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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Transporter accidents prove transporters work this way and are murder machines. To an outside observer a perfect clone is the same person, impossible to differentiate. But to the individual's experience, they die every time they are disintegrated in a transporter. It's a new consciousness being created when reassembled that thinks it's continuous. It's hand-waved away because it's how it's always been and transporters are a key part of the Star Trek setting.
There was that one episode with Barclay that showed he was conscious during transport and also showed that people could exist inside the matter stream (or whatever the technobabble is).
Yeah that whole episode had strange ideas. He grabbed a fish person from the matter stream and it became a human person when he integrated. That just makes no sense with how the transporter works! Even O'Brien couldn't figure that one out
I haven't seen that episode. But it kind of defeats the traditional explanation of how transporters work. Unless we go with the "we can exist as beings made of energy" which is always a popular type of alien or alternate being in Star Trek. And the classic transporter accidents don't make sense, then. When a transporter clones someone, who is the real one and how would you figure it out? Most of the accidents only make sense if you treat a transporter as a digital device that moves data.
Transporters are inconsistent in how they work in Star Trek. The transporters work however the writers of the episode need it to work for the plot. Sometimes it's a clone machine and sometimes it's something else.
The Barclay episode I was referring to was Realm of Fear.
People get way too worked up about this.
Be less "Guy Fleegman afraid he was a redshirt" and more "Guy Fleegman once he's realized he's comic relief".
If a consciousness thinks it's continuous that consciousness is continuous.
The substrate your consciousness dances on also changes all the time. Molecules arranged around the galaxy or cells dying and being replaced pose the exact same quandary, and the solution to both would seem to be "who cares"?
The arrangement of cells and neurons known as "You" goes in, the arrangement of cells and neurons known as "You" comes out.
No, it's simply mistaken.
The difference is that molecules and cells don't all disappear at once. Consciousness is brain activity, and the brain has redundancy that allows that activity to continue uninterrupted even while small parts are being swapped out. When you destroy the whole thing, though, the activity stops.
Would you be okay with your child (or some other loved one) being forcibly taken away and replaced with a perfect clone? If what you're saying is true, you should be, since according to you they're not just a copy, they're literally the same person.
The pattern buffer serves the same function of redundancy.
If you're ok with the ATP that makes your brain ebbing and flowing while asserting a continuation of self, you shouldn't theoretically mind if that change over happens all at once.
If it's still "you" happening all at once, then it doesn't matter either when that once is.
The pattern of synapse connections firing is what thinks it's "you" and the transport duly preserves that pattern.
Thinking "Any 'you' 'll do" doesn't mean I want loved ones forced to do anything. People don't tend to be forced onto transporter pads.
No, I wouldn't want a loved one forcibly taken anywhere. If a loved one took a transporter trip I'd love them just the same when they got back though.
No, because people are not conscious in the pattern buffer.
Yes, but consciousness is not a pattern, it's an activity, and that activity gets interrupted. Saying that the consciousness continues is like saying that an aircraft that made a flight, landed, and then made another flight really only made one continuous flight. It's the activity that we're talking about, and the interruption divides that activity into two distinct instances, even though it's the same object performing them.
That's not what I asked. The transporter destroys the original person, which makes it easy to pretend that the clone is that person. The point of my question is that you know that the original is still around somewhere out there. So I ask again: Would you be okay with your loved one being replaced by a perfect clone that looks and acts exactly the same, identical down to the last atom, while knowing that the original still exists elsewhere? Or would you consider that new version to be an impostor?
I could dispute that, but I won't as I don't feel that even matters to my position that my consciousness is my consciousness no matter where or how it's arranged.
And then starts up again, indistinguishable from before and with every right to call itself "me".
I would love my child if they went on an away mission and came back via transport. I would love my children if they suddenly were twins.
Yeah, well, in Strange New Worlds the doctor's daughter isn't even aware she's being put through a transporter until he tells her, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (also, spoiler warning)
It is distinguishable by its history, which is known. Understanding that two things that are identical are still two different things and not the same thing seems like a very basic cognitive ability developed pretty early in childhood, and I should probably remember what the technical term for it is, I'm sure there is one. It's also universally understood and accepted that genuine things are more valuable than their replicas, even if the replicas are so good that their lack of documented history is the only thing that distinguishes them from their genuine models. (This is why genuine antiques with known provenance are far more expensive than even perfect fakes.) As such, I find it very difficult to believe you're arguing in good faith here.
Oh really? Okay, another thought experiment: Let's say someone creates a perfect clone of you. Does that clone now have rights to your property? Is it okay if he/she sleeps with your spouse?
But would you be okay with your child being taken away and replaced with a duplicate? If you're being honest, you should be. Nothing's changed from your point of view, it's the same person. Right?
If you and I each have 2006's SMASH action film Crank on DVD, we both have the film Crank. There exist more than one of those. If a person is cloned by a transporter there are two of that person, but they diverge by virtue of unique experience.
Well you can fuck yourself if it pleases. It's one thing to disagree with me, it's another to impugn the earnestnest with which I state my position.
I can see an argument for the property, and if a clone slept with my spouse would be between the clone and my spouse.
Irrelevant as people are not dragged away to the teleporter, Tuvix notwithstanding.
Yes, thank you! Finally! That's what I've been trying to explain this entire time!
That's not very nice, and it makes me sad that you resort to insults rather than more sincere arguments in the face of criticism. And just when we were getting somewhere. Oh well, have a nice day.
No, you'd love a copy of them just the same...
You could say the same of a 7 year old in relation the the baby you previously loved.
With all the cell-division this creature before you is just a modified copy.
Well, no. It's an evolution of the original one.
Not a newly created copy.
It's constantly copying itself through cell division and gene replication.
That last one isn't really fair, we're animals and have attachments that can't be logically reasoned away. Our brains aren't entirely controlled by our conscious thoughts. You can believe 100% that the patterns of matter, not the matter itself, make the person but still not "feel" good about it.
Not quite. You're describing our brains as a ship of Theseus, which is fairly accurate. But our consciousness is always on while alive. Even asleep and in near-death or temporarily dead our brains don't fully stop or die. Though our brains don't actually replace neurons quite like they replace all other cells. When neurons are damaged, those pathways are lost. Our brain is redundant enough that rarely manifests as a total loss of ability. And when it does, our brains can eventually route new pathways. If enough of these are damaged at once, it can totally change a person's personality.
But transporters turn matter into energy, those patterns are transmitted elsewhere, and energy (or different energy if stored in a pattern buffer) is reassembled very much like replicators. In this case the entire brain and body is stopped, destroyed and re-created. This is, for all intents and purposes, death and cloning. People have trouble with this because to anyone NOT transported, it looks identical. But the person absolutely stopped being alive and a new one was borne that thinks it has always existed.
And Star Trek backs it up. The classic transporter accident that makes a clone of someone? If the transported person is still the same consciousness, what is the clone? Clearly that person isn't controlling 2 bodies with 1 consciousness. Which is the "real" McCoy? The answer is whichever wasn't disintegrated, or neither if they both were as part of the transporter process.
But we aren't our neurons. We are the pathways which get dutifully recreated by the transporter. Even if the electron bounce that thinks it's you briefly pauses pulsing, if that same pattern starts up again that's still you
Both "clones" are equally valid iterations of the same person with equal claim on the identity, although they would functionally from that point be like twins as they would begin developing distinct memories as soon as they each open their eyes.
Not all the time. Sleeping is the obvious exception. You may quibble about whether REM sleep counts as "consciousness", but there are a couple of deeper types of sleep you cycle through that go way down into inactivity.
There's also total anaesthesia, which (depending on the particular type) can shut your brain right down deeper than sleep does.
Then there's people who have clinically died and then recovered, including some record-holders with Lazarus syndrome and who drowned in cold water - the record there is a 2-year-old who was submerged for 66 minutes and had a core body temperature of 19 degrees C when she was pulled out.
Within Star Trek itself there's also Cryogenics (Khan and company were frozen while traveling in the Botany Bay) and Cryonics (the frozen people who were revived in TNG's "The Neutral Zone"). Were those people still the same people as they were when they were frozen?
Is there a clear cut distinction between consciousness and self awareness? I think based on common usage, most folks wouldn't say you were conscious when sleeping, as usually it's said when sleeping you are unconscious. Sure your brain is still doing stuff and it's not just "keep the heart beating" stuff, but you're not aware of it.
We don't really understand consciousness well. Current theory is that it's the weird self-awareness that comes from a human brain. Even sleeping our brains don't really stop. It just stops conscious thought. Which is a confusion of terms, really. So we don't really know.
Here's a more terrifying question: every time you lose and regain consciousness, is it you coming back? Or is it a new version of you with the same memories? What if every time you went to sleep, you effectively died but you'd never know it because the only version of you that you can actually be certain exists is the one right now?
To put the lie to the transporter-consciousness debate: a clone in the transporter either works one of two ways: 1. it creates a new consciousness with the exact same memories and there is no way to tell the 2 apart from the outside but they are clearly different consciousnesses i.e. different people, or 2. transporters kill and remake people constantly birthing new consciousnesses every time and a clone is not that remarkable as it's just creating 2 instead of 1 this time.
I think it's more they are murdering the current instance of a pattern of matter and with it the biological implementation of the pattern of consciousness. Another instance of the same pattern is created near simultaneously. To flip it, aren't they life creating machines as much as murder machines?
Yes, but having a baby doesn't exculpate you of murder. It doesn't cancel out.