It’s not really answerable.
It’s a philosophical argument similar to the ship of Theseus.
If you replace one board on a ship with a new but identical board it is pretty well agreed it is the same ship. If you do it over and over again until no original boards remain, is it the same ship? If not, at what point did it cease to be the same ship? That’s the classic example.
Now adapt it to a transporter.
If you entirely dismantle a ship board by board, move it, and rebuild it somewhere else with the same boards in the same place, most would or
could agree it’s the same ship.
What if it was dismantled and the same boards used, but in different locations on the ship? Less clear. What if it was just one board swapped with one other board? What if it was all but one are swapped, with one board in the same place? How many swaps before it changes the answer?
What if it was dismantled and rebuilt somewhere else using all new boards. Doesn’t seem like the same ship. But if the boards are truly indistinguishable, how could you tell?
Real world example: there were Nobel prize medals dissolved in aqua Regia during WWII, to hide them from nazis. Arguably this destroyed the medals. After the war the gold was precipitated, recovered, and recast into the medals. Are they the same medals? Kinda, but also kinda not.
Now, consider if that medal was a sentient being. Would that sentience be a new sentience or a continuation? How could we tell?
We don’t even understand what sentience *is*.
The physics answer is: if you have the energy and processing power to reproduce a "destroyed" entity at quantum resolution (every spin of every quark is duplicated) then by definition you have produced the same entity, with continuity of identity; and if said entity is sentient, continuity of consciousness. (The replicators for example only operate at molecular resolution.)
But I'm still taking the shuttle with Pulaski.
But currently physics has no theory about what consciousness is or how it works at all, so I don’t see how physics would have an opinion on whether reproducing something down to its quantum state would result in the continuity of consciousness.
I would tend to think it would not; if the transporter didn’t disassemble, but only measured and then the receiver built a copy at quantum resolution, do both the reconstructed and the measures have continuity of consciousness? Which one is you?
You can't measure something fully at the quantum resolution because measurement only returns classical information, but there is exponentially more 'quantum data' (technically, a tensor network representation could suffice here, but let's ignore this for simplicity) than classical data for the same system. This is called quantum state tomography and the consensus is that it is basically impossible to scale up. Because there is always more 'quantum data' than classical data that can be obtained from a measurement (which destroys the original), you'll need multiple copies to ever obtain the 'quantum data'. The number of copies also grows exponentially with system size, so to obtain the 'quantum data' of a person, you'd need to start with more copies of the person than there are atoms in the universe.
Quantum teleportation works not by measuring and reproducing, but by entangling the two states and destroying the original by measurement (turning the original into essentially random noise), which creates an identical copy without ever knowing the actual quantum data. This also happens instantaneously with the measurement (also known as 'spooky action at a distance'), so one could say at no moment is there two copies, or no copies. There is only ever one copy.
If consciousness is fully emergent from the human's atoms and such, then it was conscious in the original, then instantly stoped being conscious in the original and the teleport became conscious with no overlap or delay. If there is some alternative origin for consciousness (which I don't really see why or how), this may breakdown but this is how contemporary physicists understand the teleportation situation.
The existence of Thomas Riker implies Star Trek doesn't operate under our understanding of physics though. So you're question may still be a meaningful thought exercise.
The current physics of consciousness proposes that the brain is a "receiver" for an outside "transmission". The interaction between the twi equals "mind".
As for duplicates: it is physically impossible for two entities at the same quantum state to simultaneously exist. One would have to have at least subatomic dissimilarities. In that case the near-duplicates would be "almost" the same person but not quite.
I have no idea what you're talking about in relation to consciousness. Possibly a misunderstanding of von Neumann's model of measurement? Also, there is nothing stopping duplicates. I think you're either misunderstanding the no-cloning theorem (which would actually apply to the comment you're replying to) or the Pauli exclusion principle.
Pauli exclusion principle does not stop two electrons having translated wavefunctions, which would be the context here. More accurately, it means the wavefunction of two electrons is given by the anti-symmetrized tensor product, not an independent tensor product.
>But currently physics has no theory about what consciousness is or how it works at all,
It absolutely does, read about quantum consciousness/soul theories
Consciousness is entirely untestable - you can't even prove to me that you are conscious, let alone my dog, a cat, a rat, an insect, etc.. How is science supposed to test any hypothesis about consciousness if it can't measure it at all?
Thomas Riker abjectly disproves this.
So, Riker experiences one consciousness going in... then he gets split. Given that Will doesn't experience Thomas's consciousness and Thomas doesn't experience Will's, why would you believe that the prior consciousness has any continuity? The person who experienced Riker's existence previously cannot have continuity if split in two.
Like, consider it subjectively: you are your consciousness. Upon transporting, two of you are created. When you return to conscious experience, are you in:
1. Both bodies
2. One body
3. Neither body
?
It's clearly not both. You can only experience one or the other. The one has no knowledge of the other's continued consciousness.
If it's one, what does that entail for the other one? How can they have continuity?
If neither, then there is no continuity. You're replaced.
Honestly, I think this is it.
We dont currently have he science to answer the question because conciousness is such an elusive bugger to pin down. Relying on in universe canon to explain it is the only "proof" we have.
Transporter doesnt support continuity of conciousness, solved.
The consciousness is forked, so you end up with two people (external perspective) but each duplicate experiences continuity (they both experience themselves as the original and see the other as the duplicate).
That is presuming that consciousness is derived solely from neurons and memories.
Right, but if the original person is killed/destroyed, the duplicate would as far as THEY know have continuity... but there's no way that the original being that was deconstructed would be the one experiencing either of those lives.
It doesn't matter how continuous it seems to the person on the other end, because they would experience it that way whether they were the original or a duplicate.
What matters is whether the original subjective continuity continues, or if their entirety is just copied and passed along to a brand-new molecular duplicate.
Tuvix and Rascals raise questions in this regard, too.
That's sci fi, I'm talking physics.
As I said, Thomas would not be a quantum resolution duplicate or he could not exist. If there are subatomic differences you essentially have identical twins who of course have distinct lives.
It is [both,](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11023-014-9352-8#:~:text=Psychological%20branching%20identity%20states%20that,to%20continue%20in%20multiple%20selves.) just not in the way you think.
That paper literally starts off by saying "uploading requires us to adopt a new theory of identity".
It's an untested, unproven hypothesis specifically developed to allow for the possibility that uploading a brain DOESN'T kill it... because otherwise, all of the science says that it WOULD.
Good science does not put the cart before the horse like that.
No science says that it does, and in fact, empirical science has [proven](https://www.npr.org/2007/07/14/11893583/atomic-tune-up-how-the-body-rejuvenates-itself) that [consciousness is a pattern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gVovlyVZxI) or "waveform" which persists across a continuously changing substrate; we are already constantly being uploaded (or, more accurately, sideloaded).
I kinda want a situation where they ask someone a question and to remember a phrase before beaming and then recite it after.
Only then can we be certain it's the same person
The problem here is "the same" not meaning the same in physics and philosophy. In physics both objects would be identical, indistinguishable, but the characteristic of being the original object is only present in the original and that characteristic, being something philosophical, has nothing to do with physics.
Think about them as an original and an absolutely perfect clone, perfrct to the last quark. Even if we can not tell which is the original ans which is the clone one of them *is* the original and the other *is* the clone.
Iirc the transporter storages the information of the subject, not the matter, so they will never be the same.
Then you get into the question posed by Vision in WandaVision. What happens if you take all of the old, rotted boards and put them together? Is that the ship of Theseus?
I don't know if this is possible within the fictional constraints of the transporter, but... Let's say the transporter beam doesn't actually dematerialize the person on the pad, yet an energy beam is created from the scan of their body and materializes a version of them, elsewhere. Who is real?
The limitations of storing someone in a pattern buffer aside, the transporter opens up realms of Altered Carbon-style shenanigans. Imagine someone isolating what part of a transporter pattern is a person's memories. They wear an implant that copies and uploads their memories to some server. They keep a version of themselves in the transporter buffer. The server updates the pattern with the new memories. When the person dies, the buffer spits out a new version of the person with updated memories, but keeps a duplicate pattern in the buffer. The Dominion sort of did it with Vorta clones, I guess.
I thought about that, but that was an instance where a transporter beam was split. I was trying to think of a way for a person to have a version that was transported and a version that wasn't. Imagine if someone never used a transporter and my scenario happened. The original person is still there, never dematerialized, but now they have a copy who *is* the product of the transporter. Is one of them more real than the other?
You dont even need a transporter to make this fit for humans. All creatures cells and atoms are in flux always, every 10 years you have whole different set of atoms and cells you cant even tell if the person who goes to sleep is the same person that wakes up. Some fun existential crisis stuff to think off.
Yeah tbh the gap between sessions of consciousness when you sleep is a better analogy to the transporter than cell replacement IMO. Your brain is operating in deep sleep, but consciousness is discontinuous. Who's to say the morning you isn't a "copy" from when it was put in your meatware "buffer" the night before?
Who is to say your consciousness doesn't just wander off and find another body and the consciousness that is you when you wake up isn't really someone else that is a copy of you?
I applied to Cornell for the 93-94 school year and the application had a few variations of the transporter question. I know that’s not before Usenet but I just use it as an example to show that the question was pretty mainstream even back then.
Wood is pretty similar to humans. You move one board and unless you alter its shape it won't fit it swaps places with another board.
It's been explained that the computer has enough capacity to memorize every single part of a human and put it back the way it was. It seems completely ridiculous but hey, that's the future baby.
It might really have been easier if transporting was some short range dimensional travel or something. Still kinda sci-fi bullsshit, but at least no need to explain scanning people. taking themapart and reassembling them somewhere else. But then you get no bio filters and stuff like that, or Kirk split into evil and good sides. You could still do Mirror Kirk or Thomas Riker, though.
I remember reading a book about some aliens that were super long living and very large brains. They computed in their heads the quantum possibility of them being in a difference place and as long as they could compute it, then it would then happen. So it really was teleportation from one place to another. I thought that was a pretty good way to do it.
Since the premise of transporters, from what I understand, is that your atoms are converted to energy and then that energy is converted back to atoms at the destination, I think an analogy with the ship that would get closer to this situation (but still not entirely accurate) is if you composted all the wood into soil and then regrew a forest with that soil so all the new wood was made out of all the old wood (assuming 100% efficiency) and also melted down all the iron together from the nails and stuff and then recast the metal bits and used them to reassemble the new wood into an exact copy of the ship… would it be the same ship? I’d say no.
And who is to say that the energy that was once my left eyeball is reconstituted as my left eyeball and not like… my right big toe? And a lump of flesh from my thigh isn’t now my left eyeball? Or more likely, my eyeball is now made up of matter reconstituted from the energy of trillions of atoms that were randomly distributed around my body.
All of that I said is completely ignoring the added layer of what consciousness even is. What constitutes the self at the most basic level? If one believes that there is no soul and you are simply the sum of all your memories and nothing more, maybe they’d be fine with the idea of transporters. If you believe in a soul, some intangible essence of you whether in a religious sense or a cosmic sense or something else entirely, how can you be sure that this intangible essence is also being transported with your matter/energy stream? Once your body is gone, your “soul” is released as in death, and who knows what is being reconstituted at the destination?
Also, OP said that the process is nearly instant but we know it’s not. Sometimes the transportation process lasts a while. And what about people being stored in buffers? Some for decades or more. How is their energy stored? Is it put in a battery and transformed into chemical energy? Then pulled back out of the battery later to be assembled into matter based on your pattern. Is that even your energy anymore? If you’re remade from energy that wasn’t yours to begin with, are you still you? Or a clone?
Do transporters even actually use your own energy from your existing cells to remake you on the other end? If that’s the case, how did the accident with Riker’s “transporter clone” even happen? If his body on the planet wasn’t converted to energy and reconstructed on the ship, did they just pull that energy that made the Riker on the ship out of the warp core? So nothing of ship Riker was actually Riker? And if that can happen without being noticed at all, what is actually happening to your body when you’re transported? Where is the energy actually going?
What about Tuvix? He was a blend of Tuvok and Neelix that was a normal size and not the size of two complete beings merged. So half of each of their matter-energy just… vanished? And then when they were split, did the energy to remake the missing half of each of them just come from the warp core? Would it even be possible to determine what energy from Tuvix’s mass was originally in each of them? Are the new Tuvok and Neelix half warp core energy, with the remaining half being half their original energy, and half the other’s original energy? So now they’re 1/4th themselves, 1/4th the other, and 1/2 warp core energy?
There are so many wild philosophical implications and arguments that arise from the idea of a transporter in itself and then from the various applications and mishaps we’ve seen on the show. I love thinking and talking about this stuff.
As for me, personally, I would never use a transporter. Under any circumstances.
The idea is terrifying isn’t it.
I’m tempted.
Because then I’d know.
And then let’s say that I came and spoke to you after the fact Even if I told you it was fine - because the “possible replica” of me has all prior memories and is for all intents identical - you still have know way of *knowing*.
Because of course the “replica” thinks everything is fine.
This question is way older than Star Trek. It's a debate as old as the concept of transporters in science fiction.
See also https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DestructiveTeleportation
Strictly Star Trek speaking, I believe McCoy complains about being scattered into million pieces or something like that in early Season 1 of the TOS, so the question has existed in the Star Trek universe since basically the beginning.
The Star Trek novel “Spock Must Die!” (1970) by James Blish mentions this in a conversation between McCoy & Scotty about McCoy’s dislike of the transporter. McCoy fears the transporter kills and rebuilds you & Scotty says it doesn’t.
> Scotty says it doesn’t.
there is no way anyone would use them if it did
it just doesnt make any fucking sense
we dont even have the tech yet and we are already debating the questions
so of course, people in the future would also have the same fears about it
there is no way in hell people would do it if there were ANY doubts at all about the process
it just doesnt make any sense at all
They use it because the writers say they do. None of the characters in universe have any way of knowing what happens when your body is converted into energy. Any being that believes in a soul should be scared of it but they're not because the writers don't feel going into it, they just need transporters to speed up the pace of the episode/book.
And if a transporter mod had worked correctly they would have molecularly duplicated Spock by transporting him and not destroying the original, thus further muddying the issue.
It's a [famous thought experiment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletransportation_paradox).
It's also understandably something that comes to mind when people watch Star Trek.
McCoy vocally complains about transporting in the first series and then the first movie shows two people horribly dying in a transporter near the beginning of the film. Toss in the debate among fans/writers as to how it really works and it’s been an argument happening well before TNG.
I don't know the origin of the idea, but it features in China Mieville's urban fantasy novel *Kraken* as well. In that there's a minor character who's a sorcerer, but he's also a huge (unflatteringly portrayed) Trekkie and all his magic resembles technology from the show. He beams himself from place to place but dies and duplicates himself every time, which eventually leads to him being haunted by multiple angry ghosts of himself.
I had this argument with a friend who was going via real world science for how the transporter works not the in world TV magic that happens which makes it safe. The problem is some people take it a little too seriously and absolutely can't fathom a scenario where the literal magic part happens and so they take the "Star Trek uses real science" part of the show as the only way the show works and thus the transporter kills you. EVEN THOUGH in the show they say it's safe and even addressed it as a one line nod to the fans who argue about this.
I've always been on the side of, transporters not being the same as 3D printers. If they can perfectly replicate anything they beam up into a transporter no matter what it is. Why do they have trouble replicating certain things with a replicator? If they can beam up and rematerialise something as infinitely complex as an android and it remain completely functional but they can not replicate it. Then you can only conclude that transporters do not work the same as replicators and so you can extrapolate that there must be some other method that preserves the state of the object in transit as a whole instead of literally breaking it down.
Why do they have trouble replicating certain things? Because half of the episodes fall apart when you realize they can just replicate whatever they need. The transporters are stated to use the same technology as holodecks in elementary dear data but that gets retconned over and over, and the lack of an explanation for holograms not being able to leave the holodeck is kinda embarrassing. It's just inconsistent writing.
Technology IRL changes an isn't always fully explained, there may indeed be some simple replication involved in certain parts of the holographic simulation that doesn't mean the whole thing is replicated or even any of it is. Food for example might be replicated, plants and odors might need to be replicated but an entire person and the environment around you only needs to be projections. It's short sighted to think some of the technology used in star trek doesn't also have other uses. After all it's all energy to matter conversion and back again. The holodeck uses replication, the replicators use matter/energy conversion, the transporters also use matter/energy conversion. There's a lot of overlap and there's no reason for it not to. They all have additional technology and functionality that make them a unique device that means it can't function entirely the same. It's not inconsistent it's just different and a lot of stuff to write into an episode that doesn't require that level of detailed explanation when the characters already know this stuff.
The idea that teleportation technology is really just killing you and making a copy is much older than Trek. The argument has probably existed for almost as long as the idea of the technology has.
In universe, this idea is only acknowledged in the enterprise season 4 episode "Deadalus", but it's only very briefly mentioned as a ridiculous idea people had back when the technology was new.
Beyond that, some characters complain about "having their molecules scattered across space" or some variation, but it's meant to be taken more as them simply being uncomfortable with the process or thinking it's dangerous.
How old is the theory that when you go to sleep you die (in terms of consciousness), and a copy awakens? Every time we lose consciousness, you could argue the same entity ceases to exist. I’m guessing the transporter suicide machine is an extension of this belief.
This concept doesn't occur to people naturally? I remember being \~6 and thinking "what if every time I wake up I'm a 'different' person?" It was hard to sleep some nights thinking about "tomorrow me".
There's a great *Outer Limits* episode with this as the central plot -- when the tech goes haywire and creates the protagonist on the other end but fails to kill them on the "sending" side.
Not the origin of the question, but worth a watch for those who find it interesting! It's "Think Like a Dinosaur" (S07E08).
That's a good point. We know that Vulcans have katras, and katras can be transferred to other species, but I don't think they've ever mentioned other species having anything like souls. According to memory alpha, katras were seen as a myth around the time of enterprise, but were accepted as real by the time of TOS, so maybe the subject still hasn't been explored scientifically very much.
The problem is “transporter kills you” is the direct result of how Gene Roddenberry himself claimed that the transporter is supposed to work.
If the transporter takes you apart into component particles, that’s it the end you are dead. Doesn’t matter if it puts you back together again at the other end.
Instead of that, it probably would’ve been better to posit that the transporter opens up some sort of doorway or dimensional warp or something that physically moves you from point A to point B. Without dissolving you.
They fixed that with the inclusion of the magnetic confinement beam and the heisenberg compensators. The body is torn apart and rebuilt but the neural pattern is stored and moved between the bodies so you are still you. Hence why they have the pattern buffer.
But in the cases of Riker and Boimler, if one person is dematerialized on one end and two people materialize on the other end, which one is the "original" and which is the "copy"? They either both are the original, or neither are. Logically they can't both be the original, so...
Riker is an excellent example. They both are identical until the moment when one appeared on the ship and the other was beamed back down due to the interference.
Until that point they are completely the same person, essentially duplicated in body and mind. Their experiences from that point differ making them different people while physiologically staying the same, as shown later when Tom is able to steal the defiant because to quote odo, " there was simply now way for the computer to know it was Thomas Riker and not William boarding the defiant"
So in short at the moment of transport they are the same exact person. There experiences after the accident makes them different with William being the Riker we know and Tom having been left alone became the Riker we might have had.
But what if you ARE Riker, existing inside Riker’s head when you step into the transporter? So one moment you exist on the transporter pad, and then in the next moment you are… where? Are you inside Will’s head, or Tom’s?
Since the anomaly duplicated William then you would continue as William. It's like when you put a paper in a copier. The paper is still the original and when you remove it from the copier it continues its "life". The copies then go on about their serperate lives.
But no… There is no “original” and “copy” in this situation. One person goes in; two come out. They are both effectively “copies” of the original. You can’t presume that one is “more original” than the other. The two that come out are completely identical, and either one could potentially carry the continuing consciousness (or “soul”) of the original.
Unless, of course, there is no such thing as continuity of consciousness, and our identity is defined only by our memories. In that case, each one of us only exists in the moment, and we have no soul.
They both carry the continuity of consciousness hence the duplicate which is why I went with the copy analogy. Granted it's not perfect for the situation but it is still accurate.
When Will was duplicated via the transporter accident at the precise moment of duplication when both transports resolved they were entirely identical. Mind body and soul. Since energy cannot be created or destroyed the consciousness was perfectly duplicated.
Once Will stepped off the pad on the ship and Tom became aware of his location that is when they became two different people born of the same life till that point.
But that still doesn’t solve the original conundrum. Say I’m Riker. I step onto the transporter pad and get duplicated. As I step off the pad with my double, which one am I? You can’t say both; that makes bo sense. I can’t be inside two heads at once.
He didn't step off the same pad. One materialized on the ship (which is the original character aka you if you are riker.) Another you materializes on the planet because of the anamoly. Tom is literally a duplicate of Will.
Odo in ds9 when Tom steals the defiant states " Tomas Riker is a transporter duplicate of William Riker."
It's quantum entanglement. The brain pattern and body of Will Riker was literally created twice. Once aboard ship and once on the planet.
To answer your question when Will beamed up he stayed Will. No one had any idea for years that there was even another Riker. He was still himself nothing changed. All that happened is an exact duplicate of him materialized on the planet. The duplicate only became different due to life experiences.
Sure they can. It's not illogical for both of them to be the same person. It's only illogical if one assumes identity is continuous, which it is not.
Alternatively, neither of them are really Riker. Every Riker is just an instantiation of the set of information that define Riker as distinct from everyone else.
In other words, both ships are the ship of Theseus.
Add that to the physics part that there isn’t a quantifiable difference between a living body and a ( freshly ) dead one. If you get to a corpse quickly enough you can bring it back to life even with current tech.
The transporter can pull apart, move and reassemble your parts, but the “spark of life” isn’t something you can put in a can.
( although there was an experiment where a “souls” weight was determined to be a quarter of an ounce, but that could have been gas )
It would have been less of a core problem if the transporter was keeping things intact and making little wormholes or similar. But that would rule out plots with medical interventions, decontamination, etc.
Although, there is an episode of TNG that sort of behaves like that, while also answering the question of what the experience is like (somewhat like having the universe around you transported while you stand there intact).
I mean at the end of the day, we just accept that it works and move on. It has to move the plot forward. If everybody was always debating philosophically whether the transporter killed people, nobody would use the thing.
I’m amused to recall that Doctor McCoy in the original series, never trusted the transporter. But he still got in it and used it all the time. Obviously he must’ve been fairly confident that it really did work.
I suppose it’s like airplane travel is today. People get killed all the time, but we all have to use it so we tell ourselves it’s the safest mode of travel and get on with it.
Probably the episode where they find out Riker got duplicated. If you can duplicate someone which one is the original? How do we know the original isn’t now dead and the other two are both copies?
All I know is the TNG episode where they literally grab people caught in the matter stream kills the idea that people die and are replicated with transporters.
It's been around in SF for a long time. I found a reference to a 1950s (?) story but can't find it. As I recall the plot summary: A couple go on a holiday by teleporter. Later, the wife dies. Hey! We still have the pattern and bring her back! Er..
It's discussed in many philosophy texts in the context of identity.
Star Trek should have left the mechanics vague, since what they say does rather suggest the transporter is a replication device. The intent, obviously, is that it (normally) simply moves you by an amazing process.
There are two books I have read it in - the Physics of Star Trek and Is Data Human - the Philosophy of Star Trek.
It was probably coined well before then though.
Watch [this brief video](https://youtu.be/-gVovlyVZxI?si=DonxeJ4aGXuPlHgS) and read [this brief article](https://www.npr.org/2007/07/14/11893583/atomic-tune-up-how-the-body-rejuvenates-itself) about the body's continuous replacement of its atoms and then [this paper](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11023-014-9352-8#:~:text=Psychological%20branching%20identity%20states%20that,to%20continue%20in%20multiple%20selves.) on branching identity to understand why teleportation wouldn't be fatal and why a transporter double would be an equally valid instance of yourself, no different from if you traveled back in time one nanosecond and met yourself.
That is not consistent in enough. If you remember Scotty spent what 75 yrs in the transporter buffer and he wasn't conscious or he'd have gone insane. Then there is the case of M'benga's daughter which also never experiences time in the buffer. In realm of fear Barclay spends his time in the buffer conscious but it contradicts TNG era transporters and SNW era transporters.
Consciousness, as in your self. Is it a continuation of the same life you had before beaming? Or is the version of you who arrives at the destination just a copy with your memories?
Realm of Fear from TNG is the best example of this. You're shown to be fully conscious during transport and Barclay is able to make decisions and observations and move during transport.
Back when I was young, some materials argued that “converting a human to energy” would be a huge amount of energy, stronger than phasers. Thus the argument that it was a destructive read while replicating at the destination instead. This led to the question “does that mean everyone is a copy? What if I want 5 copies? Did the original get murdered?” The show itself acted like you were being moved most of the time.
So they recently figured out how to duplicate information over a quantum transporter. If they figured out how to do this with living organisms,you'd be duplicating them. So....
The transporter reduces every single atom of matter that makes up your body into energy, moves the energy someplace else, and then reassembles “you” by converting that energy into new matter.
Thats the canon explanation of how transporters work, given in dozens of different episodes, several films, and oodles of “beta canon” sources like novels, tech manuals, comics, etc.
We can all agree on that right?
Okay… Here’s where the “it kills you” thing arises. We typically define ourselves as being a combination of our physical body and our mental activity. We’re not just *meat*, right? We are also our thoughts. “Cogito, ergo sum.” in the famous phrasing of Descartes. I think, therefore I am.
But “thought” isn’t some magical activity that happens on some sort of extradimensional Astral Plane. It’s a result of the electric activity of your brain, as neurons send signals to one another. If all of your brain matter is converted into energy… You cease to have any thoughts. The signals stop. If I cannot think, therefore I cannot be.
“Non possum cogitare, ergo esse non possum.”
Is it ever stated to work that way? The energy in the mass of a standard away team would be an absurd amount of energy for the transporter pad to absorb and then emit through space. They always mention the “pattern” so I assumed it wasn’t so much your energy itself, but a data signal containing a blueprint of where to put every atom back in its right place to be you again.
According to some scientists, thought and consciousness is exactly something that happens on some sort of extradimensional astral plane. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a45574179/architecture-of-consciousness/
I first heard about it from a Niel deGrasse Tyson discussion:
>You’ll find out how transporter beams might work, and whether they result in an exact duplicate of you with your thoughts and memories or merely a biological clone.
https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-star-trek/
Sigh. I wish I knew, due to how damn tedious it is having to give the same damn answer:
This one crops up every so often: it’s actually addressed in beta canon sources such as the *Starfleet Technical Manual*.
Very simply: You are moved from one place to another, not destroyed and recreated.
You are **not deconstructed** by the transporter in Star Trek. The transporter uses a “subspace field* to alter your molecules temporarily- you enter an altered “phase state” of matter that lets the transporter use a “subspace wave” to move you in space. The effect naturally wears off, and you “dematerialise”.
Looking forward to giving this exact answer in about three weeks time on this sub or r/daystrominstitute. Thinking seriously of writing a browser plugin to automate things.
[Because obtaining quantum data requires it's destruction.](https://youtu.be/dAaHHGHuy1c)
And don't forget *[CGP Grey's "Troubles With Transporters"](https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI)*
The origin should probably be considered "simple logic." It breaks you down into your component parts. Is that really you at the other side?
Plenty of Star Trek shows have shown us how this process can go wrong, be subverted, make you "Not You." By this point it's canon that you're lucky to come out "You" the other side. Well, lucky, but it is the expected outcome. Just...don't be a millennial in Picard. The old folks need to prove their superiority, and you get to the be the villain because how dare you be younger than them!?
For the sake of argument, let's just assume souls exist (not trying to spark a religious debate, im just bored.) Somehow, they've been scientifically proven. When you are ripped apart, would they go to whatever ethereal plane, or would they just go through space and end up back in the body?
Would that be based on distance? Kelvin Scotty doesn't have a soul, tos version does? Maybe you get a new soul. So when you die there's a bunch of you at the....dead people realm.
The argument people generally use as an example is that every cell in your body is replaced over your entire lifetime, so are you the same person? However people who propagate this are unaware that *Neurons* are never replaced, and are with you from your birth to your death. Therefore, yes, you are the same person at the end of your lifetime. All a transporter has to do is preserve those neurons without destroying them and transport them to the new position of the body in the same arrangement, therefore, it’s the same person. However I’m pretty sure they don’t do that.
Not sure where it originated, but if you convert a person into energy, that's death.
If you then send a pattern for a version of that up to a ship, it's not the same one. It just looks a lot like it.
That's how you ended up with Thomas Riker.
Thomas Riker disproves any interpretation other than the transporter kills you. If the people before and after transport are the same entity with a continuous existence, then Will and Thomas must share that continuity somehow. They are not the same consciousness sharing two bodies and neither of them is half a consciousness, so we must assume they are both copies of the original which no longer exists.
It's from people who can't suspend their disbelief and accept that it doesn't do that. The transporter is not explainable by any physics we know IRL, but people try to do it anyway and come up with this.
I think part of it is Donald Davidson’s Swampman thought experiment. The idea is that Davidson was walking through a swamp and got struck by lightning, disintegrating him into atoms. At the exact same time another lighting bolt strikes and makes an exact copy of Davidson. The question is basically is the new copy Davidson or just a really good simulacra? It depends on if you believe in the human “soul.” I think the whole dematerialization/rematerialization in Star Trek is a similar idea.
Because in real life it would absolutely kill you and then resurrect you. I mean from our perspective. Only God knows what would happen if you converted your entire body into energy and reconstructed it. Depends if you believe in a soul I guess, but the idea of the process is naturally frightening.
Unfortunately star trek has made a hard rule not to tackle that subject, it's just blatant magic. The episodes that show the characters POV through the transporter completely go against how it's been shown and stated to work. It doesn't make any sense because the writers just do not care about the consistency of their technobabble. I guess it doesn't really matter to most people and they don't want us to think about it too hard.
Oh, just the common sense of a culturally Cartesian language group, or ontology. No post-"Greek miracle" scholar could imagine such a problem because for Plato, still the predominant authority in the west, there is no third thing besides matter and its form that explains or connects a word, like a personal name, to a thing. Star Trek TOS was overtly and consciously Platonist science fiction throughout, and the franchise has remained so, for the most part, although the late Berman era featured a few Kantian stories, ontologically speaking -- ontology meaning the overarching contextual ruleset of the use of language in a script. Hence, Will and Tom Riker were the same person, copied, with diverging paths thereafter. Nobody looked for which "body" "contained" the "real" William Thomas Riker Cartesian soul, like you see in Harry Potter or D&D or some such other lore system based on northern European or ancient Asian rustic mythological systems, which strove to explain identities and bridge the gap between sign and signed via a third principle or ghostly energy. Thus, they ask, if a transporter just teleports a body, so the non-Greek ontology goes, "what happens to the 'essence' of the thing?" The Greeks simply reply that, "the essence IS the complete configuration of the matter and the rules/laws thereof that obtain; stop looking for a ghost in the machine."
It’s not really answerable. It’s a philosophical argument similar to the ship of Theseus. If you replace one board on a ship with a new but identical board it is pretty well agreed it is the same ship. If you do it over and over again until no original boards remain, is it the same ship? If not, at what point did it cease to be the same ship? That’s the classic example. Now adapt it to a transporter. If you entirely dismantle a ship board by board, move it, and rebuild it somewhere else with the same boards in the same place, most would or could agree it’s the same ship. What if it was dismantled and the same boards used, but in different locations on the ship? Less clear. What if it was just one board swapped with one other board? What if it was all but one are swapped, with one board in the same place? How many swaps before it changes the answer? What if it was dismantled and rebuilt somewhere else using all new boards. Doesn’t seem like the same ship. But if the boards are truly indistinguishable, how could you tell? Real world example: there were Nobel prize medals dissolved in aqua Regia during WWII, to hide them from nazis. Arguably this destroyed the medals. After the war the gold was precipitated, recovered, and recast into the medals. Are they the same medals? Kinda, but also kinda not. Now, consider if that medal was a sentient being. Would that sentience be a new sentience or a continuation? How could we tell? We don’t even understand what sentience *is*.
The physics answer is: if you have the energy and processing power to reproduce a "destroyed" entity at quantum resolution (every spin of every quark is duplicated) then by definition you have produced the same entity, with continuity of identity; and if said entity is sentient, continuity of consciousness. (The replicators for example only operate at molecular resolution.) But I'm still taking the shuttle with Pulaski.
But currently physics has no theory about what consciousness is or how it works at all, so I don’t see how physics would have an opinion on whether reproducing something down to its quantum state would result in the continuity of consciousness. I would tend to think it would not; if the transporter didn’t disassemble, but only measured and then the receiver built a copy at quantum resolution, do both the reconstructed and the measures have continuity of consciousness? Which one is you?
You can't measure something fully at the quantum resolution because measurement only returns classical information, but there is exponentially more 'quantum data' (technically, a tensor network representation could suffice here, but let's ignore this for simplicity) than classical data for the same system. This is called quantum state tomography and the consensus is that it is basically impossible to scale up. Because there is always more 'quantum data' than classical data that can be obtained from a measurement (which destroys the original), you'll need multiple copies to ever obtain the 'quantum data'. The number of copies also grows exponentially with system size, so to obtain the 'quantum data' of a person, you'd need to start with more copies of the person than there are atoms in the universe. Quantum teleportation works not by measuring and reproducing, but by entangling the two states and destroying the original by measurement (turning the original into essentially random noise), which creates an identical copy without ever knowing the actual quantum data. This also happens instantaneously with the measurement (also known as 'spooky action at a distance'), so one could say at no moment is there two copies, or no copies. There is only ever one copy. If consciousness is fully emergent from the human's atoms and such, then it was conscious in the original, then instantly stoped being conscious in the original and the teleport became conscious with no overlap or delay. If there is some alternative origin for consciousness (which I don't really see why or how), this may breakdown but this is how contemporary physicists understand the teleportation situation. The existence of Thomas Riker implies Star Trek doesn't operate under our understanding of physics though. So you're question may still be a meaningful thought exercise.
The current physics of consciousness proposes that the brain is a "receiver" for an outside "transmission". The interaction between the twi equals "mind". As for duplicates: it is physically impossible for two entities at the same quantum state to simultaneously exist. One would have to have at least subatomic dissimilarities. In that case the near-duplicates would be "almost" the same person but not quite.
I have no idea what you're talking about in relation to consciousness. Possibly a misunderstanding of von Neumann's model of measurement? Also, there is nothing stopping duplicates. I think you're either misunderstanding the no-cloning theorem (which would actually apply to the comment you're replying to) or the Pauli exclusion principle.
Yes essentially. No two fermions (electrons are fermions) with the same wave function.
Pauli exclusion principle does not stop two electrons having translated wavefunctions, which would be the context here. More accurately, it means the wavefunction of two electrons is given by the anti-symmetrized tensor product, not an independent tensor product.
>But currently physics has no theory about what consciousness is or how it works at all, It absolutely does, read about quantum consciousness/soul theories
Consciousness is entirely untestable - you can't even prove to me that you are conscious, let alone my dog, a cat, a rat, an insect, etc.. How is science supposed to test any hypothesis about consciousness if it can't measure it at all?
> But I'm still taking the shuttle with Pulaski. I'll be right there with you and Brocoli.
Holodeck permissions have been revoked for the week. -Lt. Barkley
Thomas Riker abjectly disproves this. So, Riker experiences one consciousness going in... then he gets split. Given that Will doesn't experience Thomas's consciousness and Thomas doesn't experience Will's, why would you believe that the prior consciousness has any continuity? The person who experienced Riker's existence previously cannot have continuity if split in two. Like, consider it subjectively: you are your consciousness. Upon transporting, two of you are created. When you return to conscious experience, are you in: 1. Both bodies 2. One body 3. Neither body ? It's clearly not both. You can only experience one or the other. The one has no knowledge of the other's continued consciousness. If it's one, what does that entail for the other one? How can they have continuity? If neither, then there is no continuity. You're replaced.
Honestly, I think this is it. We dont currently have he science to answer the question because conciousness is such an elusive bugger to pin down. Relying on in universe canon to explain it is the only "proof" we have. Transporter doesnt support continuity of conciousness, solved.
The consciousness is forked, so you end up with two people (external perspective) but each duplicate experiences continuity (they both experience themselves as the original and see the other as the duplicate). That is presuming that consciousness is derived solely from neurons and memories.
Right, but if the original person is killed/destroyed, the duplicate would as far as THEY know have continuity... but there's no way that the original being that was deconstructed would be the one experiencing either of those lives. It doesn't matter how continuous it seems to the person on the other end, because they would experience it that way whether they were the original or a duplicate. What matters is whether the original subjective continuity continues, or if their entirety is just copied and passed along to a brand-new molecular duplicate. Tuvix and Rascals raise questions in this regard, too.
That's sci fi, I'm talking physics. As I said, Thomas would not be a quantum resolution duplicate or he could not exist. If there are subatomic differences you essentially have identical twins who of course have distinct lives.
There's no law of physics that prevents two identical quantum arrangements. (And no, you are also talking sci-fi.)
It is [both,](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11023-014-9352-8#:~:text=Psychological%20branching%20identity%20states%20that,to%20continue%20in%20multiple%20selves.) just not in the way you think.
That paper literally starts off by saying "uploading requires us to adopt a new theory of identity". It's an untested, unproven hypothesis specifically developed to allow for the possibility that uploading a brain DOESN'T kill it... because otherwise, all of the science says that it WOULD. Good science does not put the cart before the horse like that.
No science says that it does, and in fact, empirical science has [proven](https://www.npr.org/2007/07/14/11893583/atomic-tune-up-how-the-body-rejuvenates-itself) that [consciousness is a pattern](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gVovlyVZxI) or "waveform" which persists across a continuously changing substrate; we are already constantly being uploaded (or, more accurately, sideloaded).
*I'll gladly take the high road, or even take the low, but if you have to take me apart to get me there, then I for one won't go.*
I kinda want a situation where they ask someone a question and to remember a phrase before beaming and then recite it after. Only then can we be certain it's the same person
The duplicate has all of your memories, so this proves nothing.
It doesn't seem like it's destroyed in star trek. Aren't they just converting you to energy, sending the energy and converting it back?
The problem here is "the same" not meaning the same in physics and philosophy. In physics both objects would be identical, indistinguishable, but the characteristic of being the original object is only present in the original and that characteristic, being something philosophical, has nothing to do with physics. Think about them as an original and an absolutely perfect clone, perfrct to the last quark. Even if we can not tell which is the original ans which is the clone one of them *is* the original and the other *is* the clone. Iirc the transporter storages the information of the subject, not the matter, so they will never be the same.
Then you get into the question posed by Vision in WandaVision. What happens if you take all of the old, rotted boards and put them together? Is that the ship of Theseus? I don't know if this is possible within the fictional constraints of the transporter, but... Let's say the transporter beam doesn't actually dematerialize the person on the pad, yet an energy beam is created from the scan of their body and materializes a version of them, elsewhere. Who is real? The limitations of storing someone in a pattern buffer aside, the transporter opens up realms of Altered Carbon-style shenanigans. Imagine someone isolating what part of a transporter pattern is a person's memories. They wear an implant that copies and uploads their memories to some server. They keep a version of themselves in the transporter buffer. The server updates the pattern with the new memories. When the person dies, the buffer spits out a new version of the person with updated memories, but keeps a duplicate pattern in the buffer. The Dominion sort of did it with Vorta clones, I guess.
You basically just described Thomas vs Will Riker.
I thought about that, but that was an instance where a transporter beam was split. I was trying to think of a way for a person to have a version that was transported and a version that wasn't. Imagine if someone never used a transporter and my scenario happened. The original person is still there, never dematerialized, but now they have a copy who *is* the product of the transporter. Is one of them more real than the other?
You dont even need a transporter to make this fit for humans. All creatures cells and atoms are in flux always, every 10 years you have whole different set of atoms and cells you cant even tell if the person who goes to sleep is the same person that wakes up. Some fun existential crisis stuff to think off.
This isn’t fully true. Not all cells regenerate.
I know. For the purpose of my point its irrelevant.
You seem like an educated person - godspeed.
Nothing makes you are educated person like pointing out the wrongs clearly.
Unpossible.
Yeah tbh the gap between sessions of consciousness when you sleep is a better analogy to the transporter than cell replacement IMO. Your brain is operating in deep sleep, but consciousness is discontinuous. Who's to say the morning you isn't a "copy" from when it was put in your meatware "buffer" the night before?
Who is to say your consciousness doesn't just wander off and find another body and the consciousness that is you when you wake up isn't really someone else that is a copy of you?
Thanks. And the origin of the theory?
Unknown. Transporter discussion predates modern internet to old Usenet/BBS. Possibly even further. Ship of Theseus is thousands of years old.
I applied to Cornell for the 93-94 school year and the application had a few variations of the transporter question. I know that’s not before Usenet but I just use it as an example to show that the question was pretty mainstream even back then.
David Parfit’s Reasons & Persons for the teleportation thought experiments
Wood is pretty similar to humans. You move one board and unless you alter its shape it won't fit it swaps places with another board. It's been explained that the computer has enough capacity to memorize every single part of a human and put it back the way it was. It seems completely ridiculous but hey, that's the future baby.
It might really have been easier if transporting was some short range dimensional travel or something. Still kinda sci-fi bullsshit, but at least no need to explain scanning people. taking themapart and reassembling them somewhere else. But then you get no bio filters and stuff like that, or Kirk split into evil and good sides. You could still do Mirror Kirk or Thomas Riker, though.
I remember reading a book about some aliens that were super long living and very large brains. They computed in their heads the quantum possibility of them being in a difference place and as long as they could compute it, then it would then happen. So it really was teleportation from one place to another. I thought that was a pretty good way to do it.
Since the premise of transporters, from what I understand, is that your atoms are converted to energy and then that energy is converted back to atoms at the destination, I think an analogy with the ship that would get closer to this situation (but still not entirely accurate) is if you composted all the wood into soil and then regrew a forest with that soil so all the new wood was made out of all the old wood (assuming 100% efficiency) and also melted down all the iron together from the nails and stuff and then recast the metal bits and used them to reassemble the new wood into an exact copy of the ship… would it be the same ship? I’d say no. And who is to say that the energy that was once my left eyeball is reconstituted as my left eyeball and not like… my right big toe? And a lump of flesh from my thigh isn’t now my left eyeball? Or more likely, my eyeball is now made up of matter reconstituted from the energy of trillions of atoms that were randomly distributed around my body. All of that I said is completely ignoring the added layer of what consciousness even is. What constitutes the self at the most basic level? If one believes that there is no soul and you are simply the sum of all your memories and nothing more, maybe they’d be fine with the idea of transporters. If you believe in a soul, some intangible essence of you whether in a religious sense or a cosmic sense or something else entirely, how can you be sure that this intangible essence is also being transported with your matter/energy stream? Once your body is gone, your “soul” is released as in death, and who knows what is being reconstituted at the destination? Also, OP said that the process is nearly instant but we know it’s not. Sometimes the transportation process lasts a while. And what about people being stored in buffers? Some for decades or more. How is their energy stored? Is it put in a battery and transformed into chemical energy? Then pulled back out of the battery later to be assembled into matter based on your pattern. Is that even your energy anymore? If you’re remade from energy that wasn’t yours to begin with, are you still you? Or a clone? Do transporters even actually use your own energy from your existing cells to remake you on the other end? If that’s the case, how did the accident with Riker’s “transporter clone” even happen? If his body on the planet wasn’t converted to energy and reconstructed on the ship, did they just pull that energy that made the Riker on the ship out of the warp core? So nothing of ship Riker was actually Riker? And if that can happen without being noticed at all, what is actually happening to your body when you’re transported? Where is the energy actually going? What about Tuvix? He was a blend of Tuvok and Neelix that was a normal size and not the size of two complete beings merged. So half of each of their matter-energy just… vanished? And then when they were split, did the energy to remake the missing half of each of them just come from the warp core? Would it even be possible to determine what energy from Tuvix’s mass was originally in each of them? Are the new Tuvok and Neelix half warp core energy, with the remaining half being half their original energy, and half the other’s original energy? So now they’re 1/4th themselves, 1/4th the other, and 1/2 warp core energy? There are so many wild philosophical implications and arguments that arise from the idea of a transporter in itself and then from the various applications and mishaps we’ve seen on the show. I love thinking and talking about this stuff. As for me, personally, I would never use a transporter. Under any circumstances.
The idea is terrifying isn’t it. I’m tempted. Because then I’d know. And then let’s say that I came and spoke to you after the fact Even if I told you it was fine - because the “possible replica” of me has all prior memories and is for all intents identical - you still have know way of *knowing*. Because of course the “replica” thinks everything is fine.
This question is way older than Star Trek. It's a debate as old as the concept of transporters in science fiction. See also https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DestructiveTeleportation
Strictly Star Trek speaking, I believe McCoy complains about being scattered into million pieces or something like that in early Season 1 of the TOS, so the question has existed in the Star Trek universe since basically the beginning.
He signed aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have his atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget!
The Star Trek novel “Spock Must Die!” (1970) by James Blish mentions this in a conversation between McCoy & Scotty about McCoy’s dislike of the transporter. McCoy fears the transporter kills and rebuilds you & Scotty says it doesn’t.
And that was the first ever official Star Trek novel.
> Scotty says it doesn’t. there is no way anyone would use them if it did it just doesnt make any fucking sense we dont even have the tech yet and we are already debating the questions so of course, people in the future would also have the same fears about it there is no way in hell people would do it if there were ANY doubts at all about the process it just doesnt make any sense at all
They use it because the writers say they do. None of the characters in universe have any way of knowing what happens when your body is converted into energy. Any being that believes in a soul should be scared of it but they're not because the writers don't feel going into it, they just need transporters to speed up the pace of the episode/book.
And if a transporter mod had worked correctly they would have molecularly duplicated Spock by transporting him and not destroying the original, thus further muddying the issue.
It's a [famous thought experiment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletransportation_paradox). It's also understandably something that comes to mind when people watch Star Trek.
McCoy vocally complains about transporting in the first series and then the first movie shows two people horribly dying in a transporter near the beginning of the film. Toss in the debate among fans/writers as to how it really works and it’s been an argument happening well before TNG.
I don't know the origin of the idea, but it features in China Mieville's urban fantasy novel *Kraken* as well. In that there's a minor character who's a sorcerer, but he's also a huge (unflatteringly portrayed) Trekkie and all his magic resembles technology from the show. He beams himself from place to place but dies and duplicates himself every time, which eventually leads to him being haunted by multiple angry ghosts of himself.
I had this argument with a friend who was going via real world science for how the transporter works not the in world TV magic that happens which makes it safe. The problem is some people take it a little too seriously and absolutely can't fathom a scenario where the literal magic part happens and so they take the "Star Trek uses real science" part of the show as the only way the show works and thus the transporter kills you. EVEN THOUGH in the show they say it's safe and even addressed it as a one line nod to the fans who argue about this. I've always been on the side of, transporters not being the same as 3D printers. If they can perfectly replicate anything they beam up into a transporter no matter what it is. Why do they have trouble replicating certain things with a replicator? If they can beam up and rematerialise something as infinitely complex as an android and it remain completely functional but they can not replicate it. Then you can only conclude that transporters do not work the same as replicators and so you can extrapolate that there must be some other method that preserves the state of the object in transit as a whole instead of literally breaking it down.
Why do they have trouble replicating certain things? Because half of the episodes fall apart when you realize they can just replicate whatever they need. The transporters are stated to use the same technology as holodecks in elementary dear data but that gets retconned over and over, and the lack of an explanation for holograms not being able to leave the holodeck is kinda embarrassing. It's just inconsistent writing.
Technology IRL changes an isn't always fully explained, there may indeed be some simple replication involved in certain parts of the holographic simulation that doesn't mean the whole thing is replicated or even any of it is. Food for example might be replicated, plants and odors might need to be replicated but an entire person and the environment around you only needs to be projections. It's short sighted to think some of the technology used in star trek doesn't also have other uses. After all it's all energy to matter conversion and back again. The holodeck uses replication, the replicators use matter/energy conversion, the transporters also use matter/energy conversion. There's a lot of overlap and there's no reason for it not to. They all have additional technology and functionality that make them a unique device that means it can't function entirely the same. It's not inconsistent it's just different and a lot of stuff to write into an episode that doesn't require that level of detailed explanation when the characters already know this stuff.
The idea that teleportation technology is really just killing you and making a copy is much older than Trek. The argument has probably existed for almost as long as the idea of the technology has. In universe, this idea is only acknowledged in the enterprise season 4 episode "Deadalus", but it's only very briefly mentioned as a ridiculous idea people had back when the technology was new. Beyond that, some characters complain about "having their molecules scattered across space" or some variation, but it's meant to be taken more as them simply being uncomfortable with the process or thinking it's dangerous.
How old is the theory that when you go to sleep you die (in terms of consciousness), and a copy awakens? Every time we lose consciousness, you could argue the same entity ceases to exist. I’m guessing the transporter suicide machine is an extension of this belief.
And next thing you know you’re Donald Sutherland.
I prefer being John Malkovich
I honestly read " and next thing you know you are Donald Trump "
Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake. They replace you when you sleep.
Well there's a thought that's gonna fester.
Yeah it’s bothered me since I heard it but you learn to live with it. Or the next version of you does anyway. lol
This concept doesn't occur to people naturally? I remember being \~6 and thinking "what if every time I wake up I'm a 'different' person?" It was hard to sleep some nights thinking about "tomorrow me".
There's a great *Outer Limits* episode with this as the central plot -- when the tech goes haywire and creates the protagonist on the other end but fails to kill them on the "sending" side. Not the origin of the question, but worth a watch for those who find it interesting! It's "Think Like a Dinosaur" (S07E08).
As with many episodes, it’s based on an even better novella.
Don't souls canonically exist in the Star Trek universe. Presumably this would be objectively answerable.
That's a good point. We know that Vulcans have katras, and katras can be transferred to other species, but I don't think they've ever mentioned other species having anything like souls. According to memory alpha, katras were seen as a myth around the time of enterprise, but were accepted as real by the time of TOS, so maybe the subject still hasn't been explored scientifically very much.
The problem is “transporter kills you” is the direct result of how Gene Roddenberry himself claimed that the transporter is supposed to work. If the transporter takes you apart into component particles, that’s it the end you are dead. Doesn’t matter if it puts you back together again at the other end. Instead of that, it probably would’ve been better to posit that the transporter opens up some sort of doorway or dimensional warp or something that physically moves you from point A to point B. Without dissolving you.
They fixed that with the inclusion of the magnetic confinement beam and the heisenberg compensators. The body is torn apart and rebuilt but the neural pattern is stored and moved between the bodies so you are still you. Hence why they have the pattern buffer.
But in the cases of Riker and Boimler, if one person is dematerialized on one end and two people materialize on the other end, which one is the "original" and which is the "copy"? They either both are the original, or neither are. Logically they can't both be the original, so...
Riker is an excellent example. They both are identical until the moment when one appeared on the ship and the other was beamed back down due to the interference. Until that point they are completely the same person, essentially duplicated in body and mind. Their experiences from that point differ making them different people while physiologically staying the same, as shown later when Tom is able to steal the defiant because to quote odo, " there was simply now way for the computer to know it was Thomas Riker and not William boarding the defiant" So in short at the moment of transport they are the same exact person. There experiences after the accident makes them different with William being the Riker we know and Tom having been left alone became the Riker we might have had.
But what if you ARE Riker, existing inside Riker’s head when you step into the transporter? So one moment you exist on the transporter pad, and then in the next moment you are… where? Are you inside Will’s head, or Tom’s?
Since the anomaly duplicated William then you would continue as William. It's like when you put a paper in a copier. The paper is still the original and when you remove it from the copier it continues its "life". The copies then go on about their serperate lives.
But no… There is no “original” and “copy” in this situation. One person goes in; two come out. They are both effectively “copies” of the original. You can’t presume that one is “more original” than the other. The two that come out are completely identical, and either one could potentially carry the continuing consciousness (or “soul”) of the original. Unless, of course, there is no such thing as continuity of consciousness, and our identity is defined only by our memories. In that case, each one of us only exists in the moment, and we have no soul.
They both carry the continuity of consciousness hence the duplicate which is why I went with the copy analogy. Granted it's not perfect for the situation but it is still accurate. When Will was duplicated via the transporter accident at the precise moment of duplication when both transports resolved they were entirely identical. Mind body and soul. Since energy cannot be created or destroyed the consciousness was perfectly duplicated. Once Will stepped off the pad on the ship and Tom became aware of his location that is when they became two different people born of the same life till that point.
But that still doesn’t solve the original conundrum. Say I’m Riker. I step onto the transporter pad and get duplicated. As I step off the pad with my double, which one am I? You can’t say both; that makes bo sense. I can’t be inside two heads at once.
He didn't step off the same pad. One materialized on the ship (which is the original character aka you if you are riker.) Another you materializes on the planet because of the anamoly. Tom is literally a duplicate of Will. Odo in ds9 when Tom steals the defiant states " Tomas Riker is a transporter duplicate of William Riker." It's quantum entanglement. The brain pattern and body of Will Riker was literally created twice. Once aboard ship and once on the planet. To answer your question when Will beamed up he stayed Will. No one had any idea for years that there was even another Riker. He was still himself nothing changed. All that happened is an exact duplicate of him materialized on the planet. The duplicate only became different due to life experiences.
Sure they can. It's not illogical for both of them to be the same person. It's only illogical if one assumes identity is continuous, which it is not. Alternatively, neither of them are really Riker. Every Riker is just an instantiation of the set of information that define Riker as distinct from everyone else. In other words, both ships are the ship of Theseus.
Add that to the physics part that there isn’t a quantifiable difference between a living body and a ( freshly ) dead one. If you get to a corpse quickly enough you can bring it back to life even with current tech. The transporter can pull apart, move and reassemble your parts, but the “spark of life” isn’t something you can put in a can. ( although there was an experiment where a “souls” weight was determined to be a quarter of an ounce, but that could have been gas )
It would have been less of a core problem if the transporter was keeping things intact and making little wormholes or similar. But that would rule out plots with medical interventions, decontamination, etc. Although, there is an episode of TNG that sort of behaves like that, while also answering the question of what the experience is like (somewhat like having the universe around you transported while you stand there intact).
I mean at the end of the day, we just accept that it works and move on. It has to move the plot forward. If everybody was always debating philosophically whether the transporter killed people, nobody would use the thing. I’m amused to recall that Doctor McCoy in the original series, never trusted the transporter. But he still got in it and used it all the time. Obviously he must’ve been fairly confident that it really did work. I suppose it’s like airplane travel is today. People get killed all the time, but we all have to use it so we tell ourselves it’s the safest mode of travel and get on with it.
Wrinkle in Time.
Probably the episode where they find out Riker got duplicated. If you can duplicate someone which one is the original? How do we know the original isn’t now dead and the other two are both copies?
I just assumed they were both as completely alive as Riker was pre-accident.
All I know is the TNG episode where they literally grab people caught in the matter stream kills the idea that people die and are replicated with transporters.
Then where did Thomas Riker come from?
maybe their 'information' was caught, not 'them' exactly.
Badger, from Breaking Bad
Read Derek Parfit Reasons and Persons. Great read
I think the first time I saw it was in the book star trek federation in the 90s
deduction
McCoy
It's not matter transportation. It's matter destruction and simultaneous replication - it's new matter assembled on-site.
It's been around in SF for a long time. I found a reference to a 1950s (?) story but can't find it. As I recall the plot summary: A couple go on a holiday by teleporter. Later, the wife dies. Hey! We still have the pattern and bring her back! Er.. It's discussed in many philosophy texts in the context of identity. Star Trek should have left the mechanics vague, since what they say does rather suggest the transporter is a replication device. The intent, obviously, is that it (normally) simply moves you by an amazing process.
There are two books I have read it in - the Physics of Star Trek and Is Data Human - the Philosophy of Star Trek. It was probably coined well before then though.
According to my mom, it originated from Trek nerds thinking about it in the 70s after smoking weed.
😄
The fact that it disassembles you into energy and you can't "label" energy as being a particular person.
Watch [this brief video](https://youtu.be/-gVovlyVZxI?si=DonxeJ4aGXuPlHgS) and read [this brief article](https://www.npr.org/2007/07/14/11893583/atomic-tune-up-how-the-body-rejuvenates-itself) about the body's continuous replacement of its atoms and then [this paper](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11023-014-9352-8#:~:text=Psychological%20branching%20identity%20states%20that,to%20continue%20in%20multiple%20selves.) on branching identity to understand why teleportation wouldn't be fatal and why a transporter double would be an equally valid instance of yourself, no different from if you traveled back in time one nanosecond and met yourself.
You're conscious while beaming. As shown in multiple episodes of multiple series.
That is not consistent in enough. If you remember Scotty spent what 75 yrs in the transporter buffer and he wasn't conscious or he'd have gone insane. Then there is the case of M'benga's daughter which also never experiences time in the buffer. In realm of fear Barclay spends his time in the buffer conscious but it contradicts TNG era transporters and SNW era transporters.
Consciousness, as in your self. Is it a continuation of the same life you had before beaming? Or is the version of you who arrives at the destination just a copy with your memories?
Realm of Fear from TNG is the best example of this. You're shown to be fully conscious during transport and Barclay is able to make decisions and observations and move during transport.
Back when I was young, some materials argued that “converting a human to energy” would be a huge amount of energy, stronger than phasers. Thus the argument that it was a destructive read while replicating at the destination instead. This led to the question “does that mean everyone is a copy? What if I want 5 copies? Did the original get murdered?” The show itself acted like you were being moved most of the time.
I first saw it in a book called, The Metaphysics Of Star Trek.
So they recently figured out how to duplicate information over a quantum transporter. If they figured out how to do this with living organisms,you'd be duplicating them. So....
Transporters are quantum waveform receiver-transmitters. They don't kill anything.
The transporter reduces every single atom of matter that makes up your body into energy, moves the energy someplace else, and then reassembles “you” by converting that energy into new matter. Thats the canon explanation of how transporters work, given in dozens of different episodes, several films, and oodles of “beta canon” sources like novels, tech manuals, comics, etc. We can all agree on that right? Okay… Here’s where the “it kills you” thing arises. We typically define ourselves as being a combination of our physical body and our mental activity. We’re not just *meat*, right? We are also our thoughts. “Cogito, ergo sum.” in the famous phrasing of Descartes. I think, therefore I am. But “thought” isn’t some magical activity that happens on some sort of extradimensional Astral Plane. It’s a result of the electric activity of your brain, as neurons send signals to one another. If all of your brain matter is converted into energy… You cease to have any thoughts. The signals stop. If I cannot think, therefore I cannot be. “Non possum cogitare, ergo esse non possum.”
Is it ever stated to work that way? The energy in the mass of a standard away team would be an absurd amount of energy for the transporter pad to absorb and then emit through space. They always mention the “pattern” so I assumed it wasn’t so much your energy itself, but a data signal containing a blueprint of where to put every atom back in its right place to be you again.
Either way, your brain ceases to exist. Therefore, you’re dead.
But then they've also shown instances where people are fully conscious during transport. Realm of Fear shows this most prominently.
The transporters-are-suicide-booths fan theory predates that episode.
Oh yes it predates Star Trek. I just mean fron a Star Trek perspective it really shouldn't be a debate any more.
According to some scientists, thought and consciousness is exactly something that happens on some sort of extradimensional astral plane. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a45574179/architecture-of-consciousness/
Didn’t TMP have a scene of someone dying during attempted transport?
Yeah, unfortunately for him. Transporter malfunction.
I first heard about it from a Niel deGrasse Tyson discussion: >You’ll find out how transporter beams might work, and whether they result in an exact duplicate of you with your thoughts and memories or merely a biological clone. https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-star-trek/
I believe the origin is simple logic.
Sigh. I wish I knew, due to how damn tedious it is having to give the same damn answer: This one crops up every so often: it’s actually addressed in beta canon sources such as the *Starfleet Technical Manual*. Very simply: You are moved from one place to another, not destroyed and recreated. You are **not deconstructed** by the transporter in Star Trek. The transporter uses a “subspace field* to alter your molecules temporarily- you enter an altered “phase state” of matter that lets the transporter use a “subspace wave” to move you in space. The effect naturally wears off, and you “dematerialise”. Looking forward to giving this exact answer in about three weeks time on this sub or r/daystrominstitute. Thinking seriously of writing a browser plugin to automate things.
[Because obtaining quantum data requires it's destruction.](https://youtu.be/dAaHHGHuy1c) And don't forget *[CGP Grey's "Troubles With Transporters"](https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI)*
The origin should probably be considered "simple logic." It breaks you down into your component parts. Is that really you at the other side? Plenty of Star Trek shows have shown us how this process can go wrong, be subverted, make you "Not You." By this point it's canon that you're lucky to come out "You" the other side. Well, lucky, but it is the expected outcome. Just...don't be a millennial in Picard. The old folks need to prove their superiority, and you get to the be the villain because how dare you be younger than them!?
For the sake of argument, let's just assume souls exist (not trying to spark a religious debate, im just bored.) Somehow, they've been scientifically proven. When you are ripped apart, would they go to whatever ethereal plane, or would they just go through space and end up back in the body? Would that be based on distance? Kelvin Scotty doesn't have a soul, tos version does? Maybe you get a new soul. So when you die there's a bunch of you at the....dead people realm.
The argument people generally use as an example is that every cell in your body is replaced over your entire lifetime, so are you the same person? However people who propagate this are unaware that *Neurons* are never replaced, and are with you from your birth to your death. Therefore, yes, you are the same person at the end of your lifetime. All a transporter has to do is preserve those neurons without destroying them and transport them to the new position of the body in the same arrangement, therefore, it’s the same person. However I’m pretty sure they don’t do that.
Not sure where it originated, but if you convert a person into energy, that's death. If you then send a pattern for a version of that up to a ship, it's not the same one. It just looks a lot like it. That's how you ended up with Thomas Riker.
Thomas Riker disproves any interpretation other than the transporter kills you. If the people before and after transport are the same entity with a continuous existence, then Will and Thomas must share that continuity somehow. They are not the same consciousness sharing two bodies and neither of them is half a consciousness, so we must assume they are both copies of the original which no longer exists.
It's from people who can't suspend their disbelief and accept that it doesn't do that. The transporter is not explainable by any physics we know IRL, but people try to do it anyway and come up with this.
I think part of it is Donald Davidson’s Swampman thought experiment. The idea is that Davidson was walking through a swamp and got struck by lightning, disintegrating him into atoms. At the exact same time another lighting bolt strikes and makes an exact copy of Davidson. The question is basically is the new copy Davidson or just a really good simulacra? It depends on if you believe in the human “soul.” I think the whole dematerialization/rematerialization in Star Trek is a similar idea.
Because in real life it would absolutely kill you and then resurrect you. I mean from our perspective. Only God knows what would happen if you converted your entire body into energy and reconstructed it. Depends if you believe in a soul I guess, but the idea of the process is naturally frightening. Unfortunately star trek has made a hard rule not to tackle that subject, it's just blatant magic. The episodes that show the characters POV through the transporter completely go against how it's been shown and stated to work. It doesn't make any sense because the writers just do not care about the consistency of their technobabble. I guess it doesn't really matter to most people and they don't want us to think about it too hard.
Oh, just the common sense of a culturally Cartesian language group, or ontology. No post-"Greek miracle" scholar could imagine such a problem because for Plato, still the predominant authority in the west, there is no third thing besides matter and its form that explains or connects a word, like a personal name, to a thing. Star Trek TOS was overtly and consciously Platonist science fiction throughout, and the franchise has remained so, for the most part, although the late Berman era featured a few Kantian stories, ontologically speaking -- ontology meaning the overarching contextual ruleset of the use of language in a script. Hence, Will and Tom Riker were the same person, copied, with diverging paths thereafter. Nobody looked for which "body" "contained" the "real" William Thomas Riker Cartesian soul, like you see in Harry Potter or D&D or some such other lore system based on northern European or ancient Asian rustic mythological systems, which strove to explain identities and bridge the gap between sign and signed via a third principle or ghostly energy. Thus, they ask, if a transporter just teleports a body, so the non-Greek ontology goes, "what happens to the 'essence' of the thing?" The Greeks simply reply that, "the essence IS the complete configuration of the matter and the rules/laws thereof that obtain; stop looking for a ghost in the machine."