[Spoilers] Review - Myriad Universe Bk 2: Echoes and Refractions

As Trent already mentioned, every time a character passes through a transporter, he's killed (deep-fried, his molecules lose their pattern) and information from the pattern-buffer is needed in order to put the molecules where they used to be, creating a copy.

 

i don't buy that.

 

It's not the most inspired bit of technobabble from star trek lore, that's for sure.
But it is how the transporter was repeatedly described to function.

Not to mention, the transporter can create 2 copies of a given person instead of just 1 - the Rikers in 'second chances'; can use information from the computer memory to reconstruct persons whose physical bodies were destroyed (aka who died) in 'our man Bashir'; can melt two persons into 1 - 'Tuvix'; etc.

If one were to materialise a person without using the information from the pattern buffers to put this persons' molecules where they were, the person would come out of the transporter as a reddish organic soup (aka dead).

 

No complaints about the review, and I already knew you were a sick puppy....

My main goal with AGW was to show a Dominion War with consequences to people we care about. The best we got was Nog losing a leg. I also thought the Founders' infiltration campaign might have been more effectve if nobody knew they existed in the first place...

But I'm fine with your reaction. You enjoyed it, which means I did my job. Why you enjoyed it is a factor outside my purview.

 

It's probably more feasible than transporters, actually.

And in a world where you can be turned to energy, shot a few million miles and reconstructed, soul and all, then moving said soul is totally reasonable.

Would you say Data isn't a fully functioning individual?

 

^ Pretty certain no one has said anything about souls.

And Ziyal--although perhaps you excluded her because she didn't die in combat? And you previously added Mr. Homm to the casualty lists, so I guess this is something you've thought of before. Although, I wonder how the TV show could have done so. They presumably didn't want to kill off their main cast (other than the Terry Farrell situation); the TNG cast was protected by the films (and if they had tried to kill one of them off-screen, I would have thrown a shoe at the television); Voyager's off in the Delta Quadrant. The only people available to be casualties was the supporting cast, and most of them were civilians not likely to be in combat in the first place (not that this saved poor Ziyal).

Revealing themselves may not have been the best tactical decision, granted. Perhaps the Founders had been dominant and worshipped for so long that they became overconfident.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

Probably more that their desire to get Odo to come back exceeded their military goals.

 

That's one of the great debates in transhumanistic thought -- if you create a mental copy of yourself in a computer, is that really you? If it thinks like you, if it has all of your memories, is it you? There's no definitive answer, because humanity hasn't yet reached that point in its development. By the end of this century, however, who knows...

 

Like I said, I interpret Brave New World to have a very dark, almost dystopic, ending. Notice how blithely android-Picard assumes that any other cultures they encounter will change themselves to conform to Federation values? He's just so calm about it...I don't see the 'real' Picard ever acting that way.

 

Actually that's pretty much what Picard has always been like, assuming that Federation ways are more enlightened and beneficial and every mature civilization will eventually see their value. Heck, it's what the whole Federation is like -- see the famous DS9 scene about "root beer diplomacy." If you don't agree with the values in question, it seems dystopian, but if you do agree with them, it seems utopian.

 

No, it's not the same thing. It's an entirely new individual who simply happens to have an identical mind. If anything, the copy of you would actually be your offspring and you its progenitor, not a continuation of you.

Except that episodes like "Realm of Fear" (TNG) and "Daedalus" (ENT) establish very clearly that this is NOT the case. There is complete continuity of consciousness between when you step onto a transporter platform and come out the other side. You aren't killed, you're transformed and then un-transformed. (No, that's not realistic, but there it is.)

 

A clone is not a direct continuation or copy of your consciousness. That's a comic-book cliche that's totally unconnected to reality. A clone is simply an offspring with only one parent contributing genetic material. A clone of yourself would be a completely separate individual with a distinct upbringing and life experience. Your clone wouldn't be "you," it would be your son or daughter. It's a completely wrong analogy for the kind of duplication under discussion here.

As for duplication of the consciousness we are discussing, Sci's right -- if it's a copy, it's not you. It may think it's you, but from your perspective, your consciousness is still contained within your own skull. If you die and your copy lives on, it may think it's still you, others may think it's still you, but you'll still be dead.

The loophole is if there's a continuity of consciousness between the original and the AI versions of a person. If, say, you were to gradually replace all the neurons in a brain with artificial equivalents, preserving the pattern of the neural network and the continuity of cognitive activity, then that may still be the same original you. The conceit of ST is that this kind of continuity of thought exists during transportation -- your pattern of consciousness is encoded in the transporter pattern within the beam, along with all the other information defining you, and is thus preserved in a continuous state while your particles are disassembled and reassembled. So within that fictional context, we can pretend that the mechanism for transferring a consciousness from one brain to another is similarly a direct continuation of the original rather than a separate copy.

Indeed, we kind of have to, given how much mind-hopping goes on in Trek. Look at "Return to Tomorrow." Kirk, Spock, and Mulhall had their consciousnesses getting transferred all over the place; are we to assume that they actually died and only copies of themselves continued? Then there's Spock's katra in the movies. Is the revived Spock the same person as the original or a copy who merely thinks he is? It's more emotionally and dramatically satisfying to believe there's a direct continuity throughout the copying process. So if that can be achieved psionically, it should be achievable technologically as well, provided you assume that psionics is a matter of exotic science rather than mysticism.

 

So? The peace and prosperity of the Federation of the time is a function of their technology. As that technology spreads, it isn't surprising that its impact on the societies who become adopters will be similar to the impact it had on the Federation. It's not as if they're losing their individuality--the text specifically mentions that they retain their cultural uniqueness. What changes is that dysfunctional behaviours fall away as the technological advances make them irrelevant.

Are you disagreeing with the idea that the copy is still you, or with the clone analogy?

In the moment the copy is made, both entities are the same person though they may occupy physically distinct spaces. After they start living distinct lives, accruing their own experiences and memories, then yes, we can say that they are different individuals, though both based off the original individual, neither with a better claim on the original identity than the other. But that assumes the continuance of both the original and the copy, which is perhaps where the clone analogy is flawed, since in our literatures we tend to see clones as co-existent. But uploading takes a brain at or near the moment of death and transfers it into the artificial body, such that there remains only one of the person going ahead.

That's right. Now, considering the context, which is a thought-exercise based on a fictional phenomena, used in comparison with other fictional phenomena like uploading and transporting, do you think that the analogy referred to cloning in it's modern-day scientific sense, or cloning as it is broadly depicted in the fictional sense?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

And who gets to decide what constitutes "dysfunctional behaviors?"

I found the ending very disturbing. It was nothing less than a nationalist engaging in triumphalist bragging about the inevitability of his society's cultural hegemony.

The idea that the copy is still you. A copy is not you; it's a new person who is identical to you. It's only you if there's continuity of consciousness.

If they occupy physically distinct spaces simultaneously, then they're not you. One is you, and one is a separate but identical person.

Um, bullshit. The person who actually existed prior to the copying is the one who is the original, and the one who was created by the copying is a newer, younger person.

Or are you going to argue that if you put a document into a copy machine that the original ceases to be the original?

Now hold on. Are we talking about a transfer of a continuously-existing consciousness from medium to another, or are we talking about a duplication of an original consciousness in another medium that exists separately from the original consciousness?

"Transfer" and "copy" are not the same thing. To use an analogy, moving a page from one folder to another is not the same thing as putting it through a copy machine.

 

What about the case of Will and Thomas Riker. Which one is the original and which one is the copy?

 

That depends on the exact details of the transporter accident, and I don't remember them. I'd say that the original would be whichever one had continuity of consciousness with the Will Riker who was getting beamed up.

And if neither one had continuity of consciousness, then neither of them are the original -- the original died, and the others should be legally classified as the original's offspring, having Dates of Birth on the day of that transporter accident.

 

They both did. For one, the transport succeeded. For the other, it failed. Neither one can be considered a copy since they both had full continuity. When is a copy not a copy?

 

Then it sounds to me like neither one of them is the original and both are copies. William Thomas Riker died during that transporter accident but produced two genetically identical offspring.

 

^I wouldn't go that far. Just because a copy is not automatically a continuation doesn't mean it can never be. The situation in "Second Chances" is akin to a cell undergoing mitosis -- both resulting entities have equal claim to being the original. But nothing has died to bring that situation about.

"The Enemy Within" was the same way. Which one was the real Kirk? They both were. Also Harry Kim and Naomi Wildman in "Deadlock." It wasn't one entity being copied, but one entity being split into two, with continuity existing equally in both cases.

So really, we need to define three distinct situations:

1) A consciousness is transferred and maintains continuity; it is thus a continuation of the original.

2) A consciouness is copied without continuity; thus there is an original and a duplicate, now separate entities.

3) A consciousness undergoes a symmetrical split into two distinct consciousnesses, both with continuity; thus both have equal claim to being the original.

 

Is there continuity of consciousness during transport?

First, you are scanned, and your information storred in pattern buffers (which are, essentially, hard-drives).
Then, you are dematerialised; in the energy state, your pattern degrades aka your molecules loose information aka you die (being deep fried).
In the end, the partially disorganised molecules are rematerialised, using information from the pattern buffers to put them where they were aka a copy of you is made.

You are killed and a perfect copy (down to the quantum state via Heisenberg compensator) is made.
One can precisely identify the moment when you die (while your body is energy) and the moment when a copy is created (during rematerialisation).


In 'second chances', it is conclusively proved that the transporter can make perfect copies - only this time, it made 2 instead of 1. And, considering how difficult it is to make a perfect (as in, no errors) copy of a human, any machine that can do this was designed for this specific task.
In 'our man Bashir' all that was left of Sisko&co was information stored in the pattern buffer (and then, in all hard drives on the station); their actual molecules were scattered across half the quadrant. By using this information, copies of Sisko&co were made (there was definitely no continuity of consciousness) - and this was called a successful transport.