One of the best lines from the Next Generation series (imho) is when Barclay, the somewhat neurotic transporter technician said, "I know how it works, I don't want to go in there."

@Elurin

2 жыл бұрын

Barclay is not a transporter technician, he's a diagnostic engineer; sorry, trek nerd over here.

@LaughingSeraphim

2 жыл бұрын

@@Elurin wow. Nice. Nice. Your mind could probably cure cancer or aging, but instead it summons an image to "command scant". I, being bereft of hypocrisy in the matter cannot speak to it.

@bobbymak6964

2 жыл бұрын

I used to think that the transporter coverts matter into energy and transmit that energy at the speed of light to the destination to be reassembled. One show from Brian Greene explains it as having your atoms broken down thus killing yourself, and using quantum entanglement to duplicate yourself at a distance perfectly. That doesn't feel right to me because the transporter is creating a perfect clone.

@tradde11

2 жыл бұрын

@@toolman1one86 Bah, I've enjoyed both series. I know the original had lots of holes, but it was different for that time. Nothing like it was on TV. Heck, the network didn't even really understand it. They referred to it as "Wagontrain to the stars". You'll notice lots of similarities to the various westerns of that day.

@Zurround

2 жыл бұрын

@@Elurin He suffers from ASPERGER'S SYNDROME.

Phenomenologically, Kirk is dead as a doornail. Sociologically, Kirk is alive because it makes the paperwork easier.

@PeterKnagge

2 жыл бұрын

I can't disagree...

@HiR0SHi.the.D0G

2 жыл бұрын

You nailed it!

@reasonerenlightened2456

2 жыл бұрын

How about we focus on the technology instead of the state of Kirk. If we can store a human in a buffer (digitised human) then instant cloning becomes reality, immortality too. Cancer patients can live for a very long time too by separating the Cancer from the healthy cells, like editing a photo.

@oldvlognewtricks

2 жыл бұрын

@@reasonerenlightened2456 All fun and games until you're in a Twilight Zone episode populated with identical but ineffably soulless copies of the entire human race.

@danvermark8232

2 жыл бұрын

Have you ever watched the film " The Prestige " , the new one killed the old one, so the old one died.

Recall in TNG Mister Scott was able to survive for many years as a transporter signal stored in a memory buffer. Also, there was a duplicate of Riker created when a transporter beam was split and made two copies of him, one aboard Enterprise and another on the surface of the planet where he was marooned for many years. They were in fact two different people, having identical lives up until the split and different experiences afterwards.

@patrickmoore4037

Жыл бұрын

That still brings up a question for me, though. Did Riker really get duplicated? Or was he the same Riker existing as two different "observations"? His life could be the exact same life until he went into the transporter, then something observed him, causing his wave function to collapse, but he was simultaneously being "measured" differently somewhere else, so now a different interpretation of his location existed in another place. Both would be correct descriptions of him at both locations. Or maybe not. I'm not really sure if what I'm asking even makes sense at this point.

I haven't really settled on my own answer to this question, but I am thrilled to hear a scientist discussing it. I have been suggesting to various friends and acquaintances over the years that this an interesting problem, and have been scoffed at. To be sure, my description of the issue was nowhere near as complete and clear as it is here.

@nedegt1877

2 жыл бұрын

The soul! Everybody always forget the soul! That's not physical. You can mis huge parts of your brain and still be you.

@Jagar_Tharn

Жыл бұрын

@@nedegt1877 We have no evidence of "souls".

@shiny_x3

Жыл бұрын

@@Jagar_Tharn We have plenty of evidence, it's just not evidence you have decided to accept as proof.

@Jagar_Tharn

Жыл бұрын

@@shiny_x3 No, we don't.

@emmioglukant

Жыл бұрын

It doesn't really matter (except for consequence that may arise due to the inner-workings of the device) as long as there's the exact same you in front of others at the teleport exit, it would be exactly identical if _you_ (whatever that means in this context lol) were in front of others at the teleport exit. And if it works like that, the device just kills the original host and clones them elsewhere

At a Star Trek Con, James Doohan (Scotty) was asked how the transporters worked. His answer was "very well, thankfully".

@WagesOfDestruction

2 жыл бұрын

That was the Heisenberg compensator, a component of the transporter system. This was because no one could figure out how it could work around the problems caused by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

@mheermance

2 жыл бұрын

Except when they don't. Transporter accidents seem to be a recurring problem. Evil versions of you, young versions, merged with another person, or lost in transit.

@tonymccann7445

2 жыл бұрын

Kirk dies and also doesn't die?

@tonymccann7445

2 жыл бұрын

I enjoyed and also did not enjoy watching this video.

@davesthinktank

2 жыл бұрын

At a talk in the 70s he was asked, "When people are transported, where do they enter the ship?" He answered, "take a model and turn it over. You'll see a small hole on the bottom." 😀

Yea, I've always felt like tearing a person down, uploading them into a computer, and then reassembled is literally killing them, then creating a whole new person.

@russbell6418

2 жыл бұрын

Which, given the ability to reproduce from raw energy, could lead to surreptitious cloning. (Such as the gate-clone issues in Schlock Mercenary.)

@lancewalker2595

2 жыл бұрын

I always wondered why they simply didn't make clones of people.

@hbergeron1984

2 жыл бұрын

But this takes place continuously in our bodies through cell division. Dead cells are either recycled or discarded. We also absorb parts of "dead" material from our environment for sustenance and make it "come to life". So in a way, we are being continuously "teleported" within ourselves, one cell at a time. Now, if we could figure out a way to make it happen to every cell at once (non-destructively)..

@nirfz

2 жыл бұрын

@hbergeron1984: Cell division itself as i understand it is like cutting 1 sandwich into 2 pieces. You still got the original parts. Not the case if you just transmit the information. Also i would argue that the difference with how our cells get renewed/recycled to the discussed cases, is that in our current case, the organism as a whole never stops working. -> At no moment does your body consist of entirely dead cells and the cell division never stops. But in the transport case that's exactely what would need to happen. The organsim would have to stop it's cell division and everything else. (Which is equal to being dead.) Be either disassembled transported and reassembled. And then started again. (If that would be possible, this technology could reanimate any recently of natural causes diceased person as their organism just stopped working, so let's start it up again...) Or in the other case, only the data would be transmitted. A bit like you making a sandwich, sending the "recipe" of your sandwich to a friend, then eating your sandwich. His sandwich isn't your sandwich even though it may look identical.

@izmanq

2 жыл бұрын

what is a person, if you can make exact copy of a person, does it matter which one is original ?

Everyone dies when they are transported. but they are remade at the destination. Its not the same person. Take 'Lonely Among Us' from next generation. Picard dies, but the crew realise they can 'bring him back' by building a new Picard from the pattern buffer. this Picard is not the same as the one that died, he is missing all the memories of the stuff that happened after the buffer was created. Then there is 'Second Chances' from Next Gen also. Riker beams up to the ship and they fly off, but on the planet something went wrong with the transporter and the actual original Riker was left on the planet.

@seannemo8076

2 жыл бұрын

I’m inclined to agree with you; the problem lies with the fact that the writers constantly contradict themselves. For example, the episode where Barclay pulls someone trapped in the transporter stream… As if you’re sent to another dimension when you transport. It makes absolutely no sense based on previously established lore.

@templargfx

2 жыл бұрын

@@seannemo8076 Agree. I just sort of ignore Barclays episodes as comedic relief :P

@seannemo8076

2 жыл бұрын

@@templargfx I actually like Barclay. He nowhere near perfect, but he becomes an extremely valuable member of Starfleet. His early episodes are also good at showing the flaws in the leadership abilities of some of his superiors, giving _them_ flaws as well, thus making them more well-rounded (and thus believable) characters.

It's confirmed in the TNG episode "Realm of Fear" that the transporter process doesn't so much as "disassemble your atoms then reassemble them'. Basically, the way it works is it takes matter and sends it in a beam through subspace to the destination. At no point is any matter destroyed or created; it is simply moved from one place to another. Barclay even was conscious during transport in that episode, which would be impossible if he died during transport.

@peterg1664

2 жыл бұрын

In realm of fear it isn’t clear that Barclay is physically in subspace, it always seemed to me more like his soul, the metaphysical element of Barclay, was what experienced that, while his body was nonexistent

@techbio

Жыл бұрын

That concept has been decanonised, or simply missed, in Strange New Worlds, where a person's pattern is stored in the transporter buffer, and by law buffers have to be purged because if you don't you can materialise that pattern out of the buffer effectively copying someone. I'm pretty sure the "pattern buffer" is a thing in other Star Trek properties as well not just in SNW.

@grelyelo

Жыл бұрын

@@techbio Yes there was an episode called Relics in TNG where they reincarnated Scotty by beaming him out of an 80y/o pattern buffer.

@grelyelo

Жыл бұрын

But think of it. If you have a 'buffer' that implies it's temporary storage of some kind. Maybe the buffer simply stores a copy temporarily so that if some of the atoms are 'missing in transit' they can be retransmitted.

@Jagar_Tharn

Жыл бұрын

I mean the real answer here is that unmodified non-posthumans have no business exploring the galaxy.

During a depression, I found it kind of comforting that when I went to sleep, it was over. I assumed that tomorrow someone would wake up in my bed with all my memories and thinking they were me and good luck to them but at least _I_ was done. This was a time when the high spot of my day was those few seconds between waking up and remembering who I am. Philosophically, I still can't _prove_ that I was wrong.

@TheSonics11

2 жыл бұрын

" I still can't prove that I was wrong." Russel's teapot... It's easy to make up something impossible to prove wrong.

@brothermine2292

2 жыл бұрын

Look at sleep studies that monitor brain activity. You'd see continuity.

@Zethalai

2 жыл бұрын

I've been there. It's strange the things we can take comfort in when dealing with depression.

@mheermance

2 жыл бұрын

I'm sorry to hear that you were that depressed.

@fritt_wastaken

2 жыл бұрын

@@brothermine2292 you wouldn't. The part of a brain that is supposedly responsible for consciousness is the only part that turns off completely during a sleep

I'm glad that someone else stays up at night worrying about this too.

@davebewshey1549

2 жыл бұрын

No shit lol

@01mustang05

2 жыл бұрын

This video and the crazy going on is why we need to end child abuses!

@asherplatts6253

2 жыл бұрын

@@01mustang05 wtf are you talking about. Pls shush with your Qanonsense.

@angrydoggy9170

2 жыл бұрын

Don’t worry about it too much. Just boost the power to the pattern buffers or in extreme cases just use some previously recorded stuff to reconstruct the stuff. What worries me about all this beaming tech is that they don’t use it to make childbirth easier. Just beam that little bugger out of the womb. Shouldn’t be that much of a hassle.

@guilhermehx7159

2 жыл бұрын

ME TOO. WHAT A COINCIDENCE

I always came to that same conclusion, that the continuity is an illusion in the first place. The transporter problem just radically unseats some of the assumptions that give the word "death" any meaning, assumptions which are normally quite safe to make.

@ashhhh_skrrr7264

2 жыл бұрын

I think Q had a line about that

@peterp-a-n4743

2 жыл бұрын

This.

@zacharyb2723

2 жыл бұрын

EXACTLY!! Continuity of consciousness is bogus to begin with. Being "alive" is an ACTION, not a thing that exists. Who cares if the new Kirk is slightly different than the old Kirk? Same as life, all the time.

@godsofwarmaycry

2 жыл бұрын

@@zacharyb2723 so if they made a perfect copy of Kirk, then killed the original, would it be OK?

@ckom9

Жыл бұрын

@@zacharyb2723 Are we all not changing every moment? I am not the same exact person I will be 1 second from now.

For me, the argument "first make the copy and then destroy the original" is the key to know that they are different persons and the original Kirk dies. I read about this in the book "The new mind of the emperor" from Roger Penrose, and impacted to me so much that I stopped reading the book and never forgot this. I read it 30 years ago, but I remember that Penrose said that the logical way of doing this is first construct the copy and then kill the original. What happen if you don't kill the original? Well, the film "The Prestige" and the machine of Nicola Tesla (David Bowie) answer the question. Also the film "The 6th day" with Arnold Schwarzenegger has something to say.

@squidwardfromua

4 ай бұрын

The Prestige is beautiful. I love how Hue Jackman sacrifices himself each time using the machine just to do the trick, each time it's literally the end of life to him, but to everyone else it looks like just teleport. Definitely one of my favorite films.

I dont know about you, but I'm really happy the screenwriters added characters like Leonard McCoy (Star Trek) with real reluctance to use transporters and allways preferred shuttlecraft ( transporter phobia). It's like a reminder that we perhaps, will never really know ~

@xenuno

2 жыл бұрын

McCoy had an obvious reluctance to thinking clearly as well. Logic and reason were as alien to Bonehead as science is to a flat earther. Why Roddenberry felt the need to have a childish character in TOS is beyond me ..

@DenverStarkey

2 жыл бұрын

@@xenuno three words ; inner crew conflict.

@gregansen544

2 жыл бұрын

@@xenuno Well said, Sheldon.

@peterg1664

2 жыл бұрын

Xen Uno he was sometimes extreme, but not more extreme than Spock. Kirk is supposed to be the Synthesis of McCoy and Spock’s Thesis and Antithesis

@Jagar_Tharn

Жыл бұрын

Wait so you're telling me McCoy was transphobic?

I've always thought he dies as it simply makes a duplicate and destroys the original copy. I'd be happy to use the Stargate but wouldn't go near the Startrek transporter!

@the_omg3242

2 жыл бұрын

Yep. It's always safer to just rip a tunnel in the universe and step through than to use a teleporter. Aside from the whole disintegration issue, who's to say some future version of Facebook isn't making a digital construct of you with the transporter pattern to figure out how to sell you stuff better? (or an actual copy for their slave mines)

@juanausensi499

2 жыл бұрын

@EL SHNASTO What are you talking about? We have natural clones (twins) and they have the same rights as everybody else. A human is a physically contiguous material body, not a unique collection of data.

@thedocklighter

2 жыл бұрын

I hate to break it to you, but a stargate also transforms anyone crossing its event horizon into an energy pattern before transporting the traveller, sending the data/energy pattern to the destination gate for reassembly. The traveller only perceives a sense of crossing a distance as an effect of the stargate process, while preserving your initial entry momentum upon exit at your destination. What you are thinking of, from what I understand, is more of an actual doorway like the one from ST: TNG year one used by the Iconians (I think they were called) which connected two points in spacetime and you simply walked through with no conversion/reassembly.

@HolyMith

2 жыл бұрын

Actually the strgates do decompose matter to transport it.

@HolyMith

2 жыл бұрын

@EL SHNASTO Yeah there's a few episodes where they mention it in Stargate Atlantis.

I'm surprised she didn't mention the way the film "The Prestige" handled teleportation aka replication. That was probably the most realistic version of teleportation

@JdeVrijer

Жыл бұрын

didn't she, though? isn't that the 'kirk dies' scenario?

@sidog

Жыл бұрын

@@JdeVrijer well, in The Prestige, the original doesn't die by default. w/o ruining the film (too late?), he original dies some other way....

@JdeVrijer

Жыл бұрын

@@sidog don't worry, I saw the film.

@parasitelights3158

Жыл бұрын

Are you not watching thee video? I'm very interested in what, if not that, you took from thee video.

@zweisteinya

Жыл бұрын

Great film, especially with the Tesla angle

The answer is Yes, he dies. The fact that the buffer could be used to make different versions of you illustrates the fact that when you are dematerialized you died as you were. The data in a buffer could create (“transport”) an infinite number of “you”s

@noway8233

Жыл бұрын

But for each copy yuo need the mater (how much weight capitan kirk) and the energy to asemble it, this machine is a destructive photocopy of mater

@jasoncoffee

Жыл бұрын

@@noway8233 What about the William Richer accident?

@Bradley_UA

Жыл бұрын

So he lives then.

@cvabds

6 ай бұрын

​@@noway8233they have matter sinthesizer, and there are buffer clones in the franchise

Fun fact: When filming Star Trek originally the crew was supposed to land on planets with space shuttles. This was too expensive to produce at the time, so they came up with the transporters that just "beamed" the crew where they needed to be.

@peircedan

2 жыл бұрын

More specifically they could not construct the sets in time for the shuttle craft. We did get both a shuttle craft eventually.

@dennisbergendorfii5440

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, my friend. The great advancement of the 23rd century is... ... the PLOT DEVICE!

@johncronin9540

2 жыл бұрын

They did at least try to accommodate Quantum Physics in the plot, by imagining a “Heisenberg Compensator” as part of the transporter mechanism. It’s ironic that Dr. McCoy never really trusted that mode of travel.

@petemccutchen3266

2 жыл бұрын

@@johncronin9540 the “Heisenberg Compensator” was Next Generation innovation. Apparently someone explained to The Great Bird of the Galaxy that the transporter wouldn’t work. So he mentioned the Heisenberg Compensator.

@jasonbrady3606

2 жыл бұрын

Yep

Finally, someone is addressing the important questions!

@kennethedwards3095

2 жыл бұрын

You have no idea, just how important this question really is to the rulers of this world. It's very similar to asking: if I knew that God is a man, and I am also thought I killed The Man to assume his mantle; should I be concerned that He might return? And if so, can he return as himself? And if so, how is that possible? Will I ever be able to have peace of mind? ✨

@lordgarion514

2 жыл бұрын

I wanted to give you a like, but you currently have 42, and I just can't ruin it. I'll give you one later though.

@hut8_newzealand361

2 жыл бұрын

@@kennethedwards3095 And if he can return I guess we can too. We get an improved mark 2 incorruptible body but still recognizably ourselves. i.e. flesh and bone, not flesh and blood.

In the "copy and destroy original" scenario it depends on whether he is the particles in their arrangement or just the arrangement. If it's just the arrangement and you have multiple copies he splits into multiple versions, when you copy and destroy the original you split him and stop one version, so it looks like one continuous version. | - before transport | /\ - two versions exist | X - one version is destroyed | - after transport

The information transmission/murder was basically confirmed in TNG when Will Riker was transported off a planet, but through a glitch, the original Will Riker (eventually going by his middle name Thomas), was not destroyed and remained behind. Two Rikers exist in TNG: Will and Thomas.

@mrthewhite2620

2 жыл бұрын

That isn't exactly what happened in that episode because that isn't how transporters work. The beam doesn't transmit until the person is broken down. What happened was the beam was bounced back and split into 2 with neither of them being "the original" in the context of this discussion. The original was destroyed before the beam even transmitted.

@D1G1TAL1D10T

2 жыл бұрын

The new show Lower Decks also has a teleporter clone episode, which cameos Thomas Riker. (Frakes did the VA)

@Tasarran

2 жыл бұрын

And the fucked up part is the copy (Will) is the one who gets to be considered the 'real' Riker.

@Tletna

2 жыл бұрын

@@Tasarran I agree, it is f'ed up. They just didn't want to lose all the progress the copy Riker had made. Still it's unfair to the original Riker copy.

@DonCDXX

2 жыл бұрын

I'm pretty sure that making a copy was just a situational fluke. Otherwise, Janeway wouldn't have killed Tuvix.

I still put myself definitely in the "die" camp. Regardless of the physics of our universe (which keeps this from being practical anyway), in the Star Trek universe, there are a small number of examples of transporter accidents that result in multiple copies being produced. In one specific case, Riker (TNG) arrives both back on the ship, and another copy finds himself trapped back on the planet. The experience of both up to that point is the same, and the episode deals with the human aspects of that. My take is that the person entering the transporter would not have a continuing experience, which is pretty equivalent to what we would describe as death. John Scalzi's Old Man's War tries to address some of this, not with a transporter, but by transferring human experience to a newly built body for the person. He creates a period of time where the consciousness is shared between the two and then effectively shut off in the old person. The "scary" part is that there would be no observable way to tell the difference. The destination copy, even if effectively a completely different person would have the memories and experiences of someone that had a continuity of conscience, even if it was the end for the original.

@barakeel

2 жыл бұрын

What do we mean by dying anyway? Every seconds I die and I am reborn a new person in the next. Will I take a transporter of course yes. I don't care if I am dying, I am already doing it all the time.

@Graeme_Lastname

2 жыл бұрын

I've been dead several times and it just doesn't matter. Just being dead for a while makes very little difference to anything in the long run. Dead is just a description of the current state. ;)

@BigHalfSteps

2 жыл бұрын

@@barakeel That's the wrong take. You're taking this spiritually, but imagine you go to sleep and you never wake up. Blackness. Nothing. This is it. Whatever comes next isn't you anymore, it's basically someone who took over your identity and he lives and experiences, while you're in your blackness. The point of the whole discussion is that teleportation will kill you. If your matter ceases to exist, you might as well be dead.

@peterbelanger4094

2 жыл бұрын

@@barakeel HUH?..... "Every second I die and I am reborn a new person in the next".... How the **** do you come up with that nonsense? You need to slow down on whatever it is you are smoking.

@MehYam2112

2 жыл бұрын

Your body replaces cells over time, such that your material makeup may be completely different as the decades pass. Have you died in the interim? This problem's also been reframed this way: imagine a boat that gets a part replaced with an identical piece periodically. Eventually, none of the original boat remains, but the boat's identity has never been changed. If the old parts were secretly reassembled into a second boat, which one is authentic ?

My big eureka moment was when I realized that transporters and replicators were essentially the same technology. Transporters start with an original, converts it to a data stream, transmits the stream, then reassembles the original. Replicators start with an original, converts it to a data stream, stores the data stream, and the original can be reassembled over and over again.

@danelmore6553

2 жыл бұрын

I feel like the real question that would solve the copy/no copy debate would have to be "Could Kirk be beamed to two locations at once?". If so, then there is no discernible difference between "transporting" and "replicating". Obviously, that would not be the case in the Star Trek universe, simply because of the narrative mess it would create. Though I suspect that in real-world applications, that would most likely be correct.

@joansparky4439

2 жыл бұрын

@@danelmore6553 there is a TNG show where they run into a Riker that got copied (this leads to William and Thomas Riker stories down the road) by accident when he was supposed to be beamed from a planet. One materialized on a ship, the other back on the surface.

@darrinwatts3419

2 жыл бұрын

@@joansparky4439 And one TOS episode where a transporter malfunction was spitting out a "good" and "bad" clone of anyone/thing that was sent through it. Essentially two halves of the same being that would die if they weren't rejoined. I liked that it touched on the way people need both sides to be a whole person and make effective decisions, but essentially a silly story that Shatner could use for some of the overacting he was known for.

@ajnasreddin

2 жыл бұрын

Replicators are programmed, so not the same.

@yannickgullentops6857

2 жыл бұрын

Their was a video of minute physics explaining why the transporter and copier are not the same. Apperently a copier is not possible but a teleporter is

Very deep subjects spoken in a very calming, gentle manner. Just wonderful.

The canon answer is no-death, mostly because they've defined it that way, but it doesn't seem consistent with a lot of their narratives. As people have pointed out in the comments before me, there are numerous episodes with transporter anomalies, and they often use the "buffer" to recreate someone. If it's possible to store the data even after the transporter has functioned, then the data and the person exist at the same time. I don't see any reason the transporter couldn't print two copies of the same person at the same time, and if that's the case there is no way I can see that transporters aren't just incredibly expensive 3d printers.

Actually this question was explored very effectively in the novel Rogue Moon (1960), by Algis Budrys. A matter transmitter is used to place people on the moon where they try to solve a puzzle placed there by extraterrestrials. The puzzle instantly kills anyone who makes a blunder in attempting to make progress within the puzzle. When a person is transmitted to the moon, since it is a one-way trip, he or she is also transmitted to a receiver on earth, so that two copies of the person exist... and the novel emphasizes that neither is in any way an "exact" copy of the original person. Thus the original person is unquestionably dead. A reprint of the novel was retitled The Death Machine.

@eljcd

2 жыл бұрын

A classic one, that! Still have the paperback somewhere...

@MoebiusUK

2 жыл бұрын

_"the novel emphasizes that neither is in any way an "exact" copy of the original person. Thus the original person is unquestionably dead."_ This breaks down when we examine the notion of "exact copy". Does that even mean anything? In no two moments of time is an individual an exact copy. We're changing continuously. I'm sure the novel is complex and a great read but .....

@88Magician88

2 жыл бұрын

Yes but in reality we have the No-cloning theorem. So, therefore, you can't have two exact copies of anything.

@telectronix1368

2 жыл бұрын

'He or she is also trasmitted' More accurately a **copy of their body, cells, current-neuronal/electrical-activity** could be transmitted. Even if the transporter really did teleport your actual, physical body to the moon it couldn't, also, transmit your body to a different location. You'd either have your 'real' self sent to the moon and a copy of your information another location or two copies if your information and your actual body disintegrated.

@inthefade

2 жыл бұрын

An interesting novel that explores this idea is Permutation City by Greg Egan.

"We've run out of money, just stick 'em in a tube and call it, oh I dunno a transporter or some other baloney. It's not as if anyone will be massively overthinking this half a century later is it?" -- Gene Rodenberry.

@ValeriePallaoro

2 жыл бұрын

Yes ... he said that for a lot of things (but now we have ipads, mobile phones, vaccination by pressure through skin ... )

@ommtodaybykwv9986

2 жыл бұрын

He had to go in that direction because they didn't have the budget to show the Enterprise landing on a new planet week after week, as the execs wanted. So, he sought a way around the problem. Trek included a number of features into the Transporter to account for molecular cohesion and patterns, plus the retention of the state of matter (heartbeat, brain activity, and so on).

@bhangrafan4480

2 жыл бұрын

The key to the success of ST TOS is that the producers and directors never let the sci-fi "machinery" get in the way of the action or drama. In this way they kept up the pace and momentum of a story. When they thought it useful for the drama to have someone stranded or something, they dragged out the shuttle craft. The writers and producers of ST TOS largely came from the same stable that wrote crime dramas, westerns and action thrillers. The drama and action always came first, the Sci-fi ideas second to that.

@laszlozoltan5021

2 жыл бұрын

@@bhangrafan4480 indeed- compelling stories is what gave Star Trek it's longevity. This is why I have not watched TV in the past 2 decades or more- "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sounds and fury, signifying nothing"--- Shakespere, MacBeth: A5Sc5. .

@bhangrafan4480

2 жыл бұрын

@@laszlozoltan5021 I admit to the same feelings.

The “Dark Matter” series has a good way to travel the universe, using androids at the destination they wanted to go to and upload the memories when the android returned to the pod

Just want to say....this lady is amazing! She has helped me understand things I have mentally struggled with for years. She has a way of making things easy to understand for us regular folks who haven't attended university. Thank you for all of your contribution towards educating the masses!

Sabine became my favorite KZreadr in a hurry. I'm loving this dry but humorous no-nonsense attitude.

@PanglossDr

2 жыл бұрын

I like that she ventures outside of strict science but is able to treat pseudo-science or science fiction in a sensible way.

@ZulqarCheema

2 жыл бұрын

so many jumpers and tops that wardrobe must be massive 😃

@vivekyadav

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah she had already become my favourite, and then I heard her music videos and fell in love even more. She's the coolest one on youtube!

@David-lm6oy

2 жыл бұрын

Very witty

What has always bugged me, besides the issue discussed in this video, was the ability of converting the data into a person on the planet where there is no machine. There's never any rush of air, nor anything disappears from the scenery, which means that the whole person is being built on energy supplied by the machine on the spaceship. Now, considering the famous E=mc^2, that's a LOT of energy just being beamed down on the planet casually, without any side effects. Ain't that something!

@georgelionon9050

2 жыл бұрын

Fun fact, "beaming" was introduced in Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry simply because they couldn't afford the special effects needed for Shuttles back at the beginning for TOS. Gene never cared too much about the scientific fiction being too sound, like for example also his "star dates" just being random numbers. He "just" made a western in space, with the admittedly revolutionary idea of having an optimistic outlook on the future of humans, in a time where most fictional settings in future were of dystopian nature.

@pfzht

2 жыл бұрын

The ship is the emitter.

@jcf20010

2 жыл бұрын

@@pfzht That's not what he talking about. He's referring how could they be re-assembled without any machinery on the receiving end.

@atomtamadas

2 жыл бұрын

Once you have enough energy to travel above the speed of light i don't think that such "small" quantities matter any more :D

@pfzht

2 жыл бұрын

@@jcf20010 The answer is the same, by the ship. The ship is the emitter. Think of the transporter/replicator systems as being like a hologram emitter mixed with a 3d printer.

Thank you for CAPTIONing and clarifying

Re thinking about these issues, I found "The First Immortal" (1998) by James Halperin very helpful. Instead of the transporter problem, he tackled the idea of cryogenically preserving the person at death, waiting for the technology to come about (computers. medical, etc) to restore them, etc. He breaks down the ideas piece by piece to give your mind time to work on them. For example, what about the issue of resolving accidental death and restoring a copy of the person taken, perhaps every 10 minutes? He seems to settle on the idea that if for you and the person restored (friend or loved one), if neither can tell it's not the original, it's good enough, and the detailed philosophy / morality can be worried about elsewhere. The book tries hard to use pure science and extrapolation, to be more realistic and gives references to lots of the ideas. The web now greatly expands on that, of course. Halperin is way too optimistic about the rate of progress (re the timeline in his book re the timeline we are experiencing). Well worth a read if this kind of thing is interesting to you, IMO.

When the original series was being developed it was felt it would be easier to do the fx for the transporter then to do fx of the Enterprise landing each week.

@surenot9491

2 жыл бұрын

Wanted to comment the same. It was cheaper than animating the shuttle landing.

@mikedunn7795

2 жыл бұрын

Yes. The transporter was the "invention" of the scriptwriters. A stagehand used to sprinkle tiny bits of aluminum foil onto the actors as they faded away in the transporter.

@froggyziffle

2 жыл бұрын

Warp drive was a similar band-aid on the thorny problem of interstellar travel in a reasonable time.

@mikemhz

2 жыл бұрын

@@froggyziffle I've been thinking about how an interstellar story could be told without warp drive ever since I read Revelation Space.

@adrian72300

2 жыл бұрын

@@surenot9491 Yea, not the Enterprise landing lol, the shuttle is like a boat going to shore from a ship, but yes I thought most ST fans already knew it was to save on production cost for an expensive show as it was

This feels like a variation/inverse of the Ship of Theseus, which goes to show how philosophically useful modes of transport are. Second only to the tortoise

@truefilm6991

2 жыл бұрын

Yep, posted the same without having seen your comment. This sailing ship paradox was the first thing that came into my mind. Not the same, but very similar.

@maggiemakgill

2 жыл бұрын

"The trouble with transporters" by CGP Grey brings up the ship of theseus (and Picard is one of the Philosophy majors who want to talk about it) as well, contrasting it with another ship 'the cutty sark' which was burned and rebuilt (and then gets really scary bringing up breaks in conscientious like anaesthetic and just .... sleeping).

@biggerandbetterthings7222

2 жыл бұрын

Hmmm that's a great point, and what is the 'real' one if you make a 'copy''s..

@rikki146

2 жыл бұрын

i was about to mention it lol

@truefilm6991

2 жыл бұрын

@@biggerandbetterthings7222 there are a few good suggestions to answer this conundrum, such as "both" or "neither". IMHO this conundrum says more about human perception that the Problem itself. There are no boundaries between objects. You breathe in and "air" becomes "you" for example.

I remember in one episode the transporter malfunctioned in the transfer, the computer thinking the attempt was a failure it sent the character back to the ship. Not realizing that the transporter attempt worked the transporter created two exact copies of William T. Riker in two different places at the same time. In another example a ship that's life support system was failing the character made a change in the transporter pattern buffer instead of sending them to another location it beamed him up but kept his transporter pattern saved in the memory bank till help arrived. Unfortunately for them help did not arrive for hundreds of years so when they found and released him he thought only a moment had passed being froze he never aged a moment nor felt any time pass while locked in the transporter pattern buffer. Those two mentioned occurrences are enough to get me pondering if that was possible what else could occur. Like instead of recruiting, training and honing a group of recruits for a military they could take their top soldier and keep his pattern saved in the transporter allowing a countless number of duplicates. Or if the Enterprise was about to be destroyed they could quickly beam up as many crew members as possible saving all their patterns in some extremely tough container similar to a planes black box. It would allow them to endure something extremely catastrophic while frozen in the buffer's stasis till help could arrive. Just think if a timer was used in conjunction someone could put themselves in transporter stasis and it would release you at a set time, turning the transporter basically into a time machine, well a time machine that only worked forwards in time...

@sanityassassin8161

2 жыл бұрын

Kinda like the way the Cylon's "Resurrection Ships" in the reimagined version of Battlestar Galactica worked.

@autohmae

2 жыл бұрын

If two can exists, this means the copy argument is the correct one and it's a mass killing machine.

I think they tried to address this in the show by saying they've discovered energy and matter to be interchangeable. So rather than taking some kind of scan on one end and 3d printing a person out on the other they literally turned the energy to matter, moved it, and changed it back to matter. The episode with Barclay in the transporter shows him actually being conscious and able to act while in the middle of that process which implies continuity of "personhood". Of course it's also a TV show and they weren't completely consistent but this is the explanation I've always just gone with.

@farmerjohn6526

2 жыл бұрын

The transporter and the holodeck are related

The question requires an understanding of how the information describing one’s consciousness is included.

@christopherbelanger6612

2 жыл бұрын

It's already covered when you recreate everything from the elementary particles. If you can recreate everything perfectly, the consciousness is included. Understanding of "consciousness" is no more necessary in this discussion than an understanding of anatomy or biochemistry.

@rogergeyer9851

Жыл бұрын

@@christopherbelanger6612: But you are assuming you know how consciousness arises. We assume we know that, but it is an assumption. And I'm not getting religious on you, just pointing out that there's a LOT we don't know about consciousness.

There was an episode of the new Outer Limits series that explained this but with much less technical explanation. A vegetarian dinosaur race from another planet contacted us and built base on the moon with the intention of exchanging citizens for cultural studies. When someone is sent, a copy materializes on the other planet and the original is vaporized at the origination point. In the show, it is called balancing the equation.

@dannyhutton

2 жыл бұрын

The episode was entitled, "Think like a Dinosaur" and was quite a provocative story indeed.

@daholestorynotinbut

2 жыл бұрын

thank for reminding me that i had seen that episode at some time and place and found memorable still.good episode deals a lot about this subject, Peoples out there check this episode out

@jayx4996

2 жыл бұрын

It is funny. I mentioned the same episode in my reply.

@Blazeww

2 жыл бұрын

Do they explain wether the mind is transported or not? Is it literally just a copy that acts like the original and has memories but is basically just like a really advanced A.I? Example Tom is killed when he transports and the copy of om goes on experiencing what Tom now can't but no one could know if it the original mind of Tom and whatever directed his mind before or if its a completely new person because he acts just like Tom.

@jeffmccrea9347

2 жыл бұрын

@@dannyhutton Don't think I'm stupid but you wouldn't be the Danny Hutton from the 70's group Three Dog Night, would you?

I have to think of a game (SOMA) which handles this problem pretty well, although there it isn't transporters but full brain scans which can be loaded up into robot bodies. The protagonist has a brain scan done on himself after an accident, which was pretty new tech at that point in the story, but after the scan he wakes up somewhere completely different. He finds out it's 100 years in the future in a somewhat broken underwater research facility, the earth is mostly dead because of a meteorite impact and has to find out what happened and what he can do to get out of that horrible situation. Don't want to spoiler too much here, but it also deals with the issue with what happens if your self, your conciousness, gets copied, or has gaps in its continuity.

Thank you Sabine. This is really interesting. There are several parallel questions round this one. 1. In one of Isaac Asimov's short stories The Brain In I Robot The Brain is a supercomputer owned by U.S. Robots. Other large computers from other firms have failed to do the calculations necessary to create a hyperspace drive, destroying themselves in the process. Consequently, when The Brain is put on this task, Dr. Calvin meets with it often to monitor progress. She discovers that the problem is that when humans go through hyperspace, they cease to exist momentarily. This is in violation of the First Law of Robotics; consequently, developing the drive is very dangerous for any robotic computer. In this case, The Brain not only develops the hyperspace drive, it also develops a sense of humour (or slight derangement), sending Powell and Donovan off on a flight with nothing to eat but milk and beans. 2. In Michael Crichton's book Timeline. Where the time machine disassembles the people being transported by a powerful laser. which bring up this exact same question. From the physics point of view he bases the way it works by asking why do single photons interact with a detraction grating as if they are others to interact with. The answer he uses as the basis for the quantum tech is that the single photon is interacting with all the other photons in the multiverse

Yes, I have thought about this since I was a kid. It brings up all the questions about the nature of our selves and our consciousness. I was happy to see that a lot of this was explored in the Altered Carbon series on Netflix.

@oldvlognewtricks

2 жыл бұрын

Also the game Soma, if you're so inclined.

@danvermark8232

2 жыл бұрын

Have you ever watched the film " The Prestige " , the new one killed the old one, so the old one died.

@brucetucker4847

2 жыл бұрын

The series was decent, but if you enjoyed it, read the books, they're even better.

@marcvanleeuwen5986

2 жыл бұрын

I wonder why you bother making videos: they're just sequences of bits, and given infinite time and space, any bitstring will appear spontaneously somewhere, possibly by a program generating all of them and also by mere chance

@robertopreatoni7911

2 жыл бұрын

@@marcvanleeuwen5986 what a cynical yet true consideration. At first I wanted to thumb down your comment but then I went like "Hey, he's right though..."

Star Trek missed a great side plot! Due to a transporter malfunction, Kirk is deleted from the transporter room AFTER he is beamed to a planet surface. After comparing a transporter time log to the time on his communicator, which he had previously synced to the transporter, he realizes that he arrived to the surface before he was deleted from the transporter room. He then contemplates the nature of existence and what it means to exist. After fretting over the issue for some time, he ultimately comes to the conclusion that he exists if other people think he exists!

@Nymaz

2 жыл бұрын

The Kirk postulate: "I bang alien women, therefor I am." The Riker corollary: "Holograms and nonbinary aliens count too, right?"

@KM-dk5gn

2 жыл бұрын

Well, there was the episode of TNG where they find out that two copies of Riker materialize, one left the planet and the other was stranded on the planet, unbeknownst to anyone else, for a number of years until someone found him later.

@arielsorensen9192

2 жыл бұрын

@@KM-dk5gn I was thinking the same thing. Thomas is a copy. What I don't understand is, if the data from everyone is still in the transporter logs, if somebody does die, can't they just make another copy?

@Nymaz

2 жыл бұрын

@@arielsorensen9192 That was addressed on episodes of both Enterprise (Relics) and DS9 (Our Man Bashir). The amount of data is huge and stored in a type of RAM that degrades over time. Plus there's only enough to temporarily store a certain number of people so if you tried to store their pattern, you'd basically take the transporter out of commission for just a few people, and you'd end up losing the pattern soon anyway.

@petermirtitsch1235

2 жыл бұрын

@@arielsorensen9192 BOTH Rikets are copies. That's the point.

I recall this question was explored in the James Blish novel, 'Spock Must Die', which I believe was the first published Star Trek novel.

@WakenerOne

2 жыл бұрын

Indeed.

Start: he dies End: he dies I subscribe to the continuous experience. The original dies, and the copy goes on believing they are the original.

Dr. McCoy was right in questioning the transporter "scattering his atoms back and forth across the galaxy"!

@billgiles3261

2 жыл бұрын

Were McCoy’s atoms scattered or was it information about his atoms. If it were to be his actual atoms then he would physically survive. If merely the information the he is dead. Maybe the writers wrote this line being aware of the conundrum.

@joesterling4299

2 жыл бұрын

@@billgiles3261 If it's just the information, then the receiving end can spit out endless McCoy's, as long as it has the building resources available.

@esausjudeannephew6317

2 жыл бұрын

Molecules

@billgiles3261

2 жыл бұрын

@@esausjudeannephew6317 that would be particularly arduous reassembling all those hydrogen and oxygen atoms back into water.

@Graeme_Lastname

2 жыл бұрын

@@esausjudeannephew6317 A machine to manipulate the quantum fields so that then you don't need to drag 'resources' around with you. Limitless, free, components. 🤫

The answer will never be clear because the question is ambiguous. Even just reanimating a patient can bring up the dilemma “did they die and resuscitate, or was there just a blip in their continuous life”. The REAL answer is 42.

@Mormielo

2 жыл бұрын

The answer will never be clear because we have no idea about how we could have an idea about what consciousness really is and where it comes from.

@telectronix1368

2 жыл бұрын

It's the difference between being "identical" and actually being the same thing.

@MrPassigo

2 жыл бұрын

You still have continuous brain activity when you get resuscitated. Its just your heart that stopped beating. If youre brain dead, you cant be brought back to life.

@georgelionon9050

2 жыл бұрын

The answer to every ill defined question is 42. PS: to be more exact, an answer to every ill defined question is 42. Because it is as good as any other answer...

@bobbywise2313

2 жыл бұрын

@@MrPassigo I will have to reread up on this but I think there have been cases where the EEG was flat and the person resuscitated. Of course documented cases would be rare because people are not generally hooked up to an EEG during resuscitation. It would be those in a hospital undergoing continous EEG monitoring that coded and had a ROSC after a prolonged period that would possibly have a flat EEG during the process. I vaguely remember studies on EEG patterns of dying patients also. A flat EEG is not technically brain death medically speaking. Brain death involves other criteria like no spontaneous respirations based on an apnea test. But a flat EEG generally means ones thinking brain is likely gone.

They never mentioned it in Star Trek, but all those security crew people who kept getting killed could have been reconstituted with the information in the buffer. People who were close to death could have been edited back to health by Dr. McCoy using the transporter.

This discussion reminds me of a British science fiction novel of the 50s/60s based on a non-destructive copy technology for teleportation. Since I read it at about age 10 back then,I cannot remember the title or author. The plot was based on a candidate who was repeatedly scanned and sent to the moon in order to decipher and penetrate an alien structure. The copy's fate was invariably to be killed in the process by the artifact, but knowledge gained in each attempt aided the next copy to progress further. The original and copy remained in telepathic resonace until divergence quantum effects reached a certain noise level or the artifact killed the copy. As a dedicated trekkie from that era, I think of the novel occasionally while watching Kirk beam away. In later Star Trek series, the introduction of the "pattern buffer" plot contrivance was never fully fleshed out to mean that away team members need never die while on mission. I enjoy your videos, thanks; even at my age - or, especially at my age LOL - it is great to exercise the grey matter.

The "continuity of experience" argument carries the horrible implication that we die every time we go to sleep.

@Pllayer064

2 жыл бұрын

Or take acid :)

my question is if the pattern buffer contains all information about the person during transport that means that scotty could replicate any person to the nth degree

@thePronto

2 жыл бұрын

That would be a violation of the Federation's self-copyright law, and is programmed into the Transporter.

@eds1942

2 жыл бұрын

@@thePronto Yeah they don’t have the monopoly on transporters and not everyone plays by their rules. Think about it like copy protection on your favorite media. People bypass those all the time and we only have a few billion people that have the same machine language and have only had a couple of decades on this. My guess is that transporter tech was created by some highly advanced long forgotten ancient race with these rules hard coding into some tamper resistant essential component that can only be replicated without fully understanding it. Basically like with the Stargates in the Stargate franchise, except there everyone is stuck using the Gates that the Ancients made because nobody has the technological knowhow to make their own gates. So even the best scientists and philosophers of the Star Trek universe can only guess if transporters copy and destroy or not. I’m of the opinion that they use copy and destroy but it doesn’t really matter unless that possibility conflicts with your believe system.

@reasonerenlightened2456

2 жыл бұрын

William Riker had a copy. ^^^^ Let us make the human copy machine and then we would worry about philosophy. I love the idea of disposable copies of me, because then my labour truly becomes something I could really sell without selling myself as well. I could receive income from as many employers as I could find and they can abuse the copy of me as much as they like, I would not complain as long as my copies do not come knocking on my door asking for equal rights. We would be able to add the the class of the copies and the class of the originals to all other social classes we have. ^^^^ ( Also, Beaming is a convenient technology for change of scenery without wasting time, because the episodes are time-limited.)

the franchise itself is wildly inconsistent on this but it suggests the answer to the question "does he move or does he die" is "yes" in episodes of TNG, we saw: - Picard turn himself into an energy being and then get recovered from the pattern buffer - Riker cloned by a transporter accident, creating his "brother" Thomas Riker - Barclay experiencing being transported as non-instantaneous and discovering people who had been trapped in the beam how does the transporter work? "very well, thank you" is what the TNG tech guy said when asked about the Heisenberg compensators

The show itself does add some clues as to what the teleporter does. There is one episode of TNG where the teleporter beam is reflected, which results in a copy of Riker. There is another TNG episode where Scotty hides himself in the teleport buffer and is recovered years later. In an episode of Voyager, the crew smuggles a village of people from being hunted down by hiding them in their teleport buffer. The Riker episode in particular makes me think it is making a copy. I think the episodes where the teleport is used to store or hide people also support copying. What really baffles me about it though is that if you can store the data on a person long term, why not re-beam a new copy of the person if they get killed. I guess the copying process is destructive to the original, maybe the data is too massive to copy digitally so its done in some sort of 'analog' method. But even if it is, then surely they could re-create the conditions of Riker's situation to preserve copies of people, I suppose those conditions aren't understood well enough to reproduce.

I remember reading a short story where the copy arrived at its destination but the original survived the auto destruct. The original, who thought it had failed to arrive at its chosen destination was arrested and "advised" of its situation, and its impending death.

@georgelionon9050

2 жыл бұрын

Sounds like something Asimov would do and he is brilliant.

@valentinmalinov8424

2 жыл бұрын

I believe, that this story reflects reality. Information is not dependent on space and time. Consciousness is indestructible, but the particles of our body are situated in the specific crossing point of Space and Time. That means that the created copy is new. The original person has been killed. If you are interested in the specific details of how these elements are relating just find my book - "Theory of Everything in Physics and The Universe"

@nagualdesign

2 жыл бұрын

That happened to Will Riker once. His 'twin', Thomas, went on to live a relatively normal life.

After watching The Fly (1986) transporters have freaked me out 🧎🪰

@maxwaggoner823

2 жыл бұрын

Also, The Prestige (2006).

@maxwaggoner823

2 жыл бұрын

Oh, and Timeline (2003)

@neilwilson5785

2 жыл бұрын

That dog tho.

@Gunni1972

2 жыл бұрын

Yes that one adressed some of Sabines Questions.

@craigcorson3036

2 жыл бұрын

Needlessly so. It is no more likely that fly bits would be melded with human bits than that human kidney bits would be melded with human elbow bits. He came through his device with all of his parts in the correct places - except for some fly DNA!?!?!? WHY? The fly wasn't even ON HIM. Now, I am able to suspend disbelief up to a point, but when major errors in simple logic are made, that ability reaches its limit.

Two literary references: In James Blish’s “Spock Must Die,” the first Trek novel published after the original series was canceled, Kirk, McCoy and Scotty have a philosophical discussion on this very subject, with Kirk finally opining on the issue of identity: “It seems to me that a difference which makes no difference *is* no difference.” To which McCoy replies: “I hope you’re right, Jim. Indeed, I pray you’re right. Because, if you’re not, when we send a man through the transporter for the first time, we commit murder.” This conundrum is also addressed in James Patrick Kelly’s outstanding short story “Think Like a Dinosaur.” The devices can function across many light years, and operate by creating an exact duplicate of the person at the receiving end. Since this tech could result in someone being endlessly copied for nefarious purposes, the ironclad rule of its use is that once the transmission is completed the original must immediately and painlessly be destroyed (which makes the participants a type of suicide volunteer). Of course, in the events of the story tragedy ensues.

Sabine, well done! Your videos get better and better - you'll soon break the "half-million subscribers ... line". I finally noted some special acoustic effects. (I might have missed them in other videos.) However, they pep up the video. For me they help to keep up attention. Other famous scientist use it too. I don't think using CGI/animations make a presentation less scientific so there could be some more of those as well. Your videos help me understand and give arguments to question concepts, theories and publications. It's really brave that you speak out what goes wrong in physics and science in general in public. Respekt! Hopefully others (will) do the same. Another really great thing is that you do not take part in the click-bait-***t and that your recent videos do nonetheless get views way beyond the 100K-area.

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." -- guy who didn't have transporter tech

@brucetucker4847

2 жыл бұрын

Maybe they had it, but didn't use it because no one in their right mind would submit to being murdered so a perfect copy could be recreated at a distance.

@epiendless1128

2 жыл бұрын

Imagine how horrifying the transporter effect would be if we could see this crude matter as it was being assembled.

@STSWB5SG1FAN

2 жыл бұрын

TNG "The Realm of Fear" puts an end to this argument pretty definitely.

@nathanielhellerstein5871

2 жыл бұрын

Ask physicists if matter is crude. Are Muppets crude?

I haven't read all the comments but remember both Riker (Next Gen)and Boimler (Lower Decks) were copied in transporter accidents. So copying is canon for the writers, I think.

@fluffysheap

2 жыл бұрын

It happens to Kirk too!

@dingo137

2 жыл бұрын

It can also split you into good and evil copies of yourself, as it did to Kirk.

@georgelionon9050

2 жыл бұрын

@@dingo137 Basically the transporter was a magic machine McGuffin thing, that always did as the writers wanted it to do to make an interesting plot.

@dingo137

2 жыл бұрын

@@georgelionon9050 Very true. Let's see, we have: The good/evil thing I mentioned. Sending you into a mirror universe. Destroying Jack the Ripper. Copying you. Turning you into a child. Keeping you in suspended animation for decades. Turning you into holosuite characters.

I stayed awake at night thinking about transporters until I ran up against the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In an episode of The Next Generation, there's a scene referring to "Heisenberg Compensators" under the transporter pads - which essentially close that plot hole, but they never describe how the compensators actually work. In 1994, Time magazine asked effects designer Michael Okuda, "How do the Heisenberg compensators work?" and Michael Okuda replied, "They work just fine, thank you." At that point, I knew this was akin to hunting the proverbial snipes. Obviously, Kirk lives. It shows it so right on TV!

Yes! I wrote an episode of Blake’s 7 where the spaceship gradually reformed and made a copy of Jenna who then was transported into the end of the last episode and rescued Blake and the others.

I've though about this problem too. I had an idea for a sci-fi short story that takes place in the future where teleporters are fairly commonplace and "never" fail. In reality, sometimes the original person isn't destroyed and is then tracked down by the teleporter manufacturer and eliminated. The copy goes on about his day unaware that anything happened.

@Beregorn88

2 жыл бұрын

Schlock Mercenaries did something similar years ago: all the ftl travel at the beginning of the series was done through a series of gate managed by a race of apparently benevolent technocrats. In reality, every person using the gate were copied, the copy mindripped for useful information and then recycled.

@reasonerenlightened2456

2 жыл бұрын

Beaming is a technology for change of scenery without wasting time, because the episodes are time-limited.

Derek Parfit’s “Reasons and Persons”, in part three has used this exact example to discuss the subject of personal identity and whether identity is what matters in the perceived unity of consciousness. Or not.

@RyderSpearmann

2 жыл бұрын

The best and oldest example I know of is the repaired ship paradox (I don’t know it’s actual name), where a ship is repaired and maintained continuously and eventually all parts have been replaced. Is it the same ship? And if a now well aged maintenance man had happened to keep ALL of the original parts (albeit in poor condition) and then reassembled them… then what ship is it? The “true original”? Then what is the ship that the crew has been on all this time?

@fbkintanar

2 жыл бұрын

@@RyderSpearmann the ship of Theseus is the name of the paradox

@Schtuperfly

2 жыл бұрын

Ofcoarse he lives. Captain Kirk never dies. However if he did die Scotty could reassemble him from his most recent transporter record. Or, if needed an army of Kirks could could be reassembled from his transporter record. That's if you expect transportation to be an orderly slow motion affair with record keeping. Why must the original leave the pad? Think of it as being swept into a black hole and sqeezed into one of the emissions that exit the poles. In this scenario the orderly reception of data is replaced by a fancy catcher's mit only able to mathmatically reverse the effects of the extreme violence. I too lose sleep over these things. As we don't know how transporters will be developed either outcome is possible. As to the other question I believe you die but you can still live in denial of that fact so it doesn't matter. I have believed this for many years.

@reasonerenlightened2456

2 жыл бұрын

@@RyderSpearmann you are not the same human every 3 months or so. Cells are replaced by new cells. It is the function that makes you being you, not the material. Eventually, What is You is defined by the limitations of the materials you are made of in addition to the functions you perform.

@oldvlognewtricks

2 жыл бұрын

@@Schtuperfly I love the idea that transporters make immortality a legislative concern. You could just materialise a backup copy but for the ontological regulations.

It all depends on whether the underlying technology is classical or quantum. You can teleport quantum states without "collapsing" the wavefunction, and the no cloning theorem guarantees there will always be just one continuous state from beginning to end. The classic teleporter however just works by vaporizing (killing) the person and assembling one or more new copies at the other end.

@tanjamanglory

2 жыл бұрын

no cloning theorem?

@BrunoHaineault

2 жыл бұрын

Would it not be more feasible if teleportation actually uses "small artificial wormholes"? This way, you can step through to another location as a complete person LOL. No worry about breaking you apart then rebuilding you. If the "transporter" approach worked, then you could theoretically restore someone to earlier states, eliminate disease, etc. After all, the Chief Engineer (Scotty) stored himself in the "pattern buffer" to be "found" decades later. I for one prefer the artificial wormhole approach ... Why not as both are "science fiction" as per our today's knowledge :-)

@rogergeyer9851

Жыл бұрын

Kilgore Trout: (Nice Vonnegut reference, BTW). I don't know what all the fuss is about. Unless one is worried about some religious angle like the Soul staying with the body or some such thing -- if one person comes in and one (indistinguishable by all human reckoning) person consistently comes out -- it's functionally a transporter. If religious philosophers want to fight about that, it's on them.

1:49 That's okay Sabine. I think we can neglect travel time in this particular instance.

I do LOVE your mini lectures; you know layman's terms like no one else, and you're the most watchable scientist on KZread.

@caseyh2115

2 жыл бұрын

and being strangely very attractive adds just as much.. I love her sense of humor... Ill bet she is really cool to talk to in person

The Kirk thing is a fun thought exercise and all, but little more than that. Both the theoretical physics involved and this transport concept, is so far beyond established fact, that you might as well be trying to understand whether or not Santa's reindeer get butterflies in their stomachs during Christmas flight. Love your channel: keep up the good work.

@frostyrobot7689

2 жыл бұрын

I have it on good authority their ears pop.

@spatialphysics

2 жыл бұрын

@@frostyrobot7689 😂

@christiangreff5764

2 жыл бұрын

Take the ship of Theseus and you get a much more realistic thought experiment questioning our perception of identity. Uploading brain patterns (neural network connections, not all individual atoms) into computer programs would be a further, still SciFi but not as impossible, scenario with similar implications.

WOW this must be my new favorite channel!

Good video as always. It didn't fully change my mind, as I still think the copy argument holds and the original always dies. But framing it as a problem of a continuity of your personal "story" is interesting and might change my opinion once we have a better understanding of what "continuity" and subjective "story" mean.

If you're interested in exploring this topic through a game, I recommend SOMA. It's a horror game, but you can turn down the difficulty to be more of an interactive story. It delves into this type of philosophical topic pretty well

@jesseeverett2495

2 жыл бұрын

I agree, SOMA is a very interesting (if a bit psychologically unsettling) exploration of many of the ideas discussed here!

@flakdampler11

2 жыл бұрын

Yesssssss everyone should play SOMA. Really made me think

@dashwhatchamakalit

2 жыл бұрын

The Coin-Flip is a mind-numbing question, in that whole thing.

She forgot the episodes where you have multiple copies (like Riker) or when they created a new entity with right to self determination being ignored.

@NovaSaber

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, the fact that the transporter CAN duplicate people adds weight to the side that says "create a copy and destroy the original" is the way it usually works.

For me it's like sleeping. Our continuous waking experience ceases during sleep, and we wake up the next morning feeling like ourselves even with the interruption that takes 8 hours (sometimes it feels like just 1 hour of sleep).

Every morning we wake as a new person with the memories and experiences of previous versions of ourselves. We have no way of contacting our previous selves and exist for only a day before we too fall asleep. A transporter just seems a voluntary version of this.

I once got into a similar debate centering on whether a transporter could be used like a copy machine. We were employing specifics from several episodes to make our cases. For example, in one episode, Kirk is split into his “powerful but evil” half and his “good but weak half.” This seems to support the “copy” argument. After several rounds of debate, a third person overheard and promptly resolved it: “It’s not a real technology. It’s just a plot device that does whatever the writers need it to do.” I find this answer to be entirely satisfying.

@fillemptytummy

2 жыл бұрын

😒

@octosquatch.

2 жыл бұрын

You are correct

I subscribe to the "You die anytime consciousness is interrupted" argument. This could mean sleep kills you and you wake up the next day as a copy with memory of the previous "you".

@101Mant

2 жыл бұрын

Your brain doesn't stop working during sleep though, even if you don't remember what it did. I'm one of those people who never remember my dreams unless a wake up during them, but even with no memory of them my mind was still active. I really think this definition of die trivialised it so much as to be effectively meaningless. If you knock someone unconscious it isn't murder.

@Blox117

2 жыл бұрын

sleep is not unconsciousness

@georgelionon9050

2 жыл бұрын

To all replies, this just ties down to "what is consciousness". And now suppose you say, well the brain does work on some level during sleep, is this "consciousness"? How can something/somebody being called consciousness, if there is no visible activity, has no memories (during deep sleep phase) etc. Well practically speaking the brain does keep working on a deeper level, like some people will wake up if someone calls your name, or it will make a wakeup procedure, if there is something cutting the body.. Anyway, if you argue all this, still puts down, is your consciousness interrupted while you undergo an operation in anaesthesia .. becase here the brain doesn't even wake you up while your body is cut open.. I guess if any state can be called non-conscious this is it... do you die in anaesthesia? and another you wakes up after the operation with the same memories? Anyway, I think this "consciousness is interrupted" argument to be stupid in the first place. Thats why all this followup questions are mood.

You could say that we "are" our particle arrangement. We could be "dying" every time a particle in our body changes its arrangement. This means that the idea of living continuously is already an illusion. We simply act on our particles, whether this is a clone acting or you has no real difference to any outsider. As long as there's just 1 of you at any time, it really doesn't matter if it's a clone. One could argue, since our particles are every changing. That we remain "ourselves" because we change slowly over time, as opposed to being reconstructed from new particles at once.

This is the basis behind non-duality; the identity problem, and whether or not it is possible for the "self" to live and/or die

Reminds me of the Ship Maintenance Theory... replacing gradually all parts, is it still the same ship?

@rodrigomanzo777

2 жыл бұрын

Theseus Ship might work here to navigate the question

@markpats290

2 жыл бұрын

@@rodrigomanzo777 Yes Theseus Ship !

@MisterZimbabwe

2 жыл бұрын

Short answer is yes it's the same ship, long answer is yes because matter in and of itself isn't special, but a given unique configuration is, new matter added to the original configuration just becomes part of a pre existing pattern, assimilated if you will. As long as any matter is assimilated into that singular instance of that pattern, it is the same ship. You could build a separate duplicate ship but it would not be the same since you can't perfectly replicate the original pattern, and the new duplicate pattern would be operating on its own outside of the prime original ship-configuration.

@Xishnik94

2 жыл бұрын

@@MisterZimbabwe but you can argue that the unique configuration becomes a different configuration everytime a piece is added/subtracted/changed....

@MisterZimbabwe

2 жыл бұрын

@@Xishnik94 THe pieces themselves don't matter (nop pun intended) The shape of the whole is the shape of the whole, and it stands as a unique configuration until total dissolution or enough matter within the pattern is lost or reshaped that the pattern-shape is no longer absolute. I think a better argument to made for the ship of Theseus would be "If a wooden pirate ship is converted into a solid steel battleship one piece at a time over several years, is it still the same ship?" is more in line with what people deliberate over.

Great video Sabine. Another KZreadr CPG GREY was also kept up at night on this, he did a video on this a few years back, called “The trouble with transport era”, he called it a death machine.

I always wondered what would happen if you transported a scuba diver swimming deep in the ocean to a mountain top. Wouldn't the sudden pressure change cause instant decompression sickness and/or death? If so, then teleportation could be used as a cruel, although inventive, weapon.

This question was a television show in the Outer Limits series. The original was to be destroyed after the transport and they failed to do it.

Concept: The Ancient Philosophical Question: "Ship of Theseus" translated into "Star Trek".

@georgelionon9050

2 жыл бұрын

Not exactly, but it has certainly connections.

@frankupton5821

2 жыл бұрын

@@georgelionon9050 If the original 'Ship of Theseus' problem is subjected to a sequence of small modifications, at what point does it cease to be the 'Ship of Theseus' problem?

@ricardoabh3242

2 жыл бұрын

You are never the same in any case, I always found that Theseus conundrum fun, but I don’t see the issue, I think it’s a non issue. You are never the same, a cosmic rays are constantly changing you… The only way to be identical is to be removed from time. Then you are a photon lol

@georgelionon9050

2 жыл бұрын

@@frankupton5821 Hahahahahaha!

I've always been convinced that he dies every time.

@ValeriePallaoro

2 жыл бұрын

Wow ... what brings him back to life on the planet he ends up on? Or are you going with the copy theory?

@SJNaka101

2 жыл бұрын

@@ValeriePallaoro copy theory for sure. Every time he transports, we have a new kirk. He is functionally the same as the kirk that went through the transporter, and from his perspective he never ceased existing. But I believe the original kirk's consciousness actually ends when he goes through the transporter. I see it just like the movie Prestige, only in that movie the teleporter literally creates a copy that cannot tell if it is the original or not, and he literally murders one version of himself every time he uses it.

@nustada

2 жыл бұрын

@@ValeriePallaoro It is a new person born every time. Just with the memories and visions of the old.

Man this invention comes with wild possible experiments you really have a fully thought out grasp of this possibility

I loved in Enterprise where everyone said, "You're not getting ME on that thing!"

Trouble is, this boils down to what is consciousness. If we can’t define its properties within physics, you won’t be able to apply physics to answer such questions. Rather, these thought experiments reveal how difficult the problem of consciousness is to make sense of within our current understanding.

@invertexyz

2 жыл бұрын

I disagree. I don't think you need to fully understand consciousness to tackle the issue going on here. You can deduce the answer through a thought experiment: If the machine reconstructed two copies of you, which one would you be seeing through the eyes of? There's no way for that to be decided, both are the exact same reconstruction of you. And thus because there is no way to decide, then neither could possibly be you. Similar situation if it teleported your information but didn't actually deconstruct you at the starting location.. you'd still be standing there, and the one at the target location would undeniably just be a copy. You were gone as soon as your neural persistence was broken, and a new instance of brain activity takes over in the copies, operating on the years of memories and pathways you built up.

I like how the show Dark Matter handled teleportation. Your body wasn't physically broken down and transported. Instead, only your conciousness was transferred to a clone that was prepared at the other end. After you were done cloning around, the consciousness of the clone was transported back and "overlayed" over your original consciousness. If the clone died, then you would simply wake up with no memory of whatever your clone did.

@mharti7984

2 жыл бұрын

For my taste this "solution" is highly questionable. I think the whole point of this video is to question what consciousness and identity is in the first place. This solution just assumes that there is some sort of "conscious entity" in your body that you could simply transport to another body. I highly doubt that this is how the world works.

@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan

2 жыл бұрын

Wasn't that Altered Carbon? They called it "resleeving"

@dr.catherineelizabethhalse1820

2 жыл бұрын

For all intents and purposes that’s the same thing.

@stevenscott2136

2 жыл бұрын

Might not have even been "consciousness". If a duplicate has exactly the same brain structure, wouldn't it act and think just like the original? Then alter the original's brain to reflect the changes that make up the clone's memories. Keep the original sedated to simplify the file-management issues until the process is complete.

This has been one of my favorite philosophical discussions for years now. This all boils down to what we determine consciousness to truly be. To me, I believe consciousness is my personal perception of self, and in this kind of transporter, my personal self ends immediately. But to anyone else, I am unchanged. I think this hypothetical technology could be used for something, but on a personal level, I'm disinclined to travel this way until the self/consciousness issue is resolved. I believe wormholes/bending of space is a more viable option.

@razzledazzle15

2 жыл бұрын

Oddly, the safest fictional teleportation technology is probably the portal gun.

@DenverStarkey

2 жыл бұрын

@@razzledazzle15 it's a shame modern generations don't read as much. there's been far more than just a few sci-fi novels where space travel , teleportation and what not used worm hole portals to cross vast distances. the portal gun was not an entirely original thought of valves. hell there's even mroe modern media that used this concept optehr than novels (star gate). they just didn't put it ina gun form. but yeah i think realisticly unless you are talking dead object or inanimate cargo hauls , the only safe teleportation system would use a wormhole/space folding portal. i think a molecular disassembly transporter would not be something ANY ONE wanted to step into.

@razzledazzle15

2 жыл бұрын

@@DenverStarkey I’ll have you know I was a long standing member of a monthly sci-fi book club. There are other fictional teleportation devices that work along similar lines to the aperture portal gun, but the portal gun is probably the most well known among those. Stargates, jump drives, and other “folded space technologies” don’t involve demolecularizing the traveler and are all theoretically safe

@rragnini2222

2 жыл бұрын

Please read my complimentary comment. I too have wondered about the nature of consciousness, and this transporter discussion raises some important ideas.

@DenverStarkey

2 жыл бұрын

@@razzledazzle15 you basically said what I said.lol

A related question is whether living matter can be produced in the lab strictly from atoms or other elementary particles. It would be super interesting to have Sabine cover the current state of research in this area. You can find this discussed this on Reddit but the information is all over the place in terms of quality.

China Mieville's novel "Kraken" has a character haunted by all the previous selves killed whenever he teleports.

@sageinit

2 жыл бұрын

China Mieville ❤️

@paulhaynes8045

2 жыл бұрын

One of Christopher Priest's books had a similar theme, only it's used as the basis of a magic 'teleportation' trick. Rival magicians try to outdo each other with 'impossible' tricks. And, when one of them comes up with a teleportation trick that utterly baffles the other, he tries to find out how it works. It turns out (spoiler alert!) that the first magician has invented a device that remotely duplicates people - so he can walk into a cupboard on stage and instantly reappear at the back of the theatre. But, of course, the device only copies the magician, so (the second magician finally discovers) the magician has to be killed each time the trick is performed (he falls through a trapdoor into a tank of water and drowns). The real psychological drama of the story is not so much the fact that a man has to be killed each time the trick is performed, but that the performer knows what's going to happen to him each time he performs it. To perform the greatest magical trick the world has ever seen, he must face up to death by drowning each evening.

@mike-williams

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulhaynes8045 you should put in a spoiler alert for the entire plot of The Prestige (also a well known movie)

@paulhaynes8045

2 жыл бұрын

@@mike-williams yeah - thought of that afterwards! I could also have just walked to the next room and found the title of the book - or even googled it... But I'm old and it's late. Still an excellent book though - well worth a read, even if some idiot has given the plot away... Never seen the film, as I liked the book so much, I didn't want to chance it being spoilt. Anyone reading this who hasn't read any Priest, should try him - he's a much underrated writer. I'd start with his earlier books, though, the later ones can be a bit weird.

@mike-williams

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulhaynes8045 you can also edit your previous comment to remove/alert spoilers

IN an episode of TNG they found an old abound ship with the crew gone. When they checked the transporter logs the discovered Scotty from the original Star Trek had stored himself in the transporter buffers. They were able to bring him back.

@vansdan.

2 жыл бұрын

what episode?

@bngr_bngr

2 жыл бұрын

There were two people in the buffer. But one of them their data pattern was to far gone to be saved. It sounds like the buffer might contain more than one copy of a person.

@morrismccab

2 жыл бұрын

@@vansdan. "Relics", season 6, episode 4. They also found a Dyson sphere which was never mentioned again.

@vansdan.

2 жыл бұрын

@@morrismccab thanks! 🍻 and wow, sounds like a good episode then

@MyReligionIs2DoGood

2 жыл бұрын

@@vansdan. Kind of. They should have made two episodes out of it - a Dyson sphere is just too big of a discovery to have it overshadowed by fan service.

That isn't how Star Trek transporters work at all. When transported the person is aware and active within the beam and the beam can miss the reconstruction machine (I have asked the Trekkies, myself a Trekkor, and nobody knows what that thing does since you can be teleported to a planet and then directly to sick bay without the teleporter pads at all so nobody really knows what that thing does) and despite just launching the beam to some random place the person will still arrive there. In one episode, Riker discovers that he has a teleporter twin who was left behind and unable to send a distress call because the planet's electromagnetic field interferes with communications, the reason for the teleporter accident that copied the beam and sent one version to a ship and left the other on the planet. In another episode Barclay first reports seeing a creature within the teleporter beam during teleportation to the ship and back to the planet and finally he grabs one of the creatures and brings it to _The Enterprise_ and it turns out to be a crew member believed to have been lost in a transporter accident... obviously WAS lost but not so lost. In The Motion Picture (I think) there's a transporter malfunction that results in binary copies of people failing to merge with their selves. Your sane and scientific teleporter logic has not changed my mind about Star Trek, or about teleportation. Teleportation = Death by Complex Photocopy

Great Video! Did not change my mind at all. I think if, ever we will be able to construct a transporter, Kirk dies. But he will never notice, nor will his copy notice. Nor will anyone be able to notice. Scary.

McCoy: Crazy way to travel, spreading a man's molecules all over the universe.

@informatimago

2 жыл бұрын

Even if that's how it works (that the exact same particules are displaced in space), this doesn't remove that the body is destroyed during the transport, and therefore technically people die. The soul is just reconnecting with the new body.

@castielvargastv7931

2 жыл бұрын

@@informatimago technically there is no such thing like a „soul“. Soul is a religious construct.

I love this topic. An interesting note is that in Next Generation's second season, a new doctor was introduced into the fold (Beverley came back later) and she was completely unwilling to be beamed up precisely because of this. Additionally, for the most part Ive seen people freeze and unfreeze on a different location. Often carrying their innertia and having no recollection of the process (we must have beamed aboard, is not too uncommon) However under certain scenarios, people that are scrambled have been known to communicate with the computers sensors. And yes I can so relate, I lost good nights sleep thing about these kinds of concepts.

i can't believe this video exists. i've been trying to have a meaningful conversation about this for years.

for the teloporter i see three possibilities: - instantaneous full copying (with minimal errors): a new kirk is created, as there is no brain signal continuation. - layer by layer copying, without feedback between old partialy disassembled and newly assembling body, fast enough to not have the new partial print die. this results in original kirks death. - layer by layer slow copying with both way feedback between the disassembling and newly assembling bodies (so the body/copied object behaves like a coherent piece). this would keep kirks instance of mind alive, as the copied layer is continiously integrated with the original, and the copy continously integrates the original. this should work like normal brain cell division and death, but with wifi instead of cell to cell contact. i also think this is the most likely methode, as instantaneous or excedingly rapid generation of new structures would be much more prone to error and energy intensive than a step by step process. the feedback would be necessary to have any object printed without falling appart or ceasing function half way. the presence of full body scanners and full body scan transmitters also makes feeding back the instance info a plausible methode. the third option also fits the slow fade in/fade out effect of startrek teleportation.

"Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly explores just this topic. Interstellar "transportation" is gifted to humans by dinosaur-like aliens.The catch is it duplicates the individual at the other end, so the original needs to commit suicide. Oddly, it doesn't happen automatically via the equipment used. It was an interesting story. I recommend it. The Outer Limits also made an episode based on it.

@beachpicnicjoy

2 жыл бұрын

Wut lol

@mandelabrein8116

2 жыл бұрын

"The Prestige" dealt with the problem the same way. Went from a cool movie about competing magicians to a brain phuck powered by Nicola Tesla tech

@Blox117

2 жыл бұрын

that makes no sense, just let the clone do all the work on the other end

@RobMacQ

2 жыл бұрын

That Outer Limits episode is a classic and is probably what originally got me thinking about this whole problem.

7:52 is basically my position. There is only the present, so identity is necessarily a kind of side-effect of memory as it were. The 'old' Kirk stops existing whether he gets teleported or not, because simply the passage of time would mean the end of past-Kirk. There is only the particular arrangement of matter in the present moment which we may recognize as resembling a memory of a past arrangement.

@Arigator2

2 жыл бұрын

The teleporter definitely murders people. It incinerates them in one location and rebuilds them in another. If you take it step by step the first step is murder. The second step is creation. You have murder and then creation. Does creation nullify murder? If creation does nullify murder then the Bible makes more sense.

@septitais

2 жыл бұрын

​@@Arigator2 The thought experiment says nothing about morality of killing someone. It's about whether your conscious experience continues after you've been teleported. And the video isn't discussing the science fiction show Star Trek- that was just an example to better visualize what the thought experiment is about. So mentioning the bible, contextually makes just as much sense as mentioning Star Trek or Harry Potter.

@Arigator2

2 жыл бұрын

@@septitais I wasn't talking about morality. That bit about the bible was just a joke. My point is that the teleporter isn't a transportation device. It destroys you in one location and allegedly recreates you in another. It's a communication device with a build ability. It's like a smartphone with a 3d printer. It would be like if you sent an email with information about yourself and then were shot and your body burned. Then the email was received and the 3d printer rebuilt 'you'. Whether or not your consciousness continues is an unanswerable question. We can't even define what it is. It might not even be a real thing. But personally I am not getting in that murder machine. The mechanics of the machine are definitely part of the question and are relevant. You can say they aren't if you want to be a moron.

@Arigator2

2 жыл бұрын

@RogerWilco99 I'm not making a distinction between killing and murder. Murder machine has alliteration. :) I think of whether or not I would get in the machine. I don't care a lot whether my death is considered justified or not. I just don't want to die. I definitely would not get into the machine. I think that if everyone who used the machine said it was fine that would be even less assuring. If you watch The Next Generation it definitely seems like they've been through the teleporter too many times and have lost their humanity. The actual robot acts more human than most of the characters. Well yes, there are all kinds of problems with the Star Trek teleporter. So yeah immortality. Also infinite cloning. There is nothing that connects your initial death to the recreation. They could definitely happen only one or the other. I think there is an episode like that. Where the transporter starts spitting out duplicates?

It reminds me of that phrase "distinction without a difference." Without getting into the Physics, if we accept that a machine can read and reproduce a nearly perfect copy, then both the original and the copy perceive themselves as the original until someone tells them which is which. If the original is destroyed and the copy is told that he is the original, he will never know he is the copy and the original can never contradict it. So, yes, the original dies, but the copy doesn't know he is not the original. And since the original is dead, he doesn't know he is dead. So far as the rest of the world is concerned, the copy is a completely interchangeable part and carries forward all the memories, and hopes and dreams for the future that the original had. For all practical purposes, the copy is now the original -- but is still technically a copy.

I've also thought about this question alot. Somewhere I've read that the body recycles its cells every 7 years, dont know if that fact is true. This would mean that we are physically another person than ourself seven years younger, but we usually are able to remember stories older than 7 years ago. The meaningless of our unique body reminds me of the movie ,,Prestige" in which *spoiler* the protagonist in order to show his magic trick makes a clone of himself, falling through the stage floor into water to drown to erase evidence of two existences, while he appears on another place fascinating the audience