Would Star Trek's Transporters Kill and Replace You? (syfy.com) 409
schwit1 quotes Syfy Wire:
There is, admittedly, some ambiguity about precisely how Trek's transporters work. The events of some episodes subtly contradict events in others. The closest thing to an official word we have is the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, which states that when a person enters a transporter, they are scanned by molecular imaging scanners that convert a person into a subatomically deconstructed matter stream. That's all a fancy-pants way of saying it takes you apart, atom by atom, and converts your matter into energy. That energy can then be beamed to its destination, where it's reconstructed. According to Trek lore, we're meant to believe this is a continuous process. Despite being deconstructed and rebuilt on the other end, you never stop being "you...."
[Alternately] the fact that you are scanned, deconstructed, and rebuilt almost immediately thereafter only creates the illusion of continuity. In reality, you are killed and then something exactly like you is born, elsewhere. If the person constructed on the other end is identical to you, down to the atomic level, is there any measurable difference from it being actually you? Those are questions we can't begin to answer. What seems clear — whatever the technical manual says — is you die when you enter a transporter, however briefly.
The article also cites estimates that it would take three gigajoules of energy (about one bolt of lightning) to disassemble somebody's atoms, and 10 to the 28th power kilobytes to then hold all that information -- and 2.6 tredecillion bits of data to transmit it.
"The estimated time to transmit, using the standard 30 GHz microwave band used by communications satellites, would take 350,000 times longer than the age of the universe."
[Alternately] the fact that you are scanned, deconstructed, and rebuilt almost immediately thereafter only creates the illusion of continuity. In reality, you are killed and then something exactly like you is born, elsewhere. If the person constructed on the other end is identical to you, down to the atomic level, is there any measurable difference from it being actually you? Those are questions we can't begin to answer. What seems clear — whatever the technical manual says — is you die when you enter a transporter, however briefly.
The article also cites estimates that it would take three gigajoules of energy (about one bolt of lightning) to disassemble somebody's atoms, and 10 to the 28th power kilobytes to then hold all that information -- and 2.6 tredecillion bits of data to transmit it.
"The estimated time to transmit, using the standard 30 GHz microwave band used by communications satellites, would take 350,000 times longer than the age of the universe."
Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. You are copied and the current you is destroyed.
Oh rly? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I have an assembled jigsaw puzzle that depicts a waterfall....then take it all apart....then put it back together again....wouldn't we say it's the same puzzle it was before? Wouldn't we say that picture of a waterfall is the same picture of a waterfall that it was before?
Its identity as a jigsaw puzzle, or as an image of a waterfall, wasn't lost when it was disassembled. It wasn't destroyed and then a copy created. The same puzzle was disassembled and re-assembled.
Same goes for, say, a car. Or an ambulatory robot.
So why wouldn't the same go for a person? What is special about a person, distinct from these other things, that would make this answer different?
Re:Oh rly? (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not building it from the same particles, or the "duplicate" transporter events would not be possible.
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, in see. So if it is the same blueprint but different particles then it is a different person, even if the memories, etc., are identical.
That makes me think about the book/show Altered Carbon, in which everyone has a hard drive surgically implanted into their brain stems, and all their memories go there instead of into the gray matter of the brain. When somebody dies, they just pull that hard drive out, implant it into a different (unused) body, and spin it up. They consider this new person to BE the
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
So, by your reasoning, it would not be the same person. Transferring memories around like this does NOT transfer people around like this, since the particles that make up their bodies and brains are entirely different.
In my opinion, yes.
If they pull out the hard drive, make a copy and put the two copies in two new bodies, would they both act as one person? I don't think so, therefore, old memories in a new body is not the same person, but a copy.
IMO there is some part of the brain that differentiates "me" from a copy, that is, if the technology was available, I could replace all of my body parts with artificial ones, including most of the neurons in the brain, but there is at least some part of the brain I could not repl
Its not the old memories, its the new memories. (Score:3)
If they pull out the hard drive, make a copy and put the two copies in two new bodies, would they both act as one person? I don't think so, therefore, old memories in a new body is not the same person, but a copy.
Its not the old memories, its the new memories.
From the moment they both are awakened they have different experiences. Its kind of analogous to the multiverse notion, or the time travel notion, that one minor difference can change the future. Except here the cumulative differing experiences change the person. Since we are discussing TV check out the series Counterpart. Its plot is based on the premise that a physics experiment caused a "bridge" to be established between an original universe and a new uni
Re:Oh rly? (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue with transporters isn't whether they kill you or not, it's all the other things you could or should be able to potentially do with the technology. But the writers can make the magic spell work however they want, and can just make it impossible for plot convenience. In reality, if we could do something like that there would probably be loads of really terrible things that we could with it as well. Anything is a weapon if you know how to use it cleverly.
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Put together your puzzle.
Take a picture of it.
Send that picture to someone else.
They print it on cardboard stock and cut out pieces.
Is it the same puzzle?
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It's different matter to the original so it's a different object. Star Trek transporters convert the matter to energy and then beam that energy, along with the pattern to convert it back to matter and assemble it, to the destination.
So it's more of a question of converting to energy and back again means it is a new object, and it's not really possible to say because it's beyond our rather arbitrary definitions of what an object is.
Re: Yes. (Score:3)
Assuming the transporter is breaking down the molecules and reassembling you.
If it's instead a wormhole that is moving you then it's space around you that moves.
Secondary thought here - the mass that you consists of when you are broken down, where does it go, and where does the mass at the arrival site come from?
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The transporters in Trek supposedly matter to energy and energy to matter conversion, although it's not clear why you would bother sending all that energy when you can get more at the destination. The implication seems to be that it's the same person/object because their molecules were moved, i.e. it's not a copy fabricated out of new material... Except that it kinda is new material because of the matter/energy/matter conversion.
It's all very inconsistent though. In TNG it seems like the person is conscious
No (Score:5, Insightful)
You wouldn't even be copied correctly. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics says you can either know the location of a quantum object exactly or its velocity exactly, but NOT both. So aside from all the other laws of physics transporters break this is a bit of a show stopper.
Be practical. (Score:2)
It only needs to be precise *enough*.
Which means more precise than the random forces our elementary particles already experience.
And it doesn't say it is impossible. It "only" says you need infinite energy. :D
So you can improve the precision of both values, by using more energy. As long as it is reasonable.
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Who says it's a copy? It's clearly indicated that a "matter-stream" travels from source to destination - meaning that the original matter could have been "translated" into energy, preserving all relationships and quantum states, and then "translated" back into matter.
The fact that difficult transports often involve spouting technobabble about "focusing the matter stream", etc suggests such a process - if it were just energy and data being transmitted you wouldn't need "focus" - either the information is t
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
The funny thing is that quantum mechanics tell us that the COPYING is impossible, but TELEPORTATION is perfectly fine.
You cannot measure quantum state precisely, but nothing stops you from moving it around (well, a few practical concerns stops you, but that is beside the point).
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For this kind of transporter, you don't need to measure the exact properties, merely transfer them. For example: take a particle with non-zero spin that decays into two products. Measuring one of the products will reveal the original spin, yet until you do that, I assume it doesn't break any entanglement (I'm not a physicist). Or, take a modular Shroedinger's box. You take an original box (with the cat and poison in an unknown state), attach a box with cat food, slide the door open to let the cat throug
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transporters break this is a bit of a show stopper.
No, no, you have it completely backwards. Far from being a show stopper, the transporters were a required plot device.
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And they work fine, until some jackass adds a polarity inverter in the loop... or what is a phase modulator? Not that it matters, anyway, since we're all stuck in the holodeck.
Maybe. We aren't what we were anyway. (Score:2)
Re: Maybe. We aren't what we were anyway. (Score:4, Interesting)
At the subatomic level, everything in those cells is being continuously changed. In less than a blink of an eye, the same quantum fluctuations that are holding your existence together have passed through your existence in spacetime and are receding from you at the speed of light.
Continuity of existence is just a convenient mental construct that has no actual meaning in the realm of physics.
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"Yes. You are copied and the current you is destroyed."
Yes, and you'd live forever, since the transporter wouldn't send any cancer cells or pathogens to the new destinations, so addtionally no need for a doctor.
If you got a bullet in the arm, transport a yard away but use the last copy where the arm was still OK.
Also, there would be no fat people, no old people and no need to exercise.
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Funny)
But at what point does it become socially acceptable to say "I need to go to the bathroom! Bah, I'll just teleport instead."
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Why wouldn't you just teleport the pee out of your bladder.. to say, the cup two cubicles down?
OK, this is silly but let's go there all in good fun.
The pee gets transported. Ahhh! But did anything get left in it's place? Of did we leave a vacuum? If we did, your bladder collapses with a bang and that's gotta sting.
But, wait a minute! Where did the air go where we transported the pee? Did it get all mixed together as fizzy pee now? And that's another problem with the Transporter, where does the material at the destination go? I don't want to have my molecules re-assembled with the ambient air mixed in
matter-stream = not necessarily a copy (Score:2)
> You are copied and the current you is destroyed.
Are you though?
Unlike the related replicator technology, a transporter is dealing with a matter-stream, NOT a data stream. You've been disassembled, and then the same pieces are reassembled at the destination. That leaves open the possibility that the re-assembly is exact, preserving the exact position and relationship of every atom, and even preserving quantum states, entanglement, etc.
It's not even clear that you'd be "dead" in transit - certainly for
Re: (Score:3)
They answered this at a greek pub long ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Next question, does the new you have a soul?
Nope. But neither did the old you.
Re: (Score:2)
We are souls; we have bodies.
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
According to Trek lore, we're meant to believe this is a continuous process
Never trust Lore. I'd trust a backstabbing Cardassian before I trusted Lore.
The invalidity of your argument is stunning and be (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you shooting for winning a invalid argument contest or something? :)
Look up "argument from autority" on why that is fallacious.
Also, you merely quoted a statement. Regardless of its source, that still requires an actual line of reasoning as its basis, to become a valid argument. A line that starts with verifiable reliably observable patterns in reality, if possible. Or with commonly accepted paradigms/axioms otherwise.
No, "the gospel" is not one of them. Because it is not just contradicting observed rea
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You need to look it up, actually.
And no, it's also you who needs to look up the rules of logic and reason. You are discussing your misunderstanding of empiricism and related positions--logic never tells you the accuracy of premises being proposed, only the valid relationships between premises and conclusions. You are, in fact, in believing otherwise, both ignorant of logic and ir
Re: (Score:2)
An appeal to authority is exactly a fallacy if you the authority you appeal to is an actual authority. That is simply because even authorities are fallible and therefore their statements are up to scrutiny.
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I would say that most scientifically minded people agree that you can't even test for the existence of that authority and therefore knowledge about existence of such an authority is impossible. So the only thing that is left is either believing in it or not believing in it.
Now that raises the question if it is an appeal to authority if that authority may not even exist.
Either way quoting Bible text does not serve as a valid a
Re: (Score:3)
Music, while there is certainly some objectivity to it where you can analyze the complexity of rhythms, melodies, and harmonies within the context of what our human brains, is still mostly a subjective thing.
In many cases people first have to 'develop' an ear for music. Train their mind to distinguish between the instruments that are used, so they can perceive them individually as a part of a harmony than instead of noise.
People who don
Define all those terms... (Score:2)
These discussions are always bound.to derail because people discuss this without ever knowing or defining what they precisely mean with those terms. And the answer fluctuates wildly with what people assume about it in the moment of writing, which, to make matters worse, changes over time, as they learn what they wanted the terms to really mean.
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Better question, does the old you have one?
Well, scientifically ... (Score:2)
Someone really might actually stop existing when his face is covered.
(E.g. due to his body being beamed precisely on top of a precisely equivalent body of anti-matter*, and a substitute being beamed in for his hands in the same process.)
We just grow to rely on the assumption of continued existence, based on past experience.
Which is all we're ever gonna get from reality.
And that is OK, because it's only about general usefulness of our assumptions.
_ _ _ _
* As far as we know, that is equivalent to bouncing in
Yes (Score:2)
Yes
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Define 'Die'. (Score:5, Funny)
Define "alive". And "exists". :) (Score:2)
To me, most people are already not more alive than limbs. They are passive-thinking drones of bigger swarm body controlled by a network of opinion leaders.
I'd not be surprised if aliens see corporations and states as the dominant lifeforms on this planet.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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You are the relationships between them.
As long as the relationships are maintained, you maintain.
Die to basic biological processes, all your physical matter is constantly being changed out, after 7 to 10 years you are comprised of completely different atoms. ,after 10 years of natural
If you are still you
Exchange of matter inherent to Cellular processes, then you're still you if that full replacement is implemented by a transporter beam.
This is such a fascinating topic and one I have muddled on so many times I can't count them. A brain teaser I like to ask people is this:
If I replace 10 of your brain cells with a computer substitute, are you still you? What if I replace 10% of your brain? What about 90% of it? At what point did you cease to be you? Or did you ever?
Re:You are not the specific matter you are compose (Score:5, Interesting)
Your brain-teaser intrigues because our common-sense definition of a person is not precisely defined. It is quite fuzzy and ambiguous, despite having central significance in our lives.
We are talking about fuzzy logic. Many things have this sort of "threshold ambiguity." A light-sprinkling is easily distinguished from a heavy rain, despite the fact that we can not draw any single thin line between the rainfall level to tell us when it changed. We might watch a whirlpool spin inside a river, without ever being able to draw a definitive line around the point at which the river stops and the whirlpool begins. When does a few grains of salt on the table become a "heap" of salt? If I start swaping parts out of a car, when does it become a different car? These questions are all rhetorical; we are talking about ambiguous terms that sit on opposing ends of a sliding scale. There can't logically be a precise answer, because each term is defined as a fuzzy, high-level abstraction.
That usually doesn't cause us problems when we are talking about boring objects like salt or cars. But when we talk about living beings, our sense of a persistent identity is much stronger. So we have a cognitive conflict over the fact that we feel there should be a clear-cut "thing" that is a person, but the subject matter still qualifies as a high-level abstraction with a very fuzzy definition (and one that inclines us to give contradictory answers depending on context).
Re: (Score:3)
There's actually a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 [wikipedia.org] episode about that very topic.
Re:You are not the specific matter you are compose (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because, for those who do not believe in a soul, a "person" is nothing more than a high-level abstraction.
To a Platonist, the high-level abstraction is more real than the matter that implements it. So that is the "real" you. This suggests, however, that after this "you" is destroyed and a duplicate is built, that duplicate will actually still qualify as "you." It meets all the criteria. It gets confusing though if the original is not destroyed, because, for a brief period anyway, both copies of you meet all the criteria (in Plato-parlance, both "participate in the form of you to the same degree.").
To an Aristotelian, that high level abstraction isn't very real, and the matter that makes up is the only real thing around. So "you" are constantly changing, from one moment to the next, like an ever-flowing river. So the original you is just made to change a bit more quickly than usual, and then made to change back at the other end. I don't think Aristotle ever actually thought of a person this way, but it is the logical consequence of combining his ideas with modern science. It is also surprisingly similar to the Buddhist world view.
For those who DO believe in a soul...well....their priests can answer this question for us.
And, for those who believe in qualia....the relationship between qualia and personal identity remains as ambiguous as it always has been.
Science First (Score:4, Insightful)
Given what we do know it probably is but since we don't yet know what consciousness really is we cannot be certain. If we cannot copy the consciousness then the philosophical debate is moot.
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Yes, of course. Because there's nowhere else for the information to exist.
You are making two very big assumptions here. The first is the QM is the basis for everything. It's certainly the best model we have so far but nobody has yet managed to make it work properly with gravity so it is not ruled out that there is something more fundamental beyond it which approximates to QM in all the ways we have studied it so far. The second is that the only means to store information in the body is via the particles we already know of. We know the Standard Model is incomplete and some extens
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The Ship of Theseus [wikipedia.org] comes to mind.
The underlying question is, what constituted "identity" of a complex syste?
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Yes. If only matter is transported there would be a dead body at the other end. For the transporter to work correctly, it would also have to include the information about various fields present in the body and the brain - electric, magnetic, electromagnetic and so on. Before a transporter can work everything about the composition of the universe needs to be known to the smallest scale and as accurately as possible - 100%. Otherwise there would always be just slightly degraded version of you at the other end
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I realise that I'm actually describing the Holodeck there. I wonder why they don't use Holodeck to explore nearby planets and to have meetings. That would be much safer too - just send probes if needed and then recreate everything. In all the episodes they would dramatically enter the Holodeck with the away team.
There is only relationships. (Score:2)
It's realtive relationships all the way down. That's essentially the essence of quantum field theory.
Even elementary fermions are merely "waves in nothingness". :)
What about sleep (Score:2)
Isn't this exactly why Dr. McCoy refused to use them?
Also, how can we know that our "self" survives sleep? Maybe our awareness actually ends permanently and an entirely separate awareness with our memories and personality wakes up the next day.
Re:What about sleep (Score:5, Informative)
The same went for Pulaski in TNG (intended to be the female McCoy).
They talk about transporter phobia a bit more in a TNG episode where Barclay believes he is suffering from transporter psychosis for similar reasons. Among his fears were that if something goes wrong his atoms will be scattered throughout the universe or something like that. Then Counselor Troi talks to him and among other things notes that the transporter does not create a "weird copy" of people.
Then there's another episode near the end of the very same season where it is revealed that a transporter phenomenon created two Rikers who lived independent lives afterwards, directly contradicting the statement from Troi. The two Rikers were identical, only differing in environmental impacts that influenced them after they were 'split'.
Keeping in mind how Roddenberry felt about Trek canon (that the new overrides the old) it would mean that transporters do indeed create copies.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh God, fucking Pulaski. I had thankfully forgotten all about her until you reminded me. Fuck you.
It's painfully obvious that "The Next Generation" was written by people who - it's not that the didn't care about canon - it's that they simply weren't familiar with it. They wrote whatever they felt like and the fans groaned under the weight of an increasingly self-contradicting show.
Remember DS9 and their inexplicable "Vic Demone" 50s Vegas casino episodes? Years later I read an interview with the write
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However I don't feel ashamed for reminding people of what happened.
Also keep in mind that Roddenberry had a lot of influence on those early seasons and also that Wesley, that much disliked character, was more or less Roddenberry's self insert into the story.
It's a bit like Star Wars with the original trilogy versus the prequels (we do not talk about the other movies). Lucas apparently had a lot more influence on the prequ
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As I recall the Barclay episode, he was conscious in the matter stream (so he could rescue those trapped crewmembers from the other ship). "Conscious in the matter stream" (and able to take actions) struck me as ridiculous at the time, but if you accept that, then he's continuously "Barclay" throughout the entire process, so he's not killed and re-created.
And the Riker episode proves conclusively that there's no such thing as a soul.
So the movie where Spock dies and stores his soul in McCoy's brain so that,
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Trek canon has been all over the place even when Roddenberry still had a say in it.
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I have a fan theory to explain this contradiction.
The transporter is supposed to do a matter to energy conversion, transmit the energy to the destination somehow and the convert it back into matter using the also transmitted pattern. It's not very clear how this works, especially as the destination often doesn't have a transporter system to do the conversion from energy to matter so it must be controlled remotely somehow.
Anyway, assuming that's the way it works then the argument will be that since it's the
Re:What about sleep (Score:5, Interesting)
What is this "sleep"?
I became conscious this morning, and the universe, including myself, sprang into existence as a consequence.
Hi there Mr Boltzmann's brain! ;D (Score:2)
I wondered when you might show up in my imagination! :D
Pat buchanan (Score:3, Interesting)
Nearly all arguments that claim you die when transported are equally valid for arguing you die when you get knocked unconscious. Many also work with regards to dying every time you fall asleep. A few of them are so broad that they can be used to argue you die when you get distracted by a squirrel and lose your train of thought.
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People get fixated on consciousness in this problem. Most of the arguments, combined with a bit of knowledge about how physics works, imply that you die and are reconstructed when transported... by any means.
All fundamental particles are identical, except for their quantum state. A Star Trek transporter is supposed to reconstruct all those states identically, except for their location. If I (or any of my bits, no matter how small) move, I'm doing the same thing. And that includes moving in time.
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What happens if you where transported and the old copy was not destroyed, are you 2 people, what if then you shoot the original?. Also what if you suffer honorably before you are transported but since you where scanned before you where transported you don't remember.
I don't think you can really answer if die, the transporter does this in a quick manner that can keep an existing copy if it wished, where as you live atoms are slowly replaced. You would really depend how you define "die" in this fictional sit
10^28 kilobytes? (Score:2)
Rather than x times the time of the universe for a single transmission, how many parallel transmissions would be needed for it to happen in the allotted time.
What methods used to prevent packet loss or corruption etc...
If you're going to have a hypothetical discussion, at least make some effort to make it plausible.
Re: (Score:2)
Because when someone measures your weight using a power of 30 it makes you sound like a fat SOB.
My main takeaway from this summary is you should lose weight to cut down on your transporter times, probably would also help reduce the number of copy errors.
In Star Trek, No. If we actually built one? Yes. (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends (Score:2)
Two out of two Rikers agree (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
But that is contradicted in other episodes where it's stated that the transporter is a matter to energy to matter conversion device. If that is the case then the amount of energy sent to the destination would only be enough to reconstitute a single copy of the original.
Maybe there could have been extra energy added somehow, in which case neither Riker is the original, or rather both are part of the original and part newly formed.
A bit old perhaps (Score:3)
It's even older than that; Rogue Moon is 1960. (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Algis Budris was an excellent storyteller.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/e... [isfdb.org]
It is a plot device (Score:2)
In other word the YOU as a person would die will all that include, and a double non differentiable from you from memory and physical aspect is created. Fro
Re:It is a plot device (Score:4, Interesting)
However, we must also consider that on more than one occasion it has been made clear that there is a form of consciousness while in the transporter, such as when Barclay saw something in the matter stream and he and several security officers were able to pull people back out. That suggests that you remain you the whole time.
To contradict that, Scotty spent decades in a transporter but was no worse for the wear when he was re materialized.
We know that people can be selectively modified while in transport such as when Picard and others reverted physiologically (but not psychologically) to children, then back to Adult form due to some sort of epigenitic changes.
Whatever caused the above, it is apparently not sufficiently controllable to beam elderly people back to middle age or beam the dead back to life, even if you do have a recent pattern still in the transporter logs
Of course, IRL we know that the transporter works because glitter is cheap and the shuttle set and models weren't ready yet :-)
Compression (Score:2)
Where's PKZip? (Score:2)
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Not too bad (Score:2)
"The estimated time to transmit, using the standard 30 GHz microwave band used by communications satellites, would take 350,000 times longer than the age of the universe."
That's on par with my "hello world!" program.
Admittedly I've read this thread (Score:2)
But I guess my level of geekiness doesn't extend far enough - the question made me roll my eyes and wonder whether the author would die a virgin.
Depends (Score:2)
Is the Transporter made by Flywheel or Peleton [slashdot.org]? And how often is the firmware updated?
Never made sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Transported stuff just didn't make sense in the StarTrek world. And I say that while really liking ST. It was really just a way to cut down on the boring realities of space travel.
On one side is the post explanation where your body just beamed as information and your soul just "reattached" itself to your unique physical hash; where ever it was in the universe. This required lots of energy and computing power. And none of those topics were ever explored in any other way... immortality, shields, manufacturing, health, communications, cloning, alchemy, def/offensive etc etc.
The other, I personally liked, is opening a subspace link on a specific channel & encryption to "push" you across the small "gap" between two cosmic points. The only delta power being the size and distance the worm hole covered. This made sense since we already opened sub space envelopes for the entire ship. Small holes should be do able. I think there was much more evidence of this in the stories.
But with either or other cases, the whole topic was just poorly used. It was akin to inventing the ball and the only use case was bowling. Basically within a solar system, you wouldn't need _any_ transport ships. Just beam supplies/weapons/hostiles around. Just drop a 1m^3 of the sun next to a hostile ship. Don't "build" ships with glue & cables & welding... just jigsaw puzzle them together in hours.
Transporter tech just broke the ST universe. It was just something you had to ignore to enjoy the story. Luckily it was a minor detail in most stories so easy to do so.
Re:Never made sense. (Score:5, Informative)
> It was really just a way to cut down on the boring realities of space travel.
It was really a way to reduce the cost of filiming the show. Requiring shuttlecraft for all planetary visits would have increased the cost of filming considerably, with non-plot scenes in far more episodes. And it was _much_ simpler than langing a ship the size of the Enterprise on every planetary surface.
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> Basically within a solar system, you wouldn't need _any_ transport ships.
Wouldn't that depend on other factors like risk, cost, and range? Larry Niven wrote a fascinating analysis of teleportation, with the first paragraphs available at https://www.scribd.com/documen... [scribd.com] . He speculated that there is an energy and angular momentum cost of teleportation to locations of different potential energies. For a society that has easy access to anti-matter energy, it might not be too expensive to teleport someon
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
The pattern that represents you is perfectly transferred to a new location and reimplemented using new materials. This is no different than when you eat and poop the material that sustains your pattern.
As an aside, how wonderful to have a controversy that doesn't matter, for a change.
Why transport when you can portal? (Score:3)
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I'd totally construct a gnarly ghetto around that portal so that all the fucks who look in decide not to come. Tourists suck!
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China Miéville's "Kraken" addressed thi (Score:4, Interesting)
In that book there's a character who's been transported many times --- and is haunted by the ghosts of his former selves.
Timeline (Score:3)
The technology in Michael Crichton's Timeline is similar, in that it had to break you down to a subatomic level to travel through a multiverse. Of course, the one problem was that they didnt actually know how to reconstruct you on the other side, so they relied on another multiverse that was almost identical to ours except that it had the ability to reconstruct people.
Why the transporter (Score:4, Informative)
It's *FICTION*. ... Also: Define "you". (Score:2)
If you obsess that much about it, maybe you should fix your neglected actual life.
(I'm a big TNG fan, just FYI. But it was ages ago. It's dead, Jim. Yes it is. I'm sorry. Please move on.)
Oh, and before even beginning this discussion, please qualify, by defining "you"! :) :)
Yeah, no, you need at least a couple of cycles of being absolutely certain of the definition, and then having it ruined by even deeper insights, before we can begin. Trust me. Been there.
I don't have the strength to be your teacher.
No. (Score:2)
Because the script says so.
It's addressed, in-universe (Score:3)
There's an ST:Enterprise episode where the inventor of the transporter comes aboard to research a project with Archer since his ship is one of the first to have a human/life-form approved transporter array. They address and dismiss the idea of the person dying or being a copy. But of course they go into no detail about it.
Silly humans trying to reduce everything to binary (Score:3)
2.6 tredecillion bits of data
But this is a solution for quantum computing! Wheres my funding!
So, after reading the threads, (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to ask: Is this how religions get started?
The ancient Greeks already discussed this.. (Score:3)
Push-Pop (Score:3)
Seems like the /. crowd has missed the obvious analogy.
If consciousness and self are created by the chemical anatomy per se, rather than the chemistry acting as an antenna to your soul from a higher plane, then the transporter would be like a computer stack.
In a computer, take the current program counter and register values, and you can push them to the stack, and then later pop them, and you end up back to your initial "consciousness", right where you left off. Add in a memory image, then record or store those data, and then you can power down the whole machine and still resume right where you left off. If I take two machines of identical build, store the memory and register values as a hibernate file, and move the image from machine A to machine B, you the user, if you were unaware of the hardware switch, would have no idea that your "Mind" or "Soul" was operating from a different shell. To yourself and everyone else, it is still you.
The Mind's I, 1982 has a section on this concept (Score:3)
The Mind's I [wikipedia.org]
Part IV explores its titular issue, "Mind as Program". What is the self: the mind, or the body? Can they be separated? Can the location of the consciousness be separate from one's physical location. In that case, where are you, really? Dennett's fantastical account of being separated from his brain and David Sanford's response tackle these issues. In this section the mind is considered as software: as patterns of thought and action, as separate from the physical body housing it as a piece of software is from the machine it runs on.
Great book, the one that introduced me to Douglas Hofstadter.
Stupid fucking commenter. (Score:2)
This only looks simple, if you don't think of it more than five minutes and think you are soo smart.
You have many years of philosophical growth before you. Many many MANY years.
Trekkies ... in pubs??? (Score:2)
Were they hiding like tardigrades, rotifers and nematodes in a vegan meal? ;)