Source Page. Credit is to SMBC-Comics and even more credit to @[email protected] who noticed it was missing and found the credit in this comment. Sorry about that and thanks, you're awesome aperson <3
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Transporter accidents prove transporters work this way and are murder machines. To an outside observer a perfect clone is the same person, impossible to differentiate. But to the individual's experience, they die every time they are disintegrated in a transporter. It's a new consciousness being created when reassembled that thinks it's continuous. It's hand-waved away because it's how it's always been and transporters are a key part of the Star Trek setting.
There was that one episode with Barclay that showed he was conscious during transport and also showed that people could exist inside the matter stream (or whatever the technobabble is).
Yeah that whole episode had strange ideas. He grabbed a fish person from the matter stream and it became a human person when he integrated. That just makes no sense with how the transporter works! Even O'Brien couldn't figure that one out
I haven't seen that episode. But it kind of defeats the traditional explanation of how transporters work. Unless we go with the "we can exist as beings made of energy" which is always a popular type of alien or alternate being in Star Trek. And the classic transporter accidents don't make sense, then. When a transporter clones someone, who is the real one and how would you figure it out? Most of the accidents only make sense if you treat a transporter as a digital device that moves data.
Transporters are inconsistent in how they work in Star Trek. The transporters work however the writers of the episode need it to work for the plot. Sometimes it's a clone machine and sometimes it's something else.
The Barclay episode I was referring to was Realm of Fear.
I think it's more they are murdering the current instance of a pattern of matter and with it the biological implementation of the pattern of consciousness. Another instance of the same pattern is created near simultaneously. To flip it, aren't they life creating machines as much as murder machines?
Yes, but having a baby doesn't exculpate you of murder. It doesn't cancel out.
People get way too worked up about this.
Be less "Guy Fleegman afraid he was a redshirt" and more "Guy Fleegman once he's realized he's comic relief".
If a consciousness thinks it's continuous that consciousness is continuous.
The substrate your consciousness dances on also changes all the time. Molecules arranged around the galaxy or cells dying and being replaced pose the exact same quandary, and the solution to both would seem to be "who cares"?
The arrangement of cells and neurons known as "You" goes in, the arrangement of cells and neurons known as "You" comes out.