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Post by Georgie L on Jun 23, 2011 14:23:53 GMT
Does the transporter from Star Trek murder and resurrect it's passengers every time it is used? no, it destroys them at the molecular level and rebuilds each molecule in a new location, in effect it has made a new person that is for all intents and purposes the same person. There was a malfunction in which the transporter made 2 copies of one person in a episode.Yes, sleep and death are two different things. You can come back from sleep, but you cannot come back from death or it wouldn't be called death. People have been clinically dead and then managed to be brought to life through the wonders of science
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Post by zylonbane on Jun 23, 2011 15:36:48 GMT
You know, I think a better way to say in the second panel is "Our time has passed." It would just fit better IMO. Except that he's already using the word "passed" in the third panel.
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Post by basser on Jun 24, 2011 0:34:02 GMT
On the subject of the transporters the REALLY fun part about those is that in order to actually be any kind of efficient they would have to disassemble someone and then reassemble them using atoms already available at the destination. What's going to be the most readily available source of human-making material at a station built to de- and reassemble people? So in effect using a Star Trek transporter means donating your atoms to recreate whoever uses the terminal after you, whilst you get to be built out of some random stranger's bits. It's really something you don't want to think too hard about.
On the plus side if anything goes wrong in the whole brain-rebuilding department you won't be physically capable of telling the difference.
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Post by goldenknots on Jun 24, 2011 3:44:14 GMT
They need Gardener In The Dark...
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Post by smjjames on Jun 24, 2011 4:09:38 GMT
They need Gardener In The Dark... huh?
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Post by goldenknots on Jun 24, 2011 4:35:10 GMT
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Post by hal9000 on Jun 24, 2011 7:16:44 GMT
On the subject of the transporters the REALLY fun part about those is that in order to actually be any kind of efficient they would have to disassemble someone and then reassemble them using atoms already available at the destination. What's going to be the most readily available source of human-making material at a station built to de- and reassemble people? So in effect using a Star Trek transporter means donating your atoms to recreate whoever uses the terminal after you, whilst you get to be built out of some random stranger's bits. It's really something you don't want to think too hard about. I'm reminded of a quote: "Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today." -Lawrence Krauss
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Post by rafk on Jun 24, 2011 7:45:16 GMT
Meanwhile, in Silicon Heaven: "Hey! That dick is telling people we don't want to be brought back to life! NOOOOOO!!!!" Ha, yes! Now that we know the robot was turned off before Annie could interrogate it, I wonder if Annie will use a variation of this to justify turning others on to interrogate them. "How do you know the others don't want to be turned back on? Just because he didn't. He didn't even say the others wouldn't want to be turned back on!" On the other hand, if turning them back on risks Kat having to "euthanize" all the ones she turns back on, the emotional effect on Kat (whether she and the robot are overdramatizing this or not) will be horrific, and I don't think Annie could put Kat through that, so maybe not.
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Post by Stately Buff-Cookie on Jun 25, 2011 19:32:03 GMT
Does the transporter from Star Trek murder and resurrect it's passengers every time it is used? Arguably it kills them, then assembles a copy that thinks it's the original. Sleep is not quite such a discontinuity. I do believe that Trek's creator has gone on record as saying it does not kill them and build a copy. It is the original person along with their original memories and whatever a soul might be. No, he doesn't care about the science. That's how things work. No arguing. That's the gist of it anyway. He's gone on record with that because he doesn't want any philosophical bull hovering around what is just a storytelling device to quickly change scenery.
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Post by Per on Jun 25, 2011 20:46:57 GMT
I do believe that Trek's creator has gone on record as saying it does not kill them and build a copy. It is the original person along with their original memories and whatever a soul might be. No, he doesn't care about the science. That's how things work. No arguing. Even if that's the case, evidently the writers don't care, since from the original series onwards there have been examples of people splitting, combining and multiplying. The clearest example, which I believe was already referenced, is the episode where a character that we may call Bob was transporter-assembled without the source person being disassembled and this is found out only some time afterwards. Is Bob 2 the same subject as Bob 1? If he isn't, then the transporter does not preserve the metaphysical subject. If he is, then assuming we don't allow for Bob 1 to arbitrarily stop being himself, we have two instances of the same metaphysical subject, which is a contradiction in terms. Of course, the episode mostly concerns itself with the practical inconvenience of having two Bobs around, and the metaphysical implications leave no lasting impression on the characters whatsoever.
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Post by Stately Buff-Cookie on Jun 27, 2011 2:47:12 GMT
It's just to stop nerds from arguing about something that is impossible in the first place.
Though.. personally..
TUVIX WANTS TO LIIIIVE!
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Post by Per on Jun 27, 2011 10:46:55 GMT
It's just to stop nerds from arguing about something that is impossible in the first place. Is it really Gene Roddenberry going on the record with that? There is science fiction that deals with technical and metaphysical matters in other ways, and that care somewhat about continuity and consistency.
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Post by darlos9d on Jun 27, 2011 14:12:11 GMT
Meanwhile, in Silicon Heaven: "Hey! That dick is telling people we don't want to be brought back to life! NOOOOOO!!!!" Ha, yes! Now that we know the robot was turned off before Annie could interrogate it, I wonder if Annie will use a variation of this to justify turning others on to interrogate them. "How do you know the others don't want to be turned back on? Just because he didn't. He didn't even say the others wouldn't want to be turned back on!" On the other hand, if turning them back on risks Kat having to "euthanize" all the ones she turns back on, the emotional effect on Kat (whether she and the robot are overdramatizing this or not) will be horrific, and I don't think Annie could put Kat through that, so maybe not. I figure this train of thought will be skirted around, if it's acknowledged at all. Like I said, I get the sinking suspicion we're supposed to assume Frank's words represent all the old robots, as if it were a given. Though hey, Tom has surprised me before. Regarding "robot death," I had a thought recently. I realized what TRUE death would be: a re-format. Or alternatively, anything that ruins either A) their memory storage or B) any other core parts to the point where the memory in storage becomes useless (kind of like how changing your CPU requires you to format your hard drive and re-install everything). In those cases, the previous entity that you once knew would very and truly no longer exist. Even if you went through the process of "re-installing," there's no telling how the new personality would develop. Of course, here we can hit upon similar metaphysical issues that the Star Trek Transporter brings up. Say you have robot A. Then you copy all of robot A's memory. Then you create robot B which has the exact same physical configuration. And then you put robot A's memory into robot B. Suddenly, you have robot B becoming an exact duplicate of robot A as he was when you originally copied his memory. But they obviously aren't the same person, physically. This is interesting, because often times in sci-fi you'll see a notion along the lines of "if we could upload our brains somewhere, we'd be immortal since if we got killed, we could just re-install ourselves somewhere else." But since you could theoretically make copies of the original while the original still existed, then making a copy after the original is destroyed is still just making a copy. The original is dead forever, from the original's vantage point. ... anyway, the point of all this is simply this: the issues I described above are TRUE issues of robot life and death. You don't get any deader than memory wipe, or something that necessitates it. So, if that's real robot death, then anything lesser is NOT death. So I call bullshit on Frank saying that their shutdown stasis is death. It just isn't. It's hibernation. So I take back what I said about Kat. If anybody is blowing things out of proportion, it's Frank. Kat is just a poor young victim of this crazy old robot's insane ramblings. Stupid Frank.
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Post by Stately Buff-Cookie on Jun 27, 2011 19:21:22 GMT
It's just to stop nerds from arguing about something that is impossible in the first place. Is it really Gene Roddenberry going on the record with that? Not in precisely those words. That's just my understanding of it. It comes down to the teleporter not being there for the scifi element. Nor any other reason other than for plot convenience. It was originally put in so they wouldn't have to show someone shuttling down to a planet every time they visited somewhere. That's it. It was never meant to be something the show revolves around. Consider how the teleporter related plots show up more in later series rather than the original. By which point the teleporter was iconic rather than just plot convenience. It was never meant to be a "thing". It just sort of happened. ...This is Star Trek. It's always been about entertainment first and foremost. The show cares for little about the technical matters or consistency. That it's the future with advanced technology is just where the story happens to be set. It's a large part babble babble made up words moral quandary okay lets wrap this show up with the deflector array now that we've milked the dilemma for what it was worth. Granted, some iterations of the show are worse about this than others, but that's what Trek is about. I'm not taking jabs at Trek either. I love the show. TUVIX WANTS TO LIVE! I think Voyager was a worthwhile addition to the Trek family just for that one line, for instance. Edit: Oh and the Original series was more WATCH ME TWO FIST POUND THIS ALIEN INTO SUBMISSION and proceed to get more women in more colors than you could ever dream of. In an era of tense racism, no less.
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Post by warrl on Jul 2, 2011 1:12:04 GMT
...This is Star Trek. It's always been about entertainment first and foremost. The show cares for little about the technical matters or consistency. That it's the future with advanced technology is just where the story happens to be set. It's a large part babble babble made up words moral quandary okay lets wrap this show up with the deflector array now that we've milked the dilemma for what it was worth. Granted, some iterations of the show are worse about this than others, but that's what Trek is about. I've talked with people who took a professional interest in the rules for writing Star Trek scripts in various series. Professional in the sense of "these people write for a living and thought it would be neat to sell a script to Star Trek". One tidbit is that there are very firm instructions that scriptwriters are NOT to make up the technobabble. Apparently the studio hire people to write just that, so that it has a consistent sound to it. What the scriptwriters put in the script is "{insert tech talk here}". And this has been the rule since Roddenberry's day. As compared to the original concept write-up, Uhura was demoted from First Officer because it was thought that America was not ready for a black female in that high a position. (Hey, they would have been working on this in 1964-1965, so that isn't totally unreasonable.) Instead a nonhuman was brought in and made First Officer, which I have to think had some positive influence. And Uhura was kept on the bridge as part of the command crew, which also helped. Although it may not have helped much. I wouldn't call it a step in the right direction, more like sliding a toe an inch or two - but it was in the right direction.
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