Using a transporter- Would you still be "you"?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

wormhole-based tech is simply a short-cut corridor between two points in space-time, without dematerialization.

They should have made the transporter work that way as well...

 

[Jedman67]

A transported Riker is no more the original than a replicated cup of tea, earl grey, hot. He has consciousness, grows a beard and gets fat, so for all intents and purposes, he's Riker, and the only Riker his crewmates will know until they find the copy by accident. Okay, bad example. But the original is long gone. Probably redistributed into cups of tea or plants on the holodeck.

"Tea; Earl Riker; hot."
For all the discussion of whether or not your the same person, there was an interesting novel of a somewhat dystopian future. One of the characters had died in the 1980's or 90's and had his brain frozen for cryonic preservation. He had been resurrected in the future and had a body cloned. In that novel, characters can "teleport" by having their consciousness 'beamed' to the destination and 'downloaded' into a rental body. I can't recall the name of the book, and 5 minutes of googling hasn't helped either.

 

[Tracy Trek]

Well...I stand corrected, fair 'nuff. Not surprising - it's been so long since I watched the show or movie.

It does appear as if they are basically high-powered transporters, but generate small wormholes to transmit the data in the Stargate universe. It's probably a more efficient use of energy to maintain a small stable wormhole between two points to transmit a data stream than the larger size of one required to move an entire non-demolecularized human.

To heavily oversimplify, it sounds like it's the difference between compressed digital signal vs. uncompressed analog signal, using both matter/energy manipulation and Einstein/Rosen theory as a travel medium. Definitely better than Trek transporters in the matter of ability and efficiency, but reopens the debate over what happens to the consciousness after the containing body has been torn apart at the molecular level.

I wonder if it would hurt in real life...

I think you are right about the small wormhole, again going back to the original Stargate movie. After the event horizon vortex explodes from the center, it gets sucked back in and stretches back out the other side, getting smaller and smaller. In the series, they just showed it getting sucked back into the gate. Maybe due to budgetary reasons for special effects.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

there was an interesting novel of a somewhat dystopian future. One of the characters had died in the 1980's or 90's and had his brain frozen for cryonic preservation. He had been resurrected in the future and had a body cloned. In that novel, characters can "teleport" by having their consciousness 'beamed' to the destination and 'downloaded' into a rental body. I can't recall the name of the book, and 5 minutes of googling hasn't helped either.

There's a movie like that, it's called Xchange.

 

[Makarov]

Trek has fantasy teleportation where your consciousness remains intact during the journey judging by Realm of Fear, though I don't see why since your brain is disassembled. In my opinion though, yep you'd be dead. It's not like sleeping and waking since your consciousness is there somewhere in the back of your brain. Your entire self is just gone.

Even all that aside, I'd also not step on the transporter because of the lack of reaction after the transporter deaths in the Motion Picture. Up there with the worst deaths to experience in Trek and they only get a line or two then everyone moves on.

 

[Tracy Trek]

Trek has fantasy teleportation where your consciousness remains intact during the journey judging by Realm of Fear, though I don't see why since your brain is disassembled. In my opinion though, yep you'd be dead. It's not like sleeping and waking since your consciousness is there somewhere in the back of your brain. Your entire self is just gone.

Even all that aside, I'd also not step on the transporter because of the lack of reaction after the transporter deaths in the Motion Picture. Up there with the worst deaths to experience in Trek and they only get a line or two then everyone moves on.

It makes you wonder exactly what happened to them (their bodies). When the ground crew reported back they said something like, "What we got back didn't live long, thankfully".

 

[Willow]

Even all that aside, I'd also not step on the transporter because of the lack of reaction after the transporter deaths in the Motion Picture. Up there with the worst deaths to experience in Trek and they only get a line or two then everyone moves on.

True enough! I remember being creeped out at the transporter death. But then, that would be in keeping with tradition with TOS, except that the "uncelebrated dead" is a Vulcan IIRC, and not a red shirt.

 

[Chaos Descending]

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

 

[Jedman67]

there was an interesting novel of a somewhat dystopian future. One of the characters had died in the 1980's or 90's and had his brain frozen for cryonic preservation. He had been resurrected in the future and had a body cloned. In that novel, characters can "teleport" by having their consciousness 'beamed' to the destination and 'downloaded' into a rental body. I can't recall the name of the book, and 5 minutes of googling hasn't helped either.

There's a movie like that, it's called Xchange.

Not quite. In the book it was somewhat like the human-form replicators of stargate, in that the 'bodies' were easily replaceable. Lets say you have teleporters that can only transport humans, but not their clothing. So you beam anywhere, you're stark naked. But in order to accommodate the masses of people who need to teleport all over the place and most certainly do not want to spend the day in the nude, teleport operators rent clothing to their customers when they arrive. Except replace clothing with bodies.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There's a movie like that, it's called Xchange.

Not quite. In the book it was somewhat like the human-form replicators of stargate, in that the 'bodies' were easily replaceable. Lets say you have teleporters that can only transport humans, but not their clothing. So you beam anywhere, you're stark naked. But in order to accommodate the masses of people who need to teleport all over the place and most certainly do not want to spend the day in the nude, teleport operators rent clothing to their customers when they arrive. Except replace clothing with bodies.

Actually that is how it works in the movie. With the added twist that there are also cloned bodies with limited lifespans which are used for difficult or dangerous work. But it also has normal people 'renting' themselves for transport as well.