maybe you have to decide whether to draw a line someplace.
Say you’re attacked by aliens with deadly force, but you survive….
though needing stitches everywhere….
your dismembered hand is sewn back on, but you need a prosthetic leg…
and let’s say, also, a heart, liver and face transplant.
You were unconscious for 4 days, then awaken.
I think we agree that you didn’t die.
But what if your skull is shattered and your brain atomised, but it’s far enough into the future that we can replace them with parts from a recently deceased donor?
And almost every limb and organ is replaced,
plus you’re out cold for a month,
kept on life support…. and then you awaken with amnesia.
Aren’t you still you?
Is having your atoms briefly shifted through space, and reassembled,
without any perception on your part of loss of memory or consciousness …
(whether or not a brief period of unconsciousness was noted by an observer)
Or more likely a “Real” transporter would work by spacial energy coherence for navigation and quantum entanglement for direct mass transference. Of course that would make the warp dive obsolete.
After just 5 or 6 generations of analog to digital, with or without compression algorithms, is going to make Kirk and Spock look like someone from the Cartoon Channel.
And think of poor Thomas Riker in “Second Chances.” Survives years on a planet only to be killed again in order to be “rescued.” When Scotty was stuck in the transporter in “Relics,” he was actually dead for decades on end. Those crewmen that died in the transporter in the first movie? Perhaps it was a mercy killing instead of dying over and over again.
And you wonder why the Vulcans take shuttles and Dr. McCoy complains about it?
So far there just isn’t a place in physics for that concept called “soul”. But the first one to prove it gets the Nobel Prize.
Ida No over 6 years ago
That’s the job I want when I go to the future.
SusanSunshine Premium Member over 6 years ago
Soul or no soul isn’t the only question…
maybe you have to decide whether to draw a line someplace.
Say you’re attacked by aliens with deadly force, but you survive….
though needing stitches everywhere….
your dismembered hand is sewn back on, but you need a prosthetic leg…
and let’s say, also, a heart, liver and face transplant.
You were unconscious for 4 days, then awaken.
I think we agree that you didn’t die.
But what if your skull is shattered and your brain atomised, but it’s far enough into the future that we can replace them with parts from a recently deceased donor?
And almost every limb and organ is replaced,
plus you’re out cold for a month,
kept on life support…. and then you awaken with amnesia.
Aren’t you still you?
Is having your atoms briefly shifted through space, and reassembled,
without any perception on your part of loss of memory or consciousness …
(whether or not a brief period of unconsciousness was noted by an observer)
any greater trauma, or any nearer to death?
I’m not so sure.
grantsterling over 6 years ago
Or more likely a “Real” transporter would work by spacial energy coherence for navigation and quantum entanglement for direct mass transference. Of course that would make the warp dive obsolete.
PoodleGroomer over 6 years ago
After just 5 or 6 generations of analog to digital, with or without compression algorithms, is going to make Kirk and Spock look like someone from the Cartoon Channel.
Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo] over 6 years ago
And think of poor Thomas Riker in “Second Chances.” Survives years on a planet only to be killed again in order to be “rescued.” When Scotty was stuck in the transporter in “Relics,” he was actually dead for decades on end. Those crewmen that died in the transporter in the first movie? Perhaps it was a mercy killing instead of dying over and over again.
And you wonder why the Vulcans take shuttles and Dr. McCoy complains about it?
So far there just isn’t a place in physics for that concept called “soul”. But the first one to prove it gets the Nobel Prize.