Transporters are an obvious death sentence.
If I melt you down into a slurry and then drive a mile and reconstitute you back into an exact copy, you are still dead. Functionally nothing changes because the copy is convinced it is the same person, but your consciousness was interrupted. You are dead.
We don't place a lot of value on the continuity of consciousness but it is basically without rival in terms of importance. At no time in your existence is your brain "off". There are many times when your brain is performing administrative functions and isn't writing to memory, such as when you are asleep or comatose, but your brain never interrupts your stream of consciousness. The impulses continue for some time even after heart failure. It is, for all intents and purposes, you. Your body, and even your brain, is the physical carrier of it, but make mistake, those are just machines that support your consciousness. A teleporter is, without a doubt, a death sentence.
Instantaneous travel would have to be achieved via a wormhole. You also wind up with far fewer philosophical and technological questions with a wormhole.
To understand what is and isn't a death sentence, we have to describe death. Is death impossible to return from, i.e., once you cannot be resuscitated you are DEAD? Is death just a state where your heart or brain is nonfunctional, but you can return from death under certain circumstances?
If the former, then teleporting isn't death because you quite clearly still live after being teleported. If the latter, then death during teleportation is irrelevant because you are instantaneously resuscitated with no I'll effects.
If you're one of those anti-Ship-of-Theseus guys who say teleportation kills you and creates a perfect clone put of your parts with all of your memories, then it's only a problem if A. The human soul exists, B. The soul leaves the body the instant it can no longer support one, and C. There is some ethereal deposit of souls just waiting to plop a fresh one in the nearest empty body. In THAT case, you're doing some poor wayward soul a tremendous altruistic favor by relinquishing you mortal body to them. That's a lot of good karma you can earn just by stepping into a teleporter!
[QUOTE=GunFox;52715291]Transporters are an obvious death sentence.
If I meet you down into a slurry and then drive a mile and reconstitute you back into an exact copy, you are still dead. Functionally nothing changes because the copy is convinced it is the same person, but your consciousness was interrupted. You are dead.
We don't place a lot of value on the continuity of consciousness but it is basically without rival in terms of importance. At no time in your existence is your brain "off". There are many times when your brain is performing administrative functions and isn't writing to memory, such as when you are asleep or comatose, but your brain never interrupts your stream of consciousness. The impulses continue for some time even after heart failure. It is, for all intents and purposes, you. Your body, and even your brain, is the physical carrier of it, but make mistake, those are just machines that support your consciousness. A teleporter is, without a doubt, a death sentence.
Instantaneous travel would have to be achieved via a wormhole. You also wind up with far fewer philosophical and technological questions with a wormhole.[/QUOTE]
But isn't consciousness just awareness ? If you're not "writing to memory" and you're not aware of your surroundings then you're turned off and very much not "existing" for that small period of time.
As i see it, the only thing that matters is memory retention and being a "continuous self" is an illusion, you're a machine that goes on and off all the time and there's nothing scary about it. "Death" is the loss of information that makes you, not the loss of your senses.
hey what if
you die each tick
each planck unit you go poof ded
along with the rest of the universe
but you will never know because a new universe is made anew the next planck unit, with a new you in it that didn't notice a thing
therefore all this talk is pointless and you are all stupid and I'm the best
[QUOTE=GunFox;52715291]Transporters are an obvious death sentence.
If I meet you down into a slurry and then drive a mile and reconstitute you back into an exact copy, you are still dead. Functionally nothing changes because the copy is convinced it is the same person, but your consciousness was interrupted. You are dead.
We don't place a lot of value on the continuity of consciousness but it is basically without rival in terms of importance. At no time in your existence is your brain "off". There are many times when your brain is performing administrative functions and isn't writing to memory, such as when you are asleep or comatose, but your brain never interrupts your stream of consciousness. The impulses continue for some time even after heart failure. It is, for all intents and purposes, you. Your body, and even your brain, is the physical carrier of it, but make mistake, those are just machines that support your consciousness. A teleporter is, without a doubt, a death sentence.
Instantaneous travel would have to be achieved via a wormhole. You also wind up with far fewer philosophical and technological questions with a wormhole.[/QUOTE]
It's not a copy though. If I take a boat apart board by board and rebuild it somewhere else in exactly the same configuration, with the exact same boards it doesn't become a different boat.
Also, continuity of consciousness is a load of shite. You lose consciousness every time you go to sleep or get sedated for medical purposes, no one's having an existential crisis that falling asleep will mean they stop existing. No one considered sane, any way.
The brain is just a bio-electrical and chemical computer. As long as all the parts are constituted in the same order at the end of the transport as they were at the beginning it's the same person with the same consciousness.
The objection that transportation kills you because of your consciousness is exactly the same as people claiming it kills you because it detaches you from your soul. You're objection is based entirely on the concept that a human being has some form of non-physical connection to a concept and that transportation somehow removes this connection.
Transportation doesn't kill you, and getting you photograph taken doesn't steal your soul.
[QUOTE=GunFox;52715291]Transporters are an obvious death sentence.
If I meet you down into a slurry and then drive a mile and reconstitute you back into an exact copy, you are still dead. Functionally nothing changes because the copy is convinced it is the same person, but your consciousness was interrupted. You are dead.
We don't place a lot of value on the continuity of consciousness but it is basically without rival in terms of importance. At no time in your existence is your brain "off". There are many times when your brain is performing administrative functions and isn't writing to memory, such as when you are asleep or comatose, but your brain never interrupts your stream of consciousness. The impulses continue for some time even after heart failure. It is, for all intents and purposes, you. Your body, and even your brain, is the physical carrier of it, but make mistake, those are just machines that support your consciousness. A teleporter is, without a doubt, a death sentence.
Instantaneous travel would have to be achieved via a wormhole. You also wind up with far fewer philosophical and technological questions with a wormhole.[/QUOTE]
Again, no cloning theorem. Even if the original matter is destroyed you cannot create a copy of that matter and the atoms that make it up. For the transporter to work with literally no visible signs of degradation in transported matter, it would require the original matter to be moved, not replicated.
[QUOTE=Redfiend;52715856]Again, no cloning theorem. Even if the original matter is destroyed you cannot create a copy of that matter and the atoms that make it up. For the transporter to work with literally no visible signs of degradation in transported matter, it would require the original matter to be moved, not replicated.[/QUOTE]
I just did the same thing in the example. The original matter must be deconstructed, converted to energy, and then transported to the new location. At which time the matter must then be reconverted back into matter and assembled into the same location.
My example of melting your matter into a bucket is actually LESS involved.
Would you really trust that it was still you?
Let me put this another way: You are generally impermanent. The material that comprises your cells is slowly swapped out over time. Your matter is transient. Lets say I collect the discarded matter over some time and use it to build an exact copy of you. Is that you? It is still made up of all of your matter, and it is still imbued with all of your exact memories. It, for all intents and purposes, is you. But I think you would object if I shot the original in the face. What is the difference? What makes you [I]you[/I], and the clone NOT [I]you[/I]?
OR, yet another way, you would have no concerns about being broken down at the atomic level, converted into photons, and then reassembled at another location?
[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;52715799]It's not a copy though. If I take a boat apart board by board and rebuild it somewhere else in exactly the same configuration, with the exact same boards it doesn't become a different boat.
Also, continuity of consciousness is a load of shite. You lose consciousness every time you go to sleep or get sedated for medical purposes, no one's having an existential crisis that falling asleep will mean they stop existing. No one considered sane, any way.
The brain is just a bio-electrical and chemical computer. As long as all the parts are constituted in the same order at the end of the transport as they were at the beginning it's the same person with the same consciousness.
The objection that transportation kills you because of your consciousness is exactly the same as people claiming it kills you because it detaches you from your soul. You're objection is based entirely on the concept that a human being has some form of non-physical connection to a concept and that transportation somehow removes this connection.
Transportation doesn't kill you, and getting you photograph taken doesn't steal your soul.[/QUOTE]
Your consciousness is never interrupted. When you go to sleep, your brain activity actually increases, but, as I said, you stop writing to memory. You need to access short term memory in order to convert it to long term memory. As these neurons fire, the rest of your brain attempts to create a pattern from the information, which is why dreams happen. So long as you have continued electrical impulses in your brain, you are you.
This isn't some techno-phobic shit, it exists because you aren't your brain. You extends from the electrical impulses traveling through the neurons. Worse, it gets even more complicated once you really analyze the brain and realize that your consciousness isn't even the only one fucking present. Your right brain also presents with its own consciousness, but interacts very differently with the world. Then on top of that, you have a collection of biochemicals altering how you perceive and interact with the universe.
[QUOTE=Redfiend;52715856]Again, no cloning theorem. Even if the original matter is destroyed you cannot create a copy of that matter and the atoms that make it up. For the transporter to work with literally no visible signs of degradation in transported matter, it would require the original matter to be moved, not replicated.[/QUOTE]
This line of thought assumes that an imperfect clone on the quantum level would be visually distinguishable on the macroscopic scale.
you're all a bunch of nerds
[QUOTE=jonu67;52712722]It was usually just because a no name security officer had to come down with the main team to up the danger for when he dies, so it was a higher percentage, but really, any "non" main character that came down with the team had an extreme likelyhood of dying in the TOS era because plot drama, in the later eras however, such as TNG technically more yellow shirts died, due to the uniform colour switch, which indicated operations/security in the TNG era if that's anything to go by.[/QUOTE]
Speaking of redshirts, have there ever been "ascended extra redshirts" in the series? Like a redshirt who miraculously survived multiple dangerous away missions and became a veteran among the crew?
[QUOTE=ironman17;52717834]Speaking of redshirts, have there ever been "ascended extra redshirts" in the series? Like a redshirt who miraculously survived multiple dangerous away missions and became a veteran among the crew?[/QUOTE]
ToS, Technically yeah, there are a number of regular red shirt crewmen who are noteable for surviving or litterally coming back to life on a few away missions. But they don't become anything more than a recognizeable extra, one of them shows up again in DS9 for a single episode iirc but I may be remembering wrong (not that tribble episode just in case :v:).
[QUOTE=DeEz;52717626]This line of thought assumes that an imperfect clone on the quantum level would be visually distinguishable on the macroscopic scale.[/QUOTE]
It would after a dozen or so transports. And given that transporting is even a common means to local transportation on a planet (see Voyager, the episode where Harry Kim crosses some timeline and ends up back on earth). Twice daily transports at minimum = 14 in a week = approximately 55-60 in a month.
If each transport imperfectly cloned your matter, after a while some signs of cellular degredation would occur, whether it just be your skin peeling or loosing your hair, or your skin turns blue and all your memories are now an LSD dream. The first 1 or 2 transports would make no difference, but when you use it as much as seen in the show (as in, for literally any troop transport between point A and point B)... it will become obvious in no time.
[QUOTE=Drury;52715716]hey what if
you die each tick
each planck unit you go poof ded
along with the rest of the universe
but you will never know because a new universe is made anew the next planck unit, with a new you in it that didn't notice a thing
therefore all this talk is pointless and you are all stupid and I'm the best[/QUOTE]
occams razor
[editline]26th September 2017[/editline]
and several other razors
[QUOTE=Pat.Lithium;52718477]occams razor
[editline]26th September 2017[/editline]
and several other razors[/QUOTE]
especially a cut-throat razor
[QUOTE=Pat.Lithium;52718477]occams razor
[editline]26th September 2017[/editline]
and several other razors[/QUOTE]
occam's PHASER
[editline]26th September 2017[/editline]
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[QUOTE=Redfiend;52718102]It would after a dozen or so transports. And given that transporting is even a common means to local transportation on a planet (see Voyager, the episode where Harry Kim crosses some timeline and ends up back on earth). Twice daily transports at minimum = 14 in a week = approximately 55-60 in a month.
If each transport imperfectly cloned your matter, after a while some signs of cellular degredation would occur, whether it just be your skin peeling or loosing your hair, or your skin turns blue and all your memories are now an LSD dream. The first 1 or 2 transports would make no difference, but when you use it as much as seen in the show (as in, for literally any troop transport between point A and point B)... it will become obvious in no time.[/QUOTE]
No, you cited the no-cloning theorem, a real theory in quantum physics. This theorem mostly just states that it's impossible to clone an arbitrary unknown quantum state.
I brought up that you assumed imperfect copies of quantum states would be distinguishable on the macroscopic scale (eg. cellular degredation etc). Where does this information come frome? Source? Do you have any citations from any reputable physicist?
its no different than taking the bus, in the star trek world anyways, and assuming we're just talking on-site transportation (Africa to France etc). Hell, safer even because it has redundant safety mechanisms and even bio-filters out the ass.
the reason that it fucks up is usually due to completely obscure reasons that they could never have compensated for in the universe
[QUOTE=GunFox;52717535]
Your consciousness is never interrupted. When you go to sleep, your brain activity actually increases, but, as I said, you stop writing to memory. You need to access short term memory in order to convert it to long term memory. As these neurons fire, the rest of your brain attempts to create a pattern from the information, which is why dreams happen. So long as you have continued electrical impulses in your brain, you are you.
This isn't some techno-phobic shit, it exists because you aren't your brain. You extends from the electrical impulses traveling through the neurons. Worse, it gets even more complicated once you really analyze the brain and realize that your consciousness isn't even the only one fucking present. Your right brain also presents with its own consciousness, but interacts very differently with the world. Then on top of that, you have a collection of biochemicals altering how you perceive and interact with the universe.[/QUOTE]
Again you're claiming that there is some ephemeral part of a Human being which makes them alive beyond their physical composition, which just isn't true. The electricity in your nervous system is comprised of electrons which are just as physically real as the pathways they travel. When you get transported every particle in your body is moved, all at once, to a new position. There is not a single thing left behind.
If transportation caused bodily functions to stop then people's hearts would stop regularly upon transport. However, from the subject's point of view nothing stops, everything keeps moving as normal, they're just instantaneously in a new position. People regularly make comments or say parting words [i]while[/i] being transported, and they're completely fine. Hell there are people who have been transported mid sentence and have had to trail off or suddenly interrupt their sentence when they realise what happened to them. Their consciousness was objectively not interrupted (under your criteria).
Obviously, there is a small delay between being dematerialised and then re-materialised (transportation only travels at light speed, after all), but to the person being transported the delay is unnoticeable. The only reason people appear 'frozen' for a second when they beam in is because the actors had to stand in position and wait for their cue to act, and it's much cheaper and easier to slap an effect on a still frame than a moving actor.
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