Nononononononononono,
youve all got it quite wrong…
let me explain…
what they did was take a ton of tinfoil confetti, put it into a vertical blower and film it.
Then they filmed the actors against a green screen ( one of the transporter sets was a matte, a painting on glass)
then crossfade between the actors and the vertical blower until both dissapear, return to empty set.
Same thing in reverse for the beamdown.
Film the set, film the actors against green screen,
crossfade stock footage of vertical blower filled with tinfoil confetti, fade in to actors on set.
or something like that.
Great questions. They can’t both be me, IMO, because
if they are both identical to the same thing, me, they
are identical to each other. But they’re not identical
to each other–one is on the Enterprise, the other
elsewhere. So either neither is me, in which case
I’ve ceased to exist as does the amoeba that
fissions into daughter cells (we don’t say there are
three amoebas) or I’m the fellow on the Enterprise,
as he alone has my body–and I’ve got a duplicate too.
The fissioning case is really interesting.
Suppose I do fission into duplicates, each of whom
remembers my life, and so on. Then it seems
I cease to exist, by the argument I gave above.
But suppose I committed an horrific crime just
before I jumped into the transporter.
Are my offshoots responsible? Do they
deserve punishment.
You know I do something awful then jump into
the ‘duplicator’ and these two guys, exactly like
me, remembering everything, come out the other
side and say: Nyaa Nyaa Nyaa! We didn’t do it!’
Are you sure? Didn’t they rust or corrode or something? Not even a little bit? Maybe the taking them out and all accelerated their deterioration or something.
Shouldn’t you be checking on this? I know I would.
I think the process of atomizing you would have to kill you. From your point of view, it’s just like dying, you wouldn’t “wake up” in the body of any duplicate. Whether they make an exact copy or not, and out of what molecules, doesn’t matter. If I am scanned without doing any damage to me, and a duplicate is constructed, why would I suddenly start seeing through his eyes? To the copy, it would feel like his existence continued uninterrupted, and to everyone else I would seem unchanged – even if they wait years before making a copy. But the original me would not sense or experience what the copy does. So obviously, I would not use a transporter.
The legal ramifications are interesting. I think they’d have to hold any copies of you responsible for your actions before duplication. But it gets sticky very quickly. What if they make a few changes before making the copy? What if they make the copy after the statute of limitations runs out?
there is a future person who is just like me and who remembers
my life, plans to carry out my intentions, knows what I know.
He is as much like me psychologically as I would have been
if I hadn’t used the transporter. Note too that he is as he
is because I am as I am. He speaks English because I do.
He will know how to play flute because I do.
Suppose (Case I) I go to sleep, perfectly ordinary,
and wake up a few hours later.
The future person is just like me and his matter is only
slightly different from mine. (He is me, in fact.)
Case II. The duplicate who results from transporting me is just
like me except his matter is entirely different from mine.
That’s the substantial difference. Why should it matter to me
how much of my matter this future person has?
Suppose when I go to sleep in the first case I know
the future person who wakes up will be tortured.
Then it’s reasonable for me to anticipate the torture,
to fear it.
In the second case, the future person will be tortured too,
suppose. Why not fear/anticipate his torture? Because
his matter is different from mine? Isn’t that really a
technicality. He will remember my life, know what I know,
just like the fellow in Case I. How can how much of his
matter is different from mine make the difference
between whether or not I should anticipate his
experiences? It’s just a technicality, isn’t it?
What hangs on it?
But it does make the difference between whether this
fellow is a mere duplicate or is actually Me. If the matter
is changed very rapidly he is not me, I’m killed; otherwise
he is me.
OK, but then isn’t it a technicality whether or not he is me?
What hangs on it? Isn’t what matters that both people
will remember my life, know what I know. At the end
of the day the real difference between them is how much of my
present matter they have, and why care about that?
Even if this guy isn’t me, isn’t it just as good as if
he were?
tsk tsk tsk…
you people are so sad…
pretending to be a geek does not make you one!
for the record…
At this point, Heisenberg compensators take into account the position and direction of all subatomic particles composing the object or individual and create a map of the physical structure being disassembled amounting to billions of kiloquads of data.
Simultaneously, the object is converted into subatomic particles, also called the matter stream. The matter stream is briefly stored in a pattern buffer while the system compensates for Doppler shift to the destination.
The matter stream is then transmitted to its destination via a subspace frequency. As with any type of transmission of energy or radiation, scattering and degradation of the signal must be monitored closely. The annular confinement beam (ACB) acts to maintain the integrity of the information contained in the beam. Finally, the initial process is reversed and the object or individual is reassembled at the destination.
Perhaps my analogy wasn’t a good one. But, over your lifetime, the cells in your body die and are replaced. Eventually, your body is comprised entirely of cells which were not there when you were born. It’s a longer process than “beaming”, but it’s still destruction of the original and replacement by a new body. So, how do you know your current soul is the same one you were born with?
The point being that they worked this out already! Y’all are barking up the wrong technology tree.
The nervousness about transporting isn’t because people fear not being themselves anymore, but because sometimes people fail to materialize again at the other end. Or materialize inside a wall or something. Although that happened mostly in the early days, before the technology was improved.
The other point being that this is a perfect example of what’s wrong with philosophy. What’s the point of arguing things that aren’t there to begin with? Hmm?
There are better things to occupy one’s time, I’m sure.
Congrats, aren’t there any parts of those fasteners you can’t see? Or polish. What about those parts? No corrosion or rust or anything to those parts? I mean, do you actually remove the nails or screws? Or whatever they are? Shouldn’t you?
The point is that we have definite intuitions about these science
fiction cases, which reveal a good deal about what we
take ourselves to be and also in virtue of what we believe we
persist through time.
Also some of these things we can do already.
For instance the case described above–I slowly
replace the parts of my car until over the
years I end up with an automobile with none
of the original parts. Is that the original?
If not, because the parts are new, then it would seem that
nothing can survive the change of all its matter. Well, that’s interesting
isn’t it? It follows that
I’m a good deal more recent than I thought,
all the matter in my body gets replaced every 14 years or so.
So I’m an adolescent.
Back to the auto: suppose we say it does persist through the
replacement of its parts. Now all the old parts are in the
garage. Suppose I reassemble them. Is that auto my original
car? Seems so, doesn’t it? But then the one made of
new parts is not the original.
Puzzles like these–some of which we can do, some of which
are still sci if–reveal deep theories we seem to have about
persistence of things through change.
This pertains to some very old questions: does anything
material persist through change? How? These are really
some of the first scientific questions ever asked.
This is science at a very deep level, it’s part of the rational
investigation of reality. And it’s worth doing to the extent
that finding answers to fundamental questions about
reality is worth doing.
Personally I think that we persist through change only
if we are immaterial souls. Souls or nothing. But then
if there are no souls (and there are good reasons to
believe the human animal is the whole deal (which I
won’t burden you with now)), then, well, none of us
exist or not for very long. We’re nothing like
what we think we are. That’s what the Buddha taught,
in fact, so it has profound spiritual and religious
implications.
)
