Using a transporter- Would you still be "you"?
- Thread starter AdmiralBruno
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How about Kirk in The Enemy Within?
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan... individuals are able to have an uninterrupted conversation while being transported.
And in-universe, this question was undoubtedly already debated and settled a long time ago by eminent scholars, philosophers, etc., since nobody ever brings this up anymore. End of discussion.
Kor
I think Mr. Laser Beam has it right. We're constantly dying as our matter is always changing. Our consciousness too ceases for multiple periods every night as our minds shut down to sleep - we dream in between dips into utter oblivion.
If the transporter breaks us apart and physically moves and rebuilds us, we're physically the same as we were before, and our consciousness is interrupted for less time than it is when we're asleep. I think we're being silly or just wrong trying to hold onto outmoded concepts of how things actually work.
There is no continuity of the "soul" always there validating our existence. And hell, if you believe in one, believe it travels with the matter stream. Or if as in other sci-fi, copies of you are made in the transport process, believe that the soul is constantly with you wherever you are, regardless what physical molecules you're made of. And if there were an accident and there are multiple copies of you, have faith that your soul is always yours and your exact copy's is different from yours because the soul is about magic, not molecules and consciousness.
The copy will have to cope with the fact that their soul just came down from heaven just then regardless the memories they had of before, and you will have to cope with the fact that though you're the original, there is now a copy of you and you shouldn't freak out. Neither of you should but rather learn in adulthood to get over it as identical twins do growing up and develop along their own lines.
Finally, note the language we use. We don't say that we are our soul but that we have a soul. Again it has to do with our insecurities and a need for validating our existence (because an omnipotent master of the universe has given us an immortal indestructible and personally identifiable magical power) more than it does understanding the actual nature of it (mentioned in the first two paragraphs).
If the transporter breaks us apart and physically moves and rebuilds us, we're physically the same as we were before, and our consciousness is interrupted for less time than it is when we're asleep. I think we're being silly or just wrong trying to hold onto outmoded concepts of how things actually work.
There is no continuity of the "soul" always there validating our existence. And hell, if you believe in one, believe it travels with the matter stream. Or if as in other sci-fi, copies of you are made in the transport process, believe that the soul is constantly with you wherever you are, regardless what physical molecules you're made of. And if there were an accident and there are multiple copies of you, have faith that your soul is always yours and your exact copy's is different from yours because the soul is about magic, not molecules and consciousness.
The copy will have to cope with the fact that their soul just came down from heaven just then regardless the memories they had of before, and you will have to cope with the fact that though you're the original, there is now a copy of you and you shouldn't freak out. Neither of you should but rather learn in adulthood to get over it as identical twins do growing up and develop along their own lines.
Finally, note the language we use. We don't say that we are our soul but that we have a soul. Again it has to do with our insecurities and a need for validating our existence (because an omnipotent master of the universe has given us an immortal indestructible and personally identifiable magical power) more than it does understanding the actual nature of it (mentioned in the first two paragraphs).
If technology to build a functioning transporter were ever to exist, I think it might be damn near impossible to definitively prove what happens to the conscious mind in a transporter stream. Yes, we could take a camera along for the ride, but that's clearly not the same thing. Even if the person who came out the other end "feels fine", we don't really know with absolute certainty that it's really the same person or not.
It does bring up the interesting question if we are nothing more than the sum of our experiences or is there something more there that is unquantifiable? My take? Our bodies are like radio receivers, each operating on a certain frequency at which our souls resonate. If the body were destroyed and copied for later reassembly, the soul would be able to easily re-attach to the reconstructed body, as it would operate at the exact same frequency as the original. If this were the case, it's all good!
This could also explain various incidents of alleged reincarnation accounts, where someone's body would happen to operate at the precise same frequency as one who came before, allowing the soul to become re-attached to a new person and have all the old person's memories. The Will & Thomas Riker problem certainly doesn't track with that, though. They're two individual men with two different personalities & agendas that have developed in isolation from each other.
Interesting questions also arise regarding "genetic memory", which is likely a different kind of thing altogether.
All this gets very deeply into the dubious studies of Noetics. There are a lot of people studying it, but I think very little, if anything, of substance has been substantiated. Dan Brown's 2009 book "The Lost Symbol" delved into it quite a bit and discussed the experiments that determined that there is a 3-7 gram difference in a body's weight at the precise time of death. Many believe it's a quantifiable measure of the soul leaving the body. Who knows?
It does bring up the interesting question if we are nothing more than the sum of our experiences or is there something more there that is unquantifiable? My take? Our bodies are like radio receivers, each operating on a certain frequency at which our souls resonate. If the body were destroyed and copied for later reassembly, the soul would be able to easily re-attach to the reconstructed body, as it would operate at the exact same frequency as the original. If this were the case, it's all good!
This could also explain various incidents of alleged reincarnation accounts, where someone's body would happen to operate at the precise same frequency as one who came before, allowing the soul to become re-attached to a new person and have all the old person's memories. The Will & Thomas Riker problem certainly doesn't track with that, though. They're two individual men with two different personalities & agendas that have developed in isolation from each other.
Interesting questions also arise regarding "genetic memory", which is likely a different kind of thing altogether.
All this gets very deeply into the dubious studies of Noetics. There are a lot of people studying it, but I think very little, if anything, of substance has been substantiated. Dan Brown's 2009 book "The Lost Symbol" delved into it quite a bit and discussed the experiments that determined that there is a 3-7 gram difference in a body's weight at the precise time of death. Many believe it's a quantifiable measure of the soul leaving the body. Who knows?
The way I see it, in classic Trek, the transporter magically turned a person into energy, sent the energy somewhere where it re-materialized itself. Kirk was still Kirk because he was made of Kirk. This debate was at the heart of Spock Must Die, but it seemed rather silly then being a philosophical much ado.
When TNG came back, it filled half its scripts with techno babble and tried to explain how all the technology worked. The transporter, the replicator, the holodeck all related technologies. Suddenly your characters were broken down into a pattern in a buffer and transmitted as a data stream and you had to use Heisenberg compensators because it's impossible to know where a given particle is when it's broken down and still impossible to know where and how to put it back in the right place and... and, um, sorry, they're copies. 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. What fascinates me about TNG, is that on some level I imagine each and every character understands this but probably doesn't give a shit. Sort of like that episode of Ghost in the Shell where Pazu's jilted lover puts her brain into a copy of his body and begins to live his life exactly. In the end, the two fight, one dies, and the team accepts the survivor as Pazu at face value not really caring if he's their teammate or his jilted girlfriend.
When TNG came back, it filled half its scripts with techno babble and tried to explain how all the technology worked. The transporter, the replicator, the holodeck all related technologies. Suddenly your characters were broken down into a pattern in a buffer and transmitted as a data stream and you had to use Heisenberg compensators because it's impossible to know where a given particle is when it's broken down and still impossible to know where and how to put it back in the right place and... and, um, sorry, they're copies. 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. What fascinates me about TNG, is that on some level I imagine each and every character understands this but probably doesn't give a shit. Sort of like that episode of Ghost in the Shell where Pazu's jilted lover puts her brain into a copy of his body and begins to live his life exactly. In the end, the two fight, one dies, and the team accepts the survivor as Pazu at face value not really caring if he's their teammate or his jilted girlfriend.
IIRC Scotty refused to ever use a transporter. :P
No, McCoy was the one who sometimes complained about the transporter. But he still used it.
Kor
Some TOS person on TNG said they never used the transporter...
That would be Admiral McCoy from "Encounter at Farpoint".
Encounter at Farpoint said:
Wouldn't he ever beam down on away missions?
Yes. But by the time he's an Admiral, he can choose his mode of transit.
I think Dr. Pulaski also had an aversion to using the transporter.
Like the old saw about the irrresistable force meeting the immovable object, this is strictly a matter of definition. If, for instance, you define as "you" any entity that remembers your memories, thinks your thoughts, and feels your feelings, than a transported duplicate is "you". (Well, as much you as you are, at any rate.) If, on the other hand, you define "you" as the you you are, accept no substitutes, then your answer may differ.
If you can find it Robert Ettinger's "The Prospect of Immortality" constructed thought experiments along these lines that made "Spock Must Die" look like Mother Goose.
If you can find it Robert Ettinger's "The Prospect of Immortality" constructed thought experiments along these lines that made "Spock Must Die" look like Mother Goose.
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True, per "Unnatural Selection." Alicia Travers in "Storm Front" (ENT) was likewise averse.
I think the error is in thinking that we are ourselves separate from what we think and feel. We do not feel our matter being us any more than we notice when the food we've even becomes replacement cells in our bodies.
The only real concern with a transporter is in the question if anything is lost from one point to another. Nothing divine (again, the soul is not bound by geography) but physical or mental. Actually, I can see this being a cause for the same people who distrust GMOs or vaccines, distrusting what tests have proven out of perpetual paranoia for what they might have missed.
Hell, what are the effects of constantly warping through space or having subspace fields constantly traveling through you? If cell phones cause cancer, what might communicators do?
My concern is would my consciousness.... me, would I still exist? Or not.... because if that question can't be answered then yah... I'll stick to the shuttles tyvm
Why wouldn't you exist? Really
At what point do characters post-transport not seam like they're anything but the same being?
Making things muddier, how do you know you're not a copy of yourself when you wake up in the morning?
Same with people in comas. Why shouldn't they think when they wake up fifteen years later they aren't like Riker in "Future Imperfect" and must find a way back?
Doesn't everyone at one point or another in life wonder if they're not actually in an elaborate alien lab or computer simulation or (nightmarishly, when you think about it) if life isn't actually just a big test God set up to see if you're worthy of happiness in the True World Hereafter? It's the stuff of solipsistic nightmares.
Ok, I'm digressing, but I wonder if there is any actual merit to fearing even the idea of a second copy of you being made and the original being fried, or if it's people not understanding how inconsistent consciousness actually is.
But it wouldn't be impossible to determine if the original physical form was being delivered, or if the original was knowing being destroyed with a copy being created to the destination.
No, in Spock Must Die the intent was that Spock would be scan, a deliberate copy would be sent to a distant planet, investigate the situation, return to the transporter chamber to report, and then (iirc) purposely be destroyed.
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