When a person is beamed up it's not the same person

[Luther Sloan]

T'Girl
The pattern buffers overload aka they can only store the large volume of information needed to transport a single person for a few seconds/minutes before the information looses coherence, being lost. See DS9: Our man Bashir
Permanently storing the large volume of information needed to exactly 'replicate' thousands of compunds is not feasible with federation technology.

Proto Avatar:

Yes. This is common Trek knowledge that a transporter can only hold a pattern for so long under normal conditions (with the exception of Relics and Day of the Dove). She knows this fact. The point she was trying to make is that the transporter even with it's temporary immense data storage capabilities is not a replicator. I mean, why doesn't the replicator just replicate real seeds for a nearby garden instead of replicated synthesized veggies? Surely, one little seed is not going to take up all that much space in the data storage as a live animal or human being. The thing is that we don't see any hint that the replicators have made any attempt at being more advanced than they are under any circumstance. I mean, we know that there is not enough storage on a starship or a space station to hold a handful of people. But wouldn't the Federation have some type of server farm the size of large city to hold such storage on some planet somewhere? We already know it is possible to hold a pattern in the buffer because Scotty had done it. Why wouldn't the Federation immediately start digitizing the patterns of cows to duplicate at a moments notice at one of these large holding facilities somewhere? Well, it's because they would only get a return of one cow per one cow deposited. They cannot duplicate the cow's pattern because they cannot figure out how to duplicate the freak conditions like they did in "Second Chances". Nor would the Federation want to. It would open up a giant can of moral issues for their perfect little club of allied aliens.

Anyways, the point is that the replicator is a piece of technology that is not capable of replicating living matter. Not just because of the data storage capacity problem. But because the replicator cannot replicate living matter. The only replicator that was able to replicate living matter was from the alien abductors in Allegiance. But that was their technology. Not the Federations.

So your theory that the transporter is like a replicator in the fact that it can create living matter is beyond the Federation's capabilities. The transporter doesn't replicate or create a new copy from a digital pattern; the transporter is a phasing machine that transforms a living person into energy and then converts it back into it's original state again (as if it was a car ride). And the physical body and it's kinetic energy transforms into never really dies because it continues on seamlessly (or uninterrupted) as a living energy being or state.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Replicator

You know, T'Girl, our bodies are made up of water, carbon and a few other cheap elements. What makes us special is the information embedded in these elements - that's what makes us ALIVE.

Well, there are living energy beings that exist within Star Trek. Just because these type of aliens are made out of energy doesn't mean they are no longer alive by your definition. That is the same thing that happens to a person in the transporter. A person gets transformed into a living energy being or state and then gets converted back to his original form. Sure it may not make scientific sense. Then again there are a lot of things within Star Trek that don't make sense (scientifically). But they exist within the show none the less.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Noncorporeal_being

However, maybe your right. Perhaps you do die when you get turned into an energy like state.

Then again...

Star Trek makes clear that the body is 'dematerialised' and then, in order to 'materialise' the copy, you need the information from the 'pattern buffers'. Once the body 'dematerialises', it looses this information aka DIES - that's why one needs 'pattern buffers' to retain the information in the first place.

Yes, it is true. If you remain in this energy state for too long, your bodily energy existence (i.e. pattern) will degrade under normal circumstances. Think of a person's pattern in the transporter pattern buffer as a way of making a person a temporary energy being before he is phased (re-materialized) back into his original form again.

I mean, it's not a coincidence there are two components used in the transporter that have the word phase in it.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Phase_transition_coil

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Phase_discriminator

Dematerialising by transporter is equivalent to dematerialising by phaser - it kills you, reducing your body to a few random atoms/particles. Afterwards, at the 'beam down' site, a copy is constructed - it could be from new atoms/particles or the dematrialised atoms/particles. This doesn't change the fact that the original is dead - it was vaporized on the transporter pad."

I believe you cannot kill the essence of a person. There is going to be a soul and or a spirit body connected to the living energy or spark within the transporter buffer for it's eventual re-materialization back into physical form.

Just like the spark of a little energy ball impregnated Troi and became a child. Just like that dude from Transfigurations transformed from a human body and into an energy form. The transporter creates an energy state of a person in the buffer. However, seeing the transporter process is artificial and imperfect, a person (and his kinetic energy) can only exist or continue to stay alive for as long as the the energy spark can retain it's original molecular instructions (from the buffer) for re-materialization.

 

[Pauln6]

If the atoms / particles were really dead or gone during transport: Then we wouldn't see Emory Erickson's son (from Daedalus) existing in some type of weird other worldly energy state. In fact, this episode leans more in favor of the transporter being a unit that seamlessly phases you into an energy type existence rather than killing and copying you. In other words, I believe you cannot kill the essence of a person. There is going to be a soul and or a spirit body connected to the living energy for it's eventual re-materialization back into physical form.

And this was an episode that focused on the origin of the transporter!

I think it was a type of experimental longer range subspace transporter though so not quite the same as the standard model. Even so, it doesn't really make sense.

The principle problem is that energy beings exist in that state because that is how they have evolved. Human brain activity functions due to bio-electric energy but we are physical beings; dna and memories are physical so you need matter and energy to exist as the individual person that you are - you cannot just 'convert' to energy without destroying the physical properties (i.e. personality). Obviously wibbly wobbly science can rule that dna can exist somehow in a matrix of energy so you can create some kind of energy copy but you still run into this philosphical dilemma as to whether artificial copies (such as memory patterns copied into a robot) are really the original at all, or just an approximation of what the original 'effects' were. It doesn't really add anything to the debate.

Another example is that if you break down the molecular bonds of a human you can eventually end up with a human who is nothing more than hydrogen atoms (didn't the Kalandans uses a similar process to reduce some crew into a special chemical lattice?) but clearly it isn't a person any more. You can catalogue the original physical properties to recreate them when reconstructing the person i.e. creating an identical copy, which is how the process has effectively been described with the exception of this romantic notion that the original wasn't destroyed (option 3).

I'm willing to get on board with the notion that the matter can be phased intact into an alternate dimension so that it is only represented in this (our) dimension as the displaced energy needed to maintain the link and that the pattern buffer is only needed to add back in any information that could be lost while in the phased state in spite of the anular confinement beam. I think this is the only way that you can argue that the original isn't destroyed without resorting to the unconvincing arguments about the soul merrily and intentionally joining in the fun (which even the 24th century scientists haven't proven) and new souls springing up if a copy is created but that is nothing like how the system has ever been described (option 2 above).

On the other hand, we have stasis units that can halt a person's physical processes without 'killing' them i.e. without being in a position to revive them but clearly they aren't alive in any traditional sense. Converting a person to energy and back could be akin to this process, just a step more extreme.

'Death' and reconstruction is the best explanation. Reg's intra-transport shenanigans in Realm of Fear support the dimensional phase argument up to a point with the exception that you aren't being taken apart molecule by molecule as described in the same episode. It's a bit of a mess really.

I think for my RPG I'm going to stitch it altogether myself to make more sense and edit out the stuff that is self-contradictory.

 

[Luther Sloan]

Well, we know in Realm of Fear that you can be suspended in a half phased state (of being both matter and energy) at the point right before you start to lose molecular cohesion. We also learn that you get taken apart molecule by molecule. In addition we pick up on the fact that the other patterns in the buffer were also both half matter and half energy, too.

So maybe this half phased matter and half phased energy thing mentioned by 3D Man has some merit to it.

And the part where you get taken apart molecule by molecule or the moment where you start to lose molecular cohesion is a more intense level or phase of the transporter process that leaves you more phased energy than phased matter (but your still somehow both).

As for the energy being thing. Electro-energy does run through out our body. So it is not inconceivable that we may broken down or exist in an energy like state when we die. Anyways, I suppose that's the mysterious part of the transporter we won't know until we actually test the afterlife for ourselves someday.

Anyways, the funny things is that we wouldn't be having this discussion if the transporter was biological and it used living dimensional ecto-plasm instead of energy for it's matter stream and your pattern was saved as a formless mass like collection of living cells (instead of energy). Because essentially you would be living on as a collection of cells within that short amount of time within the matter stream.

 

[Pauln6]

Well, we know in Realm of Fear that you can be suspended in a half phased state (of being both matter and energy) at the point right before you start to lose molecular cohesion. We also learn that you get taken apart molecule by molecule. In addition we pick up on the fact that the other patterns in the buffer were also both half matter and half energy, too.

So maybe this half phased matter and half phased energy thing mentioned by 3D Man is true.

And the part where you get taken apart molecule by molecule or the moment where you start to lose molecular cohesion is a more intense level or phase of the transporter process that leaves you more phased energy than phased matter (but your still somehow both).

As for the energy being thing. Electro-energy does run through out our body. So it is not inconceivable that we may broken down or exist in an energy like state when we die. Anyways, I suppose that's the mysterious part of the transporter we won't know until we actually test the afterlife for ourselves someday.

The issue isn't whether a person can remain alive in an energy state as much as how much of a person can remain alive in an energy state? Breaking down matter destroys dna. In fairness to trek, at the time it was being written they had no idea how much of our personalities is linked to our dna (and nor do we yet we just know of significant personaility commonalities in monozygotal twins compared to fraternal twins and a few studies on depression, moods, and addiction) so it's not surprising that they didn't take this into account.

 

[Luther Sloan]

The issue isn't whether a person can remain alive in an energy state as much as how much of a person can remain alive in an energy state?

Pauln6:

Well, seeing there is no evidence to suggest that a person is not living as 100% of himself/herself as energy during the matter stream transfer I guess it is up to your interpretation.

But from my side of the fence (if my theory is true): how much of a person remains alive in the energy state? Well, I would imagine that would be the entire person (including that person's mind and body), seeing he comes out on the other side just fine if that person (and the surrounding kinetic energy) does indeed become living energy for the re-materialization.

However, despite the inherit flaws within the question that keeps getting raised about the transporter's actual function. There are 5 MAJOR THINGS that imply that the transporter is more a car ride that phases you into living energy than a copy machine.

1. The transporter has been proved that it is NOT a copy machine by Emory Erickson (the creator of the transporter).

2. The transporter has been used for over 200 years by countless of civilizations within the Alpha Quadrant and there has been no debate or even a rumor that the transporter is a device that kills your original (or previous version) and then makes a copy (since the creator had wiped away any doubts about it's use).

3. Fictional Time Travel proves that two originals (or identical versions of a person) can occupy the same space time and not be a copy of one another.

4. Beings that have an awareness of human emotions or have an evolved higher perception have not voiced any concern over the use of the transporter. In other words, Guinan, or Betazoids never sensed anyone dying during transport. The Q never said anything to humans about it. The Prophets treated Sisko like he was the one and only Emissary (and not as if he was some weird copy).

5. Deep Space Nine's "Our Man Bashir" we learn that the mind can exist during transport. This was not an incident where the crew was in some type of half material and half energy like state during transport like Reg, or Emory's son. The patterns of the DS9 crew needed to be saved into computer storage as it's raw energy state. And in this episode: the minds of the DS9 crew had gotten transfered to the Holodeck even though you need a fully formed physical brain in order to have a mind. In other words: this suggests that there is a suspended sense of consciousness during the energy state or a person's transporter pattern stored in the transporter buffer or a computer.

 

[SpyOne]

A matter stream is a form of energy.

Only in that matter is a form of energy, in which case there is no conversion since we are all made out of energy (in the form of matter) to begin with.

Nice try, but no cigar.

Once again, there is indeed a conversion that takes place when a person is transported because of the very nature of being "beamed" from one place to another. When they step onto a transporter pad, their bodies are dematerialized and then rematerialized elsewhere. That is where the conversion from a solid object to a form of energy (and back again) takes place.

Heck, it's even been said onscreen more than once that a transporter is a matter/energy conversion device.

Yes, and contradicted more often than that.

Examples please.

Just search the transcripts for the phrase "matter stream". A matter stream is a stream of matter, therefore matter. Not energy.
The "solid object" is not being converted to energy, just broken down into sub-atomic components and then transmitted as a "stream" to a distant location where they are re-assembled exactly as-was.
The only time I can recall the transported being used to transmit energy was Encounter At Farpoint.
Similarly, in Realm Of Fear it appeared that the transporter worked by passing through some alternate dimension, allowing Reg Barclay to rescue someone who had been lost in transport days ago by grabbing them as he went by.
Both are anomalies that should be disregarded. Or as Gene would have put it, both were points where a fact was not allowed to ruin a good story.

The TNG Tech Manual does use the word "dematerialize", but then makes it clear that it is using it inaccurately, to describe the process where the subject is transformed into "a subatomically debonded matter stream" which is then sent out within an "annular confinement beam" to the destination.

I feel the need to point out that you have cited no examples of your position. Can you cite episodes other than Encounter At Farpoint where it is described as a matter-to-energy conversion?

 

[SpyOne]

I weigh about 125 pounds, if the transporter re-materializes double T'Girls, does each weigh in at 62½ pounds? And if both T'Girls are full weigh, where does the extra mass come from?

the transporter adds new material to make up for some lost

but during Kirk's era, where would that extra mass come from? You would seem to be suggesting that the majority of the second "evil" Kirk was created by the transporter out of whole cloth. Replicator technology is years in the future. Did the TOS era transporter beam bio-mass out of the Enterprise's food stocks, the bins of material used by the ship's fabricators (again, no replicators), and use this to "build" a second Kirk in the pattern buffer? The new material that is added comes from where?

Well, there was a replicator in The Undiscovered Country.
I imagine the "food slot"s store food in a similar way. Ship's stores, if you will.
I mean, we all agree it had to come from somewhere.

 

[SpyOne]

What makes you think that -both- Rikers weren't copies?

The mere fact that they were 2 Rikers instead of 1 PROVES that the transporter makes copies of what it 'beams', that it is designed to do exactly this.
Making copies of a human being is exceedigly difficult - if the transporter is not designed specifically for this, it shouldn't be able to do it; at most, it would only manage to create failed genetic experiments, not perfect copies.

And the fact that, normally, only 1 person steps out of the transporter proves that 1 of the two beings that exist during transport is MURDERED.
I'm assuming that only one copy is created - mostly because making more seems redundant, unnecessary for transport.

See my above comments: the transported normally has to replace a wee bit of mass that gets lost during transport. It can, on occasion, replace larger amounts. Replacing very large amounts is almost always fatal to the subject.
Due to unique conditions not yet fully understood, on one occasion the transporter successfully replaced roughly 50% of the subject and had the subject survive. It happens that it actually did it twice: once to the Will Riker who beamed up to the ship, and once to the Will Riker who's matter stream reflected off the atmosphere and rematerialized on the planet.

 

[SpyOne]

Similarly, if I break into your house in the dead of night in order to harm you or take your possessions, you can kill me without warning (coldblood). And it would be completely legal and moral in the eyes of society.

Not to sideline the discussion even further, but not every society makes that legal. In many, you must feel that the thief threatens your life, AND that escape is impossible or significantly risky. In those societies, you MUST flee your home if you can.
Some of those societies are even members of the United States.

 

[Pauln6]

Just search the transcripts for the phrase "matter stream". A matter stream is a stream of matter, therefore matter. Not energy.
The "solid object" is not being converted to energy, just broken down into sub-atomic components and then transmitted as a "stream" to a distant location where they are re-assembled exactly as-was.
The only time I can recall the transported being used to transmit energy was Encounter At Farpoint.
Similarly, in Realm Of Fear it appeared that the transporter worked by passing through some alternate dimension, allowing Reg Barclay to rescue someone who had been lost in transport days ago by grabbing them as he went by.
Both are anomalies that should be disregarded. Or as Gene would have put it, both were points where a fact was not allowed to ruin a good story.

The TNG Tech Manual does use the word "dematerialize", but then makes it clear that it is using it inaccurately, to describe the process where the subject is transformed into "a subatomically debonded matter stream" which is then sent out within an "annular confinement beam" to the destination.

I feel the need to point out that you have cited no examples of your position. Can you cite episodes other than Encounter At Farpoint where it is described as a matter-to-energy conversion?

I wondered about the term 'matter' as well and I think that this is an appealing interpretation. If it's matter, the DNA and memories can be preserved in the soup. In this case it is not much different to the stasis argument, where the person is practically dead but can be revived at the other end. It can also explain why Janice ended up with a soupy mess on the transporter pad in TMP.

I also think Realm of Fear is largely apocryphal.

 

[Mytran]

I feel the need to point out that you have cited no examples of your position. Can you cite episodes other than Encounter At Farpoint where it is described as a matter-to-energy conversion?

I realise that TOS has been mostly ignored for the purpose of this debate, but Kirk does explicitly say so in The Savage Curtain:

LINCOLN: A most interesting way to come aboard, Captain. What was the device used?
KIRK: An energy-matter scrambler, sir. The molecules in your body are converted into energy, then beamed into this chamber and reconverted back into their original pattern.
LINCOLN: Well, since I'm obviously here, and quite whole, whatever you mean apparently works very well indeed.

Granted this is an extremely simplified explanation (not least because Kirk was talking to someone from the 19th Century!) but TOS had been on the air for nearly 3 years by this point. It's a pretty safe bet that this was the creators' intentions of how the Transporter worked.

As for later Trek... in Lonely Among Us Picard beams out, energy only.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Only in that matter is a form of energy, in which case there is no conversion since we are all made out of energy (in the form of matter) to begin with.

Nice try, but no cigar.

Once again, there is indeed a conversion that takes place when a person is transported because of the very nature of being "beamed" from one place to another. When they step onto a transporter pad, their bodies are dematerialized and then rematerialized elsewhere. That is where the conversion from a solid object to a form of energy (and back again) takes place.

Yes, and contradicted more often than that.

Examples please.

Just search the transcripts for the phrase "matter stream".

I have, and they simply refer to a person while they are in an energy state during the transporter process.

A matter stream is a stream of matter, therefore matter. Not energy.

Once again, total semantics. It's a form of energy, specifically the energized state matter becomes once it's converted to by the transporter.

What you're talking about isn't in regards to a transporter, but rather deuterium streams typically injected into a matter/antimatter reactor within a warp core. Matter streams have also been used to describe concentrated particles in space.

The "solid object" is not being converted to energy, just broken down into sub-atomic components and then transmitted as a "stream" to a distant location where they are re-assembled exactly as-was.

You're in total denial. That's nothing short of a "po-ta-toe" versus "po-tat-oe" argument.

The only time I can recall the transported being used to transmit energy was Encounter At Farpoint.
Similarly, in Realm Of Fear it appeared that the transporter worked by passing through some alternate dimension, allowing Reg Barclay to rescue someone who had been lost in transport days ago by grabbing them as he went by.
Both are anomalies that should be disregarded. Or as Gene would have put it, both were points where a fact was not allowed to ruin a good story.

It's odd that you'd want to disregard two episodes that are proof against your argument...

The TNG Tech Manual does use the word "dematerialize", but then makes it clear that it is using it inaccurately, to describe the process where the subject is transformed into "a subatomically debonded matter stream" which is then sent out within an "annular confinement beam" to the destination.

You're really grasping at straws here.

Actually, the TNG Tech Manual uses the word "dematerialize" very accurately. "A subatomically debonded matter stream" is simply what's left of a person once they are converted from a corporeal being into the form of energy to be transported to or from a ship.

I feel the need to point out that you have cited no examples of your position.

That's definitely the pot calling the kettle black. Your whole argument is based on your opinion that people aren't converted into energy, whereas onscreen dialogue has constantly said otherwise.

Can you cite episodes other than Encounter At Farpoint where it is described as a matter-to-energy conversion?

Actually, "Encounter At Farpoint" is enough, but...
"Day of the Dove"
"Realm of Fear"
"The Savage Curtain"
"Lonely Among Us"
"Unnatural Selection"

 

[T'Girl]

Permanently storing the large volume of information needed to exactly 'replicate' thousands of compunds is not feasible with federation technology.

First, thank you for admitting the there are thing that Federation technology can't do.

Second, it would be unnecessary to permanently store information on this particular vaccine, because the dialog makes clear that Crusher had a sample of the vaccine at her disposal. The attempt to have the Enterprise's state of the art medical replicator copy the vaccine resulted in a facsimile that was unstable. The technology couldn't handle the complexity of the sample.

Crusher: "The sample works fine when used as an injection, but it becomes unstable when we try to replicate it."

ProtoAvatar here's a copy of the transcript for you. http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/104.htm

About the vaccine - if Crusher didn't have access to the vaccine until it was 'beamed aboard' she couldn't copy it, of course.

ProtoAvatar, you actual saw this episode at some point, right?

About ribozomes - the romulan's ribozomes were damaged - not just in a cell but throughout his entire body - cellular damage is not a physical trauma, localized.

No. Doctor Crusher clearly states that there is cell damage TO VITAL AREAS. Not simply that there is cell damage, she added that qualifier because the damage wasn't general. Crusher did have access to healthy Romulan ribosome, the problem was they could not be copied by 24th century technology. This is why she was testing every member of the crew, that's how they found Worf. Now if Worf had been copied during his many transports, he would have no ribosome for the testing to find, in fact by the time of The Enemy he would have been dead.

ProtoAvatar here's a copy of the transcript for you. http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/155.htm

Dematerialising by transporter is equivalent to dematerialising by phaser - it kills you, reducing your body to a few random atoms/particles.

You're confusing dematerialize with disintegrate again. My fast check of the dictionary found this:

Dematerialize: to cause to become immaterial / to lose materiality / to appear immaterial
Disintegrate: to reduce to particles, fragments, parts; break up / destroy the cohesion of

I mean come on ProtoAvatar, they're not even close. Memory Alpha has this under the phaser description "The phaser beam can stun, heat, kill or disintegrate living creatures."

My old personal description on the phaser was this. Phasers fire nadion particle beams that works by hitting the target with an phased harmonic frequency, basically a vibration. To disintegrate it shake your molecules apart, disrupt it shakes your cells apart, heat excites or rubs things together, stun slaps your nervous system with neurological 'thump'.

The definition of dematerialize sound more like a transition from material to something else, if material equates to physical then it does sound more like you're losing your physical substance, rather that you're being disintegrated. More you're becoming energy (if energy is the something else) instead of being destroyed by energy.

LINCOLN: A most interesting way to come aboard, Captain. What was the device used?
KIRK: An energy-matter scrambler, sir. The molecules in your body are converted into energy, then beamed into this chamber and reconverted back into their original pattern.

Ohhh baby, good transcript quote. I like "converted" much better than "torn apart" or "destroyed." Let us examine the good Captains words (shall we).

The molecules in your body are converted into energy
The molecules in your body are beamed into this chamber
The molecules in your body are reconverted back into their original pattern

I'm not seeing the word "copy," and it's interesting that Kirk refers to the end result of reconverted (rematerialization?) as Lincoln's original pattern, Kirk just as easily could have said pattern, Lincoln wouldn't have know the difference.

 

[Pauln6]

LINCOLN: A most interesting way to come aboard, Captain. What was the device used?
KIRK: An energy-matter scrambler, sir. The molecules in your body are converted into energy, then beamed into this chamber and reconverted back into their original pattern.

Ohhh baby, good transcript quote. I like "converted" much better than "torn apart" or "destroyed." Let us examine the good Captains words (shall we).

The molecules in your body are converted into energy
The molecules in your body are beamed into this chamber
The molecules in your body are reconverted back into their original pattern

I'm not seeing the word "copy," and it's interesting that Kirk refers to the end result of reconverted (rematerialization?) as Lincoln's original pattern, Kirk just as easily could have said pattern, Lincoln wouldn't have know the difference.

I think people are getting hung up on the English meaning of particular words used rather than applying the correct legal test, which is to apply the meaning that would be conveyed to an objective observer in possession of the relevant background knowledge i.e. what is actually seen in the episodes and what is scientifically possible when compared to both real and established Trek physics.

The issue is that when 'molecules in your body are converted into energy' they lose the properties that they used to have as matter and gain new properties as energy in much the same way that radium gradually turns into lead as its sub-atomic particles leak off as energy. We can't change the total amount of matter & energy we have to work with either (unless it's added in from an external source). So the person can't be matter and energy at the same time unless the total matter and energy is equal to the total matter you had to start with, in which case SOME of the matter must be losing its properties. Aren't these fundamental laws of physics?

If 'dematerilisation' means that the matter is phased into another dimension and replaced with energy displaced from that dimension then that's fine; the same person is 'rematerialised' when they snap back into our dimension and the transport is akin to being in temporary stasis. This is NOT how transporting has been described even in Realm of Fear and the phased matter in that episode seems to contradict what we are being told about how transporters work so that is very unhelpful.

If transportees are completely converted to energy then the 'person' is no longer alive. Their DNA doesn't exist any more and their memories, if they can exist in some kind of energy lattice at all, are just copies of the persons memories in the same way that cutting and pasting information from one PC to another is just making a copy on the second computer or a person downloading their memories into a robot body is just making a copy. The scientific data regarding DNA and memory encoding wasn't available to the writers when the fundamentals of the transporter were created so it isn't surprising that they thought the human mind was some kind of floating thing that is just resting in our brain case rather than the result of a mixture of chemical and bio-electrical processes.

During rematerialisation the matter is rebuilt using the scanned pattern as a template. This is no more the original than if one had re-downloaded the data back onto the original computer from the second computer. You could indeed end up with two indentical copies if you use additional resources and different locations on the same computer as per Tom Riker.

The rematerialised being isn't really the original person any more unless you ascribe to the unproven, unscientific, and never mentioned concept that a transportee's 'soul' actively retains cohesion even if the physical properties of the body are destroyed. If we're applying evidence from the background that we see, this makes no scientific sense and is never mentioned. It may be the simplest way to explain some of the apocryphal transporter episodes where people remain 'alive' in the transporter for long periods, akin to being in stasis, but the same argument remains even then, that they are copies or 'approximations' of the original in some kind of alternative state. Cloning, copying, and Tuvix also lead to unexplained and unexplainable situations as far as the 'soul theory' is concerned.

I like both the phasing and reconstruction theories but there is far more evidence to support the destroy and rebuild theory. Scienticifically the rematerialised person is a copy.

 

[barnaclelapse]

I....I like....cookies....

 

[Pauln6]

I....I like....cookies....

Cookies make you fat.

 

[T'Girl]

I....I like....cookies....

cookies make you fat.

Perhaps "Cookies" is the lovename of barnaclelapse's girlfriend?

 

[Pauln6]

I....I like....cookies....

cookies make you fat.

Perhaps "Cookies" is the lovename of barnaclelapse's girlfriend?

Someone on here has a girlfriend? Doesn't seem likely, but I'll roll with it...

Cookies makes you PHAT.

 

[The Badger]

We could argue the treknobabble until we are blue in the face,, but as I see it, it all boils down to one point.

Given the respect for individuality and sentient life within the Federation, would they ever use a device that routinely KILLS and REPLACES it's users?

I think not. I am therefore satisfied that, however it works, the transporter does indeed move people from point to point safely.

 

[Pauln6]

I agree, although many nerds enjoy pointing out that the way they have described it, it couldn't work that way.