"But what if it kills you, but no one can tell?"
this is pascal's wager for nerds
Pascal's wager argues that if there are 2 different and non provable outcomes to a belief, you should believe the one that has better consequences for you.
In this case there are no divine consequences of being destroyed and reassembled in another location.
This is probably more of a ship of Theseus question.
-A man can't step into the same teleporter twice.
Proverbs for the 24th century
The point of Pascal's wager is how non provable beliefs can't be logically reasoned one way or the other. Like how there is no objective original and duplicate ship of theseus.
People arguing over the danger of the transporter is a lot like trying to reason any unsolvable paradox, and especially like arguing over having faith. Better than roko's basilisk, though, that's pascal's wager for scuzzy tools.
Not to mention, if we have the technology to construct human bodies and minds on the other side of that teleporter, what is to stop them from modifying the machines to change your brain (or body). I have lost any trust I once had in any government or company to believe them if, hypothetically, they tell me they have the know-how to change my opinion of Coca Cola upon reconstruction.
Cory Doctorow vibes.
I am not. You are already a process, a continuous state of going in and out of existence.
And yet despite this being philosophically sound my student loan people do not agree.
Me with brain chip implants, especially those with non-libre software
This is why I want monsters Inc style linked door-wormholes. It's less... Reconstituted flesh.
Less room for duplicates, more room for halfsies I guess
I'd like to know or see a Star Trek series about the development of Star Trek technology.
Like the history of flight or the first ancient sea captains, .... when it comes to the history of the humble teleporter, how many freakin people did they have to reconstitute, recombine, turn into a puddle of goo, teleport into a wall, remove their brains, reconfigure their organs, teleport into a bulk head or reanimate into empty space before they perfected the technology.
*"...I teleported home one night, With Ron and Sid and Meg. Ron stole Meggie's heart away, And I got Sidney's leg." *
Teleportation Blues, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Maybe that's why there are so few Indians and Pakistanis in the Trek universe.
I think I've explained this too many times to do it again, but: teleportation doesn't have to be "destroy and reconstitute" any more than going through a door necessitates killing you and reconstituting you on the other side of the door. The key is establishing continuity of your mind across the intervening space, which is mostly an engineering problem.
Star Trek transporters are "destroy and reconstitute" though. They are explicitly described as such. The whole Thomas Riker situation even requires it to be the case.
I think we are still in the realm of a physics problem for teleportation lol
Fusion is an engineering problem. the sun does it. We've done it. We just suck at it.
Teleporting is not possible as far as we know ....unless I missed something huge in science news
I felt like they hinted in some episodes that there was some rule of nature they were exploiting to get it to work. Like imagine trying to tell someone in the 11th century that humans made machines that can fly, they imagine some mechanical thing flapping wings. They imagine it because they don't know what air does when it passes over a fast moving surface. It isn't like the transporter really stores your pattern down to every particle, there was something that they found that made it a lot easier problem to solve.
Yeah someone mentioned the Heisenberg compensators to me in a different comment and I'm betting that's what you are referring to.
The real problem with all of this is that people can't get away from the idea of a soul. Something intangible unmeasurable that is really "us" riding around in a meat-robot. It's hard for people (me included) to realize that the meat packaging is all that we are. If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am. There is no "me" outside of that... And that's a really hard concept to accept and internalize.
If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am.
If you perfectly recreate your body without destroying the original, the original doesn't start seeing and hearing through the clone. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, there's no difference between the you that steps into the transporter and the you that steps out of it, but you do actually die when you're "transported." You don't get to see what's on the other side of the transporter, another being that shares your exact memories does.
I dunno even if there is no you in a metaphysical sense the deconstruction method still ends your personal subjective experience of being you which sucks. Sure the next you might be just as much you as the first one but you don't get to be around to enjoy that.
I'm on the fence: pro-transporter, anti-disintegration. If transporter technology existed without the suicide booth aspect and I could just send a copy of myself halfway around the globe in an instant I'd do it. Biggest problem I see is funding all the new clones of me running around. If there was somehow a way for us all to sync our memories occasionally without melting our consciousness that would be cool too.
All that could have been avoided by having a drop pod launched to the surface containing a mechanical avatar. The crew member just sits down in a chair to remotely control the avatar using an FTL link for instant control. Of course the avatar has a hologram projector so it looks exactly like the crew member. But that would be too safe and not dramatic enough.
Something went really wrong with computers after humans for warp. That's why you can break any evil one by acting crazy or telling it to calculate pi. Also why Data doesn't just wifi.
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