Source Page. Credit is to SMBC-Comics and even more credit to @aperson@beehaw.org who noticed it was missing and found the credit in this comment. Sorry about that and thanks, you’re awesome aperson <3
Source Page. Credit is to SMBC-Comics and even more credit to @aperson@beehaw.org who noticed it was missing and found the credit in this comment. Sorry about that and thanks, you’re awesome aperson <3
I’ve always wondered if your consciousness would transfer over.
There’d be a consciousness, it would have your memories and be indistinguishable to you, but I can’t understand where the chemical/physical parts of the brain turn into me perceiving and experiencing stuff.
Well consciousness is just chemical and electrical impulses. If you manage to re-create everything down to the molecule in the right area then you could completely rebuild the consciousness. Also means you’d be able to completely manipulate memories, experiences, basically anything held in the brain. Provided you had an intense enough neural mapping and deep enough understanding of the human brain to accomplish that. Luckily in the Trek universe, at least at the time of the 24th/25th century, that isn’t possible.
That’s assuming you know which exact parts do exactly what. Kinda like an encrypted zip file versus an unencrypted one.
You edit whatever set of bits/bytes you want in both, but only in one of them will you actually know whats going on.
But we do know there’s quantum weirdness to the universe, so I personally think you would need more than just a molecular copy.
It’s really the question of why am I the brain in this body? Why do I perceive existence, and why isn’t it just a sequence of reactions in a brain which can adapt to highly complex phenomenon.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon
It’s just a more complicated example of the ship of Theseus, and honestly it comes down to if you believe in the concept of a soul.
To illustrate mechanically is a computer with the same model of hard drive with a copy of the data the same?
If you take the drive apart, ship its parts somewhere, and reassemble it, is it the same drive?
Yes. But that’s not what’s happening in teleportation. It doesn’t use the same parts, but different ones arranged in the exact same way.
Depends on the teleportation system. In star trek you are comprised of the same physical material, just converted to energy and back. I could be wrong though, I’m no expert. I think a more interesting question is, would you be more ok being killed in one place, having your body be transported mundanely and being revived at your destination, or being cloned perfectly and then having the original killed? Theoretically the same to you either way
Not the same to you. As soon as the same tech can be used to clone, it feels fundamentally different.
You die in one place, and a consciousness that thinks it’s you starts in another place. Does the order really matter?
Yes. Doing it in a different order means there’s a version of me with different experiences. But even if you do it in the same order, that it can be used to clone means there is a me that dies and doesn’t come back to life. Whereas if it can’t be cloning, then it’s just me.
I believe there have been numerous times where it’s confirmed that you are conscious and perceiving things while in the transport stream
Barclay got sweet tentacle hugs a few times during transport.
Daniel Dennet: “Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events, could explain consciousness at all.”
We don’t understand just how this works just yet. But I’m confident that some day we will.