Is the transporter suicide?

[JMJ_coder]

Remember that this is at best many, many years in the future. If you want to think about something, contemplate whether AI is sentient or demands human rights or has a soul – or whether your clone will have a soul. AI and cloning are much closer to reality than transporting.

 

[JMJ_coder]

Just so you know, there will NEVER be a transporter, The human body is way too complex. The computing power required for such a device is that if a Cray XMP supercomputer were utilized, it would take roughly 5 billion years to record the position of every single atom in every single molecule. The memory rquired would be such that if you stacked a 100Gb hard drives, one on top of the other, the stack would reach the moon. I don’t even want to think about power requirements. There are different things in comic books, Star Trek and Star Wars which are actually plausible. Transporters are not among them. IEven the most die-hard Trekkie will admit this simple fact.

One may assume that the computer on Enterprise is so complex that it is to a Cray Supercomputer like a Cray Supercomputer is to ENIAC. Also, storage systems will likewise be advanced – think how much physical space would be required to store 100GB for ENIAC.

Secondly, who knows what advanced algorithms, encodings, etc. will be employed to transport – I just hope they don’t use a lossy algorithm.

 

[JimG]

So when I can’t remember an important fact or appointment – I can blame it on the fact that that particular memory cell was accidentally transported to Mars?

You might lose a particle or two on occasion. We may think we are quite solid and all in one place, but nothing is 100%.

 

[Ghoti]

One may assume that the computer on Enterprise is so complex that it is to a Cray Supercomputer like a Cray Supercomputer is to ENIAC. Also, storage systems will likewise be advanced – think how much physical space would be required to store 100GB for ENIAC.

Secondly, who knows what advanced algorithms, encodings, etc. will be employed to transport – I just hope they don’t use a lossy algorithm.

We get converted to .jpgs, e-mailed to the location, and reprinted in 3D.

 

[didymus]

Every particle in your body has a probability wave function such that the probability of it (and you) being right here in front of the computer is 99.99999% and the probability of it being located at some distant point is .00000000000001% or worse, so the chances of your spontaneously disappearing from in front of your PC and reappearing on Mars–with no space suit yet!–is rather remote. But not, strictly speaking, impossible.

Now, if there were some way to make the probability waves of every particle in your body coherent with each other, and tweak the percentages in a way that you wanted, the airlines might be in even more trouble.

How about the time machine in Crichton’s Timeline?
Like the transporter it disassembles you here and reassembles you at a different point in space/time with 99-point- a lot-of-nines, but not 100% accuracy.
Crichton, unlike the ST writers realised that these 0.0-whatever-1 errors would accumulate and one character goes insane from “transcription errors”.

 

[JMJ_coder]

We get converted to .jpgs, e-mailed to the location, and reprinted in 3D.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

What do you mean you can’t recognize me!

 

[JimG]

Of course, transcription errors do occur naturally on a slower scale as the body regenerates itself from new material on an ongoing basis. My body today is not the same matter as my body 30 years ago, as it is continually being reformed of new material.

 

[Ghoti]

Of course, transcription errors do occur naturally on a slower scale as the body regenerates itself from new material on an ongoing basis. My body today is not the same matter as my body 30 years ago, as it is continually being reformed of new material.

Reminds me of my “family axe”.

My grandfather – a blacksmith, first for the Newfoundland Railway, then for CNR – made his own axe in the smithy, back in the 1920s. It’s in my dad’s workshop now. Beautiful piece of craftsmanship. The head had to be replaced once, because it got badly chipped on a missed swing. Oh, and the handle was replaced, but only twice – once when it got dry for too long and split, loosening the head, and ironically once when it got rotten from damp. Other than that, it’s a solid, wonderful piece of craftsmanship.

Lemme tell you, it’s in wonderful condition for being almost 100 years old. They don’t make 'em like that anymore.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

Just so you know, there will NEVER be a transporter, The human body is way too complex. The computing power required for such a device is that if a Cray XMP supercomputer were utilized, it would take roughly 5 billion years to record the position of every single atom in every single molecule. The memory rquired would be such that if you stacked a 100Gb hard drives, one on top of the other, the stack would reach the moon. I don’t even want to think about power requirements. There are different things in comic books, Star Trek and Star Wars which are actually plausible. Transporters are not among them. IEven the most die-hard Trekkie will admit this simple fact.

I won’t admit it because you (or I) do not KNOW what new technique or law will be discovered. It’s arrogant to assume we already know or have manufactured everything that can be known or manufactured.

But I’m with McCoy on the transporter. Don’t like it, never will. Gimme a shuttlecraft.

 

[SMHW]

Okay, Trekkies, you’re sent forward to the 24th ?] century aboard the Enterprise (whichever one) and the Captain is going to let you beam down to a new planet. But should you?

Well, it depends on WHICH Enterprise. If it’s Kirk’s or Picard’s then we can discuss this. If we’re talking about 's Archer’s Enterprise-- no way! That transporter could barely handle bodies, let alone souls.

The transporter will dematerialize you, i.e., destroy your body as matter, turn you into an energy pattern, then rematerialize you down on the planet. It is safe to assume that your soul will separate from your body upon dematerializtion and the act of reassembling the body will not bring the soul back. I don’t know what to call the new, soulless you, especially since no one who experiences the transporter seems to be aware that they have lost their soul (which makes sense, actually).

NO! The soul goes with us. It has to! I have to live with the absence of the flying cars :crying: we all expected to have by the end of the 20th century and now you want to destroy what little hope I have left by telling me I shouldn’t be dreaming of transporters?:imsorry: (Does this mean stargates are a problem too?)

Note as well that the transporter could be used as a copier. Chekhov got killed down on Planet X? No problem, we have his energy pattern stored in the transporter, we’ll make another hard copy.

Let’s say we get to keep our souls. Then if the transporter accidentally makes a second copy of someone (like what happened to Commander Ryker) then does God have to create a second soul? Kind of like what happens with identical twins.

What if a transporter accident sends me to a parallel universe and the other me is still there? And what about heaven? How are we going to know who’s who with all these parallel people running around? Oh wait… that should be a separate thread!

 

[MrZoom]

Of course, the real reason that Star Trek has transporters is that in the original series, Gene Roddenberry didn’t want to have to land the ship every week.

 

[jmcrae]

Of course, the real reason that Star Trek has transporters is that in the original series, Gene Roddenberry didn’t want to have to land the ship every week.

It also makes for a more interesting story if there are some things happening on the ship, and then other things happening on the ground.