Would you use Transfer Transit to travel?

[Christopher]

Some questions:
What happens if you die while your clone is alive?

Then you die. The "clone" (duplicate) is a temporary construct with only a 72-hour lifespan.

What are your liabilities for the criminal behaviour of your clone?

Probably TT would require you to sign paperwork saying that the company wasn't liable for any abuse of the system, so presumably you'd be agreeing to take any liability onto yourself. Otherwise it'd be hard for the company to stay in business.

Are there any psychological or physiological side effects of unfiltered memories suddenly being dumped in your brain - especially if your clone witnessed or took part in criminal acts?

As long as you're unconscious during the corresponding interval, there are no competing memories to create any conflicts. From your perspective, it would just be as if you lived those 72 hours yourself, or however long it took.

If your clone witnessed criminal acts and you have access to these memories, are the memories admissable evidence in a court of law?

I would think so, and indeed, they might be more reliable than normal testimony because the memories might be recorded in the system. Although there would have to be a way to assess whether the data was hacked or tampered wtih.

No way would I trust this technology not to screw up.

Where's the harm? Your own body and brain are safely in the pod where you started, no matter what happens to your duplicate. It's even safer than a car or an airplane, because you're not physically moving anywhere. It's no more dangerous than lying in bed for three days. (Although that does have risks of its own in some circumstances.)

It seemed like an anachronism on Dark Matter anyway - too advanced to be credible given the level of other tech around them.

Not at all. We know they have the technology to rewrite and transfer memories (a core premise of the show), we know they have lifelike androids (a main character), and we know they have FTL communication. Transfer Transit is basically just a combination of the three. It's a natural outgrowth of the other established technologies in the show.

I keep hearing people talk about the idea of Trek transporters killing people and creating copies. I've never seen anything in the show to suggest anything other than disassembly and reassembly of the existing body and I can't imagine any reason why anyone would willingly use a system that killed them and left a copy to continue their life.

My take on the subject: https://christopherlbennett.wordpre...quantum-teleportation-and-continuity-of-self/

OK. So, let's compare that "fear" with a different concern in Transfer Transit. With TT, your body and life remain safely at home (or at the departure emporium). But what surprises me is that the clone is able to continue with your adventure without succumbing to an emotional crisis. Would he/she not have difficulty coping with the fact that in a few days (or at any time during high risk activity), he will be exploded or recycled. Clones are thinking, feeling sentient beings—yet they are given only a few days of life, only to be harvested for their recent memories!

Fiction tends to use the word "clone" imprecisely and sometimes for various different things. Strictly speaking, a clone is a biological offspring with only a single parent (at its most literal, it means a plant grown from a cutting of another plant). An actual, literal clone of you would be your child that would have all your DNA and would look and sound approximately the same way you did at the corresponding age, allowing for differences in epigenetic and developmental factors. The tendency of science fiction to appropriate the word "clone" for identical duplicates created by other means is misleading.

Transfer Transit duplicates are not actual clones. They're basically telepresence drones, biological robots that mimic human bodies. Your duplicate's consciousness is an exact copy of your consciousness at the moment you were scanned, so it's basically you. That's the whole point, that it's the equivalent of going there yourself. The "transfer clone" is just a temporary substitute host for your consciousness, because the technology exists to transmit your consciousness FTL but not your body, so a suitable replica of your body needs to be created at the destination.

There's no reason why a person who "travels" to another world by TT would have any more fear of death than a person who travels the regular way. Indeed, there's less reason to fear death, since you know your true self is safe back where you started and the worst that can happen is that you lose a maximum of 72 hours' worth of memory. Some people might enjoy the freedom that gives them to take risks they normally wouldn't, even if it meant they might not remember it.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I see someone (not the immediately previous poster) has been digging around in the graveyard and disturbed the rest of a decaying corpse. Some things, such as Dark Matter, are perhaps either left buried or resurrected in a new skin.

 

[Christopher]

I see someone (not the immediately previous poster) has been digging around in the graveyard and disturbed the rest of a decaying corpse. Some things, such as Dark Matter, are perhaps either left buried or resurrected in a new skin.

I think the underlying ideas, the scientific, logistical, and philosophical questions, are worth discussing no matter how old the show is.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It might have been better if the person responsible had created a new thread rather than indulge in necromancy.

 

[Christopher]

I've never seen anything wrong with reviving an old thread. I really don't understand why this board has an objection to it, since most other online forums I frequent have no problem with it.

Besides, the last post before yesterday was only 16 months old. Dark Matter is still pretty fresh in people's memories. I didn't even realize it was an old thread.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

your true self is safe back where you started

but YOU aren't.

You are the clone and you know you are going to die (a COPY of your consciousness, not the original). Who would be comfortable with that?

It's just like Sim from ENT. He was created from Trip, much like whatever this thing is that we're discussing. And Sim didn't want to die.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

If I were the clone, I'd cause mayhem in the time available and let the real version of me pay the consequences - f*ck that dude.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

If I were the clone, I'd cause mayhem in the time available and let the real version of me pay the consequences - f*ck that dude.

I assume there's a way to scan a clone and prove that it isn't the original.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Assuming the original chose and wasn't forced to use the technology, isn't he/she at least an accessory to any crimes committed by the clone?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Assuming the original chose and wasn't forced to use the technology, isn't he/she at least an accessory to any crimes committed by the clone?

I highly doubt it.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

If you teleported an autonomous killing machine somewhere and it went on the rampage, you'd be responsible - at least morally - even if you couldn't be extradited.

ETA: Could happen nowadays or in the near future with autonomous drones - no futuristic technology required.

 

[Christopher]

If I were the clone, I'd cause mayhem in the time available and let the real version of me pay the consequences - f*ck that dude.

Attitudes like that are why I'm certain any customer of Transfer Transit would have to sign paperwork accepting culpability for any wrongs committed by their transfer clone. I mean, we have to accept terms of service like that to use just about any software today; surely such things would exist in the future as well. Otherwise TT would've been sued out of business before long.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Apart from the existential crisis that each clone would face, the other major respect in which I didn't find the technology very credible was it's seemingly quite limited deployment in the Dark Matter universe given that it didn't appear to be exorbitantly expensive. It seemed more like a contrived magic plot mcguffin - similar to those damned stones that Stargate Universe used to swap consciousnesses across millions of light years. Maybe I just suffer from imagination failure.

 

[Christopher]

I don't get the whole "existential crisis" thing. You're just downloading yourself into a robot copy for 3 days. As long as nothing happens to the copy, you get the memories back and it's exactly like you were there yourself. Most people probably wouldn't worry about the philosophical conundrums, or if they did, they wouldn't use the service to begin with.

Really, I found the technology a lot more credible than transporters. Like I said, it's just a form of telepresence. It was perhaps the cleverest, least cliched concept in the show (which was otherwise largely a melange of familiar SF tropes), and I think they used it deftly.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I don't get the whole "existential crisis" thing. You're just downloading yourself into a robot copy for 3 days.

Ah, and therein lies the rub: COPY.

The clone body gets a copy of your consciousness. Not at all the same thing as placing your own, original consciousness into a new body (which I would think would, by definition, be impossible).

So what we're left with is essentially a separate being which thinks it's you. And it's expected to just march off to its fate and allow itself to die?

 

[cylkoth]

You like chocolate cake...your biological drone copy will like chocolate cake...

You like watching home improvement shows... your biological drone copy will like watching home improvement shows.

You're not a deranged murder-death-killer...your biological drone copy will not be a deranged murder-death-killer.

The travel transit biological drone is NOT a separate sentient being. It is an identical biological COPY OF YOU. Your copy-thus YOU, is well aware of the 3 day limit and won't run off and do anything you wouldn't do because it is not an independent being. When it terminates, the 3 days of memories are transferred into you. You know this, and so does YOUR copy.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Do identical twins behave the same and always agree? Not in my experience - they can be quite competitive against each other.

A consciousness wakes in a clone body and remembers it's a copy with a limited life span intended to perform some task or other. How it performs said task or whether it performs it at all probably depends on the original base personality. I wouldn't trust my copy within an inch of my life.

 

[Christopher]

Do identical twins behave the same and always agree? Not in my experience - they can be quite competitive against each other.

That's a really, really bad analogy. Twins are separate individuals from birth. Their genes are the same, but their minds, memories, and personalities are distinct. They only look the same from the outside, superficially; inside they're two different people and they know it. A transfer clone is not only an exact copy of your body, but it contains an exact copy of your mind at the moment of transmission. It's identical to you on the inside, where it counts, not just on the outer surface. If, say, someone transfer-cloned you against your will in your sleep, your mind would awaken in the clone body and you'd be utterly convinced you were the same person you'd been the day before -- because in any meaningful sense, you still would be.

A consciousness wakes in a clone body and remembers it's a copy with a limited life span intended to perform some task or other. How it performs said task or whether it performs it at all probably depends on the original base personality. I wouldn't trust my copy within an inch of my life.

Well, then the problem there is with you, not with the technology. And again, any user would most likely have to sign paperwork holding them legally liable for any criminal misuse of the system. Any technology can be abused by bad actors, which is why there are legal and financial penalties put in place to stem such abuse.

Also, you say "some task or other," as if it were non-specific. Remember, this is a technology mostly used for interstellar travel and tourism. Most civilians using it are just going to want to form some enjoyable memories -- in which case they wouldn't want to do anything that would jeopardize their chances of having their transfer clones' memories returned to their own brains at the end of the vacation.

The other main use we've seen is military, which actually makes a lot of sense -- it lets them put soldiers on a scene without risking anyone's actual death. I imagine it could also be used for sending rescue workers into dangerous areas or engineers into leaking reactors, things like that. Any technology can be used for positive ends as well as negative ones. People who want to damn a technology for the way humans may abuse it is just trying to dodge our culpability for our own actions.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

In the Dark Matter universe, it works as you state because the clones seem resigned to their fate and act in the same way as if they were the original. That's the bit I have a problem with accepting. I don't recall if the series addressed this question.

 

[Christopher]

In the Dark Matter universe, it works as you state because the clones seem resigned to their fate and act in the same way as if they were the original. That's the bit I have a problem with accepting.

Because they are the original in every meaningful way, identical in consciousness and personality. Your premise that there's some gigantic, fundamental difference between the original person and their duplicate is illogical and unsupported by the evidence. The entire point of the technology is that it is indistinguishable from being there yourself. The whole reason to use Transfer Transit is so that you can effectively be somewhere that's impossible to reach soon enough (or affordably enough) through normal travel and achieve something there that you will remember doing afterward. If the version of you in your transfer-clone body didn't feel it was the exact same person that you are, it would defeat the entire purpose of the system.

As for "their fate," remember that in the normal operation of the system, the transfer clone returns to the pod at the end of its trip and its memories are beamed back into the original person's mind. The consciousness within the clone does not "die," it is restored to the body it came from in the first place. Most of the time, it would feel to the TT user that they themselves had traveled to a distant world and then returned home. The problem is, fiction tends to focus on the exceptions to the rule, so Dark Matter frequently used the trope of a transfer clone being "killed" before it could return to the pod. That seems to have given you the false impression that that's somehow routine, that a transfer clone would somehow expect to "die." But that's not the way it's supposed to work. That only happens if something goes wrong. (Although it would be more common with people using the technology for military purposes -- but of course such people would be trained to follow orders and would not automatically engage in the kind of depraved license you seem to imagine.)