Comment on we are creators
dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week agoAnd some even got the cyberpunkiness almost right (Johnny Nmemonic swung so hard!). I think for every visionary piece, we have 100 lost contemporary ‘trash’ (not trash, more like a picture of the spirit of the time) that has already been lost.
I mean Star Trek was pretty wickedly ahead of it’s time for all of the creator’s shortcomings. Still can’t believe that teleporting doesn’t kill you every time.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Has it ever been proven in any of the shows that the transporter didn’t kill everyone that used it and just made such prefect copies that no one realized?
Like it created an extra copy of Riker and there was the tragedy of Tuvix. Though I’d say the former is evidence that it is new copies but the latter might be evidence against it, since they each had memories of their time merged when they separated. Actually, that whole incident kinda brings into question what’s going on for a transporter to accidentally merge two people and not in a “horrible teleportation into a wall accident” way and then somehow de-merge them.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
the thing is that a copy is indistinguishable from the original, it’s like trying to figure out which copy of a text file is the original, it’s a question that simply doesn’t apply in the first place.
you change more in a week than a transporter would change you in the process of disassembly and reassembly, if you argue that the person stepping out of the transporter somehow isn’t the same person then you’ve just made the concept of “the same person” meaningless.
dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Yeah, there definitely are some waved away elements that are basically magic. I’m just binging TNG now, but I saw the Lower Decks tribute to many-a transporter incidents.
I mean if you can transport and not at the same time (the copy version), it is not hard to think that once that buffer is cleared on the one side, it’s game over man.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
it’s only a problem if you think the sole thing defining “you” is an intangible soul that for some reason wouldn’t just transfer between or get copied alongside instances of yourself
the line of reasoning you talk about has always been so strange to me, you’d be talking to a person walking out of a transporter and insist they’re dead, as they look you in the eye and ask if that’s an insult
dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
I had a similar argument with a friend, and I think he won that time. It came out of left field and rephrases the whole thought experiment.
Instead of me defending the argument, how would you interpret a clone incident? Would you get ‘the other feed’ as well? We have the sleep cycle where we don’t actively get input (even though our conciousness is present during dreams to a certain extent). So if a transporter clone incident rebuilds the person on the other side, but an original instant could go on experiencing a life that wouldn’t be if the transporter functioned correctly.
Hopefully that took the soul out of your argument!