transporter

[calvin]

as i understand it, the transporter technology depicted in Star Trek works by "dematerializing" a person or object by converting their matter into energy and then beaming that energy to another location where they are later rematerialized.

my question to everyone is, if this technology is really invented in the future, would you actually use it? or would you be afraid to? for the sake of this thought exercise, let's pretend that this technology has already been perfected and that there are no risks involved in terms of transporter accidents or health side-effects.

personally, i'd be afraid to use it even if there is 100% guaranteed safety.

i mean, what are we as sentient beings really? are we a physical entity distinguished by our molecular composition? if so, do our dematerialized atoms and molecules still retain the essence of our being? and what of our disembodied consciousness? what state are we in between the time that we are dematerialized and reconstituted at the other end? are we dead, alive, both, or neither?

i don't think that our essence/"soul"/whatever you want to call it, is directly tied to the molecules that make up our physical shell. after all, we are constantly shedding old cells and rebuilding new ones from the food we eat. being heterotrophs, most of the matter that our bodies are composed of was at one time or another a part of another living being. and all of us are ultimately just re-constituted stardust.

to me, going into a transporter is like having a machine scan my body and save my molecular pattern; then it vaporizes me (thus killing me) and then builds an exact molecular copy of me at the other location. to the rest of the world it may seem like i've been "transported," but the truth is the person who stepped onto the transporter deck is dead. just because the person who came out the other end has all my memories doesn't make him me.

what are others' thoughts on this matter? what do you think happens once you're "beamed" up/down/sideways?

[lionhead]

Well, in my opinion. Since the transporter doesn't copy anything but transports you body in tiny little particle across a certain distance very fast i won't have any trouble entering one of them. Especially if its 100% safe. Hell, i would even want to make a living out of it, for people who are scared. Like you.

I don't believe in the soul, i believe in the brain. Your body is only transported, be it by small particles. Those particles are put back together at the end, meaning the moment between departing and arriving won't change the way you think, it won't kill you and you definitly won't notice it.

It doesn't change your brain patterns in any way, because it work faster then the human brain does. So your still very much you when you arrive. even if you do it a million times. Nothing is left behind, no essence or soul or whatever. Everything of you is transported away.

[calvin]

perhaps i'm not explaining myself very well. i don't believe in a soul either, nor anything to do with the supernatural. i'm just questioning whether disassembling a person (which technically ought to kill them) and then putting them back together is possible without disrupting one's conscious being, whatever that entails.

my personal thoughts on the human essence is that what we experience as human consciousness (or any consciousness for that matter) is simply a flux of chemical causality occurring in each of our brains. but our current scientific understanding regarding these matters still leaves much unexplained.

let me pose a related scenario to you. imagine if the transporter, rather than rebuilding a single copy of you using all of the original molecules, instead built two copies of you with the exact same molecular pattern, splitting the original molecules between the two copies 50/50 and obtaining the offset from the environment. what then of your consciousness? which body would you find yourself inhabiting a millisecond later? what if it were split 75/25? 99/1? do you see the problem now with assuming that our consciousness is simply encapsulated in the matter we are composed of?

[lionhead]

if it build 2 copies of me, using both 50%(or one 99% and the other 1%) of my original body and making both copies whole using "random" molecules it would be cloning, not transporting. Thats a whole different game.

if it only rebuild 1 copy, what happens to the other 50% of my original body? Before i know that, i can't answer.

In any case, cloning isn't ethical in my opinion.

[calvin]

for the purpose of this exercise it doesn't really matter. maybe it's incinerated; maybe it's stored away to be used for rematerializing the next person or object that goes through the transporter; or maybe it's processed into soylent green; take your pick.

and regardless of whether or not you think it's ethical, it's a hypothetical possibility, and thus a valid scenario. assuming that you're being forced into this transporter/cloning machine by an evil nazi scientist, where do you think your consciousness would end up?

[lionhead]

Well, if the other 50% is disintegrated, and the Transporter rebuilds you with "random" molecules because it saved your molecular structure your consciousness would not go anywhere. As it is, it will remain in the same state as it was when you departed.

its hard to say if you are still you if half of you is reconstructed from random molecules(if those molecules come from someone else or from the environment is irrelevant) and half of you is "processed". But your consciousness wouldn't be altered as your brain isn't altered.

If find it hard to say because even though i believe your conscience is only you brain, i'm not 100% sure if there isn't anything more.

At that point its not cloning anymore, so i wouldn't mind going through it.

being forced in by an evil nazi is something else

[calvin]

you see why i have my reservations about teleportation, then?

i mean, we're not talking about existentialistic doom in just the metaphysical sense. i'm not necessarily worried about the ontological implications of the transporter, but rather actual practical concerns with the process, and the very real possibility of death--even if to everyone else it's as if i'm still alive.

but who knows? maybe by the time such technology exists we'll find that consciousness really is just a physical phenomenon that can be disassembled and reassembled without any problems so long as you keep all the original physical parts.

in any case, thanks for indulging me in this admittedly strange thought exercise.

[deltaflyer3]

well what if u found a way to keep the person in one spot and then just copy the data used to trasport some one to CLONE them

[Valathous]

I really like that question. I don't know if there can ever be a definitive answer without actually testing it. Completely disessembling the mind and reassembling it could, in a sense, destroy who they were. Would the memories all be there afterwords? Would the mind go into a total system shock? I realize I've simply just re-iterated much of what you initially asked, but I really have no answer to that and tend to agree with your skepticism.

I actually used to think of a similar thing when in several episodes, but most notably the one where Voyager hides people in the transporter buffers, just how they survived? They would hide their physical patterns and molecules in that state for a prolonged period of time, not allowing the cells to receive oxygen or the like.

As for the transporter technology we have at this very instant... I've heard they moved a pen from one room to another, but it ended up as molten plastic, lol.

[calvin]

[captnskydiver]

Star Trek universe has its own laws, just like any other fictional universe. There is a flaw in your logic, my friend. Answers you are seeking can be only find in Star Trek universe, whereas answers you are providing (or try to figure out) belong, I guess, to the universe you and I live in now.

[subcom]

Do you guys realize you are discussing every single episode of Star Trek that dealt with a transporter accident? The episode "Unnatural Selection" reconstituted Dr. Pulaski from records in the transporter and the episode "Relics" discovered Scotty still alive stored inside the transporter buffer of ship he was aboard on his way to retirement. First, you can't be afraid of new technology: the perambulator was a terrifying contraption when it first appeared on the streets but now it's called a car and we're currently ponying up billions to keep GM and Chrysler from going under. Transporters are also a proven technology in Star Trek, no guesses about what happens on the other side. Although there was an episode like that too with Reginald Barclay. And the STNG Technical Manual describes the transporter as a converter not a copier. Your body does not die on dematerialization, you don't wink out of existence. You simply chamge into something else temporarily, in this case energy. You haven't been killed, you don't die, you are still you just as energy instead of matter. Transporting is transitional not any kind of end in itself.

And if you think that's wild, FOX News reported on 2/9/09 that researchers at the University of Maryland involved in a science they call Quantum Information Processing successfuly teleported matter ten feet. Now, where's Scotty when you need him?

[StephenRichardson]

There is a soul and it is transported within God's realm. If you want to say that you die that is fine by me but I know that the soul lives on. It is an external observer, and you must have faith in him.

[Cosiris]

The transporter has a pattern buffer which stores the energy once its converted from matter. The transporter then has targeting emitters that focus the stream of energy at its destination. If we do have a soul then it is already energy and just gets transported along with everything else. It's been 5 series and 10 movies; the people that use the transporter seem all ok to me.