this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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It's my head-canon conspiracy theory that the true workings of the transporter are hidden/obfuscated, even from the technicians and engineers, to avoid the existential dread of facing the truth: you die, and then it clones you.
All these systems to make it appear as if it's a single, consistent matter stream, to leave room for the possibility of a consistent consciousness or even soul. It all falls apart in light of William Riker. You can't duplicate matter. The only feasible explanation is that they got his scan, and successfully materialized him, but the signal that would have disintegrated the original failed.
Tuvix died because people couldn't accept how many times they had technically killed their colleagues, or commited suicide.
Sure, but different writers treat it differently. What about the one episode with Broccoli, where we get a first person view of being in the transporter, and he clearly has a continuous consciousness throughout the experience.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realm_of_Fear
Based on this episode, you aren't killed and recreated.
IIRC, it is explained (kinda) that the personal viewpoint of being solid within the matter stream isn't entirely real. Wishywashy, but how do you show that on a screen, really?
To the bigger issue above, the function of the transporter is that the pattern buffer isn't "storage" such that you cannot query against the buffer as if it's data in memory where individual particles can be pinpointed. (Obv this is not necessarily canon and some episodes poke holes in the idea).
I've always imagined it more like a mound of dirt dumped onto a conveyor in FIFO order, sending it up the beam, then rolling in order into the pattern buffer. The buffer is just holding all the matter in a continuous conveyor in the original order so it can be reassembled on the pad. Outright saving a pattern to memory where every particle location, energy state, etc. would take basically all the memory everywhere (TNG: Lonely Among Us). Weapon and bacteria/virus patterns could be simple enough to detect within the buffer to knock those bits out as the "dirt" rolls around continuously.
And of course the longer you roll a bunch of dirt down a conveyor, the positions of particles shift out of their original position until eventually there's not enough of the original pattern to reassemble properly.
My headcanon for Scotty locking the buffer into a diagnostic loop means additional scrutiny in the system's pattern scanning which then keeps "knocking" bits back into place they were in the prior 'pass' down the conveyor in order to continue calibrating scanners.
Don't look at me like I'm crazy, it totally makes sense!!!!!!!!!¡!!!¡!!! *cough
So, you’re saying Tuvix died for our sins?
Pardon my blasphemy.
No pardon, only meme
When you're advanced enough to let go of concepts like having a soul, the idea of having your being destroyed and remade elsewhere becomes a lot let problematic. What's the difference between being anesthetized and revived VS transported?
Shit, for all we know the universe just started five minutes ago and all of history is just a collective delusion. Just go with the flow and stop worrying about existential problems. One day you'll die forever and that's OK.
Oh, for sure. I'm fine with that. But it seems clear that the writers aren't, and neither are many Trekkies.
Spock had a soul and that is canon. His soul (or whatever it was that made Spock more than the sum of his sexy, sexy green parts) was so important to his friends they quit their jobs, stole their own ship, crashed her, stole another one then got Spock's soul out of valet parking just in time by THISMUCHSECONDS before it (or he) got lost forever.
TLDR: souls are a thing for Vulcans, why not everybody else? Vulcans haven't advanced beyond the concept at all.
The transporter is just a people replicator. Same technology. Why reinvent the wheel?