Teleporters 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.
In 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
The real question is why they wouldn’t use the transporter buffers effectively as backups for away teams. Have an away team member killed? No problem, rematerialize them from the buffer.
Teleporters 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.
In 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
Star Trek’s transporters and Stargate’s Stargates are cloning devices
The real question is why they wouldn’t use the transporter buffers effectively as backups for away teams. Have an away team member killed? No problem, rematerialize them from the buffer.