Yeah, Trek canon seems to be a little fluid in this regard.
TWOK, coming back from the Genesis cave, I think.
also, TVH, Whale Lady screaming orgasmically during the transport with Fat Kirk.
Yes and no. Just because we see the character having experiences in the transporter does not mean that there wasn’t a destruction of consciousness at the moment the body was disintegrated. Perhaps it happens twice, once when the person’s pattern is copied into the “buffer” and then that consciousness is destroyed when the new person is created.
Now, if we could see a POV shot of one room dissolving, bright lights, and then a new room appearing… (I’m not sure if we’ve seen that in Trek, but I’d be surprised if it has never happened) then I’d be convinced that the consciousness has survived and traveled, because that POV-type shot should be impossible with a disintegrate-and-recreate style transporter.
But that would be a different type of transporter than what we’ve been discussing up to this point. Miller and Triponus and Chronos are claiming that even if it IS impossible for that POV shot to continue from one room to another, (because the person’s experiences come to an end) they would still happily step inside.
I don’t see why a continuous POV shot would be impossible in our scenario. You have the POV of the guy standing on the transmitter pad, and then you have the POV of the guy standing on the receiver pad. It’s the same person, from the same POV, with no awareness of any interstitial events. That’s kind of key to our whole argument, actually. I thought you’d picked up on that by now.
Then you really haven’t been paying attention. I’ve repeatedly said the problem with the transporter is because your consciousness, your stream of continuous experiences, stops there on the pad. If that’s not what’s happening, if you believe you could be seeing one room one second, and then experience the new room a few seconds later, then we’re talking about different things. I don’t disagree that your post-teleportation self would feel like that’s exactly what happened. But would right-now-you experience both things? I don’t see how.
There is a difference between the experience of the post-teleported dude, with his memories, and the pre-teleported dude, with his disintegration. And that’s key to my whole argument. Not that there’s a difference in the people, the difference is in the experience. And if you step in, you will be experiencing disintegration.
You said “you have this POV” and then “you have that POV” – so you are admitting they are two separate things. Sure, you can paste them together to fool the audience, or you could say you are showing it from the perspective of post-teleportation-guy, and including some memory mixed in with current events. But the fact remains, pre-teleportation-guy doesn’t get to see that POV.
Yes, and then picks up over on another pad. But from the POV of the person being teleported, it just looks like a jump cut.
And then, however many miles away, I experience re-integration.
There is no real way to demonstrate that disassembling your body and then reassembling it would “kill” the original you and create a copy. It’s an unknowable and mostly philosophical argument that would not impact “you” in the least.
Why? Because the me that is typing this is already gone by the time you’ve read it. You see imprints he’s made, through this medium. Unless my body dies shortly afterward, me of the future is going to remember typing this, and remember “some large part” of what it was like to be the guy typing it, but I won’t be that guy anymore. That point of consciousness is gone, never to return.
How is that any different from the teleporter scenario? Yes, that point of consciousness when you step into the teleporter ends, and a new one begins, in a body identical to the one that stepped in. But I’m a new point of consciousness 10 minutes from now in the exact same body, and will never again be the point of consciousness right now. Do I die every instant to the next?
So what could be happening is that, even with the continuous POV of Barklay in the realm of fear ep, at some critical point, for maybe only a yoctosecond, a discontinuity occurs? I could see that.
What’s the shortest length a time our brains* can actually sense?
ETA: *or mind/soul/essence, to possibly separate it from any physical thing
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I think language is failing us here. When you say “I” in this sentence, do you mean the right-now-typing-you? If so, how does that happen? If you are duplicated instead of transported, is right-now-you experiencing the copy’s reality? Or your own?
Any discontinuity in your stream of consciousness doesn’t equal death. Being knocked unconscious, in an alcoholic black out or even sleeping are not really part of your continuous stream of consciousness. They are interruptions to it. When you’re asleep and especially dreaming some stuff is going on, but it’s not part of your waking day stream of consciousness.
A break in the consciousness stream can’t be said to be a point of death.
Yes, that’s who I mean. If I step into a teleporter, and am disintegrated, and reintegrated somewhere else, the person who steps out of the teleporter is the same person who stepped into the teleporter.
I thought I had made this sufficiently clear already.
If I am duplicated instead of transported, then there are two “mes” in the world, and neither has any stronger claim to being the original than the other.
Maybe some sort of quantum tunneling or spooky action is bridging our consciousness from one body to the next. So, the bodies zap and unzap, but our “Being-ness-i-tude” continues unzapped
That’s the button marked “Z-1439” on the control console.
If a transporter is ever built, it would surely have to be tested extensively before being used on a person. I imagine that one of those tests would include putting something through with a camera. If I beam up a camcorder, then pop the tape in a VCR and watch it, would that satisfy you? There’s a point-of-view shot from the perspective of being transported.
It’s different. Consciousness is not a point that exists only in one instance in time, it is an abstract concept flowing through time. If it could be adequately captured and explained perfectly in a single instant in time, you’d be right.
Exactly. So what makes you so confident that YOU (not an abstarct concept of you, but right-now-you) get to experience the future of whichever of the duplicates happens to survive disintegration? You only get to see/hear/touch one future, and I’m betting it’s the one that ends right then and there.
I think the problem here is that many of you don’t believe in true self-consciousness. You believe your entire existence is an illusion. Well I believe there is SOMETHING that is me, other than the meat – call it a soul, if you want to, but we don’t need to go down the supernatural road. I believe it is simply my own awareness of self – my consciousness.
No. You’re watching post-camera’s tape of the event, which is analogous to the memories transferred when a person is transported. There is still no proof that pre-camera’s tape recorded the events after the transportation.
Consciousness might be a term you use to represent a streamed concept of self awareness or whatever, but explain how interruptions to it aren’t “deaths and rebirths” if you believe consciousness is like a flow of electricity that once turned off can never again exist as the same flow. Electricity is a good analogy actually, because even if there is a continuous flow of electricity it’s not the same electrical energy continuously.
Further, individuals can only exist at one point in time, we can’t exist in multiple points in time. So for us, consciousness like you seem to talk about is nothing more than philosophy. We only exist in the perpetual present tense.
[QUOTE=Sterling Archer]
So is it your claim that when you say “Tomorrow, I will experience breakfast.” and when you say, “Tomorrow, I will be vaporized and recreated on another planet and will experience breakfast there.” there is no meaningful difference?
[/QUOTE]
Yes - there is no meaningful difference.
No - in the case of the teleport, the “death” and recreation are sequential, at no point is there two of me, how can there be a divergence?
Because who else could it possibly be?
To the contrary, my theory is based on the idea that consciousness is the true seat of identity. Who I am, is a pattern of memories. I am not the matter that stores those memories. So long as that pattern is intact, I’m still alive, even if I’m not currently installed on the original sack of protein in which those memories were generated.
Bah! That’s not what I asked. It is clear to me we’re not going to get any further with this. You keep explaining from the point of post-teleportation guy. Yes, I agree he’s the same! But that doesn’t matter to YOU, pre-teleportation guy.