Transporters and Souls

[piepie]

Ok, you know about the trek transporters. There's been a couple of episodes where 2 copies of a crew member have been made. From our perspective they're the same person, but, if you were to go through a transporter you'd be conscious of the world surrounding you dissolving in to the place you're being beamed too, or, yourself momentarily blanking out then becoming aware again when your atoms are reconstructed. Right then, if two copies of yourself are accidentally made what would happen to your consciousness. If you can see the world changing around you as you are beamed (like in that voyager episde with the gold and silver robots filmed in first person) then if you are split, you consciousness would see both viewpoints of where you are beamed too - like the transporter pad - one version of you stood next to another. If you can only see on perspective of thw world when you are beamed, then, why isn't your conscious perspective in the "copy" of yourself stood next to you on the transport pad, and vice versa.

I can only think of three solutions to this - whenever you are beamed your "soul" or consciousness, or essense, or whatever you want to call it is destroyed, and is replaced by a perfect copy containing your memories, feelings and whatever you were thinking but not actually -you - since both copies are identical, neither can be you, because your "essense" would have to perceive both viewpoints - which can only mean that your "soul" is in neither, and both are indentical copies with their own essense or soul believe they are you.

Another way is to accept both copies are you and in effect are sharing one mind - having input from 2 perspective - the you standing to the left and the you standing to the right.

The other way is to have one reproduction that actually is you - the one where you are aware of the environments changing as you are transported, and the other being a copy but, as you are already "in one body", it must be another identity who has all your memories, feelings and thoughts, but it's own seperate entity - if that is the case though then why wasn't your perception materialised into that body.

That's probably the best I can explain it. Let me know what you think

[piepie]

I hope it's clear but what I mean by souls and essense is what you perceive, your own awareness.

[nuages]

Which episode did this occur?

[piepie]

I vaguely remember an episode where Riker is split in two during a transporter accident. One "copy" of him was left on a planet for some years while the other ended up on the enterprise.

I think TOS did a similar story too, with Kirk being copied. I'd like to get torrents of them both, but I don't want to have to download the entire season to get them :S

[nuages]

I know with bittornado and azureus if you choose detials(at least with bit tornado) you can right click on each file and choose priority on them or not to download them at all.

[piepie]

That's the response I was expecting which means I haven't worded well enough

 

It has to be thought of as that episode of voyager - it shows the camera in a first person perpective view of a robot being beamed into voyager - the depths of space disolve into the a view of the medical bay, along with the perdy special effects and soundeffects that the transporter feels it needs to do.

Throughout this the robot is completely aware so it essentially shows that it's not being disintegrated and reintegrated, so there's no loss of consciousness (in the sense of being aware) - the whole thing is like the hollodeck program ending really.

Right then, if for some reason as the robot was being beamed aboard two copies were being created - one landing in the sick bay and another ending up on the bridge - where would the flow of perception end up - if it ends up on the bridge, why doesn't it end up in the sick bay. That's the problem, and it's the same for the beamed up and unbeamed riker - the perception on one hand stays on the planet, but why doesn't it end up on the starship and viceversa.

It's sorta like walking into a tunnel, and somehow ending up walking out of to exits if you can imagine that from a first person view.

The options are, your consciousness dies and is replaced by an exact replica, memories feelings and all - both seperate entities that believe they are you. Or your consciousness appears in both, if it is only part of the empirical beliefs of the brain - in which case, seeing that they are both you, you will perceive both viewpoints and diverging experiences, because you've been conscious the whole time and still are conscious. The last way is that, you stay conscious - not "Killed" or whatever, but, a copy of youself is made that your awareness isn't it - but then you have to ask why are you aware in your current body but/and not aware of the experiences being gained by the teleported clone.

 

A you say, there's no way of proving whether you would die or not and another consciousness is "formed" when the matter is reintegrated. If you were transported, ignoring the clone thing, you could die - in which case a new entity will take your place and would essentially be you and it will believe it is you and would tell the observer "yep, I survived, what ya on about, i'm here aren't i, stop talkin' crazy", but you consciousness/perception/awareness would be dead - you'd have proved to yourself, but you'd be dead. If your consciousness survives then so what, you'd say the exact same thing the reintegrated "clone" would have said, seeing that it has the same memories and thought patterns and that it believes its;ef to be you (and why wouldn't it). So either way something is beamed, and both claim to be alive, but there's no way at all to prove your perception has survived, and not another consciousness born from the physical brain. The only way something can be disproved or proved is if a 2 copies are formed - which is not possible with real physics because the current theories of teleportation revolve around the EPR pardox which doesn't allow copies to be made

[lamp]

i'm pretty sure that you are being dematerialised so as soon as a part of the brain needed to see or your retina or something dematerialised then you would no longer see.

[BigDawgAMD]

SNIP

 

Another really good episode with transporters is the one in wich they (TNG) find Scotty in the buffer of a transporter system. Again I can't remember the name of the episode.

 

I think the episode was "Relics"

[xuri]

In season 1 of TOS, "The Enemy Within", the transporter malfunctions and produces a duplicate Kirk who is, of course, evil. In this episode the two Kirks are identical, sharing the same memories and abilities, but have different temperaments; one good, moral, and ineffectual the other immoral and decisive.

 

In the TNG episode "Second Chances", it is discovered that Riker had been duplicated 8 years previously when the transporter crew of the Potempkin initiiated a second transporter containment beam (or some such technospeak) to try to compensate for a weak pattern while trying to beam Riker through the "distortion field' surrounding Nelvana 4. The second beam was reflected back to the surface, and a duplicate Riker materialized. After his rescue by the Enterprise, the duplicate takes the name "Tom" and goes on to become evil-ish, joining the Maqis and hijacking the Defiant on an episode of DS9.

 

Based on these two incidents, it would appear that, in the Trek Universe transporter duplicates are evil, or at least prone to evil. This would suggest that the duplicates lack some governing influence, like a soul.

 

Of course, in the Trek universe, all duplicates are evil. Lore is the evil Data. The alternate universe, recently revisited on Enterprise, is populated by entirely by evil duplicates (except for Vulcans, who are immune to evilness).

[piepie]

I'm trying to use that voyager episode as a way of imagining being conscious as you're being transported, whether it's realistic it or not. It's not a question of the science of teleportation. I just want to say for the sake of clarity of vision that the transporter worked as it does in that voyager episode - the key thing I'm trying to convey is that you should think of the whole process as being from a first person perspective. When you are transported area 1 disolves into area 2 (in that case on voyager), but if a malfunction occurs and two copies are made what does your first person view end up seeing?

 

 

Xuri, evil twins is the greatest of all sci fi cliches, and you've gotta love the idea lol

[d23]

The soul is in the software.

[piepie]

Ah, but why doesn't it matter which one. Ignoring the directorial view of it. You say the images overlap for a moment then restore to a single image, but what determines which POV becomes -your single- POV. It can't be an aribrary choice between the two identical copies because it brings up the question of why Copy A instead of Copy B.

I like the idea of the directorial view. If it was an episode, the direct can make up some reason for choosing the first person view of Copy A instead of B. Choose an outside perspective and avoid the whole issue, or have both POVs of each copy overlapping throughout the whole episode, which will cause havoc.

I think I see where you're coming from. I don't want it to be a debate on science, or the flakiness of certain trek episodes. I just want it to bring up people's views of what the soul is. If your consciousness dies during transport and 2 or 1 copies are made, both will have their own consciousness and both will believe they are you, but if you die during it it has to mean the "soul" is something more than the sum total of the brain. If for some reason your consciousness or POV ends up in one clone, as I say, you have to wonder why you don't have the POV of the other clone either seeing that they are both the same. If your POV/consciousness (I desperately need an apt word for this) ends up in both bodies, it could mean the soul doesn't exist, that we are just the sum total of our brain, but then we'd need to explain how the materialised you would share the POV of the two clones, in that sort of directorial superimosied images. I suppose that some sort of tangled pair theory could crop up here, but I haven't much of a clue of that there gubbins.

[piepie]

It's quite a scary prospect isn't it lol. If transportation using the EPR paradox as a base will eventually work I wouldn't go through the process of transportation, not until a solution to this seemingly impossible "split" can be solved. The "link" and I hate the word because incites the fluffy kind of spirituality in my mind, but it's the word I've been using in my mind anyway. The only way I can see that this link doesn't occur is that the mind is destroyed during transport and replaced with a different consciousness, implying that the mind/soul/whateverthehellitshouldbecalledinthiscasebecauseihaven'tabloodyclue is the sum total of the physical parts of the brain, or for some random, irrational reason only one clone retains your POV and the other forms it's own consciousness.

 

[gregC]

Of course' date=' in the Trek universe, all duplicates are evil. Lore is the evil Data. The alternate universe, recently revisited on Enterprise, is populated by entirely by evil duplicates (except for Vulcans, who are immune to evilness). [/quote']

 

Clones are good natured beings who have humanity's best interest at heart... the good universe is the duplicate one :rolleyes:

 

Anyway... if you were to be converted to energy as per folklore, then if that was duplicated and rematerialised in different locations, each would just be a carbon copy of your body. Both would continue the exact same thought process you were thinking just as you were being transported, but like someone said earlier, they would from then on have different experiences.

 

Which one would be the 'real you'? I'd say neither, since you forfeited that when your body changed from a defined structured mass into pure enregy... or you can at least assume if you ended up in the transporter room after you finished transporting then you are the 'real' you.

[piepie]

but to add to that what if both copies ended up in the transporter room?

[xuri]

Clones are good natured beings who have humanity's best interest at heart... the good universe is the duplicate one :rolleyes

 

I didn't watch Voyager with any great regularity, but I can think of two violations of the evil twin rule on that show. In "Course:Oblivion" the liquid metal clone creatures from the demon planet in "Demon" are not evil. And in Deadlock, the Harry Kim from the alternate timeline is just another Harry Kim (and replaces the, apparently, non-alternate-timeline Kim, who is dead).

 

Anyway... if you were to be converted to energy as per folklore, then if that was duplicated and rematerialised in different locations, each would just be a carbon copy of your body.

 

Which raises a more troublesome question than the possible duplication (or non-duplication) of the soul/essence/cosciousness. Where did the energy for all that additional matter come from? If the energy-matter conversion is 100% efficient, then -- even if there wasn't some kind of meter on the powerline from the engines to the tranporter -- you'd think engineering would notice about a half a Riker's worth (or half Kirk's worth) of antimatter missing, yes?

 

Both would continue the exact same thought process you were thinking just as you were being transported, but like someone said earlier, they would from then on have different experiences.

 

Which one would be the 'real you'? I'd say neither, since you forfeited that when your body changed from a defined structured mass into pure enregy... or you can at least assume if you ended up in the transporter room after you finished transporting then you are the 'real' you.

 

Is it live, or is it Memorex ? Clearly, as you say, it is Memorex.

 

The transporter has been used at least once to make deliberate changes at the molecular level. In TNG "Unnatural Selection" they use the transporter to repair Dr. Pulaski's genetic code, using a sample of DNA from a hair root.

 

In Voyager "Tuvix" it fuses Tuvok and Neelix into a composite person with a singular, combined, consciousness -- although half the mass seems to have gone somewhere else (maybe in the "Mirror, Mirror/In a Mirror Darkly" universe they got an evil character named "Neelok?").

 

In TNG "Rascals" it turns Picard, Guinan, Ro, and Keiko are turned into children by a transporter "anomaly" (where did the extra mass go?) when the transporter fails to copy their telomeres.

 

In Voyager "Drone" it combines Seven of Nine's nanoprobes with the Doctor's portable hologenerator to create a Borg from the future (again, where did the mass come from?).

 

That's just what I can think of, off the top of my head (and some TV Tome searches).

 

As to whether you are conscious while being transported, there is ample evidence that you are.

 

In the Enterprise episode "Vanishing Point" Hoshi has a dream while in the "matter stream", but she has no clear recollection of it after she materializes.

 

In TNG "The Realm of Fear" Barclay sees alien slug things flying around while he is dematerialized. Later in the episode, it turns out he is infected with "quasi-energy" microbes, and they will have to use the transporter to "clean" him. While being beamed to no place, he spots more slug-things, and is able to grab one and "bring it out" of the transporter with him and it turns out to have been a human being who was floating around in molecular limbo when a similar attempt to clean his system of the "quasi energy" microbes -- by engineers less skilled than LaForge and O'Brien -- failed.

 

In Enterprise "Daedelus", a human is trapped in a transporter accident and exists as an "anomaly" and is apparently aware and able to follow people around the ship. Upon being rematerialized, though, he has no recollection of his existence as an anomaly and doesn't realize that 15 years have elapsed since he was dematerialized (he dies almost immediately, so he might have had something to say about vaguely remembered dreams or weird flying slug things).

 

If we are imagining a magical technology, why not imagine that technology capable of preserving and supporting the electrical activity of the brain while the brain itself is converted into energy? Perhaps as virtual particles in the transporter beam flicker in and out of existence a sort of virtual plasma forms, and the thoughts of the transportee are carried on as a series of plasma reactions? Unconstrained by the transit time of ions across synapses, such thoughts would be many times faster than brain-based thought (which would account for Hoshi dreaming a whole episode in the fraction of a second that she was dematerialized). Then, as the transporter put you back together from the pattern in the pattern buffer, the exact chemical state of your brain at the moment of your dematerialization would be restored, and you'd start thinking what you were thinking before you were dematerialized.

 

So, here is my vote. If you are duplicated by the transporter you would. Barclay-fashion, be aware of the event when it happened -- you'd experience a momentary bilocation of your awareness as the second "you" was created, which would cease at the moment of materialization. However, like Hoshi, and (presumably Kirk), you'd retain no clear memory of this after the transporter reassemble your brain and you resumed whatever thought it was you were having at the point that you were dematerialized.

 

As to why the materialized Barclay was able to remember the thoughts and experiences of the dematerialized Barclay, that is a mystery. Perhaps his memory was as fragmentary and fleeting as Hoshi's and a lot more transpired than he remembered? Or, perhaps, the "quasi-energy" microbes that infected changed his patten in some way?

 

 

[piepie]

Something to add. I've just downloaded Wrath of Khan and during a teleport Kirsty Alley and someone else, I think it was McCoy were having a conversation - both looking at each other as they were beamed.

[hubix]

You guys should also watch TNG 6x02 "Realm of Fear", that's about Barclay and his transporter phobia. But it is clearly show how you are transported and you can see it from a person's being transported point of view.

[piepie]

Thanks, hu. I'll try and download it. It's not the sci/tech part of it I was interested in talkingabout though, but the episode might bring up some theories.