Transporters are Death Machines?

[denverpilot]

Nate you just killed the thread like my ex girlfriend.

It's no fun to think about the real world morals.

Sorry. It was on my mind but a bad time to be thinking about it.

No kidding.



Besides, the thread is about a human self. Can it be moved and where is it? My sense is its an illusion and we operate as a collection of memories governed / strongly influenced by subconscious needs and desires.

That book I mentioned in reference to Henning's utopia where the universe is occupied by friendly altruistic aliens attempts to tackle the whole soul vs body thing too. It's actually quite a fun little read.

Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

Fairly famous SciFi book. Essentially you have a choice when you get really old. You can die or you can sign up to go be space soldiers with brand new genetically altered bodies.

They don't really tell ya but you kinda know they're going to have to do something drastic to accomplish that and it's that they have figured out how to transfer your consciousness from one to another.

That's book one and it also introduces you to some folks who weren't transfers. Kinda don't want to give any spoilers. It's a multi book series.

Anyway Scalzi does a reasonable job tackling the whole consciousness moving around thing. It becomes part of the plot in the second or third book. Quick reads, nothing too heady, and he touches on stuff like why war, and why volunteer for war fighting and various side characters while still maintaining a protagonist with character, and a real plot arc, unlike freaking Lucas.

Google "Split Brain". Some very interesting things happen if you sever the corpus callosum. It's a super highway of neurons connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain.



When severed you end up with two minds in one body and sometimes they conflict with each other. There's a story of a man who shook his wife violently with his left hand only to rescue her with his right by grabbing his left arm. And there are many similar stories of this kind. (I wonder what the religious would say happens when one believes and the other denies God. Heaven or hell? ...but I digress)



So, if two minds can be in a single body perhaps is not out of the question for a single mind to be in two bodies. Personally, if you made a carbon copy of me, atom for atom, I'd think there would be two of me but unaware of the other except in each other's presence...but who knows.

If forgotten all about that. That is some of the most fascinating stuff I ever read about.

Way better than that new Orlando theme park ride, "50's science! Electroshock therapy!" I think it was way in the back corner at EPCOT. They never update that place. Haha.

I suffer from split brain. One half wants to spend all of my money on flying. The other half thinks I should pay bills first.

There's a few folk here who've combined those. They're kinda superhuman and freakish though. They get paid to do it.

 

[2Airtime2]

Interesting topic Brundle.

 

[bflynn]

I recall it rated teleportation as very close to fundamentally impossible, due to restraints at the quantum level and the limits imposed by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Well, today it is fundamentally impossible. In the Star Trek future, they have Heisenberg Compensators in the transporter system to deal with that problem.

Supposedly if you uncouple the Heisenberg Compensators, you might be able to beam something from the holodeck into reality, but that was never put to an actual test and was probably just a ruse to fool Moriarty. Which, given replicator technology, I never really understood.

 

[Henning]

Every person who's ever had to pull the plug on modern "life" support machines has had to think about what "life" really is.

No fancy high tech Star Trek transporter required.

All you need to ponder the depths of this question is a respirator breathing for someone.

I was in Australia when a friend called, her 18 year old son had taken a fall, serious brain trauma, 'come tell me what to do here, the Drs are telling me to pull the plug.' So I fly over to San Diego and sure enough, there's nothing left of the kid, he doesn't even have a skull cap at the moment because they needed to relieve the pressure.

So, go into meeting with her, the nurses and doctors and they give her the whole spiel even telling her that they knew before the surgery he didn't have a chance, and as soon as the skull cap came off they knew there was no recovery due to the condition of the brain, and that it was the right thing for her to do and pull the plug.

I looked at the surgeon who just told me that he put her dead son on a life support machine, "You rotten no good piece of f***. WTF is wrong with you? Why in the f*** did you put that kid on life support if you knew he was dead? Was it so you could bill the excellent insurance you piece of s***? You are the f***ing professional here, why in the hell did you not pronounce him dead? Do you not understand that for all your words and explanations you give her, that all she hears is "You need to kill your child."? Are you that f***ing stupid, or are you just that f***ing uncaring? Of course he needs to come off life support, the question is why did you put him on it in the first place and cause her all this grief and suffering? You have failed your Hippocratic oath, because here, you have certainly done harm to this woman by failing to do your job properly." Nobody in the room could look her in the face. In the mean time her dysfunctional mom is leading a church group in the hall to protest pulling the plug. I had to straighten her ass out too, not for the first time in 2 decades.

 

[FastEddieB]

Again, if you're into this sort of thing...

 

[Jaybird180]

Well, today it is fundamentally impossible. In the Star Trek future, they have Heisenberg Compensators in the transporter system to deal with that problem.

Supposedly if you uncouple the Heisenberg Compensators, you might be able to beam something from the holodeck into reality, but that was never put to an actual test and was probably just a ruse to fool Moriarty. Which, given replicator technology, I never really understood.

something about holo matter not being the same a real matter. They actually tried it but it didn't work so they decided to fake it.

 

[Maverick]

My Head Hurts!

 

[G-Man]

On a lighter note, I'll echo Denver Pilot's recommendation for the Old Man's War trilogy. Entertaining reading!

 

[denverpilot]

My Head Hurts!

Must have reassembled the atoms wrong. File a bug report with Scotty's team. He has an Indian call center that'll take the reports and give you a ticket number.

Don't file it as "critical", he's working on numerous cases involving extremities attached to foreheads.

We'll all talk about your headache in SCRUM tomorrow and prioritize the ticket down below those -- maybe get back to you in say, 60 days? The bosses printer is also on the fritz.