concrete_babyWhy the galactic barrier and transporters don’t match real science, and why warp drive might
killall-qBecause teleportation is murder. Whatever comes out on the other side may look and act like you, but isn't you, because you're now dead for having been disassembled by the teleporter.
zalackTeleporters are interesting because when you think about it long enough, you realize the person on departure end died.
Then you think about it more, and if the person that comes out the arrival end is an exact replica, down to the atom, and has continuity of thought... if you accept that they died then you kind of also have to accept that the "you" of any given instant is constantly dying and giving way to the "you" of the next instant. That person living that experience at that exact moment will never exist again.
So then you're kinda back to transporters being business as usual again, but with a fun new existential crisis on the side.
SeeJayEmmIn practice, I agree with you. The transporter scans, disintegrates, and reconstructs the thing being transported. But when the thing being transported is reconstructed at a subatomic level it is effectively identical.
I can imagine the society we see in startrek having already worked through the moral and philosophical implications. I would have loved to see that addressed in an episode tho.
Is one carbon atom the same as another carbon atom, philosophically? Can you keep your identity when all your atoms are replaced by other atoms of the same kind? It's the ship of Theseus problem
Durran Durrandon@concrete_baby @SeeJayEmm True, but we are all the Ship of Theseus, we are all being replaced cell by cell, all the time.
Irrelevant to the transporter as the same matter is moved by the matter stream and reassembled in the same order. This is less asking if the ship of Theseus is the same ship after the hull and the mast were replaced and more asking if my kitchen table is still the same after I took the leaf out, folded the legs in, put it in a truck, moved to a new house, and set it back up