The Transporter Debate (2015?)

[Kobayshi Maru]

The point is that they don't know.

Montgomery Scott doesn't know?
Geordi LaForge doesn't know?
Miles O'Brien doesn't know?

This is the part of supposition that would make no sense. These men (and other in the Federation) are talented experts in the field of engineering, how could they not be aware of something so basic about how the transporters work?

It isn't a matter of the people who when through the process not being aware that they are a exact copy, it is the the engineers who understand the underlying theory not knowing that the end result is a copy.

How would that be possible?

)

How would they know? They know how to take the thing apart and then put it back together but that doesn't mean that they have special insights into the uniqueness of an individual or how it is affected by the transporter. It would be like asking the mechanics that repair your vehicle how to cure car sickness, if you see what I mean.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The problem with the transporter is that there is a period of time during which you don't exist as a living being but as computer data. In effect, you are as dead as a fictional character. The transporter then reconstructs you, using that data as a blueprint. That's why I seriously doubt that the person reconstructed is the same one as that, that was disintegrated. That person may be fooled into believing that, but that doesn't change anything.

Are we talking about whether in Star Trek they are the same person or, if a transporter existed in real life, they would be the same person? Inside the narrative of Star Trek it is pretty clear they are the same person.

Unless you believe in the existence of a soul which controls your conscious experience that is separate from the body, then wouldn't the perception of continuity be real continuity, and the question of whether it's the 'Same person' a semantic one? Technically two molecularly identical versions of someone are more the 'Same person' than you are the same person you were when you were six.

 

[Mytran]

I suppose it depends on whether the machine is known to disintegrate and dump the remains of a person (and reproduce it from some secondary matter elsewhere) or else to simply move that person across space (albeit in a scifi energetic manner).

One is kill&copy, the other is a manner of transportation.

 

[JD5000]

The 'copy' theory loses weight with me when considering transport to a site that doesn't have another transporter - e.g. transporting to the surface of an uninhabited planet or something. There's nothing at the site to recreate the matter, and if I think of the matter being recreated from the environment that's being transported to, that doesn't hold water if the environment doesn't have every single material that makes up a humanoid body, never minding that different species may be made up of different elements - iron in Human blood, copper in Romulan/Vulcan blood: What if there isn't any iron or copper present?

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

The 'copy' theory loses weight with me when considering transport to a site that doesn't have another transporter - e.g. transporting to the surface of an uninhabited planet or something. There's nothing at the site to recreate the matter, and if I think of the matter being recreated from the environment that's being transported to, that doesn't hold water if the environment doesn't have every single material that makes up a humanoid body, never minding that different species may be made up of different elements - iron in Human blood, copper in Romulan/Vulcan blood: What if there isn't any iron or copper present?

The copy theory is alive and kicking though when you end up with two Rikers that were made from ONE original pattern. One of them has to be a copy fooling himself into believing that he's existed before his (re)materialization. The question is then,, what if they were both copies and the original was gone?

 

[Mytran]

That was a rare situation based on a unique set of circumstances

LAFORGE: Apparently there was a massive energy surge in the distortion field around the planet just at the moment you tried to beam out.
...
RIKER: How was the second pattern able to maintained its integrity?
LAFORGE: The containment beam must have had the exact same phase differential as the distortion field.

Seriously, what are the chance of that happening again?

 

[JD5000]

I accept it, but that's the question I've always had about 'Second Chances' - where did the additional matter actually come from? It's gotta come from somewhere, unless you believe in magic. Or have an alternative theory to the Big Bang.

I know it's a chicken-or-egg kinda question and one that science can't yet definitively answer, but I admit it keeps me up at night sometimes.

 

[Mytran]

Matter can be converted into energy and vice versa. It's possible that (under these unusual, emergency conditions) extra energy was continually pumped into the Transporter system until the sequence was considered complete. Although the amount of energy required to produce a person sized object is enormous, it's nothing that the ship's Warp Engines couldn't handle under normal operations.

I suppose it's possible therefore that the Transporter CAN be used as a copying machine (so long as the original person is standing in the chamber). However, you would need an enormous amount of energy (not readily available outside of a starship) and I would imagine that the practise is strictly banned under ethical grounds, much like cloning.

Something similar must have happened with the two Kirks in The Enemy Within, albeit with an extra level of weirdness in the brain.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

That was a rare situation based on a unique set of circumstances

LAFORGE: Apparently there was a massive energy surge in the distortion field around the planet just at the moment you tried to beam out.
...
RIKER: How was the second pattern able to maintained its integrity?
LAFORGE: The containment beam must have had the exact same phase differential as the distortion field.

Seriously, what are the chance of that happening again?

Seriously, that's how science works. By turning accidents into methods and techniques. Vulcanization that turned fragile rubber into the material that tires are made of, was an accident, something that may not have happened in a long time. Fortunately the person who witnessed the accident understood what it meant.

 

[Mytran]

Fair enough, but I was implying that the chances of it happening again were the rarity here, not the ability of a decent scientific mind to reproduce the circumstances artificially.

As I said in my following post, the Transporter (with sufficient resources and intent) could be used as a duplicating machine but I doubt such usage would be sanctioned anywhere in the Federation any more than cloning is (Up The Long Ladder), even though the technology to do so presumably exists.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I think it's a given that if the technology to duplicate people isn't in use in the Star Trek universe, then duplicating the conditions of the accidents that have duplicated people simply isn't practical for some technobabbly reason. Because, if it were practical, then some villainous power would have done it. Unlike in Star Wars, you wouldn't have to wait ten years for your clone army. You could just double-click. Your home planet would go under emergency lock-down while the planet's transporter power is diverted to your secret base and a million perfect copies of your greatest warrior are beamed into existence. That's just too good to be true. Ergo, it's not even technically possible, because otherwise it would have happened.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

I think it's a given that if the technology to duplicate people isn't in use in the Star Trek universe, then duplicating the conditions of the accidents that have duplicated people simply isn't practical for some technobabbly reason. Because, if it were practical, then some villainous power would have done it. Unlike in Star Wars, you wouldn't have to wait ten years for your clone army. You could just double-click. Your home planet would go under emergency lock-down while the planet's transporter power is diverted to your secret base and a million perfect copies of your greatest warrior are beamed into existence. That's just too good to be true. Ergo, it's not even technically possible, because otherwise it would have happened.

It's the same reasoning that some people use to prove that long range space travel is impossible/impractical.

The short version of that reasoning being that if space travel was practical then alien cultures would have already invaded us.