# A classic debate: Is a transporter a suicide machine?



## sinister42 (Apr 12, 2016)

Is the Star Trek transporter a murder and cloning machine?  How do I know that the "me" that gets reconstructed at the end of the beam is the same "me" that went into it?  Do I go into the machine, get deconstructed, die, and then a clone of me is created? How can we be sure that the transporter beam also transports our consciousness?  What is consciousness?  How would anyone ever know the answer?


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## HareBrain (Apr 12, 2016)

If it doesn't transport matter itself, but creates a clone from scratch, then it must be a suicide machine, as the end result would be the same as creating a copy and leaving the original intact (in which case "awareness" must reside in the original).

It's the same argument as storing the memories etc to upload into a future body. The future body will believe it is the continuation of the original, but the original's conscious awareness perishes.


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## Ray McCarthy (Apr 12, 2016)

sinister42 said:


> Is the Star Trek transporter a murder and cloning machine?


Yes, as it's described in the series.
SF writers in 1940s saw the difference between a transposer and a transmitter and the stupidity of the ST idea.


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## reiver33 (Apr 12, 2016)

It conducts a destructive analysis of the subject and transmits the pattern to the destination station. It doesn't even pretend to convert matter to energy, transfer the energy, and reconstitute...

You wouldn't get me in one of those damn things, no-siree bob!


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## SilentRoamer (Apr 12, 2016)

HareBrain said:


> It's the same argument as storing the memories etc to upload into a future body. The future body will believe it is the continuation of the original, but the original's conscious awareness perishes.



I don't think that memories exist independantly of the neurons and physical structure they are embeded in. It seems a common misconception in a lot of scifi - that conscious identity exists as a seperate manifestation of the physical structure of the brain - or more often that even if the two are combined now they are in fact seperable in some way.

Personally I don't think any conscious identity exists outside of the physical structure, your physical brain is part of what makes you, you.


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## Ray McCarthy (Apr 12, 2016)

SilentRoamer said:


> It seems a common misconception in a lot of scifi


Perhaps an assumption. We don't know how brains work, we don't know what identity and sentience or intelligence is exactly, though we think we recognise it when we see it. We can't make a copy of of a brain either and see if it thinks it's the same person.

I'm sceptical that EVEN if our identity is purely and completely encoded in our brain that there would ever be a way to store a copy of that in a computer or storage device. It will be interesting too if a head transplant is ever successful, (it sounds feasible) but it won't answer any of the philosophical questions about "self", "identity" etc.


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## HareBrain (Apr 12, 2016)

SilentRoamer said:


> I don't think that memories exist independantly of the neurons and physical structure they are embeded in. It seems a common misconception in a lot of scifi - that conscious identity exists as a seperate manifestation of the physical structure of the brain - or more often that even if the two are combined now they are in fact seperable in some way.
> 
> Personally I don't think any conscious identity exists outside of the physical structure, your physical brain is part of what makes you, you.



I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not. But on the assumption that you're not -- say you were able to store your memories and brain patterns etc digitally, and then load them into a new brain, whilst you (the original) were still alive and conscious, would you be aware of being in two places at once? One assumes not. And then let's say the original, you, were killed, would you then suddenly become aware of residing in the new brain? Again, one assumes not. The memories might (given advanced enough technology) be capable of being transmitted, but the feeling of "you" -- the observer -- resides with the original physical brain, and can't be transferred. If it could, then it could also be copied, which means you could then be aware of being in several places at once.


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## Ray McCarthy (Apr 12, 2016)

HareBrain said:


> And then let's say the original, you, were killed, would you then suddenly become aware of residing in the new brain? Again, one assumes not.


I'd agree. If it worked at all (which I'm sceptical of) it would be two different people with same memories and nearly identical personalities that diverge quickly with time?

Clones are not actually identical.

Identical twins are actually not identical, but just very similar. I think I read they don't share finger prints? Nor would clones.


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## SilentRoamer (Apr 12, 2016)

HareBrain said:


> I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not. But on the assumption that you're not -- say you were able to store your memories and brain patterns etc digitally, and then load them into a new brain, whilst you (the original) were still alive and conscious, would you be aware of being in two places at once? One assumes not. And then let's say the original, you, were killed, would you then suddenly become aware of residing in the new brain? Again, one assumes not. The memories might (given advanced enough technology) be capable of being transmitted, but the feeling of "you" -- the observer -- resides with the original physical brain, and can't be transferred. If it could, then it could also be copied, which means you could then be aware of being in several places at once.



I don't suppose I'm agreeing or disagreeing with you really it was kind of a tangent  and a talking point  I don't think memories and the brains physical structure are seperate entities. Your physical brain structure, its neurons and pathways and electrical field are what makes you you, you can't externalise those memories as they are formed by the whole. If we could create a perfect copy of ourselves then that would be another us - seperate and distinct but until the point of creation the exact same person. However at the point of creation when they know they have been created they cease to become "us" - their neural pathways change and they are no longer "you".

Two copies of Windows on the exact same hardware isn't the same thing - we're the natural version of that only when we create copies of ourselves it's not illegal and it's a lot more fun. 

I suppose if the technology were advanced enough some sort of external storage device might be possible, Peter Hamilton has the idea of clones with memory inserts so people inhabit more than one body of themselves at any time and have a sort of dual consciousness as one and all of the inhabited bodies - he plays a lot with memory/clone/relife tech. But I think you would need to replicate the exact physical structure of the brain whose memories you want to copy to be able to store any contextually correct memory - which I think would end up bringing moral issues.

Inhabiting muliple bodies at once would be odd - slightly different concept to the Hive Mind, Hamilton has to skirt what it would feel like, it's like asking what it would feel like to be a bat and "see" in sonar or an octupus with 8 appendages.


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## Ray McCarthy (Apr 12, 2016)

SilentRoamer said:


> Inhabiting muliple bodies at once would be odd


We seem only able to have one stream of consciousness. Can you read a book with one eye, watch TV with other and make intelligible conversation? People can do simultaneous tasks only if they are well practised at them (like knit and watch TV or talk, or talk and drive). For example when driving if you encounter the unexpected you drop the conversation or wouldn't remember what is on the radio.
In my "fantasy" stories I hypothesise that the Fey folk can split their consciousness, and thus cope with shape changing to be a flock of birds. Or project "Glamour" using magic at same time as normal activities.

How easily can you do two unrelated tasks, you have no experience of, with both hands at same time, while conversing on something complicated?


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## Parson (Apr 13, 2016)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Identical twins are actually not identical, but just very similar. I think I read they don't share finger prints? Nor would clones.



Do Identical Twins Have Identical Fingerprints?

Indeed they don't, or at least there hasn't been any record of it. Finger prints are influenced by stresses in the womb.? Who knew?


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## Dave (Apr 13, 2016)

Ray McCarthy said:


> I'd agree. If it worked at all (which I'm sceptical of) it would be two different people with same memories and nearly identical personalities that diverge quickly with time?
> 
> Clones are not actually identical.
> 
> Identical twins are actually not identical, but just very similar. I think I read they don't share finger prints? Nor would clones.


Star Trek TNG addressed this problem with the ongoing arc story of William and Tom Riker. One was a duplicate made by a transporter accident in error and they had both experienced a different previous 10 years. These different experiences made them completely different people. I would say that if the writers of Star Trek believe this themselves then you have your answer already.

The book "The Physics of Star Trek" has a whole chapter on the Transporter and how it could not work, while the book "The Metaphysics of Star Trek" discusses this subject of whether the original person still exists. (yes, I do own both of these and also "The Biology of Star Trek" and several dealing with "Dr Who" and other SF Universes too.)

I'd just like to ask two further questions to complicate matters:

If someone has lost their memories through dementia, are they still the same person?
Our bodies replace atoms everyday - we eat and breath, we shed skin and hair, urinate and defecate - after about 10 years we are mostly made of different atoms - are we still the same person?


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## SilentRoamer (Apr 13, 2016)

Ray McCarthy said:


> We seem only able to have one stream of consciousness. Can you read a book with one eye, watch TV with other and make intelligible conversation? People can do simultaneous tasks only if they are well practised at them (like knit and watch TV or talk, or talk and drive). For example when driving if you encounter the unexpected you drop the conversation or wouldn't remember what is on the radio.
> In my "fantasy" stories I hypothesise that the Fey folk can split their consciousness, and thus cope with shape changing to be a flock of birds. Or project "Glamour" using magic at same time as normal activities.
> 
> How easily can you do two unrelated tasks, you have no experience of, with both hands at same time, while conversing on something complicated?



This is true but if you had multiple bodies you would have multiple consciousness and therefore no single stream of consciousness. The Fey folk sound interesting.

On a similar note there is a species briefly touched upon in Olaf Stapledons Star Maker (literally a few paragraphs) that talks about an alien species with a longer temporal present - so what we experience as "now" is actually a longer perceivable time for them. I found that concept and trying to envisage it very interesting.


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## Ray McCarthy (Apr 13, 2016)

Dave said:


> If someone has lost their memories through dementia, are they still the same person?
> Our bodies replace atoms everyday - we eat and breath, we shed skin and hair, urinate and defecate - after about 10 years we are mostly made of different atoms - are we still the same person?


Yes we are.
Oddly too, which raises serious questions as to how or where memory is stored, recent research suggests lost memories due to dementia or brian damage can be recovered.

Memory is very strange. It's not a recording. You can really "remember" things that never happened. You don't remember accurately nor everything. The idea that eventually some sort of brain interface could replay memories like video tape is fantasy.


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## Ray McCarthy (Apr 13, 2016)

SilentRoamer said:


> This is true but if you had multiple bodies you would have multiple consciousness and therefore no single stream of consciousness.


Well, we can't know if that's true, but I'd make it true in SF&F otherwise the ability would be pointless? Or someone could invent it in SF and discover that they can't use it due to only one consciousness.


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## SilentRoamer (Apr 13, 2016)

Ray McCarthy said:


> The idea that eventually some sort of brain interface could replay memories like video tape is fantasy.



No necessarily - as Clarke said "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Don't get me wrong I am always sceptical of everything but I think dictating restrictions on future technologies is innacurate.

It could be quite possible that humans create Quantum computers that work at a nano scale level capable of recreating entire brain structures in something the size of a pint which then uses Quantum Storage methods to encode contextual memories. All of this is obviously technobabble but who knows what we can achieve given sufficient technology.

I actually agree with you that it will never happen - even that it can't happen, it's just difficult to rule out. Much like I don't believe (given even the most advanced technologies and resources available) that humans will ever be capable of any Galactic scale civilisation with spaceship that break causality - (FTL I'm looking at you).


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## Ray McCarthy (Apr 13, 2016)

SilentRoamer said:


> it's just difficult to rule out. Much like I don't believe <insert subject>


We should never stop dreaming and telling stories. Those on the coalface of Mathematics, science and technology should always have an open mind too.


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## SilentRoamer (Apr 13, 2016)

Ray McCarthy said:


> We should never stop dreaming and telling stories. Those on the coalface of Mathematics, science and technology should always have an open mind too.



I couldn't agree more. I just find it hard not to kneejerk when I overhear or am involved in conversations where people are adamant that one day we will rule the stars.

I think Space travel ends up being like waiting for Fusion - we will always be X amount of years away.

I think intergalactic civilisations (at least human ones) are a pip dream, but we can dream right!


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## Vince W (Apr 13, 2016)

I think Richard Morgan's solution in Altered Carbon is more feasible than transporter technology. That is if you hold that memories can be as easily overwritten as a hard drive.



Ray McCarthy said:


> I'd agree. If it worked at all (which I'm sceptical of) it would be two different people with same memories and nearly identical personalities that diverge quickly with time?
> 
> Clones are not actually identical.
> 
> Identical twins are actually not identical, but just very similar. I think I read they don't share finger prints? Nor would clones.



Clones are like priest's socks.


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## Glitch (Apr 13, 2016)

Have you seen "The Prestige" or read the book by the same name? It touches on this subject.


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## hopewrites (Apr 13, 2016)

That was where my mind went when I read the thread title.

It is my understanding that memories are held in the body as well as the mind (which may or may not encompass more than the central nervous system and its parts) thus phantom feelings or memories experienced by amputees. I am acutely aware that the method by which I walk and read, or walk and crochet, is by setting one physical activity to "autopilot" while I do the other. I'm aware because I found that if I walked while thinking, I paid more attention to my inner world (thoughts) and often missed my turn or step. That my body continued on at the pace I had set it at regardless of whether that pace was sustainable, or prudent. I further found that it was difficult to reengage control over an activity I'd set to autopilot.

Through various other personal experiences I know that I can inhabit or uninhabit large or small portions of my physical self. I can even seem to myself to disinhabit my physical self and retreat to a state of being which has no ties to physicality. (Whether or not I completely disinhabit my physical self has not been observable to me, and I therefore refrain from claiming that I have done so.)

Given all that, I have assumed that the something non-physical, yet physically expressed which makes me me and you you, also has a model of transference. A given destination that is the repaterened physical form, for lack of a better way of putting it, 3D printed at the transportation site.
Hence transporter accidents where people are lost, or their patterns held in stasis, or accidental clones are created.

Like in wal-e 



Spoiler



when at the end his board is replaced, he is just like any other normal wal-e device. Crushing discarded items into cubes. It isn't until that something extra and unseen happens that we get the wal-e we came to love over the movie back.


Parts aren't what makes the whole.


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## sinister42 (Apr 14, 2016)

Yeah, this brings up the analogy of the sword/knife.  If you replace every piece of a knife, one at a time, over a period of years, then is it the same knife?  We replace all of the cells in our body every [QI told me this once but I don't remember] days, so are we really the same person we have always been?


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## hopewrites (Apr 15, 2016)

The consistency of personality shows that personhood is not physical in origin. Many philosophies hold that there is something beyond the sum of our patterned matter that makes us who we are. If you've ever seen the remains of a dead friend or relative you will have (no doubt) noted that while physically the same collection of parts while alive, something is missing.

If we are the physical manifestation of thought, it is my belief, that that something that goes missing at death is the thinker.


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## SilentRoamer (Apr 15, 2016)

hopewrites said:


> The consistency of personality shows that personhood is not physical in origin.



I disagree. Biological systems by their nature are self renewing comprising of composite individual parts, the individual parts at a molecular scale are irrevelevant but their formation of the whole is. When enough of the physical components fail then we have degraded consciousness - look at degenerative brain disorders - they clearly have an affect on personality and are physical in origin.


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## hopewrites (Apr 15, 2016)

They restrict normal personality expressions. Persons who experience them often feel that they are not the same as they were. What sensory input is providing this information if persons are strictly physical in nature? What disappears from the body at death physically to cease its previous functions? Nothing. All the physical constituents remain, something non physical departs, deanimating what was once animate.


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## BAYLOR (Apr 15, 2016)

Then there are the two William Rikers


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## SilentRoamer (Apr 15, 2016)

hopewrites said:


> What disappears from the body at death physically to cease its previous functions? Nothing. All the physical constituents remain, something non physical departs, deanimating what was once animate.



What disappears from the body at death physically:

All biological functions - your heart stops beating, your lungs stop oxygenating the blood which is no longer circulating to your muscles. Your cells self replication stops. All electrical brain activity stops - in life the brain is extremely electrically active.

So actually there are a lot of physical processes that stop - almost all of them tied in to the self perpetuation and renewal of the whole at a cellular level. If nothing physical ceased to function then bodies would not degrade and rot - unfortunately corpses are not the same as living humans just without the animate. A human is not like a car with the engine taken out because in a human the engine is every piece of cellular material that functions to comprise the whole.


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## Ray McCarthy (Apr 15, 2016)

SilentRoamer said:


> bodies would not degrade and rot


Most of the "rot" is bacteria.
Hence simple preservation  in vacuum, freezing or replacing fluids and air with a preservative liquid.
At a lowest temperature, just above ice crystals forming, there is possibility of resuscitation from "drowning" (in near freezing water) or electric shock, when the person was already suffering hypothermia and the only issue is that he person has stopped breathing and heart beating. So it seems we can be "paused" for a short while in very unusual circumstances. Probably not actually dead.


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## SilentRoamer (Apr 15, 2016)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Most of the "rot" is bacteria.



Of course - which is held in check by physical processes during our life which no longer exist at our death.

Oh what a jovial topic!


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## Parson (Apr 15, 2016)

I'm with Hope on this. I've been present at several deaths. (Occupational Hazard) And something (I won't go religious here although I am well and truly tempted) leaves at death. During some of the death watches I could almost feel something leave even before the labored breaths go silent. I have no scientific words to explain, but that does not mean it doesn't happen.


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## Carolyn Hill (Apr 15, 2016)

SilentRoamer, are you saying that quantum entanglement could be the basis for some sort of transmat device that didn't require "suicide"?  Cool.


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## psychotick (Apr 15, 2016)

Hi,

Well to bring this question back to what really matters - Star Trek! - the writers actually did their best in Enterprise to circumvent this question. They had one epp where someone got transported and we got to see the POV of said person - and instead of the person vanishing, the world round them changed while they were consciousthe whole time.

Also I should point out that transporters were never part of the original vision. They were "invented" because it would have cost too much in the original series to build sets for shuttles and film people flying to the ground. Transporters were quicker and cheaper!

Cheers, Greg.


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## hopewrites (Apr 15, 2016)

@SilentRoamer stopping is not the same as departing. I can stop moving, or stop breathing (momentarily) without being separated from the body. I can have body parts replaced by other organic or mechanical parts (provided my body finds them compatible and doesn't reject them) without loosing my me-ness.
 I think it requires one to get close to the religious side of philosophy to comment on that phenomenon which science has yet to comment on. That something, scientifically unexplained, yet observable, changes at death. An organisms physical manifestation may be kept in a state in all ways physically identical to life, while the essence of the organism has departed. In such cases it is up to the discretion of the attending physician to declare the time of death at the departure of the Personality, or the unplugging of the artificial support system.

If that which makes us intrinsically ourselves is not the physical manifestation, but the force behind said manifestation, then we can explain how a body whose life functions have been suspended can be reanimated, how an inanimate body can be artificially sustained, yet be void of its driving force. Electricity is non-physical, so even if the base argument is that the electric current of an individual is what departs at death, it's still a non-physical thing separating itself from the physical body.

The reason any of this is relevant is that the transporter shows it has a method of transferring the non-physical essence of the things it transports, as well as a method of deconstructing/restructuring the physical structures said non-physical essences inhabit.

When a person is held in "cycles" in the transporter, it is my belief that what is held in the cycled holding patterns is that non-physical essence, like the movie The Terminal, where Tom Hanks character waits in a political crack to complete his transportation from his country of origin tohis country of destination. There is nothing physical for the essence in the transporters holding cycle to inhibit, the pattern of their physical manifestation is stored in a computer system while they wait for someone to come along and finish the cycle, releasing them into a destination physical presence.

The transporter can destructor a physical body, hold its essential inhabitant in a suspended state, while the pattern of the physical body is rewritten to eliminate contaminants. If the computer program fails to properly remember the physical makeup of a party being transported, it can fall back on an earlier copy ONLY if the essence has been successfully suspended in the transporter process. Otherwise, the transporter engineer shakes their head sadly and the death is noted in the logs as a transporter accident.


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## LordOfWizards (Sep 30, 2016)

This thread caught my attention. So I woke it up from it's state of suspended animation. 

I too have seen people I knew who had passed, and they simply weren't there anymore. 

There is a British Philosopher and Physicist who has examined this question quite thoroughly. His name is Peter Russel. His treatment of the subject is both intelligent and humorous. He quotes both Philosophers and Physicists. I give you a taster: "There's certainly nothing original about the observation that conscious experience poses a hard problem." - David Chalmers. Russel goes on to say that he "doesn't think it's a hard problem, he thinks it's an impossible one." Because (it goes all the way back to Descartes) we believe that reality is nothing but the physical dimensions that we sense around us, but consciousness cannot be doubted, and it cannot be explained (no true neuro/scientist/biologist will tell you that thinking and/or dreaming is fully understood in terms of pure biology). 

There are new developments in science that hint at the possibility of a glimpse of what makes us conscious like: "never before has the brain so vigorously engaged the public imagination. The prime impetus behind this enthusiasm is a form of brain imaging called fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging, an instrument that measures brain activity and converts it into the now iconic vibrant images one sees in the science pages of magazines.
            As one scientist remarked, brain images are now "replacing Bohr's planetary atom as the symbol of science". With its implied promise of decoding the brain, it is easy to see why brain imaging would beguile almost anyone interested in pulling back the curtain on the mental lives of others: politicians hoping to manipulate voter attitudes, agents of the law seeking an infallible lie detector, marketers tapping the brain to learn what consumers really want to buy, addiction researchers trying to gauge the pull of temptations, and defense attorneys fighting to prove that their clients lack malign intent or even free will.

The problem is that brain imaging cannot do any of these things – at least not yet" excerpt was from here. 

Now, I'm not sure I agree with Peter Russel either since he goes on to challenge the modern day assumption that science makes that matter itself is "unconscious" or "insentient", and that maybe there is a hierarchy of consciousness that goes up the scale with life. One argument he makes is how most of us would feel uncomfortable about throwing a jellyfish on a fire instead of a log. 

Although, I believe that he is onto something because he talks about Max Planck's constant and spacetime from an interesting angle, and also points out that everything we know, we know because of how we sense it. We think that something is blue, but that is just something our brain does with light that came in through an optic nerve, etc. Our perception of how the universe is could be completely unlike an alien life form's viewpoint. 

And speaking of light, there is a phenomenon that is at least a measurable entity we can experience that has no mass. And we all know of the mass-energy equivalence, right? So perhaps what the transporter does is to capture the energy pattern that is the essential human along with the physical pattern and transfer them both.


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## psychotick (Sep 30, 2016)

Hi,

Yes the transporter is a suicide booth. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the person who walks out of the other booth however many miles away is the same person as the one who walked into the first one.

This is actually a centuries old philosophy riddle called the duplicates paradox - Thomas Reid 1775 - reworked a different way. Reid asked when another being in another time could be so identical to the first that he actually is the first. The answer is of course, never.

Lord I miss Philosophy Forums!!!

Cheers, Greg.


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## LordOfWizards (Sep 30, 2016)

psychotick said:


> There is absolutely no reason to believe that the person who walks out of the other booth however many miles away is the same person as the one who walked into the first one.


 I'll answer that quote with another quote:



SilentRoamer said:


> Not necessarily - as Clarke said "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".





psychotick said:


> This is actually a centuries old philosophy riddle called the duplicates paradox - Thomas Reid 1775 - reworked a different way. Reid asked when another being in another time could be so identical to the first that he actually is the first. The answer is of course, never.
> 
> Lord I miss Philosophy Forums!!!
> 
> Cheers, Greg.



If you approach this topic from a strictly philosophical point of view, then yes, you will come to this confusion, er, I mean conclusion. But it has been said in this thread that we should keep an open mind to future technologies, since after all there are things we don't know that we don't know.

Don't get me wrong. I actually love Philosophy, but I don't like to draw concrete conclusions in such a mysterious existence as the one we find ourselves in. The scientific method is the way I prefer to come to conclusions, and even those are not concrete, as they don't become laws without exhaustive repetitive testing.


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## hopewrites (Oct 1, 2016)

I think more pertinent than "how it works" is the question "would you use one?" 
Is the immediacy of transportation and the ability to continue experiencing life (ether as your transported self or as a clone of your disintegrated self with implanted memories of a former life you never actually lived) worth it? Or will you pack a few books and your favorite synthetic tea program onto a shuttle craft every time you have to change localities?


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## LordOfWizards (Oct 1, 2016)

hopewrites said:


> I think more pertinent than "how it works" is the question "would you use one?"


Well, let's see. The title of the thread is a question: Is a transporter a suicide machine? So It seems to me the question of whether I would use one would depend on the answer to that question. If the thread had completely settled the debate as to the answer being Yes, the transporter is a suicide machine, then I would say unequivocally No. I would not use it. But my dear Hope, I don't believe the matter has been truly settled, and I'm not sure that it can be settled in our lifetimes since we don't have another mythical machine from Science fiction that can transport us to the future. So I think the matter of "how it works" is pivotal in making _my_ determination.



hopewrites said:


> Is the immediacy of transportation and the ability to continue experiencing life (ether as your transported self or as a clone of your disintegrated self with implanted memories of a former life you never actually lived) worth it?



This is one interpretation of the result of such a technology that suggests that it is not the original "you" that shows up at the other end. (unless I misunderstood)

I posed what I thought to be a somewhat realistic (if maybe under-informed by lack of insight into actual future possibilities) solution to how tele-transportation could be achieved by the recording and teleporting of an energy pattern that doesn't just represent the real you, but is the real you. I'm sorry if some of you have a hard time with that concept, but I don't see much of anything as impossible given enough time, ingenuity, and creativity.


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## hopewrites (Oct 1, 2016)

No no I clearly understood your position. (And from my earlier posts I hope it can be easily inferred that I'm of the "transported self" camp not the "disintegrated and cloned" camp.)

I think that the dividing lines may be influenced by whether an individual is personally drawn to the prospect of skipping the line between points A and B and just jumping from one to the other, or if the individual finds that point B can't be fully appreciated unless physically traveled to from point A. 

The desperate points of view will inform the choice of whether one uses such technology should it become available. Which may also inform or at least prejudice one as to how such future tech may or may not function.

I'm impatient. So instantaneous travel appeals to me.
I read in the car (unless I'm driving) or on the bus or train. Not giving more than minimal attention to the process of getting from where I am to where I m going. So however a transporter works, I'd use it! (Provided I believed I was me when I arrived) This coupled with my strong will to live biases my opinion to the side of "no! Not a suicide booth. I don't care if it's magic or tech or what, I'm the me at the other end of the telepoter beam."

Knowing my bias, and it's basis, helps me keep an open mind when presented with an argument that doesn't agree with my bias to begin with.


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## HareBrain (Oct 1, 2016)

LordOfWizards said:


> I posed what I thought to be a somewhat realistic (if maybe under-informed by lack of insight into actual future possibilities) solution to how tele-transportation could be achieved by the recording and teleporting of an energy pattern



But if it's a case of recording and teleporting an energy pattern (information) where's the necessity in removing the original?

And if you don't remove the original, then either you have an original with awareness in their original body and the new body at the same time (which I can't rule out, but which seems less likely), or you have two individuals with separate awareness.

And if the latter, then killing the original at that point would result in the death of the original's awareness; their awareness wouldn't then suddenly "jump" to the copy. And since there is no difference in that scenario from the removal of the original at the time of the copy's creation, that makes the transporter a suicide machine as far as the original's awareness is concerned (though it creates a copy that believes it is a continuation of the original).


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## DrMclony (Oct 1, 2016)

I always love reading these threads!

One thought I have - if you were to ask this question when such a device existed, then one proof would be to simply attend the arrival of a telleported person. If they double over as soon as they appear, screaming  "J*&*& Suffering F*** Blo*** SH!!! That HURTS!" then there is a fair bet it is the same person, because they felt themselves being disintegrated while still alive.

If however, they appear standing there, all smiles and goofy looking, as though nothing at all has just happened to their shiny new body, then run, because they are clearly some kind of quantum zombie, and not the person you were hoping to collect from the transporter room. 

And your friend, (I say as I load my shotgun) well, they're already dead. *BAMMM!*


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## farntfar (Oct 1, 2016)

There are in fact two answers to this question and they are both in the end the same.

We are agreed, I think, that the physical entity, the hunk of meat if you like is transported; its molecules are "energised", ie converted into transportable energy, and then "materialised", or converted back into matter, in exactly the same arrangement.
Whether the molecules are the same ones or an exact copy is largely unimportant.

The real question is whether the life that is contained in those molecules, or at the very least associated to those molecules is transported.

So the first answer is that that life is a function of that arrangement of molecules (to a quantum level if you like, and assuming they are created/recreated to this level in the copy)
Thus the life is recreated exactly as before and I am who I always was after the transport.

The second answer is that the molecules are transferred but the spirit/soul/spark of life/incorporial consciousness is detatched from the original body. 

If you believe in a separate and incorporeal entity which holds the life essence, I think you will find it unreasonable to assume the creation of a new copy of the body would automatically create a new spirit (implying the spirit is a function purely of the body.), so the only way to have the transported person alive is to reattach the spirit to the new body.  
Thus the association of my detatched spirit and my new body is the only way for me to continue to be alive.
I am again in all ways me on the planet's surface. My molecules are identical if not the same, my spirit is the same, but my hands are perhaps slightly cleaner.


If on the other hand the spirit is not attached you have a new meat statue of me on the planet's surface with no life, no old me in the Enterprise, my spirit wails quietly to itself in the infinite void and the rest of you take the shuttle.


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## Ursa major (Oct 1, 2016)

farntfar said:


> We are agreed, I think, that the physical entity, the hunk of meat if you like is transported; its molecules are "energised", ie converted into transportable energy, and then "materialised", or converted back into matter, in exactly the same arrangement.


Exactly. Most transporter transfers we get to see have a transporter at one end (either at the origination of the transfer or at the destination) and nothing at all at the other. The "destruction" is actually deconstruction.

Two examples of this are:

What happens to Nomad in the ST:TOS season 2 episode, _The Changeling_. Nomad, about to blow up, is beamed _into space_ where, reconstituted, it explodes. If the transporter worked by destroying the original and then creating a copy, why would they bother to do the second operation at all?
Similarly -- in the episode, _Wolf in the Fold_ -- Spock points out that if Redjac survived the dispersion beaming (_into space_), each individual part of it will drift helplessly through space until the creature finally perishes. It would be simpler not to beam the "destroyed" creature anywhere, simply leave it "destroyed" _if_ that was what the transporter did to the original.


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## LordOfWizards (Oct 1, 2016)

hopewrites said:


> I read in the car (unless I'm driving) or on the bus or train. Not giving more than minimal attention to the process of getting from where I am to where I m going. So however a transporter works, I'd use it! (Provided I believed I was me when I arrived) This coupled with my strong will to live biases my opinion to the side of "no! Not a suicide booth. I don't care if it's magic or tech or what, I'm the me at the other end of the telepoter beam."



Okay, I get it. Why not enjoy the journey, right? 



HareBrain said:


> But if it's a case of recording and teleporting an energy pattern (information) where's the necessity in removing the original?



To get there faster. As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the writers of Star Trek didn't have enough airing time (length of the show) to deal with so many shuttle trips down to the surface and back. Much like you and I would likely use our car to get groceries from a mile away rather than walk. 



HareBrain said:


> And if you don't remove the original, then either you have an original with awareness in their original body and the new body at the same time (which I can't rule out, but which seems less likely), or you have two individuals with separate awareness.
> 
> And if the latter, then killing the original at that point would result in the death of the original's awareness; their awareness wouldn't then suddenly "jump" to the copy. And since there is no difference in that scenario from the removal of the original at the time of the copy's creation, that makes the transporter a suicide machine as far as the original's awareness is concerned (though it creates a copy that believes it is a continuation of the original).



As I think Farntfar kind of pointed out, there are two camps here in the thread. Those who believe that you cannot separate one's 'self' from the physical body, and those who believe they are indeed two different things altogether. So there is no killing going on. Merely suspension. My point of view (and that's all it is - I have no proof) is that we simultaneously record and capture both the physical body and what I'm calling the 'energy pattern' (the personality) and transport them both to the new location in one piece, unharmed, giggling or perhaps itchy, but very much the same exact person. No cloning, no copies, just moving from one place to another.


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## farntfar (Oct 1, 2016)

LordOfWizards said:


> what I'm calling the 'energy pattern' (the personality)



Ah well, that's quite interesting.
If you say that the personality is an energy pattern rather than a physical thing, that falls in nicely with my second idea. The physical body can be a copy of the original physical body and therefore not transferred, merely recreated, while the energy pattern would be actually trasferred (possibly as a modulation of the transporter beam). Therefore the life/personality/spirit/energy pattern remains in tact. 

Parson, Hope et al would you accept that the spirit is essential energetic and therefore capable of transport in this way, or does this remove it's mystery? (This may sound like I'm taking the mick, but I'm not.)


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## hopewrites (Oct 2, 2016)

No, I'll agree to that. I feel I've already agreed to that, so I'm happy to agree again or for the first time.


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## farntfar (Oct 2, 2016)

Thank you. Thank you. Nay, thrice thank you.


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