Immortality is discovered and is then promptly ignored

[Ghost]

Hello all,

Perhaps this topic has already been discussed before, hell I am pretty sure it has been discussed before but I wasn't around then and now I have the same question.

While thinking of some of the more sillier things in Star Trek that afterwards never really mattered I suddenly had to think of the TNG episode "Rascals" during which Picard, Ro Laren, Guinan, and Keiko O 'Brien are turned into children due to some energy anomaly (had to look that up) and the transporter.

Well at the end of the story most of them are turned back into adults with Ro Laren become an adult again off screen, and it is never mentioned again.
I probably should have had this lightbulb moment at the time but now it hit me, the crew basically has discovered immortality!

I don't know if there was any mentioning of this condition being lethal to Picard and the other three over long term but if not there is now a way of extending people's lives indefinitely.
Apparently the de-aging was the result of certain 'patterns' missing due to the anomaly and they could be restored again.

But now this is discovered, could the same method be used to remove these 'patterns', and make old people twenty year olds again?
Or if that is impossible could the properties of the anomaly be recreated again?

Even if the choice is to become ten-twelve year olds again I think most people would go for that option. A whole new lifetime to make new choices and decisions, to pursue new goals and afterwards do it again.

Why isn't the Federation on top of this, putting several science and medical teams to recreate the process?
This would probably have priority, even as a non essential project.

 

[BillJ]

I probably should have had this lightbulb moment at the time but now it hit me, the crew basically has discovered immortality!

"Unnatural Selection" was the first. Using the transporter to reverse age Dr. Pulaski, in season two.

 

[Timo]

It was never quite established whether turning the heroes to children increased their lifespans. For all we know, it shortened them, and they'd all have died of old age at eighty rather than 110 even had they not been turned back into adults.

Conversely, Kirk, Spock and McCoy got hyper-aged twice ("The Deadly Years" and "Lorelei Signal"), and that may have lengthened their lifespans! Although again I suspect the strain of the back-and-forth took years out of their remaining life.

Ditto with the transporter "cure", potentially. Although there we have little indication of any strain being involved, and this might very well prolong a life indefinitely. I mean, there's no reason why it shouldn't. It's just that it ought to prolong it by having the person live the same years over and over again - it's essentially a memory wipe. Or it should be, there being no mechanism by which Pulaski could retain her memories. The writers just didn't realize this! Luckily, there's a (very) small editing cut in the action after the beam-back that allows Picard to bring Pulaski back to speed before she indicates familiarity with what just happened.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Ah, but repeated use of the (fictional) technique might cause telomere degradation and shorten the life span -- somewhat like was proposed for the real Dolly the cloned sheep's shortened life span (although later clones have been healthier as techniques have improved).

 

[Timo]

Transporters ought to result in no imperfections whatsoever, as there's supposed to be zero harm from repeated use, as per empirical evidence (LaForge in "Realm of Fear": "There are millions of people who transport safely every day without a problem.") Transporters on rejuvenation mode in turn should be no different from transporters on any other mode. Except evidently Scotty's jury-rigged repeating diagnostics cycle that killed poor Franklin and possibly left Scotty a bit ruffled, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JirinPanthosa]

In Unnatural Selection the transporter cure was pretty specific to Pulaski's condition. They were filtering out the stuffs that caused it. There's also the question of whether you could use the transporter to make a backup copy of a human being. Lose Ensign Toughguy to a stray phaser blast? No problem! Materialize his backup pattern.

They kind of avoid being able to do that by having your pattern in the transporter buffer degrade if it's kept in more than a few seconds, and in Our Man Bashir we confirm that just a single pattern is so huge you need to delete the computers of the entire station to store it. But combine Second Chances with Relics? Backup human!

 

[Timo]

In Unnatural Selection the transporter cure was pretty specific to Pulaski's condition.

The thing is, language suggesting the exact opposite was used! They were speaking about how they have to do a "blind" treatment because they have no idea what is healthy and what is ill inside Pulaski. Rewriting Pulaski with her know-to-be-healthy pattern really sounds like the ultimate universal cure here...

They restored Picard from the transporter once in "Lonely Among Us" because his "body" had never left: he beamed out "energy only", in a fashion essentially alien and unfathomable to our heroes. There was no degradation in the hours involved. And there supposedly isn't any in the general case, because avoiding it in "Counterpoint" doesn't seem like a big problem. It may be more like the pattern as per standard procedure is deliberately dumped after a few minutes for reasons of storage space, privacy and copyright, whatever.

in Our Man Bashir we confirm that just a single pattern is so huge you need to delete the computers of the entire station to store it

...After it has been cohabiting a runabout's tiny system with five other such patterns just fine! Granted, the thing that requires massive resources might be long term storage - but Eddington and pals were not aiming for long term storage, they were aiming for immediate rescue and rematerialization...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cultcross]

A combination of technologies we witnessed should also be able to produce immortal holograms with your memories, while we're at it. There's really little excuse for dying off at all by the 24th century.

 

[The Wormhole]

A combination of technologies we witnessed should also be able to produce immortal holograms with your memories, while we're at it. There's really little excuse for dying off at all by the 24th century.

Won't the subjective experience still be terminal? That is even if they transfer memories somewhere or a transporter clone is created complete with memories, it's still a copy and the original person is still going to die and will have to deal with eternal oblivion or an afterlife. The only difference is their loved ones won't have to grieve, because oh hey Billy 2.0 has arrived.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Maybe some people just don't want to live forever.

 

[locutus101]

Hello all,

Perhaps this topic has already been discussed before, hell I am pretty sure it has been discussed before but I wasn't around then and now I have the same question.

While thinking of some of the more sillier things in Star Trek that afterwards never really mattered I suddenly had to think of the TNG episode "Rascals" during which Picard, Ro Laren, Guinan, and Keiko O 'Brien are turned into children due to some energy anomaly (had to look that up) and the transporter.

Well at the end of the story most of them are turned back into adults with Ro Laren become an adult again off screen, and it is never mentioned again.
I probably should have had this lightbulb moment at the time but now it hit me, the crew basically has discovered immortality!

I don't know if there was any mentioning of this condition being lethal to Picard and the other three over long term but if not there is now a way of extending people's lives indefinitely.
Apparently the de-aging was the result of certain 'patterns' missing due to the anomaly and they could be restored again.

But now this is discovered, could the same method be used to remove these 'patterns', and make old people twenty year olds again?
Or if that is impossible could the properties of the anomaly be recreated again?

Even if the choice is to become ten-twelve year olds again I think most people would go for that option. A whole new lifetime to make new choices and decisions, to pursue new goals and afterwards do it again.

Why isn't the Federation on top of this, putting several science and medical teams to recreate the process?
This would probably have priority, even as a non essential project.

The transporters not only preserves you from aging, it also prevents accidental death since you can always recreate a body using the last recording of your passage through a transporter, all you'll have lost are a few hours of your life, which is no big deal since people in a coma often lose the memories preceding the coma by a few hours.

However, the transporter could also be considered a killing machine since when you stop to think about it the person that initially used it is actually dead and the one reappearing on the other side is but a copy of them, thinking mistakenly that they are the original one.

I think we are better of without it.

 

[Timo]

Won't the subjective experience still be terminal?

That's a viewpoint question. For the branch of memories that gets successfully implanted in the new physical template, there's no terminal experience: memories go from birth (or thereabouts) till the operation, then continue from the operation onwards, and it would be pretty unlikely for any memory of "termination" be included in between.

Another branch gets terminated, but who cares? Certainly not the person who goes on living. And nobody is asking his other half, whose "experience" is no doubt limited only to the lack of experiences beyond a certain point.

Say, if this memory transfer technique did exist, one could create side branches at will, and then terminate those. Would that mean death for the person whose experience line continues uninterrupted, in the original body even? How about if the operation required a shutdown period of X seconds, the same thing every branch experiences (only, those to be terminated have X set at infinite)? Would the "original" be dead for the rest of his life after such a shutdown?

I doubt most people would mind, any more than they mind having their photograph taken. Although I guess there's always the odd man out, the one with a philosophical objection to elevators or wearing clothes or getting temporarily terminated.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

Maybe some people just don't want to live forever.

There is that.

 

[locutus101]

There is that.

People don't want to live forever but they don't want to die and they don't want to get old. That's as simple as that.
How many healthy happy people are willing to die there and then? Zero.

 

[at Quark's]

Probably the Vorlons prevent the Federation somehow from developing this any further ("you are not ready for immortality").

 

[locutus101]

Probably the Vorlons prevent the Federation from developing this any further ("you are not ready for immortality").

Or maybe it's Dracula or Pinocchio?

 

[The Wormhole]

Or maybe it's Dracula or Pinocchio?

Nah, ever since they discovered their true feelings for each other they don't give a fuck about the outside world. They just passionately make love all day long. Strangely enough, Pinocchio telling lies actually helps their relationship. But I suspect if I go into too much details about what use a long wooden nose has in their relationship, things are going to get a bit too graphic.

 

[locutus101]

Nah, ever since they discovered their true feelings for each other they don't give a fuck about the outside world. They just passionately make love all day long. Strangely enough, Pinocchio telling lies actually helps their relationship. But I suspect if I go into too much details about what use a long wooden nose has in their relationship, things are going to get a bit too graphic.

Nothing that hasn't been said hundreds of times already.

 

[galad2003]

Well in NuTrek they can just take a shot of Khan's blood to come back to life. Surely the Federation can just replicate the blood.

 

[locutus101]

Well in NuTrek they can just take a shot of Khan's blood to come back to life. Surely the Federation can just replicate the blood.

In nu trek everything is so simple and convenient, it's scary.

Like why was it so important that Spock didn't kill Kahn?
First the blood takes some time to die after someone has been killed by several blows to the head. Long enough to beam the dead body to sickbay and extract whatever blood is necessary to revive Kirk.

Second, if not then they had all the other popsicles, didn't they?

So no, Spock could have killed Kahn if he wanted too, but it was just convenient that he did not.