Yes they can. The two Rikers was the result of an accident during an attempt to cope with a high-risk beaming scenario. Here's the technobabble.
In other words, it was an accident.
I agree completely with Orphalesion, there.
The Transporter Debate (2015?)
- Thread starter JD5000
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I agree completely with Orphalesion, there.
My explanation is the transporter converts you from a physical/material state into a energy state (briefly you're a "energy being"), and this is what is moved to the destination. Barclay could see around himself during the unusually slow transport because he had working eyes the whole time.
Usually the physical - energy - physical conversion is so quick you can't barely persevere it.
That it was an accident doesn't make any difference. It still proves that the transporter makes copies.
As Laforge said but apparently without realizing what he was saying: "You were both materialized from a complete pattern"
In other words, they destroy the body while recording its pattern, send the pattern over and then recreate the body FROM the pattern, IE they can recreate as many copies from the pattern as they want. They just don't do that normally. But what's to stop the Dominion from creating one million Jemhadar soldiers from the pattern of one? NOTHING!
In conclusion: Neither Riker is the original, they are both copies recreated from the recorded pattern of the destroyed original.
Just as Archer said to the religious leader: "Our most humane way of executing people. (They don't even know they are going to die.)"
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It gets more complicated in cases when we see people moving or speaking during transport, rather than the traditional freeze pose needed for the film dissolve. Sort of difficult to define where the "death" of the subject occurs, if you can talk through the whole thing.
Let's not shift the goal posts! The question here was whether the original was killed in the process of transport. Orphalesion's point is that it is absurd that the Federation would routinely use a process for transportation that killed everybody who used it, and I completely agree.
The process involved here can duplicate at the receiving end without killing, when there is a malfunction of some kind. This is completely unlike the idea in the Outer Limits episode you presented upthread, when the original remains at the source while a duplicate is created at the destination.
No. Because the pattern itself cannot be duplicated, except by freak accidents. The pattern can be stored temporarily, and rematerialized, or it decays and is destroyed. Even Scotty couldn't store patterns indefinitely. During rematerialization, medical procedures from routine biofilters to emergency de-aging can be integrated into the process. The so-called pattern is the essence of the person.
That's an interesting idea.In a Universe where your consciousness/katra/soul can be separated from the body and returned, it is possible that the body is a duplicate but the katra is the same.
This is very interesting too. I like this a lot. I think it's probably the only thing that makes sense. Perhaps what they call the "pattern" is this energy form. Or something.My explanation is the transporter converts you from a physical/material state into a energy state (briefly you're a "energy being"), and this is what is moved to the destination. Barclay could see around himself during the unusually slow transport because he had working eyes the whole time.
Usually the physical - energy - physical conversion is so quick you can't barely persevere it.
In fact the transporter works exactly like the replicator. The difference is that the replicator doesn't do living beings, but that sounds more like an ethical limitation than anything else. In both case you materialize things from a stored pattern. Anybody who's worked in computers knows that there are only one kind of computer memories. Star trek INVENTED without any justification s the idea that some data (like the doctor) can't be copied while others can. Who among us doesn't realize that it is just unjustifiable plot convenient tripe?
Except that (freak accident or not) it has been duplicated. and we all know that in science, there are no "freak accidents", if something has happened once then it can happen a million times. Just reproduce the exact conditions that led to the "freak accident" and you'll have a new device, that'll work every time you push a button.
Specifically, it was the transporter's Heisenberg Compensator...
[yt]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sysxnM279X0[/yt]
...which, it later turned out, wouldn't be needed for quantum teleportation.
Exactly. They can both be copies on a technical level, though (which might be a kind of elephant-in-the-room for the characters concerned).
Star Trek's transporter is a fantasy construct, as closely related to tales of djinns and seven-league boots as it is to scientific theses. Since fiction can often happily contradict itself, I have little problem in seeing the transporter as a convenient means of travel, regardless of stories such as the aforementioned.
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Not sure what you mean. Scotty's process worked to store only one of two patterns for 75 years, and which of the two patterns decayed first was entirely up to chance ("I think it was only fifty percent brilliant. Franklin deserved better.").
It's pretty clear from the technobabble in "Second Chances" that although they understood what happened, the odds of duplicating the conditions were astronomical.
You're assuming that the pattern buffer is made of the same kind of discrete memory that we use in our computers today. Evidently, it's not.
Furthermore, there is a difference between something that has been created by algorithms, and something that has not. The algorithms that created the EMH are known and quantified. Those algorithms, coupled with the Doctor's memory records, comprise all the information in the automaton. In the case of a living being, on the other hand, evidently no such comprehensive enumeration has occurred, and evidently the pattern exists in a physical state that cannot be fully dissected to analyze in such a way, without destroying it. It is like a black box that cannot be inspected on the inside; the EMH on the other hand, is like a white box. Otherwise, they could make copies of people through the transporter at will.
Anyway, name one form of fictional technology in Star Trek that is not arbitrarily subject to plot limitations.
True, that's the thing about fiction, it can contradict itself and still survive and even thrive. Science can't.
I explain it with the starfish.
If you cut a starfish in two, the two halves will each regrow the missing portion, the two resulting starfish will have the exact same DNA. They are both original, neither is a copy.
The transporter operator "twins" Riker's incoming pattern, one of which reflected back down to the cavern. Like the starfish, both are original, neither is a copy.
Best I can figure, the planet's distortion field was the source of the extra material/energy that account for there not being two half Rikers upon re-materialization.
Yeah, the point is that 75 years is a hell of a lot longer than a few seconds. For something that was supposed to decay rapidly.
Just because they couldn't figure it out immediately doesn't mean that it's improbable. It just means that it needs some research. They are just not interested in doing that research as it leads to ethical problems.
For instance if there is a law that says that researches in human cloning is punishable by prison the all legal research will stop. There still will be some illegal research, you can count on it.
You're assuming that the pattern buffer is made of the same kind of discrete memory that we use in our computers today. Evidently, it's not.
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FYI, they stored the entire patterns of five people in the computer memories of DS9.
Evidently, you have yet to watch "Our Man Bashir".
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I've seen it quite a few times. And? Did I miss the part where they came away being able to duplicate people? I mean, did I miss it every single time I watched the episode?
Whatever the explanation, what's to stop anybody from making one million "originals" using the same process? Because it's unlikely? Unlikeliness is not a scientific concept. There's only possibility and impossibility. If it happened once then it's possible. If it is possible then it can happen a million times.I explain it with the starfish.
If you cut a starfish in two, the two halves will each regrow the missing portion, the two resulting starfish will have the exact same DNA. They are both original, neither is a copy.
The transporter operator "twins" Riker's incoming pattern, one of which reflected back down to the cavern. Like the starfish, both are original, neither is a copy.
Best I can figure, the planet's distortion field was the source of the extra material/energy that account for there not being two half Rikers upon re-materialization.
They stored the patterns in computer memories. Computer memories can be duplicated, everybody knows that. And don't tell me that computers from the future can't do what today's computer can, because... well, I won't say it, but figure it out for yourself. besides Kira's pattern was still in the computer ans used later by Nick Fontaine.
Call me when it's possible to store enough information to recreate a perfect copy of a living person in a finite amount of discrete conventional digital memory, and we can discuss it then. Till then, it's about how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin. You can imagine that you can copy people like copying a disk, and I can consider that implausible, also noting that it was never done in Star Trek except under freak conditions.
Sliding goal posts again. They used what was left in the holo-suit core to materialize a Kira duplicate? Oh, wait, no, they didn't! There was only enough recoverable information there to create a hologram that looked like Kira, but was really only the Anastasia Komananov program that Vic then modified to make Lola Chrystal by, among other things, getting rid of the Russian accent. Not Kira.
That's an interesting point, and it suggests that intentionally duplicating people with a transporter can't be done for some reason ... since if it were possible, the Dominion would certainly do it.
What are your conclusions when you encounter a contradiction?
