The universe is a hologram, and our physical brain is just an antenna tuned to the higher dimension of consciousness. Your consciousness exists separately to your body, so if the transporter builds an exact copy of your body (and brain) you will just tune back in to your same consciousness when you’re done transporting.
What if the transporter makes an exact copy without destroying the original?
What drugs aren’t you on? And can I come along?
Dmt probably, and youll have to ask the entities in the waiting room for that
I always liked the idea of teleporters that are just wormhole pairs.
If you want to travel from New York to Paris you have to first go to your local wormhole station, walk through that and be taken to the central station for all US wormholes, walk over to the international portal and be taken to the global interface station, which would be located wherever the electricity is cheapest so probably somewhere in Iceland, then you walk over to the French national station, and be taken to some facility in France, and then from there walk over to the Paris wormhole.
All wormholes are 20 m across by standard allowing cargo containers to transport through, with the Americans have made system unnecessarily complicated by standardizing their wormholes to 2.5 giraffe widths.
Everyone always focuses on the Ship of Theseus or the existential parts of this, but the societal impacts would be crazy.
Millions of people teleporting to the most beautiful places on earth and wrecking them, highways and boring parts of cities abandoned, mass death of people teleporting into a crush crowd at Mecca, landmarks toppled under the weight of teleporting tourists and bosses teleporting into your house for a “work from home” meeting, weapons and bombs being teleported into war zones…
Things would eventually find a new normal and teleporting food and resources around would remove the need for ships and trucks, you could explore the world much more easily and there would be lots of science to do in hard to reach places, marine biologists would have a field day exploring the deep ocean, doctors could teleport cancer cells out of patients, space agencies teleport probes, bases and astronauts to the moon and around the solar system…
Like it would be such a huge upheaval with so many implications. It’s interesting that people really fixate on the “would I die though? What does dying even mean if I’m still around?” part, even though I think that’s maybe the least interesting thing. I guess it taps into a very primal survival instinct?
Can I just teleport the poop out of my colon and the piss out of my balls, so I don’t have to get up to go to the bathroom?
Where are you storing your piss again?
Depends on how the technology works. It’s more likely that you would need someone’s how to receive or both ends, even if it were technically possible to just teleport randomly from point a to point b I feel like that feature would be disabled on commercial models precisely to stop the above from happening.
I would be the guy who says, “Open-source teleporters only.”
I ain’t risking having myself modified surreptitiously. 😑
uses teleporter
is inexplicably desperate to try the New Improved Coca Cola
But if they were open source they’d have the worst name possibly, and possibly an equally awful UI.
I guess we can be glad that “the GIMP” is taken so nobody will reuse that for a future FOSSeporter
- Bob’s Alternate Teleport Engine - A reimplementation of the standard protocol.
- Ben’s Unified Teleporter Template Placed Largely Under Ground - You do need to dig a big hole, but the result is very neat, with just the teleport pad and controls showing.
- Complex Linear Indoor Teleporter - Works like a corridor, letting you just walk from one building to another.
FOSSeporter makes it sound like everyone is dancing lol
The important part is to start with the acronym and then try and figure out what it can stand for.
No worries, its not you that was modified its your clone. Youre dead!
So the real dilemma here is if you believe in a spirit or after life. Essentially you wouldnt ever get where you were going. But you would.
Honestly, who’s to say that somewhere in the infinity between every second consciousness doesnt jump from one location to another breaking the continuation of persistent matter.
I mean, yeah, it probably would do that. Unless it works like the universe where they’re called transporters.
Teleporting will be so expensive and energy intensive that only billionaires will do it. It will be orders of magnitude more disruptive to the environment than private jets. You won’t have the luxury to worry about your molcules.
I’d use a teleporter with no hesitation. What’s important is my memories and sense of self, not the actual meat it’s in. I could find out I’m a copy of myself right now and not be bothered.
Yeah but once you step in the teleporter you stop being. The copy is only useful for other people to keep interacting with your clone, but the actual you is dead.
So what? There would be persistent awareness. The new me would remember everything up to the old me’s death and keep living. I’m fine with that.
As far as you know. You wouldn’t know what they modified.
Id be more fine with not remembering but to each their own
There’s no “actual” you. Your body creates a sense of an “I”. If you copy that body including the brain, the copy will have the same. You wouldn’t say that the copy’s sense of smell is somehow different, so why make a distinction for the sense of self?
A man cannot step into the same river twice
I think this idea and confidence hold extremely true until you think about Elon Musk.
I have no idea what you mean lol
His machine would not work very well.
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s far worse than that. If a company has a teleporter that can build a copy of you, they can also build an almost-copy of you. Say, a copy that is less rebellious. More obedient.
Yeah, the idea’s cool in fiction, but in reality I would never touch a machine like this. I will walk my ass over in analogue.
I’m a biologist. Perfectly recording something is very very far removed from understanding something enough to make targeted modifications.
Who guarantees the copy is exact? I don’t think we can do checksums on living bodies.
Well I imagined we were talking about an imaginary sci-fi technology. Obviously it would be more complicated and possibly at risk for some kind of manipulation in real life. If I were presented a teleporter where the only fault is a philosophical question about being a copy, then I don’t mind being a copy and my original self dying.
That feels like a very different statement than saying you don’t mind stepping into the teleporter knowing you will die while a copy continues from where you left off on the other side.
yeah I did realize that after thinking about it. Still I’m not sure. I guess it depends on what that experience is like.
Everybody says it’s fine
This happens now to you every night. Your stream of consciousness ends forever and a new one is created upon waking.
Pleasant dreams
Meanwhile Buddha: have I got some bad, but also good news for you…
Warhammer 40k: Can I interest you in a trip through literal hell?
Also: what kind of immortality would you like?
Hmm… ironic immortality! I have eternal life, but grow increasingly more weary and numb to it’s joys until I wish for the sweet succor of death that will never come.
Sounds realistic as hell that
I don’t think that would be real. People become bitter and weary because they get old and their bodies start hurting and their minds failing more and more.
If you stay sharp and fit, you won’t get bitter.
They become bitter because they don’t know how to handle their own minds. Hence being immortal gives one far more time to learn, but does not make learning inevitable
This is so blissfully optimistic that I’m not even gonna try to bring you back down to Earth with my weary bitterness.
We’d argue over the Ship of Theseus every Christmas over replicator Turkey
A distinction between a teleporter and a transporter…
To teleport implies the original matter is instantly moved from one place to another so there would be no destruction and reconstituted copy. A wormhole would seem to be the only realistic way that could be achieved.
A transporter, well that means copy then kill. No one knows if the kill part is painful because noone survives it. I find it funny Riker’s copy is actually the “original” and his lack of death is considered a transporter accident. Yet he is the one treated like the copy…
And all that said, barclay’s experience in the transporter beam is more suggestive of a wormhole style device.
I don’t know why I bothered to write all this out…
A transporter is just Jason Statham in a suit. SCNR
Well, no, “transporter” means the first one, because that’s how they’re explained to work where they’re called transporters.
Now I understand why such and such movie about magicians calls the trick “the transported man”.
Iirc Thomas is not Will’s copy. Basically the transporter has a malfunction where Thomas and Will are both constituted on a transporter pad. So both are the “original” and also both are neither. In a sense, the William Thomas Riker who stepped onto that pad that day ceased to be, forked into two different lives.
I used to use this episode to talk about identity when I taught ethics back in the day. Both men carried on their lives under the belief that they were the same man who stepped onto a transporter pad on Nervala IV. Their experiences defined who they were, demonstrating that it’s more than biological material that makes any one of us us.
Now the deeper question is: since you can’t add matter to the universe, what’s missing to give life to two Rikers?
Sounds like trek had the technology to copy people. You would think if they are sending people out into the unknown to explore galaxies light years away they would just send a copy. Or at least keep a copy.
I wonder what earth piccard would be up to…
The energy that was used in the original teleportation. I didn’t think it was that deep, it used more energy to reconstitute more matter.
You know what, now that your mention it, wasn’t the explanation that the signal was reflected back to the surface due to the ionising radiation of something, so the beam was kinda split or doubled. So my premise was wrong.
Yeah. They tried to split the beam to account for the radiation, half of it made it through, the other half mirrored back. I’m guessing the computer can extrapolate the remaining matter based off of data saved in the pattern buffer?
Either way, Thomas Riker was way under-utilized in Star Trek. I also love how “okay, sure” everyone is about this situation.
To transport just means to move, so if anything the term “transporter” implies physically moving people rather than copying. The term “teleport” is the more ambiguous one…
Someone needs to. At least you put thought into it.
The are other methods from Star Trek that could potentially be size as well.
Like “hey you actually travel through this other dimension where your physical form is undisturbed and no time passes in this dimension”
Which sounds ok, but “by the way it’s kinda a hell-dimension and your consciousness gets tortured for a distance-relative time there but won’t retain the memories after…”
Stop giving your time to corporations! W this, T that. They have played us for absolute fools, there is no need for economy class.
Seize the means of eldritchticity production comrade, don’t believe any nonsense about colors. The trains are always on time under the F co-op too.
Oh dear lord. Yeah I could definitely see a variant where the hell dimension is just “work all the hours that it would have taken to traverse in normal space so that EvilCorp can generate profit for the pan-dimensional empire”
I’m glad you did.
They both got converted into energy, Thomas is just as much a copy as Will. Also, apparently your experience is constant across the process, as seen by Barclay grabbing someone out of the matter stream. Presumably someone would notice if it hurt…
his lack of death is considered a transporter accident
Must do wonders for his self worth! 😄
Isn’t Tom just another copy? He came out of the pattern buffer the same as Will iirc.
Yet he is the one treated like the copy…
no matter what, they were like 1000th generation of copies. “the original” died when riker stepped into the transporter for the first time. so discussing whether this one is 1001st, or 1002nd generation seems not that exciting…
Damn, I was going to ship of Theseus you about the cells in your body replacing themselves constantly, but apparently our brain neurons last a lifetime.
Now I don’t think I would ever use a teleporter, either. Shit.
muscle cells too. the muscle cells you have now are the same cells you had as a kid (not entirely sure how far back it goes). they dont even divide when you gain muscle, the cells just get bigger and absorb nuclei from neighboring cells to support the extra mass. the cool thing is the nuclei stick around even if you let the muscles atrophy, so theyre forever changed by having once been big. thats probably part of why its easier to get back to muscle size youve been at before.
Just believe we’re inside a simulation and transporters won’t matter.
Its kinda crazy actually if you think about it, our ability to anticipate actions is our ability to land in outcomes expected to be made by the reality generating around us if you imagine the reality outside our bodily sensory input as a big monte carlo field of potentials in the form of intertwined variables…like a big llm.
Will they anti matter then?
That is why nervous system damage usually means life long problems. Brains and all their wiring are so arcane and complicated, even our bodies don’t know how to grow more than one of them, and we often don’t get it right the first time either unfortunately.
Well clearly you didn’t get it right.
But what about the atoms/molecules that make up those neurons? Do they last a lifetime?
So far that we know of, neural cell DNA, tooth enamel, and eye lens crystallines, never have their atoms replaced.
Which is to say that we are a ship of theseus, and a transporter does not kill us. The only reason these atoms are not normally replaced is because there is no natural mechanism to replace them.
Radiocarbon Dating of the Human Eye Lens Crystallines Reveal Proteins without Carbon Turnover throughout Life Lynnerup N, Kjeldsen H, Heegaard S, Jacobsen C, Heinemeier J (2008) Radiocarbon Dating of the Human Eye Lens Crystallines Reveal Proteins without Carbon Turnover throughout Life. PLOS ONE 3(1): e1529. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001529
Not sure I would tie my identity to my neuron DNA, tooth enamel, and eye lens crystallines. Definitely agree with you that we are living ships of Theseus. I’m pretty sure there’s no natural mechanism to replace those parts because it’s really hard, and we work “well enough” without being able to.
Yeah but we don’t know if consciousness lives in the meat or in the chemistry.
Yun Tianming: am I joke to you?
Star Trek teleporter: fax machine / shredder combination (remember that time the shredder bit malfunctioned and we got double Riker…?)
Wormhole: just a weird long gateway (with a chance of spaghettification). No problems there unless it somehow takes you through some sort of hell dimension or something.
Stargate: somehow both, because let’s be frank, the Ancients were kind of dicks. (Also, didn’t actually need the whole buffer thing, that one Orlin built in Carter’s basement with a box of scraps was completely analog, no computer bits, and it worked just fine until it didn’t.)
Schlock Mercenary (webcomic) had a couple of good takes on this concept. The “wormgates” in SM were more like teleporters, in that they disintegrated you, reduced you to data, and recreated you on the other side. As a side effect, the Gatekeepers could make copies of you in transit, which is how they kept their galactic dominance intact, by interrogating and shredding gate-clones. Arguably, they murdered trillions of sapients with their gates.
In-universe, it’s impossible to generate big wormholes, but the F’Sherl’Ganni “faked” it and everyone just kind of assumed there was some weird physics they’d figured out that nobody else knew.
The Teraport, in SM (or “tear-apart” as it was sometimes called derisively) at least had some continuity, by porting you through billions of microscopic wormholes. Whether that kills you or not, well, that’s between you and Carl.
The “wormgates” in SM were more like teleporters, in that they disintegrated you, reduced you to data, and recreated you on the other side.
That’s exactly how stargates work in the Stargate series (except for the bit where they could work like normal wormholes, but they’ve got a scanner/shredder/maker mechanism stuck in front of the wormhole for no apparent reason).
I don’t think they ever duplicated anyone (with a stargate), but Teal’c('s data) once got stuck in the buffer. Technically nothing would prevent the gate from duplicating travelers, as long as it had enough energy and it could be prevented from flushing the buffer.
It’s not like that Riker episode was taken lightly. But, you would think that an event like that would have led to a lot more soul searching. For example, occasionally there were religious people in Star Trek – what does this say about transporters and souls?
From what I remember, they spent a lot more time on the mechanics of a dude getting duplicated: the bureaucracy of it (his rank, etc.) and how it affected his relationships with Troi etc.
But, no talk of how every time someone is transported the original body is killed? No talk about how this might be a means of creating an army of clones?
Same deal with people being stored for a long time in the pattern buffer. Does this mean you can create backups of people so that if they die they can simply be beamed from that data?
Does this mean you can create backups of people so that if they die they can simply be beamed from that data?
that is exactly what they did when they lost picard in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonely_Among_Us
remember that time the shredder bit malfunctioned and we got double Riker…
I member!
Was interesting to see people try to explain to him why he was left behind…
