Lightsaber or Site-to-site transporter?

[Winston Blake]

Okay, how about we consider some other situations?

A radical new medical procedure involves replacing your blood with cold saline fluid and stopping your heart, then performing surgery and restoring your blood and body temperature (this has been successfully done in rats and dogs to no permanent ill affect in many cases).

While cold, you appear dead and have no brain activity. However, you 'wake up' just the same as when you went under (aside from having had surgery done).

Did you die?

No, of course not. (Actually, I said earlier that i didn't think suspended animation was death.)

Okay, now suppose the surgery was REALLY radical and involved slicing your body into little pieces then putting them back together again. But otherwise pretty much the same as before.

Did you die?

Does that involve the brain too? If not, then i no more die than an organ transplantee dies when parts of their body are replaced. If so, then hell yes i die- the neurons in my brain (and hence all communication between them) were totally destroyed!

Now the medical procedure involves doing all that then taking apart the pieces down to their component particles and reassembling them from other identical particles.

Did you die?

Yep, for same reasons as the macroscopic dis/reassembly.

How does this differ from teleportation in-location, except it's much more excruciatingly slow?

It doesn't. That's my point. Your scenarios don't show any inconsistencies in my view.

[Lord Sabre Ace]

Well, a transporter kills you and brings you back to life each time you use it. That raises a lot of moral questions.

I would take the lightsaber.

[Winston Blake]

Well, a transporter kills you and brings you back to life each time you use it. That raises a lot of moral questions.

I would take the lightsaber.

Seriously, you should read the whole thread first.

In Trek people have souls (or 'energies' or neural engrams or katra or whatever) that are functionally identical to souls and can exist outside their bodies. Given such a contrivance, we might as well say their soul flies at 'the speed of trekporter' to their destination body, sidestepping the classic teleporter issues.

[applejack]

Well, a transporter kills you and brings you back to life each time you use it. That raises a lot of moral questions.

I would take the lightsaber.

Well, the transporter definitely converts your body into energy. I've looked over some of the episodes that Eframepilot were able to list for me. I couldn't look over them all since not all of them are in the database, but the weirdest one has to be "Lonely Among Us" where Picard is stuck in a Nebula and conscious during that time. I'm hesitant to automatically say this is the clincher when it comes to the "soul" idea. He doesn't remember anything when he's rematerialzed. Not exactly the kind of continuity I would expect.

There are explanations for "Realm of Fear," "Relics," and "Second Chances" that don't pertain to the soul idea at all. However, since the soul thing has been shown to happen elsewhere, I suppose you could tie it in indirectly. There are examples where people's "souls" have become ambulatory and free-roaming. Not quite sure if we can automatically tie this in with the transporter, though. I haven't been able to check up on the Chakotay incident.

So, the transporter is great if you want to move inanimate objects from place to place. That's why I voted for it in the poll. I suppose you could use it on yourself if you believe you have a transcendant soul. Personally though, I wouldn't step on to that thing.

[Darth Quorthon]

I would take the Lightsaber, and hopefully be able to choose the color, but no sense getting picky, right?

But I think having a Lightsaber would be diminished without the Force Powers needed to use it to its maximum potential.

In the novel Federation (1994, by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens), Zefram Cochrane (don't ask), after being transported, asks about it, and when told, says: "That's terrible. Everytime you're converted into energy, you're killed. What comes out on the other end is just a duplicate that thinks it's the original."

The ensign escorting him to the bridge replies that it's done on the quantum level, and that your original molecules are tunneled through space and reassembled at the new location. If this explanation is feasible/believable/treknobabble enough, then I suppose that it begs the question: is your consciousness a noncorporeal entity, the spirit, or is it just a series of electrochemical impulses in your brain? Personally, I don't know if it's worth finding out.

I think this all explains why Dr. McCoy is so cranky about using the transporter!

Give me the lightsaber anyday.

[petesampras]

Even if you believe that going through a transporter is meta-physical death, I would still say it is more economicaly (or even militarily) useful than a light sabre for transporting things other than people.


An alternate (transport = death)? argument....

Imagine a 'transporter' set to instantly destroy and then identicaly replace X percent of the atoms in your brain.

Say I set the device to remove only a single atom and then replace it. Has it effected your 'conciousness'? I think we would all agree it hasn't. Afterall, you brain is constantly recycling atoms.

Now, take the other extreme. The device replaces all the atoms in the brain. Lets assume that this means death of your conciousness.

So we have 2 extremes, one is which conciousness is retained and another in which it is not. Between those two extremes must lie the point (in terms of number of atoms) at which you go from keeping conciousness to losing it.

Now, if the machine is set to remove and replace some number of atoms
which maintains conciousness (our base case of 1 atom for example) and we increase the atoms replaced by 1 - does the new configuration maintain conciousness? This boils down to - 'can removing and replacing one atom in a concious brain' change or destroy the conciousness. Clearly the answer is no, since atoms are being recycled in the brain all the time.

The trouble is that from 1 atom to all of them is a connected chain of steps equivalent to the above.


A basic theory in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science is that it is not the actual atoms or substance that compose an intelligent entity which are important, but the arrangement and subsequent behavour. Moby Dick is the same book ragardless of the actual paper used to print or write it on. Or even CD or harddrive.

Daniel Dennett - 'Conciousness Explained' is a great book on this topic.

[CoyoteNature]

I'd take the transporter, wouldn't use it, but matter energy conversion, just beam a certain amount of matter and leave it as energy in a spot you want to destroy, then you have a total conversion of that mass into energy, be better then antimatter.

As to the destruction thing, I would say we don't know what the hell we're talking about as applied to consciousness, its been a argument going on for hundreds of years and not likely to be solved any time yet.

Personally I think that I would be killed in a transporter, why I prefer something like wormholes or something equivalent. I don't care that a copy of me gets created there, I'm dead a twin of me is alive, and the twin would feel the exact same way if stepping back through.

When people die, there is no way currently of returning them to life, lets say someone does die, decay begins to set in, the worms start to eat the brain.

But that person is found later on, its cellular damage is repaired, and brain is repaired to the best approximation the computers at the time could do. That person would now be different then the person which died originally, no matter how good the computers at the time were. There is no perfect copy, not down to the subatomic scale, or above. There will still be subtle imperfections in the transport which mean it is not you, but a copy of you.

[outlawpoet]

I think it's clear, that even if you never transport yourself, the site-to-site transporter would essentially enable you to rule the world, if you were tricky and careful enough.

Personally, I would have no problem transporting myself. I don't believe in non-material aspects to my identity.

In fact, I think that I would probably duplicate myself, if the transporter can be safely modified to do so. Then I would be much safer from misadventure.

Clearly, the most important aspect of the transporter is that it has so many derivative technologies. The replicator is basically a hacked transporter, it implies forcefields(or at least action-at-a distance) and all kinds of wonderful stuff, assuming it can be reverse engineered.

[Norade]

How do we know that your conciousness isn't transported. If it is then Trek is using it's transporters wrong, you could copy your self and have all of engineering staffed with only the most compotent people, and have a back up crew waiting to be replicated.

It's obvious to me that you die in a transporter but I'm sure somebody else can take what I said above and run with it.

Anyway I'd take the transporter, I personally think that the object on the table should have been a hyperdrive vs. transporter just to make things more spicy.

[outlawpoet]

Anyway I'd take the transporter, I personally think that the object on the table should have been a hyperdrive vs. transporter just to make things more spicy.

Agree.

Hyperdrive vs. Transporter, I'd still take the transporter, because it means more specifically to me. You can't use a hyperdrive in a gravity well, so for all intents and purposes, it's just a big, complexly structured brick in your yard. You'd need to find someone to get you into the outer solar system before you could do anything at all, and by that time, it would be completely out of your control, governments don't ask before they take.

The transporter could concievably be a great boon both to mankind, and me personally, not to be the materialistic weasel or anything.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

Specs:

Lightsaber: never needs to be recharged, can cut through all known materials on present day Earth, and can do basically anything a lightsaber can standardly do.

Site-to-site transporter: Power capacity is such that it can carry two people on two trips (or one person on four trips, etc) before needing recharging. It comes with a power adapter so that you can plug it in, and it doesn't cost $1,000 to recharge or anything like that. It basically costs the same to recharge as a cell phone.

Now... maybe I am reading a bit too much into the wording at the expense of the sentiment, but I immediately noticed a huge difference here.

never needs to be recharged

Is it just me, or does a supply of infinite energy seem useful? Even at 100% efficency, (which is *not* the case, being as we can both see the blade and it cuts into the stuff around it) anything with 100% efficiency would be extremely potent as well.

Then again, at such a low recharge cost, you could just transport something big and heavy a few miles up onto a platform (mechanically hooked to a turbine, of course) and let gravity generate your infinte supply of energy. That depends on exactly how much it costs to recharge and how far it can transport, though.

[althornin]

To all of the "OMG, I get killz3d! by the transporter" people -
what is your answer to the pattern-identity theory?
According to it, an exact physical duplicate is identically equal to you.

I don't get this misunderstood mishmash about the malfunctioning transporter and transfer of conciousness requiring a soul.
why? Seems that there is no "transfer", per se - Your identical copy will be you - conciousness is just a label for the way your brain/body deals with input given its existing neuron connections, which would be unchanged in the "duplicate".

In the case of a malfunction, both of them are you - there is no need for any soul, or magic transfer - where did this bunk idea arise?
Of course, instantly, they begin to diverge into two different people, as different experiences occur and thier neural patterns diverge.
But, if one is destroyed at the same instant a new one is created, identity holds true, and it IS you.
Malfunctions result in two differnt people (the same for an instant, but the exact time slice where divergent inputs occur, the two become differnt people).

Seems simple to me.

[Norade]

es but the original you still dies and you have exact clones created. To the outside world you remain unchanged but the original you has died and will never comeback... unless Q or some other being/ST writer decides you should.

However this assumes that human conciousness is only created by a collecting of atoms. If indeed we do have a soul then things become mor complicated, if we believe in god things become more complex yet. If we have a soul the transporter could transport it or the soul could travel with the electronic signal at the same speed thus allowing you to have transported. However if you believe that you go to heaven/hell/other random place when you die things become more complex as you must travel from this place back to your body before 'you' can exist again.

Sorry to re-state what has been said better many times before but it seems some people still don't understand this concept.

[Dooey Jo]

To all of the "OMG, I get killz3d! by the transporter" people -
what is your answer to the pattern-identity theory?
According to it, an exact physical duplicate is identically equal to you.

That is the point. It will still not be you, no matter how identical it is.

I don't get this misunderstood mishmash about the malfunctioning transporter and transfer of conciousness requiring a soul.

There is nothing to get. None of the speculations about an evil transporter requires the existance of a soul.

why? Seems that there is no "transfer", per se - Your identical copy will be you - conciousness is just a label for the way your brain/body deals with input given its existing neuron connections, which would be unchanged in the "duplicate".

This was all explained earlier in the thread, but basically, a copy of anything will never ever be the original no matter how identical it is. If you know your programming, you know that the this pointer can never point to anything else than the class itself; never a copy. Even if you create a copy of the class and destroy the original immediately, the memory address of the this for the new class will be different from the old one. This translates fairly well to the concepts of me and I in the real world.

In the case of a malfunction, both of them are you - there is no need for any soul, or magic transfer - where did this bunk idea arise?

From Trek. They have these neural engrams thingys that works the same way as souls. That is why the people going through the transporters does not die. However, this would not work in reality, as these "neural engrams" doesn't exist in the same way as they do in Trek. Of course, perhaps the scenario stated in the OP includes giving these neural engram-souls to everything so the transporters would work the same way they do in Trek. It wasn't stated though...


Hey wait, does that mean, that if people get souls for choosing the Transporter, do we get the Force for choosing the Lightsabre? Because that makes the arguement so much more interesting...

Of course, instantly, they begin to diverge into two different people, as different experiences occur and thier neural patterns diverge.
But, if one is destroyed at the same instant a new one is created, identity holds true, and it IS you.

This was addressed earlier. And multiple times at that. It is not you, it is him, the doppelganger.

Malfunctions result in two differnt people (the same for an instant, but the exact time slice where divergent inputs occur, the two become differnt people).

And so which one of those is you? Don't you think that you, yourself, would be able to know the difference between you and your copy? If only because of the simple fact that you do not see the world through his eyes? In fact, the copy himself should be able to deduce that he is a copy, which would probably completely mind-fuck the poor man...

Seems simple to me.

Yes, I think it is very simple. A copy will never be the original, because that would mean that "me" for the original could be either itself, or that identical thing over there, and that would be very strange. It's like when you say that you're wearing the same jacket as someone else, when what you really mean is that you're wearing identical jackets.

[DrkHelmet]

never needs to be recharged

Is it just me, or does a supply of infinite energy seem useful? Even at 100% efficency, (which is *not* the case, being as we can both see the blade and it cuts into the stuff around it) anything with 100% efficiency would be extremely potent as well.

Very astute. Bravo! I really didn't mean that at all, but it was an interesting catch. The wording did imply infinite energy, however.

Of course, perhaps the scenario stated in the OP includes giving these neural engram-souls to everything so the transporters would work the same way they do in Trek. It wasn't stated though...

No, actually I didn't consider that... and no I wouldn't insist that this exists in the hypothetical universe where this choice is made, just the transporter itself.

[petesampras]

And so which one of those is you? Don't you think that you, yourself, would be able to know the difference between you and your copy? If only because of the simple fact that you do not see the world through his eyes? In fact, the copy himself should be able to deduce that he is a copy, which would probably completely mind-fuck the poor man...

They are both you. There is no reason that your 'conciousness' can not exist in two places at once unless you believe the exact atoms that make up your brain are of importance ( a point I address a few posts above).

Ultimately 'you' are defined by your behaviour. A 'copy' will have identical behaviour to the 'original'. The exact atoms will be different, but this is not important to the issue of the mind.

It is tempting to have a 'cartesian theatre' view of the brain/mind where this special thing is looking out of your eyes and having experiences. There is no scientific evidence at all for this. If you want to build a scientific model for it you will have to show how it will produce different behaviour from a perfect copy. The brain takes input from the eyes and processes it. An identical brain will process it identically, and thus from any important sense will be identical.

to repeat what I posted on this before....

Even if you believe that going through a transporter is meta-physical death, I would still say it is more economicaly (or even militarily) useful than a light sabre for transporting things other than people.


An alternate (transport = death)? argument....

Imagine a 'transporter' set to instantly destroy and then identicaly replace X percent of the atoms in your brain.

Say I set the device to remove only a single atom and then replace it. Has it effected your 'conciousness'? I think we would all agree it hasn't. Afterall, you brain is constantly recycling atoms.

Now, take the other extreme. The device replaces all the atoms in the brain. Lets assume that this means death of your conciousness.

So we have 2 extremes, one is which conciousness is retained and another in which it is not. Between those two extremes must lie the point (in terms of number of atoms) at which you go from keeping conciousness to losing it.

Now, if the machine is set to remove and replace some number of atoms
which maintains conciousness (our base case of 1 atom for example) and we increase the atoms replaced by 1 - does the new configuration maintain conciousness? This boils down to - 'can removing and replacing one atom in a concious brain' change or destroy the conciousness. Clearly the answer is no, since atoms are being recycled in the brain all the time.

The trouble is that from 1 atom to all of them is a connected chain of steps equivalent to the above.


A basic theory in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science is that it is not the actual atoms or substance that compose an intelligent entity which are important, but the arrangement and subsequent behavour. Moby Dick is the same book ragardless of the actual paper used to print or write it on. Or even CD or harddrive.

Daniel Dennett - 'Conciousness Explained' is a great book on this topic.