/sci/ - Science & Math

They never explicit say how it kills you and recreates a new version of you.

I think there was one episode where the "killing" part never happened and they accidentally created a copy of the person, effectively and cloning themselves. They didn't find out the original clone for 8 years later and he'd been alone on a deserted planet. The clone went off to serve on another ship but he was NEVER mentioned again.

>>9968893
>An author's idea of cannon is not the same as the finished material cannon.
I suppose, but the point is Roddenberry came up with that, for as he wrote himself, he realized a duplicate object assembled from other energies is not the same object.

And, even in the episode of TNG where they duplicate Riker, they went so far as to make their technobabble say that the energy from his transporter beam caused an "echo" response from the planet's "strange atmosphere". Thus Thomas Riker is not Will Riker, being made of energy from that atmosphere's potential, rather than the original Riker.

>>9677880
Due to the simple fact that a perfect atomic copy of a coke can, is not the original coke can.

There's a temporal connection of cause and effect of every moment of your consciousness and body that can be traced on any spacetime chart from start to finish. Even if it pulls a ship of theseus of most of itself along the way, the line still holds.

This new creation is from another set of energies with no direct causal link to the original. It would appear in an entirely different location on such a graph.

To say nothing as to what happens if they both exist at the same time - do you think your consciousness is going to magically split between them and allow you to experience the world from two perspectives at once?

It's indeed your stance that requires that consciousness magically transfer from one atomically identical copy of yourself to another. That somehow your "soul" be waiting outside of time and space to leap into a series of atoms arranged in just a certain way.

And Roddenberry thought of this - which is why Star Trek teleporters do not cannocially work by destroying your body and building a duplicate elsewhere. They convert your matter to energy, transfer said energy to a new location, and turn it back into matter there. Thus there is a direct causal connection between the teleportation, and thus it can be argued to be a rather extreme, temporary state-change, rather than a copy of you. (Even if some episodes fudge this quite a bit - it addressed this very concern.)

>>9304009
Well, no... In the case of Riker, his energy-matter stream was reproduced by interaction with exotic materials in a strange atmosphere. You could then objectively say that the duplicate signal was not Riker as it wasn't made up of the original energy.

The energy-matter transfer beam was Roddenberry's preemptive solution to the suicide booth concern. It ensures that the you are made up of your original energy when you materialize on the other end, and thus it could be excused as an extreme state change, rather than a suicide. Like full anesthesia, it involves an interruption of consciousness, but not an interruption in the temporal causality that forms you as a singular system in space-time.

Now, that episode of DS9 where they wipe the entire computer to retain the quantum state of folks after a transporter malfunction - that's another thing. ...But Star Trek isn't exactly known for its consistency.

>>9164466
Not playing link wars with a drug addict. Not considering you a drug addict because you use, but because you are blindly defending their use without pointing out any of the, much more common, negative consequences, which is classic addict behavior.

>>9159870
>>9164462
Roddenberry's transporters work via mater-energy transfer beam, so the energy that made up Kirk is the same energy that makes up body at the destination, thus one could argue this is the same object undergoing a severe state change and relocation, and it is no more a loss of identity than a brief interruption of consciousness through other means (such as temporary clinical death and an ambulance).

But the conundrum is usually in reference to teleporters that deconstruct to gather data, and then reconstruct a perfect duplicate at a new location, and those two would be fundamentally separate objects, however identical. One could only assume that this would be a new instance of the same consciousness, and had you not deconstructed the original, you would indeed have two fully functional and aware Kirks.

Not that Roddenberry didn't violate this premise for his own storylines from time to time.

>>9112334
>>9112406
>teleporters

TRANSPORTER

not Teleporter

They specifically say "transporter" because that is what it does. It transports instead of teleports. That's how people can get stuck or wake up inside the buffer and all other such things. It isn't a wormhole thing either. They turn matter and energy into another form, transport it, and convert it back on the other side. On rare occasions it can be mirrored and end up creating a copy due to interference, added energy, and a second containment beam.

>>8277990
You can't have two (you)'s. You've got you, and your copy, and they can immediately get into a debate as to which one gets to keep dating Sally and owns the house.

>>8261766
As I understood it, and seeing as how Riker was cloned and the clone was left alive, the transporters do actually kill the person to build a clone of him/her somewhere else. No one will know the difference, expect the person who was just killed - his/her life ended that instant.

I doubt the technology can somehow transfer consciousness; it is so binded to our mortal shell. This is proven by the fact that there were two Rikers - would you be concious of and be able to control a clone of you? You wouldn't, you couldn't.

I think the only way to transfer conciousness to another body is to gradually replace the neurons and cells of your body, one at a time so your conciousness, whatever it is, can slowly embed into and take over the added parts.