Transporters work by de-assembling something (e.g. you) and re-assembling it somewhere else. What if, when you’re dis-assembled, you die, and the re-assembled version of you is essentially a copy? Then every time someone steps onto a transporter, their final thought before death is that they’ll end up beamed somewhere else. And the re-assembled version (copy) just thinks that everything went fine and continues on like nothing bad happened.
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TNG had an episode where a transporter issue created two Rikers and left one stranded on a deserted planet for years.
That’s why Dr McCoy absolutely hated the things. He viewed them as death machines.
That’s what they do. This has been a topic in multiple episodes, a fear of multiple characters, and a plot device in a few different stories over the years.
You don’t need a distant science fiction MacGuffin for this. Every night you lay down and “die” for 8 hours or so, then your consciousness turns back on and you simply trust that it wasn’t altered too much in the interim. We know very well that the way we think can change from one day to the other, so who’s to say you’re really the same person?
Aaaah what did you do to me I can never go to sleep again!
I don’t think that’s quite the same. Sleeping (or intoxication) is a temporary effect clouding your “normal” consciousness. Once whatever caused it goes away - assuming nothing actually changed, as you say - you’re back to your old self. While sleep is “discontinuity of consciousness” in one way, a tell is that you can still remember dreams. If you’ve ever had (deep) general anesthesia, that time you were under can seem like it’s “missing” in a way that pure sleep doesn’t.
In contrast, the teleporter sort of… obliterates you, shredding you into atoms and rebuilding you later (if the matter doesn’t need to “travel”, at least the information is limited to light speed). It’d be no different from any other catastrophic damage to the brain.
The determining question for whether or not it’s the same is this: Are you the physical matter of your brain, or the electricity running through it? In the first case, sleep isn’t death. In the second case, it is. I would argue that you’re closer to the electricity than the brain matter, since an unpowered brain is how we define death.
But REALLY it ultimately doesn’t matter, if you think about it. An exact clone of you created after any kind of destruction of consciousness is no different than the original you had the destruction never occurred. We just intuitively really do not like that idea.
Or, since we’re getting philosophical anyway, are you some sort of spiritual entity inhabiting your body and experiencing the physical world through it?
BTW - if that’s the case then the transporter in the original question is definitely a death machine.
It goes a lot farther than that, actually. If you have the technology to assemble a person on a molecular level like that, you can basically prevent that person from dying. Captain got killed by an alien on an away mission? Just print another copy of them from their scan from just before they left.
Oh yeah. Like if you still have their pattern saved in the buffer. That’s a frightening thought.
Or you could just print out thousands of the same redshirt to act as a boarding party.
Pretty sure that’s why they specifically talk about how signal degradation occurs over time in TNG. You’re not supposed to be able to keep somebody in the buffer for an extended period of time, or you’ll lose the signal. This has been reconned multiple times though.
But didn’t Scotty store himself in the buffer for a ridiculously long period of time?
Edit: I just looked it up, and in the episode of TNG “Relics,” his shuttle crashed into the Dyson sphere on its way to his retirement community. With no supplies and little chance of rescue, he stored himself in the transporter buffer for 75 years until his crash was discovered.
Yes, but it was considered extremely risky and his partner died attempting the same thing
Yep, that’s one of the examples I was talking about when I said they retconned what O’Brien said. Although this specific example, they play it off like Scotty did some crazy tech to create some sort of feedback loop to keep his signal from degrading for like 80 years if I remember correctly.
There’s also an example in strange new worlds, Dr. M’benga is keeping his daughter in the transporter buffer in the medical wing. There’s also that one episode on TNG where Barkley found all those people who were trapped in the buffer thinking they were like interdimensional worms or something.
Or if you want a same sex partner that totally understand you.
REALLY depends on the episode/writer.
Some episodes are written like that (Will Riker/Thomas Riker)
Some episodes you keep your consciousness throughout the “beaming” process, so you’re technically you the whole way through (Broccoli in Realm of Fear)
It’s fiction and some writers treated it as a suicide machine, and some wrote it as a movement machine. Even the technical details shifted from episode to episode.
What if, when you’re dis-assembled, you die, and the re-assembled version of you is essentially a copy?
Yes, that is how they work in universe. There is at least a dozen episode that explore transporter “cloning” and other malfunctions.
The Outer Limits ‘Think Like a Dinosaur’ covered this rather creepily… https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ved5j
I was going to mention this if nobody else had.
I’ve often wondered though - say you do die, and get cloned at the other end… there hasn’t been a ‘gap’ in your consciousness as such. So were you ever truly dead? Even if you’re not technically the same person, as long as a version of you lives on.
This was always my take on the matter, too.
I am my memories, my experiences, and the continuity of my consciousness, not the meat prison my mind is forced to reside in. If my consciousness continues, I am alive. Whether that’s this bag of meat, that bag of meat, or the Transmetropolitan-inspired nanite-cloud I wish I could live on as, I’m still me either way. There might be a difference, but from my perspective it doesn’t make a difference.
If you die, you’re dead. The clone that appears on the other end, while being identical in every way, wouldn’t be the same you that you are and wouldn’t possess the same consciousness, an identical consciousness yes, but not the same one.
IT’S LONGER THAN YOU THINK!
I actually had a new thought in this that probably comes from Rick and Morty, what if transportation is possible, but it’s cheaper to murder your ass and portal in some schmuck from a parallel universe?
Haven’t watched Star Trek in any form, but I think I’ve heard of this thought experiment before anyway.
The way I see it: “the you” at the transmitter will die. There’s no place for you to go as your body is torn into atoms, unless you start bringing in “souls” or something. The question in the more philosophical sense is that, suppose you can get a 100% identical clone down to (almost) continuity of consciousness… is that still you? Really you, whatever that means?
Speaking of which… what if you left out the “breaking down” part? Are there just two of you now?
That last part about there being two of you reminds me of The Prestige. I won’t go into further detail in case I’d be spoiling it for you, but would encourage you to watch it if you haven’t.
If you arm gets cut off, you and your arm go together to the hospital, and they reattach it, are you a different person? If you die in the ambulance and they revive you, are you a different person?
More like: If you replace all parts of a boat with completely new parts, is it still the same boat?
Well no, it’s the same parts. It’s literally called the matter stream. The exact same parts are taken apart, moved to a new location, and reassembled.
I don’t know if I call it new parts, identical parts definitely. But is something technically new if it’s identical on a molecular level? Blemishes and defects and all.
