both exist, that's lost when one of you dies. The second you persists.
Both my clone and I feel like we are starman, but both of us would acknowledge that we are not the same starman. We're two almost perfectly identical sets of neurons and chemical reactions between those neurons, but even ignoring the fact that we stopped being identical the moment we start receiving different inputs from our senses, the fact that we do not occupy the same space means that we are separate entities. If one of us dies, they don't get to keep living on in the form of the other.
A copy isn't you, it's someone else, a clone. It means you die when you step into the teleporter and someone else takes over your life.
But a perfect copy is more like the you who stepped onto the pad, then then you are like the you who went to sleep last night.
All sorts of changes happened, while you were sleeping.
All sorts of changes happened while you were typing your last comment.
The you of now is a very different person then the you of 5min ago.
But I have the same consciousness
So does the copy
Fundamentally, no. It doesn't matter if the copy is identical in every way, it's physically separate.
The fact that one is the "original" and one is the "copy" doesn't matter. The fidelity of the copy doesn't matter. It's literally just the fact that it's different meat.
The copy will believe it's me, and will for any outside observer be identical to me, but I will still exist as a separate entity. Up until the next instant, where the clone-and-kill machine enters the next phase, kills me, and I'm gone, and there's a new copy of me out there with a new consciousness, living my life. But the version of me who was me is dead.
What happens if it doesn't kill me instantly? What happens if I get to look my transporter clone in the eyes? We won't have the same consciousness, we'll have two separate copies of the same consciousness. And then it kills me. And I watch myself die.
Yes. You watch yourself die, and you continue being you.
You're always doing exactly that already.
Every moment of every day. You replace yourself, with a new self.
Except the person who died is dead, and they stay dead. The person who died's final moments will be seeing their clone standing over them, and their memories will diverge.
They're clearly different meat, different consciousnesses in that moment. They won't know what the other is thinking, they will have to speak to communicate.
How are they not separate people in that moment?
Think of it like this. I have a computer hard drive. I can make a perfect clone of this computer hard drive. Every single one and zero accounted for on a separate disk. While these hard drives contain the same information, changes to one do not cause changes in the other. While they contain the same data, they are not the same hard drive.
If you have two drive in a RAID 1 array. They have the same data. If one dies, it doesn't matter. Everything important is preserved without interruption.
But I'm not in a RAID array with my teleportation clone. As far as the data contained within my brain goes, nothing is lost if I die the very instant that my clone is made, but I posit that what makes my mind my mind isn't just the data held within it.
I don't think transporters in star trek kill people, I just think they move them through subspace and the transporter malfunctions are subspace oddities
They shred your body down to its atoms, and re-assemble it somewhere else. If we have any sort of soul, or inner ghost, it almost certainly dies when your body is shredded.
I'm on the fence: pro-transporter, anti-disintegration. If transporter technology existed without the suicide booth aspect and I could just send a copy of myself halfway around the globe in an instant I'd do it. Biggest problem I see is funding all the new clones of me running around. If there was somehow a way for us all to sync our memories occasionally without melting our consciousness that would be cool too.
Fuck it, kill me. My mind is the part I care about anyway. If you get that where it's going, I'm not bothered. You could even make some improvements on my meat housing before you replicate the next one, I don't mind. Go wild
What if you wake up in hell, or on the next plane of existence, knowing that a soulless likeness of you is carrying on with your friends and family as if nothing happened, and nobody will mourn for your death?
Nah, this is Star Trek. They'll come get me
Only if you're a named character I'm afraid
Hehe.
Soulless likeness? If it has a perfect copy of my brain, then it has my soul and for all intents and purposes is me
If the transporter kills you, then whatever "you" are is gone. What is replicated at the end of the transporter is just a facsimile. It acts like you, and thinks like you, but it is not you. You are dead.
Sure it is. My current specific conciousness won't get preserved, but guess what, I lose consciousness every night. From the perspective of the me that arrives on the other end, it'll be just like waking up. They have all my memories, mannerisms, personality, there are no differences between them and me besides the fact that my conciousness doesn't continue. From their point of view, they have continuity of existence. From their perspective, and from outsiders perspective, there's no difference, for all intents and purposes they are me. Why would I feel bad about them living our life? "You are dead". When I go to sleep, my conciousness ends, and in the morning someone who has my memories and personality and mannerisms gains consciousness. I really don't see the difference.
The theory doesn't work if you don't believe that you are more than the sum of your parts. If there is no soul, then the transportation or duplication presents no issues. But if there is a soul, and it dies when your body is shredded at an atomic level, then whatever comes out the other end is not "you". Your soul goes on to whatever the next plane of existence is. Unless somehow the soul is also able to survive the transportation event, in which case it's fine. The issue Bones and others like him had is that they didn't believe that the soul survived the event.
Whether or not you lose consciousness entirely during sleep is kind of hazy. Like, you are to some extent aware of your surroundings. Even people in comas can react to external stimulus. If we fully lost consciousness whenever we went to sleep, it would be impossible to rouse someone to wake
Grandma?
Yep, we women also create trek memes.
But McCoy is saying it.