Why do people die in Star Trek?

[Paradise City]

In DS9 they stored everyone's consciousness into the mainframe. Remember "The Our Man Bashir" episode? So all you need to do is ensure the patterns are in the buffer and the marbles are in the computer and viola you've death, aging, disease all potentially cured.

 

[fireproof78]

^^
No, they have "top men" looking in to it.

 

[JWPlatt]

...some current real life researchers aim to reverse death this very century! Maybe even before the warp drive is invented!

Yes, Professor Snape. Very soon after, without the ability to colonize other planets and solar systems, the Earth will die in a pile of immortal humans wallowing in the wastes of their own unsupportable biomass. You need to think it through a little more.

 

[Ithekro]

I seem to recall some episodes or films that more or less quantify an individual soul, or an approximation of the meaning of that term. Both Spock and Picard's continued existences seem to survive due to such a thing. Perhaps Sisko as well.

Time travel and splitting realities blur it a bit in places. Both O'Brian and Kim have been killed and replaced on screen with either temporal or reality doubles. The span of difference between the originals and the "duplicates" are minimal in terms of time and thus they can more or less integrate without hassle after a few hours or days.

 

[UnknownSample]

Of course, if a transporter reconstitutes a dead person, and we decide the original doesn't really exist anymore, then every one who's ever been beamed anyplace is now dead. Unless somehow there's a difference between a beamed person and a replacement ... something that would indicate the continued presence and existence of t he "soul " who stepped into the transporter ...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

We've seen the transport process from the POV of the transportee (TNG "Realm of Fear") and conversations taking place during transport (TWOK) so I'm inclined to drop the "it kills you" theory.

 

[TwoJakes]

Given the (supposed) high ethical philosophy within the Federation, if the transporter killed and replaced you, I doubt they would use it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Besides, our bodies are constantly replacing old, dead cells with new, living ones - every second of the day....and you're still the same person when THAT happens.

 

[mos6507]

Besides, our bodies are constantly replacing old, dead cells with new, living ones - every second of the day....and you're still the same person when THAT happens.

Yes, and even our memories are just multi-generation copies of the original, which is why things get fuzzier and fuzzier.

 

[f14peter]

while watching a beaming scene the other night, and pondering the "does beaming really kill you and replace you with a digital clone" question, I came up with an idea that answers that question, at least to me: I concluded that instead of actually completely digitizing the elements of a body (or device/element/molecules/etc) into little pieces to be "scrambled" (per Dr McCoy) and then re-assembled at another point, instead it wraps the subject into some sort of subspace-ish wrapper or bubble or shell, then digitizes that to transport/re-assemble, all the while keeping the subject intact in bizarrely Star Trek way ... think of it as like making a zip file.

No canonical, empirical or even observational evidence, just making it work for me

 

[JesterFace]

Basically a transporter turns your body into a form of energy that is easier to move from a place to another and then reassembles the energy back into its original form, nothing has to change but the location. If the energy pattern is identical in both ends, shouldn't the "end result" after the transport be as well? E=MC2 basically...

 

[SPCTRE]

 

[Ithekro]

"Because people die when they are killed"

(Had to be said eventually)

 

[Doom Shepherd]

"Because people die when they are killed"

(Had to be said eventually)