Do transporters kill?

[Wyrm]

I keep using the instance of the duplication of Riker and other transporter accidents because it illustrates my point best. We know that these things have happened, and their repercussions lead us to new avenues of thought.

To recap: in the event that I keep referring to, one Riker was beamed back to his ship, and the other was left to rot on the planet. At least one of these individuals is not the same as the person who was asking to be beamed up in the first place. How do I know this? Well, let's simplify: say I have two apples, which are completely identical in every test I can throw at them. I pick up one of them. It is identical to the other apple. But is it the same apple? You could say "yes", but then how could it be the same apple, since the other apple is still sitting where I left it. They are fully interchangeable, since they are identical in every way, but I submit that the one I'm holding is not the same as the one I did not pick up. If I eat that apple, the other apple will still be there, because, although the apples are identical, what affects one does not necessarily affect the other. This is a purely physical difference.

Really? What if I sent one apple back through time and set both the past and future apple upon the table before you arrived, then they are identical by this hypothesis, and furthermore, I'm guessing to you they would be the same apple... had you known the setup. But you don't, so you go ahead and say they are not the same apple and demonstrate this by eating one, looking all so smug... until I pick up the other apple and throw it into the mouth of a waiting time corridor.

Now, you based your decision of whether those apples were the same completely on the fact that you saw there were two of them. However, I'm betting the farm that had you known that I had sent the apple you didn't eat back in time to be the apple you did eat, that you would in fact consider the two apples the same apple. So this "not the same" concept of yours is not intrinsic to the apples, but is in fact highly contingent on what you know about the history of the apple(s).

This is okay, so long as you know that the two apples have independent histories — grown from different flowers (but happening to be identical anyway through some truly freakish luck), or manufactured by some obscure apple-creation process. Things start getting interesting once we start creating perfect copies, however. See, the perfect copy uses the original apple as an exemplar, arranging atoms such that the apples are completely identical up to a rigid spatial transformation. So which apple "owns" that history?

Before I can answer that question, I have to ask another question: What does that question mean? Well, what needs to be true before we consider that the question is answered correctly? The answer to that question is that the answer we give to our first question must work for the time travel case.

Let's propose an augmented experiment. Suppose instead of there being one apple, we have two apples grown from separate blossoms that through some freakish coincidence are nonetheless physically identical. A third apple pops out of the time corridor and is set besides the other two, and then you come in. Your challenge is that you have to identify a pair of apples that are distinct as you claim. You know that in fact there are only two distinct apples and one of these apples is going to get sent backwards in time and become the third apple. Your chances of picking a correct pair is 2/3.

The reason why you can legitimately say that they are not the same apple is because they do not share a world line. The apple that goes back in time has a looped worldline but it only connects up to one apple.

Now things get a little tricky. Suppose instead of sending an apple back through time to get an apple here and an apple there, I divide one apple in a peculiar way. I pull the apple apart at the median, but as I do, I put atoms in all the right places such that when the two halves have been completely separated, I have two identical apples. So you have two apples that unambiguously started out as the same apple.

You have two questions before you: Are those apples still the same apple? And if so, when did they stop being the same apple?

If you cannot answer 'no' to the first question without tying yourself up in knots on the second, then because the two apples are the same apple as the original apple, "original" cannot be exclusive to one apple and not be contradictory.

If we get back to the Rikers, clearly one Riker was left on the planet and the other departed on his ship, each ignorant of each other's existence for several years. The one later called Thomas is not the same as the one who was continuously referred to as William, because one is on the ship and one is on the planet. At the moment of transport they are identical in every way, and fully interchangeable, but they cannot be the same entity. If Thomas were to kill himself by falling down a chasm, William would still continue to exist, because he isn't Thomas. If you subdivide the universe into two portions, defined as "on Thomas' planet" and "everything else", they will each fall into different circles on that Venn diagram. They are distinct individuals in that sense: indistinguishable, but distinct.

Your definition of 'distinct' doesn't work for time looped travelers. You're going to have to refine that definition. Check that— you're going to have to give me a definition, as you haven't even bothered defining it properly.

This leads us to another conclusion: since they are not the same person, at least one of them is a copy, if only because they can't both be the original? There was, after all, just the one William Riker when he put on his space-underwear on that fateful morning, and by the end of the day there were two. At most one of them is the original, I have just reasoned, so what is the other one, and which one is which? Both are clearly self-aware beings, possessing free will, and are equally valid instances of that person. It would be no less a crime to kill either one of them, and yet at least one was just energy the day before.

And this gets back to the same points you have been dodging this entire trainwreck of a thread: how do you define "original" in a consistent manner that allows it to be exclusive, and what physical essense doesn't get transferred to differentiate them?

You don't see that as a copy? If you reduce a person to energy and reconstitute them some distance away -- which is the mechanism that the transporter is supposed to use -- how is that not copying them?

How is it copying them, given that after the process is over, the necessary copy seems to be missing?

3. Transporter turns your entire body into some sort of energy state, or breaks it down into its fundamental particles, and beams this soup down (or up, depending on where the traveller is going). This part is unclear, at least to me, as to exactly what it's supposed to mean, but I don't think that knowing the exact mechanism is necessary to proceed.

4. Transporter takes the energy (or particles, or whatever) that you were composed of and uses the pattern from step 2 to create a new you.

My position has always been that at the end of step 3 you're dead, and that step 4 just creates another person who is indistinguishable from you, but, as I stated earlier, is still a distinct individual.

Since Feddies have direct experience with other, more freakish bodily transformations that, if reversed (or even remaining as-is), don't result in the death of a person, why are transporters singled out?

Obviously, if you never proceed to step 4, you're clearly dead or, at least, not alive; we've seen them do that in TOS at least once -- Chekhov suggested leaving someone in mid-transport forever, in what he called "nonexistence". Obviously, though, you believe that the individual can survive between step 3 and step 4.

If I stick a knife and you, and that remains unremedied, you'll die too as surely as if your body was dissolutions in step 3 and not reversed in step 4 in a timely manner. Yet obviously, you can survive a knifing. Why are transporters singled out?

But let's try a little thought experiment, shall we? If the transporter operator got into the Romulan ale a little before his shift and decided to start churning out multiple copies. It must be possible: the William/Thomas Riker episode tells us that much. So which one is the "real" person? By "real", I mean the distinct individual who started out at step 1.

Why do you assume that our meaning of "real" is non-reentrant and that we MUST choose no more than one as the "real" me?

(If there's some misunderstanding about "real", let's try this thought experiment. Let's say that I create an exact copy of you, in the manner of the transporter, and then disintegrate you -- the one I copied, that is. You would still be very dead, yes?)

No. I would lose a few seconds of experience from the one who was just disintegrated.

How many times do we have to hammer into your ball-peen head that a result you consider wierd is not liscence to say that its contradictory?

The only way I can conceive of an individual surviving between steps 3 and 4 is if it is possible for that mass of particles (or energy, or whatever) to be alive, and I just can't make myself believe that.

That's actually not an unsupported conclusion. Broccoli decided —on the spur of the moment— to reach out and grab one of those critters, indicates a reasonably functioning brain and biomechanics. Furthermore, in that Krieger wave murder mystery, Riker was theorizied to pull out a phaser and zap the generator (making it explode), just as he dissolved away, phaser still out and pointed at the generator, then that phaser should have still been out when he arrived on the pad. In which case, how come no shouted, "Hey, wait a minute! If Riker's phaser was out as disintegration completed, then it should still have been out when he arrived on the pad! Let's go ask the transport operator if he still had his phaser out when he arrived!" But they didn't, implying that Riker might have had the presence of mind to put his phaser away while still in mid-transport.

Both kind of impossible if the body stopped working during transport, innit?

Maybe in the Trek universe it's possible, but without a physical structure to organize things it doesn't make sense, at least not to me. Energy just doesn't organize itself, after all.

First, as it does seem that ST transporters do preserve life functions mid-transport, that the transporter does not kill, period. Secondly, I find in your argument that someone dies on the transporter to be no more convincing than, "THEY DIE BECAWSE I SAY SO!!"... because that's what it ammounts to.

I'm wondering if you think Kevin Flynn died in TRON when the MCP abducted him into the computer.

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I think in light of this the question is not whether a transporter kills you (I think that you can arrive at different answers for different values of "kill"). To me the question is whether or not "being killed" by a transporter matters. Even if you are, what does it matter? The information and process that is "you" stops and is then restarted. It seems horrific intuitively, even though objectively there is no difference.

That's probably the most level-headed thing I've read so far in this thread.

It also speaks against your bullshit. He points out that the problem is entirely with your intuition on this matter, but we have learned through many hard centuries of scientific advancement that our intuition is a bad guide to new phenomena.

[Wyrm]

Au contraire. I have had something very similar to your experience. I can recall counting backwards from ten as they passed the nitrous oxide (and, I'm told, injected the sodium pentathol), fighting just to see how long I could stay awake. I don't think I got past eight. My next thought was something like "am I under yet?", though of course the better part of an hour had passed, and my wisdom teeth were in a jar. I believe I know what it means to be unconscious.

Am I the same individual now as I was before I got into that chair? I can't say that I know for certain. I do feel like the same person, though of course having lost consciousness I can't verify it with perfect accuracy. I know that it would seem exactly the same to me, the post-operative SCRawl, whether or not the self-awareness of the person I was came to an end that day.

My god. That really says it all, doesn't it? Your concept of "self" is so weak that it breaks even under fucking anesthesia. Good thing you aren't actually resposible for define identity, or else we'd have to burn our birth certificates and be extradited on the grounds that we are no longer Wyrm and SCRawl.

What, you're pissy because I don't like your red herring? I have no idea about what mechanism you're discussing for your sleeper ship.

Does it really matter? The brain can't stand a few minutes of metabolic activity without blood flow, let alone centuries to millennia. The brain's metabolic activity would have to be stopped, and with it, consciousness.

Trek doesn't use one, and if they did, the basic method is not clear to me.

Khan and the Botany Bay. Jesus...

Do they really freeze the bodies solid, creating, as you put it, "inert brain tissue" (or something like it -- I can't be bothered to find it right now)? If that's it, then everything I know tells me that that kills people, as in permanently and irrevocably dead.

Or do they just cool them down so that most metabolic processes stop? And is there any supplemental "might as well be magic" technology involved? At least for the transporter we know and can agree on the basic premise; for the sleeper STL ship, you want me to make some sort of admission based on a vague mechanism. The hole you've created in my argument is an imaginary one, and I'm under no obligation to fill it for you.

Who cares how they stopped it, as long as they could restart it? That's all you need to know about the situation to answer the question. You've already demonstrated that your notion of identity and life is so weak that it can't even withstand anesthesia, but I doubt you're burning your high school scholastic records on account that the person who was in class doesn't exist anymore — which shows me just how seriously you take your notion: none at all.

And the word "consciousness" is not completely suitable. I know that I've used it repeatedly, but the problem is that I don't have the precise word to describe what I mean for what is lost when a transporter process occurs.

Translation: "Something must be lost! I can't identify it, and I don't even know if it's real, but it must be true because... because... I said so!"

In other words, it's your best guess. Maybe even a good guess.

If that's SCRawlSpeak for "the best theory supported by the evidence," then yes. And note that I'm only talking about the gross characteristics of consciousness when I identified the RAS, as the mind is more than just the consciousness.

But neuroscience as a discipline doesn't know which part of the brain contains the mind, probably because there isn't just one part, like you already mentioned in your "gotcha" response.

Neuroscience has answered the question of where the mind comes from quite convincingly: it's a synthesis of the many functional areas of the brain and doesn't reside in one spot. Just because we don't know the details doesn't mean we're not absolutely clear on that point.

Mine was always a sucker's bet; you took it, and thought you could bluff me off the pot. Nice try.

So you were lying when you said you'd retract everything, eh? Because identifying a loaded question counts as fulfilling the challenge in my book.

The more fundamental difference is that, since both are individuals, they are not completely interchangeable. If I offer two completely identical Wyrms -- let's say that it's you and a perfect copy of you standing next to each other -- an apple, only one can have it, which means that the other one can't. Again, the situations are reversible if you look at things in a merely mathematical way: one of the Wyrms got an apple. But if you're not the one who got the apple, is it the same to you, since you don't have an apple and the other one does? Do you not see how this makes them not the same person, thus causing the contradiction I accused you of making?

Again, you're assuming I have the same definition of "same" as you. The way I see it, one of the individuals has the apple and the other hasn't, and it doesn't matter which because of symmetry. There's nothing in my definition of "same" that says an object cannot be reentrant. There is no contradiction.

You know, I think I've come closer to understanding the nuances of your position. I believe that some of our differences have been more about nomenclature than substance, though of course you're free to disagree. Like you, I am a materialist, and I never stated or meant to imply that there was anything supernatural to the existence of the human mind. But individualism in the sense I've described in this post (and a couple of posts ago) does exist, and is the basis for my lining up on the "yes" side to the question in the thread title.

Your position is completely about nomenclature. You only say that "something" is missing from one of the Wyrms, that "something" is mysteriously created in post-transport Wyrms that somehow gives them different identities, but you refuse to pin down what exactly that "something" is, or even if that something is physical. The best you can come up with is your ridiculous notion of continued consciousness that doesn't even stand up to freaking anesthesia, and as such is quite useless even in the real world you live in. You may claim to be materialistic, but the way you argue is either borderline dualism, or just obviously broken tripe.

[SCRawl]

I keep using the instance of the duplication of Riker and other transporter accidents because it illustrates my point best. We know that these things have happened, and their repercussions lead us to new avenues of thought.

To recap: in the event that I keep referring to, one Riker was beamed back to his ship, and the other was left to rot on the planet. At least one of these individuals is not the same as the person who was asking to be beamed up in the first place. How do I know this? Well, let's simplify: say I have two apples, which are completely identical in every test I can throw at them. I pick up one of them. It is identical to the other apple. But is it the same apple? You could say "yes", but then how could it be the same apple, since the other apple is still sitting where I left it. They are fully interchangeable, since they are identical in every way, but I submit that the one I'm holding is not the same as the one I did not pick up. If I eat that apple, the other apple will still be there, because, although the apples are identical, what affects one does not necessarily affect the other. This is a purely physical difference.

Really? What if I sent one apple back through time and set both the past and future apple upon the table before you arrived, then they are identical by this hypothesis, and furthermore, I'm guessing to you they would be the same apple... had you known the setup. But you don't, so you go ahead and say they are not the same apple and demonstrate this by eating one, looking all so smug... until I pick up the other apple and throw it into the mouth of a waiting time corridor.

For my purposes the apples, while indistinguishable, are still distinct. It reminds me of that old trick question: if I have two coins whose values add up to thirty cents, and one of them is not a nickel, what are the two coins? The answer of course is that the quarter is not a nickel, fulfilling the proviso, and the other one is. The apple I pick up is not the other one, and whatever happens to it afterwards is irrelevant to this fact, even if it keeps looping back into the past.

Now, you based your decision of whether those apples were the same completely on the fact that you saw there were two of them. However, I'm betting the farm that had you known that I had sent the apple you didn't eat back in time to be the apple you did eat, that you would in fact consider the two apples the same apple. So this "not the same" concept of yours is not intrinsic to the apples, but is in fact highly contingent on what you know about the history of the apple(s).

I wouldn't have bet the farm. Regardless of how the apples got there, they're still distinct when I'm looking at them on the table.

This is okay, so long as you know that the two apples have independent histories — grown from different flowers (but happening to be identical anyway through some truly freakish luck), or manufactured by some obscure apple-creation process. Things start getting interesting once we start creating perfect copies, however. See, the perfect copy uses the original apple as an exemplar, arranging atoms such that the apples are completely identical up to a rigid spatial transformation. So which apple "owns" that history?

Now this is a more interesting question, in the sense that it gets at my position better. "Ownership" of history is not part of my hypothesis, though I suppose it might seem as though it does. It doesn't matter to me who is the "owner": the copy is what it is, and is indistinguishable from the original, to the point that it doesn't matter which is which externally. It would only matter to the apples themselves, and as they aren't talking, it doesn't much matter.

Before I can answer that question, I have to ask another question: What does that question mean? Well, what needs to be true before we consider that the question is answered correctly? The answer to that question is that the answer we give to our first question must work for the time travel case.

Let's propose an augmented experiment. Suppose instead of there being one apple, we have two apples grown from separate blossoms that through some freakish coincidence are nonetheless physically identical. A third apple pops out of the time corridor and is set besides the other two, and then you come in. Your challenge is that you have to identify a pair of apples that are distinct as you claim. You know that in fact there are only two distinct apples and one of these apples is going to get sent backwards in time and become the third apple. Your chances of picking a correct pair is 2/3.

The reason why you can legitimately say that they are not the same apple is because they do not share a world line. The apple that goes back in time has a looped worldline but it only connects up to one apple.

No, I can consider them different because they are distinct. Their history is unimportant to me. If I draw a line on the table between these apples and divide the universe into two portions, everything to left of that line, and everything to the right -- forget about the geometry for a second -- then each one will be on its own subdivision.

Now things get a little tricky. Suppose instead of sending an apple back through time to get an apple here and an apple there, I divide one apple in a peculiar way. I pull the apple apart at the median, but as I do, I put atoms in all the right places such that when the two halves have been completely separated, I have two identical apples. So you have two apples that unambiguously started out as the same apple.

You have two questions before you: Are those apples still the same apple? And if so, when did they stop being the same apple?

If you cannot answer 'no' to the first question without tying yourself up in knots on the second, then because the two apples are the same apple as the original apple, "original" cannot be exclusive to one apple and not be contradictory.

Do I assume correctly that you actually meant that you'll have two identical half-apples, rather than two identical apples? Or have I missed something critical? In any case, the two halves (or whatever) are still just as distinct as having two new, identical apples. If I eat one half, the other half is still there, since my eating the one has had no effect on the other.

All of this is very interesting, but since we're talking about apples -- I brought it up, I know -- their distinctiveness isn't all that important. An apple doesn't mind if it gets eaten, after all; there is no one to care about subjective differences.

If we get back to the Rikers, clearly one Riker was left on the planet and the other departed on his ship, each ignorant of each other's existence for several years. The one later called Thomas is not the same as the one who was continuously referred to as William, because one is on the ship and one is on the planet. At the moment of transport they are identical in every way, and fully interchangeable, but they cannot be the same entity. If Thomas were to kill himself by falling down a chasm, William would still continue to exist, because he isn't Thomas. If you subdivide the universe into two portions, defined as "on Thomas' planet" and "everything else", they will each fall into different circles on that Venn diagram. They are distinct individuals in that sense: indistinguishable, but distinct.

Your definition of 'distinct' doesn't work for time looped travelers. You're going to have to refine that definition. Check that— you're going to have to give me a definition, as you haven't even bothered defining it properly.

I think that it does work for time looped travellers. But anyways, if you're going to invalidate a hypothesis because it breaks under conditions of time travel, then in my opinion you're seeking excessive rigour in your definitions.

This leads us to another conclusion: since they are not the same person, at least one of them is a copy, if only because they can't both be the original? There was, after all, just the one William Riker when he put on his space-underwear on that fateful morning, and by the end of the day there were two. At most one of them is the original, I have just reasoned, so what is the other one, and which one is which? Both are clearly self-aware beings, possessing free will, and are equally valid instances of that person. It would be no less a crime to kill either one of them, and yet at least one was just energy the day before.

And this gets back to the same points you have been dodging this entire trainwreck of a thread: how do you define "original" in a consistent manner that allows it to be exclusive, and what physical essense doesn't get transferred to differentiate them?

Objectively it doesn't matter which one is the original, but since the two are individuals it clearly does matter (to them) how I treat them. The rest of the universe doesn't care, because they're identical; if I phaser one or the other, it makes no difference which one I choose. It makes a huge difference to the one I just phasered, though.

Several posts ago I referred to something that was "lost" during the transport process, and strictly speaking that was a poor choice of words. "Lost" is the wrong word here. Going back to the steps of the transporter process, if I stop at step 3, the individual has clearly been lost, because there is no individual anymore. Step 4 involves recreating that same person, so what was lost is now recreated. Reverse time and it's still the same.

You don't see that as a copy? If you reduce a person to energy and reconstitute them some distance away -- which is the mechanism that the transporter is supposed to use -- how is that not copying them?

How is it copying them, given that after the process is over, the necessary copy seems to be missing?

You mean, the original seems to be missing? It's a copy because it was generated by the transporter device from a pattern. If you don't like the word "copy", substitute whatever word seems most appropriate to you, but the fact is that the transporter used off-the-shelf materials -- or might as well have, since the particles that make up anything are the same as any other -- to create something from a pattern.

3. Transporter turns your entire body into some sort of energy state, or breaks it down into its fundamental particles, and beams this soup down (or up, depending on where the traveller is going). This part is unclear, at least to me, as to exactly what it's supposed to mean, but I don't think that knowing the exact mechanism is necessary to proceed.

4. Transporter takes the energy (or particles, or whatever) that you were composed of and uses the pattern from step 2 to create a new you.

My position has always been that at the end of step 3 you're dead, and that step 4 just creates another person who is indistinguishable from you, but, as I stated earlier, is still a distinct individual.

Since Feddies have direct experience with other, more freakish bodily transformations that, if reversed (or even remaining as-is), don't result in the death of a person, why are transporters singled out?

Um, well, it's the topic of this thread. I'm an equal-opportunity debunker, though; mind-transfer devices are just silly for so many reasons, just to pick an example, and if someone starts a thread on that I'll be sure to weigh in if I feel it necessary.

Obviously, if you never proceed to step 4, you're clearly dead or, at least, not alive; we've seen them do that in TOS at least once -- Chekhov suggested leaving someone in mid-transport forever, in what he called "nonexistence". Obviously, though, you believe that the individual can survive between step 3 and step 4.

If I stick a knife and you, and that remains unremedied, you'll die too as surely as if your body was dissolutions in step 3 and not reversed in step 4 in a timely manner. Yet obviously, you can survive a knifing. Why are transporters singled out?

Again, you know, topic of the thread.

But let's try a little thought experiment, shall we? If the transporter operator got into the Romulan ale a little before his shift and decided to start churning out multiple copies. It must be possible: the William/Thomas Riker episode tells us that much. So which one is the "real" person? By "real", I mean the distinct individual who started out at step 1.

Why do you assume that our meaning of "real" is non-reentrant and that we MUST choose no more than one as the "real" me?

If you're standing next to an exact copy of yourself, and I say to you -- the one on the left (leaving political labels aside) -- to scratch your nose. You can do so if you choose to. Now I say to you to make the one on the right scratch his nose. The one on the right can choose to scratch his nose, but you can't choose that for him. So the one on the right isn't you, despite the fact that you are identical in every way save that one. The two of you are self-contained individuals, distinct from each other, despite being identical.

(If there's some misunderstanding about "real", let's try this thought experiment. Let's say that I create an exact copy of you, in the manner of the transporter, and then disintegrate you -- the one I copied, that is. You would still be very dead, yes?)

No. I would lose a few seconds of experience from the one who was just disintegrated.

How many times do we have to hammer into your ball-peen head that a result you consider wierd is not liscence to say that its contradictory?

So, it wouldn't matter to you if I shot you if I promised to create an exact duplicate of you first? No, this is just one of those occasions when we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm absolutely convinced that you're wrong in your assertion. If you think that I'm the one that's bonkers, well, I invite you to take a poll among people whose opinions you respect, and see how that goes.

The only way I can conceive of an individual surviving between steps 3 and 4 is if it is possible for that mass of particles (or energy, or whatever) to be alive, and I just can't make myself believe that.

That's actually not an unsupported conclusion. Broccoli decided —on the spur of the moment— to reach out and grab one of those critters, indicates a reasonably functioning brain and biomechanics. Furthermore, in that Krieger wave murder mystery, Riker was theorizied to pull out a phaser and zap the generator (making it explode), just as he dissolved away, phaser still out and pointed at the generator, then that phaser should have still been out when he arrived on the pad. In which case, how come no shouted, "Hey, wait a minute! If Riker's phaser was out as disintegration completed, then it should still have been out when he arrived on the pad! Let's go ask the transport operator if he still had his phaser out when he arrived!" But they didn't, implying that Riker might have had the presence of mind to put his phaser away while still in mid-transport.

Both kind of impossible if the body stopped working during transport, innit?

At least one of the examples you chose is unfortunate for your argument. As I posted several pages ago, on page three...

...if we held Barclay suspended -- in mid transport -- at the point where matter starts to lose its cohesion...

In other words, he wasn't being disassembled quite yet, but was held on the cusp of it.

As for the example about Riker, well, do you really need me to point out the issues? Do you really think that a planetary government would be satisfied by the word of a transporter operator about whether or not Riker had his phaser out at the time of transport? Do you really think that that would make a satisfying resolution to the plot? Writers miss this kind of thing all the time.

Maybe in the Trek universe it's possible, but without a physical structure to organize things it doesn't make sense, at least not to me. Energy just doesn't organize itself, after all.

First, as it does seem that ST transporters do preserve life functions mid-transport, that the transporter does not kill, period. Secondly, I find in your argument that someone dies on the transporter to be no more convincing than, "THEY DIE BECAWSE I SAY SO!!"... because that's what it ammounts to.

Want some cheese with that whine?

I'm wondering if you think Kevin Flynn died in TRON when the MCP abducted him into the computer.

I haven't seen that movie in something like 25 years. I barely remember the plot. And I'm not prepared to review it just because you referenced it.

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I think in light of this the question is not whether a transporter kills you (I think that you can arrive at different answers for different values of "kill"). To me the question is whether or not "being killed" by a transporter matters. Even if you are, what does it matter? The information and process that is "you" stops and is then restarted. It seems horrific intuitively, even though objectively there is no difference.

That's probably the most level-headed thing I've read so far in this thread.

It also speaks against your bullshit. He points out that the problem is entirely with your intuition on this matter, but we have learned through many hard centuries of scientific advancement that our intuition is a bad guide to new phenomena.

The key word in ThomasP's post is "objectively". The universe goes on, with you performing your role in it, whatever it is, so what does it matter to the objective observer? If, as I mentioned above, I promise to create an exact copy of you right after I kill you, does it make a subjective difference to you? The other occupants of the universe might not care, assuming they weren't a party to the whole killing part, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that, if offered this opportunity, you would decline, even if you had perfect confidence in my ability to fulfill my promise.

[SCRawl]

Au contraire. I have had something very similar to your experience. I can recall counting backwards from ten as they passed the nitrous oxide (and, I'm told, injected the sodium pentathol), fighting just to see how long I could stay awake. I don't think I got past eight. My next thought was something like "am I under yet?", though of course the better part of an hour had passed, and my wisdom teeth were in a jar. I believe I know what it means to be unconscious.

Am I the same individual now as I was before I got into that chair? I can't say that I know for certain. I do feel like the same person, though of course having lost consciousness I can't verify it with perfect accuracy. I know that it would seem exactly the same to me, the post-operative SCRawl, whether or not the self-awareness of the person I was came to an end that day.

My god. That really says it all, doesn't it? Your concept of "self" is so weak that it breaks even under fucking anesthesia. Good thing you aren't actually resposible for define identity, or else we'd have to burn our birth certificates and be extradited on the grounds that we are no longer Wyrm and SCRawl.

So, because I can't absolutely be certain of something which would be impossible to prove anyways, I'm an idiot. Your standards are high indeed. Your point is unvarnished hyperbole, and unworthy of you.

What, you're pissy because I don't like your red herring? I have no idea about what mechanism you're discussing for your sleeper ship.

Does it really matter? The brain can't stand a few minutes of metabolic activity without blood flow, let alone centuries to millennia. The brain's metabolic activity would have to be stopped, and with it, consciousness.

Trek doesn't use one, and if they did, the basic method is not clear to me.

Khan and the Botany Bay. Jesus...

Ever watch that episode? Youtube is a wonderful thing, and I just reviewed the relevant scenes. No mention at all of temperature. None. And McCoy was able to detect heartbeats (around four beats per minute) from the Enterprise, though no respiration (which strikes me as odd -- what would be the point of circulation without respiration?). There would have to be something else in the system to oxygenate the blood. When Khan was awakened, it was a matter of seconds before he was conscious. Doesn't sound like he was ever frozen at all to me.

Do they really freeze the bodies solid, creating, as you put it, "inert brain tissue" (or something like it -- I can't be bothered to find it right now)? If that's it, then everything I know tells me that that kills people, as in permanently and irrevocably dead.

Or do they just cool them down so that most metabolic processes stop? And is there any supplemental "might as well be magic" technology involved? At least for the transporter we know and can agree on the basic premise; for the sleeper STL ship, you want me to make some sort of admission based on a vague mechanism. The hole you've created in my argument is an imaginary one, and I'm under no obligation to fill it for you.

Who cares how they stopped it, as long as they could restart it? That's all you need to know about the situation to answer the question. You've already demonstrated that your notion of identity and life is so weak that it can't even withstand anesthesia, but I doubt you're burning your high school scholastic records on account that the person who was in class doesn't exist anymore — which shows me just how seriously you take your notion: none at all.

More useless hyperbole. Your post barely rates better than spam at this point.

But neuroscience as a discipline doesn't know which part of the brain contains the mind, probably because there isn't just one part, like you already mentioned in your "gotcha" response.

Neuroscience has answered the question of where the mind comes from quite convincingly: it's a synthesis of the many functional areas of the brain and doesn't reside in one spot. Just because we don't know the details doesn't mean we're not absolutely clear on that point.

Isn't that pretty much what I said?

Mine was always a sucker's bet; you took it, and thought you could bluff me off the pot. Nice try.

So you were lying when you said you'd retract everything, eh? Because identifying a loaded question counts as fulfilling the challenge in my book.[/quote]

You didn't identify a loaded question -- you tried a weak response, and hoped to wrest a concession from me.

The more fundamental difference is that, since both are individuals, they are not completely interchangeable. If I offer two completely identical Wyrms -- let's say that it's you and a perfect copy of you standing next to each other -- an apple, only one can have it, which means that the other one can't. Again, the situations are reversible if you look at things in a merely mathematical way: one of the Wyrms got an apple. But if you're not the one who got the apple, is it the same to you, since you don't have an apple and the other one does? Do you not see how this makes them not the same person, thus causing the contradiction I accused you of making?

Again, you're assuming I have the same definition of "same" as you. The way I see it, one of the individuals has the apple and the other hasn't, and it doesn't matter which because of symmetry. There's nothing in my definition of "same" that says an object cannot be reentrant. There is no contradiction.

You're saying it doesn't matter to the guy holding the apple whether or not he has it? Each of the two identical Wyrms is now living his own life, and they share only identical bodies (and memories, brain structure, etc. that go along with that). If you don't see how that makes them different, distinct, then there's no use having a discussion.

You know, I think I've come closer to understanding the nuances of your position. I believe that some of our differences have been more about nomenclature than substance, though of course you're free to disagree. Like you, I am a materialist, and I never stated or meant to imply that there was anything supernatural to the existence of the human mind. But individualism in the sense I've described in this post (and a couple of posts ago) does exist, and is the basis for my lining up on the "yes" side to the question in the thread title.

Your position is completely about nomenclature. You only say that "something" is missing from one of the Wyrms, that "something" is mysteriously created in post-transport Wyrms that somehow gives them different identities, but you refuse to pin down what exactly that "something" is, or even if that something is physical. The best you can come up with is your ridiculous notion of continued consciousness that doesn't even stand up to freaking anesthesia, and as such is quite useless even in the real world you live in. You may claim to be materialistic, but the way you argue is either borderline dualism, or just obviously broken tripe.

There isn't something "missing" from one of the Wyrms or the other. But each one has his own brain, his own identity, in a way almost identical to the way you and I have our own distinct identities. Of course, you and I don't share identical memories and brain structures, so we bring different intellectual perspectives to a discussion (obviously). If you ask one of the Wyrms what his favourite colour is, both of them will say the same thing. If you ask them to do a calculus problem, they'll both perform the same. Ask each of them if they'd like to be disintegrated so the other can carry on for both of them, and they'll both say (assuming there's no death wish involved) that no, they'd rather the other guy takes that bullet.

[Wyrm]

For my purposes the apples, while indistinguishable, are still distinct. It reminds me of that old trick question: if I have two coins whose values add up to thirty cents, and one of them is not a nickel, what are the two coins? The answer of course is that the quarter is not a nickel, fulfilling the proviso, and the other one is. The apple I pick up is not the other one, and whatever happens to it afterwards is irrelevant to this fact, even if it keeps looping back into the past.

<snip>

I wouldn't have bet the farm. Regardless of how the apples got there, they're still distinct when I'm looking at them on the table.

<snip bunch of stuff that is essentially arguing around the same stuff>

It's clear you're not using the same meaning of "same" that I'm using. Your "same" is only useful for picking objects at different locations in space and time. That's not the "same" I'm interested in discussing — the one that does identify individual objects across space and time. Indeed, if it cannot by definition, then it is worthless to my discussion.

My god, you're like one of those trektards who thinks "fusion" always means nuclear fusion no matter the context!

I think that it does work for time looped travellers. But anyways, if you're going to invalidate a hypothesis because it breaks under conditions of time travel, then in my opinion you're seeking excessive rigour in your definitions.

As I said before, the definition of "same" I'm interested in arguing is one that does work under time travel. If your definition doesn't, then I'm not at all interested in discussing it.

Objectively it doesn't matter which one is the original, but since the two are individuals it clearly does matter (to them) how I treat them. The rest of the universe doesn't care, because they're identical; if I phaser one or the other, it makes no difference which one I choose. It makes a huge difference to the one I just phasered, though.

Their responses to how you treat them are symmetrical, and as such contain nothing of value. Subjectivity is overrated.

Several posts ago I referred to something that was "lost" during the transport process, and strictly speaking that was a poor choice of words. "Lost" is the wrong word here. Going back to the steps of the transporter process, if I stop at step 3, the individual has clearly been lost, because there is no individual anymore. Step 4 involves recreating that same person, so what was lost is now recreated. Reverse time and it's still the same.

Not quite. Reversing time on step 3 only still has the subject missing on the other side of the process — you either begin with nobody, or you end with nobody. Only including both step 3 and step 4 gives you a person on both ends of the process — you begin with somebody and you end with somebody.

How is it copying them, given that after the process is over, the necessary copy seems to be missing?

You mean, the original seems to be missing? It's a copy because it was generated by the transporter device from a pattern.

No. That's a circular argument. Once again, the entire argument is around that very point. I'm not handing it to you on a silver platter. In transport, you ended with exactly one somebody while beginning with exactly one somebody. If it were copying, you should have end up with two somebodies when starting with one.

If you don't like the word "copy", substitute whatever word seems most appropriate to you, but the fact is that the transporter used off-the-shelf materials -- or might as well have, since the particles that make up anything are the same as any other -- to create something from a pattern.

If the only means of obtaining a Wyrm is to pop one out of a transporter using the appropriate pattern, then in every sense, a transporter-created Wyrm is an original Wyrm, and if the transporter is destroyed after the first one is popped out, then that transporter-created Wyrm is the original Wyrm by any definition of the word. The only reason you don't consider it original is that it comes from a transporter — that a transporter cannot by definition pop out an/the original object.

Since Feddies have direct experience with other, more freakish bodily transformations that, if reversed (or even remaining as-is), don't result in the death of a person, why are transporters singled out?

Um, well, it's the topic of this thread.

That's not an answer to my question. Why specifically is change of state speak against the transporter when the case may be made for other transformations?

If I stick a knife and you, and that remains unremedied, you'll die too as surely as if your body was dissolutions in step 3 and not reversed in step 4 in a timely manner. Yet obviously, you can survive a knifing. Why are transporters singled out?

Again, you know, topic of the thread.

DON'T DODGE THE QUESTION, which IS about transporters and does NOT belong in another thread: Why are transporters singled out?

If you're standing next to an exact copy of yourself, and I say to you -- the one on the left (leaving political labels aside) -- to scratch your nose. You can do so if you choose to. Now I say to you to make the one on the right scratch his nose. The one on the right can choose to scratch his nose, but you can't choose that for him. So the one on the right isn't you, despite the fact that you are identical in every way save that one. The two of you are self-contained individuals, distinct from each other, despite being identical.

More arguing around definitions. If "self" can be reentrant, then it doesn't matter if the two individuals are self-contained and distinct but identical in a material sense, because "self" would be based on different criteria.

You need to show that any definition of "self", that I recognize as applying to personal identity, by necessity requires it to be non-reentrant in this way. You have still failed to do so.

So, it wouldn't matter to you if I shot you if I promised to create an exact duplicate of you first?

I wouldn't expect someone who shoots me to make good on any promise to recreate me. If transporter cheifs have a habit of not rematerializing transport subjects, I wouldn't use a transporter either. If transporters have a good history of subjects arriving intact then I'll know that it's my own squickiness that prevents me from using it. But being squicky about the process does not give me licence to say that it's a contradiction.

I'd strongly prefer not to be shot at all, but I'll take what I can get.

No, this is just one of those occasions when we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm absolutely convinced that you're wrong in your assertion. If you think that I'm the one that's bonkers, well, I invite you to take a poll among people whose opinions you respect, and see how that goes.

Appeal to popularity. Just because I'm in the minority doesn't mean I'm wrong, or right. You must show that "same", as applied to persons, by necessity forbids it from applying to two or more physical instances at the same time, instead of being true by contingency of the world being absent perfect copy machines. There's no prior reason to believe that it is only a matter of opinion, only you don't know how to argue your case.

At least one of the examples you chose is unfortunate for your argument. As I posted several pages ago, on page three...

...if we held Barclay suspended -- in mid transport -- at the point where matter starts to lose its cohesion...

In other words, he wasn't being disassembled quite yet, but was held on the cusp of it.

Again, since when have we taken anything the cast says at face value? You're arguing like a fucking trektard. Also, you'd think that matter on the cusp of decohesion would behave very differently from matter in its ground state.

As for the example about Riker, well, do you really need me to point out the issues? Do you really think that a planetary government would be satisfied by the word of a transporter operator about whether or not Riker had his phaser out at the time of transport?

They were satisfied by a reconstruction of the event by the Enterprise based on a circumstantial evidence that the doctor intended the Krieger wave generator to be more than a weapon. Even though they supposedly presumed guilt rather than innocence.

Do you really think that that would make a satisfying resolution to the plot? Writers miss this kind of thing all the time.

Who cares about writer's intent? It still didn't occur to anyone in the courtroom. And it's not as if another witness for Riker's innocence would hurt his chances, correct?

The key word in ThomasP's post is "objectively".

You mean, "objectively" as in "being testible by empirical evidence"? Why should any other position be taken seriously?

------

So, because I can't absolutely be certain of something which would be impossible to prove anyways, I'm an idiot. Your standards are high indeed. Your point is unvarnished hyperbole, and unworthy of you.

It means your definition of "self" is no good. It may be true or it may not for a particular case, but so what? Your definition has none of the features of "self" that I am interested in discussing.

Ever watch that episode? Youtube is a wonderful thing, and I just reviewed the relevant scenes. No mention at all of temperature. None. And McCoy was able to detect heartbeats (around four beats per minute) from the Enterprise, though no respiration (which strikes me as odd -- what would be the point of circulation without respiration?). There would have to be something else in the system to oxygenate the blood. When Khan was awakened, it was a matter of seconds before he was conscious. Doesn't sound like he was ever frozen at all to me.

Irrelevant. Metabolism is stopped (and with it, any possibility of continued consciousness) and then restarted. This is all that's needed for suspended animation.

Who cares how they stopped it, as long as they could restart it? That's all you need to know about the situation to answer the question. You've already demonstrated that your notion of identity and life is so weak that it can't even withstand anesthesia, but I doubt you're burning your high school scholastic records on account that the person who was in class doesn't exist anymore — which shows me just how seriously you take your notion: none at all.

More useless hyperbole. Your post barely rates better than spam at this point.

This is an example of nitpicking. My main point of this part of the argument is that metabolism and consciousness are unambiguously stopped and started, but you focus on the fact that the people aren't thermally frozen even though it's only a particular feature of some loony attempt to live forever. Also, if in the future it turns out that we can reverse freezing damage and restore thermally frozen people to life, then whoops freezing is a valid way of inducing suspended animation.

And again, while you say you have doubts about whether you are the "same person", you make no adjustment in your life as if it were or even may be true. You continue on as SCRawl, just as I continue on as Wyrm, as do millions of first world people. When faced with a situation where you unambiguously fit your own definition of "not self", you continue as if it doesn't matter with only some bullshit philosophising that you only may not be the same SCRawl. Why should it be different for transporters, when the answer is actually more ambiguous?

But neuroscience as a discipline doesn't know which part of the brain contains the mind, probably because there isn't just one part, like you already mentioned in your "gotcha" response.

Neuroscience has answered the question of where the mind comes from quite convincingly: it's a synthesis of the many functional areas of the brain and doesn't reside in one spot. Just because we don't know the details doesn't mean we're not absolutely clear on that point.

Isn't that pretty much what I said?

Mine was always a sucker's bet; you took it, and thought you could bluff me off the pot. Nice try.

So you were lying when you said you'd retract everything, eh? Because identifying a loaded question counts as fulfilling the challenge in my book.

You didn't identify a loaded question -- you tried a weak response, and hoped to wrest a concession from me.

Lie. I stated specifically that your question rested on a mistaken notion, and a fallaciuos mistaken notion at that, such that any direct answer that could be given would be wrong. That's the definition of a loaded question. That I didn't specifically say it was a loaded question is mere nitpicking on your part.

Again, you're assuming I have the same definition of "same" as you. The way I see it, one of the individuals has the apple and the other hasn't, and it doesn't matter which because of symmetry. There's nothing in my definition of "same" that says an object cannot be reentrant. There is no contradiction.

You're saying it doesn't matter to the guy holding the apple whether or not he has it?

It doesn't matter to his identity, or to the question of whether they are the same person in the personal sense of "same". If I say to you, "Hey, you were the guy wearing the green sweatshirt last Tuesday," if you're not wearing that sweatshirt today, does it mean that I must be mistaken that you are now the same fellow as that past self because you're not wearing a green sweatshirt? Of course not. I don't mean "same" in that sentence the way you apparently take the word "same" mean above. To conflate the two meanings is another fallacy: an equivocation fallacy.

Each of the two identical Wyrms is now living his own life, and they share only identical bodies (and memories, brain structure, etc. that go along with that).

Irrelevant to whether they share the same personal identity. Identity is to distingush me from YOU, not me from me.

If you don't see how that makes them different, distinct, then there's no use having a discussion.

I challenged you to point my supposed contradiction to me. Yes, the two are different in the sense that one is physically holding the apple and one isn't, and the death of one individual has no effect on the other, but this has no bearing on the personal identity meaning of "same" that I wish to discuss. I can be holding an apple or not, but I'm still the same Wyrm. I can be over here or over there (holding an apple or no), but I'm still the same Wyrm. I can die or I can live on, but whatever the outcome I will always be the same Wyrm.

If you cannot disentangle your two meanings of "same" from each other and discuss the one that is relevant to my discussion of transporters, then you're right, there is no use for further discussion.

There isn't something "missing" from one of the Wyrms or the other.

So says the guy who thinks subjective consciousness doesn't transfer.

But each one has his own brain, his own identity, in a way almost identical to the way you and I have our own distinct identities.

Conflating "identity" with "brains in different locations at the same time". There's nothing in definition of identity, as it applies to people, that requires them to be non-reentrant. It's only contingently true in our normal experiences.

Of course, you and I don't share identical memories and brain structures, so we bring different intellectual perspectives to a discussion (obviously).

Which is the entirety of what constitutes "you" as distinct from "me".

If you ask one of the Wyrms what his favourite colour is, both of them will say the same thing. If you ask them to do a calculus problem, they'll both perform the same. Ask each of them if they'd like to be disintegrated so the other can carry on for both of them, and they'll both say (assuming there's no death wish involved) that no, they'd rather the other guy takes that bullet.

And entirely symmetrical. How do you demonstrate that the two Wyrms have different conception and expression of their individualities, or different self-image, or anything else that is required to disentangle someone's identity from someone else's?