Sorry about that ridiculous watermark.
The fact that two Rikers existed is all the proof I need to be full Luddite. Save your death machines for the next person, thanks!
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
7 points (100.0% liked)
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
6151 readers
964 users here now
/c/TenForward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags.
Use spoiler tags in comments, and NSFW checkbox for posts.
This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
And they treat the one on the planet like he's a copy when he'd logically be the original with the one on the Enterprise being the duplicate.
They are both copies. They explain that the guy operating the transporter was losing him, so he used a second beam to try to compensate. On beam made it through, the other bounced off the st uff in the atmosphere that was causing the problem and rematerialized him on the planet. I'm pretty sure this explanation was in the episode in order to establish that both Rikers are equally real.
I think that makes both Rikers equally fake, not real.
Equally fake and equally real are the same thing.
Except that that explanation means Tom was made with the original Riker materials and Will was made from matter reserves on the ship using the original Riker as a template.
Ship of Theseus
No, USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D. But I can see why that would be confusing.
Both beams were pulling in genuine Will Riker. Presumably they are both a mix of the original material and additional material formed by the transporter. That or the transporter is violating the law of conservation of energy.
I imagine a decent amount of Riker is spread across the atmosphere any time he beams through a storm cloud. I assume Enterprise D has spare Riker bits stores somewhere to fill in any gaps.
This is why I want monsters Inc style linked door-wormholes. It's less... Reconstituted flesh.
Less room for duplicates, more room for halfsies I guess
I'll take the small chance of being cut in half over the guaranteed murder box, thanks.
Everyone remembers his irascibility in the film but ignores that, for the three original years, he transported without complaint in nearly every episode. And it was a reliable, proven technology that apparently only got worse and more twitchy a couple of decades later.
And it was a reliable, proven technology that apparently only got worse and more twitchy a couple of decades later.
I assume the subtext was that it was a reliable proven technology being operated, in his option, by an incompetent idiot too young to be trusted.
Which is as good an explanation as any for the other transporter scene...
About the time O'Brien was born.
I'm going through another cycle of binging EVERYTHING. Yes he did transport regularly, but he also certainly complained about it multiple times. Orders are orders in the end. Sometimes the hardest part of keeping a job is bottling up and repressing all those little existential horrors.
I think I've explained this too many times to do it again, but: teleportation doesn't have to be "destroy and reconstitute" any more than going through a door necessitates killing you and reconstituting you on the other side of the door. The key is establishing continuity of your mind across the intervening space, which is mostly an engineering problem.
Star Trek transporters are "destroy and reconstitute" though. They are explicitly described as such. The whole Thomas Riker situation even requires it to be the case.
Star Trek just throws all its rules out from one episode to the next. The Star Trek franchise is the McDonalds of sci-fi; you don't choose it because it's good, you choose it because it's available.
The real problem with all of this is that people can't get away from the idea of a soul. Something intangible unmeasurable that is really "us" riding around in a meat-robot. It's hard for people (me included) to realize that the meat packaging is all that we are. If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am. There is no "me" outside of that... And that's a really hard concept to accept and internalize.
If you destroy My body and recreate it, nothing will have been lost. The continuity within the meat computer in my head is all that I am.
If you perfectly recreate your body without destroying the original, the original doesn't start seeing and hearing through the clone. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, there's no difference between the you that steps into the transporter and the you that steps out of it, but you do actually die when you're "transported." You don't get to see what's on the other side of the transporter, another being that shares your exact memories does.
I dunno even if there is no you in a metaphysical sense the deconstruction method still ends your personal subjective experience of being you which sucks. Sure the next you might be just as much you as the first one but you don't get to be around to enjoy that.
I dunno even if there is no you in a metaphysical sense the deconstruction method still ends your personal subjective experience of being you which sucks. Sure the next you might be just as much you as the first one but you don’t get to be around to enjoy that.
But it doesn't and that's the point. You are not the collection of atoms that make up your body, YOU are the software program that is running on your brain-computer. The software program can be transferred (or copied) and you are still you. There is no "you" outside of that software.
Your idea of what constitutes "you" Is wrong. Your subjective experience ends when you get dismantled. We can say this definitively, because when the transporter fails to dismantle the original, they don't get to see through their copy's eyes. If they don't get to see what the transporter clone sees when both are alive, then it stands to reason that if they get dismantled, they still don't get to see what their clone sees. Their subjective experience ends.
Not only that, but they‘re also literal bombs. Remember E=mc^2? With a technology capable of converting 100% of matter into usable energy, you‘d have a pretty scary bomb bomb.
Typical McCoy. Calls turbolifts elevators and transporters teleporters.
"Old man yells at matter stream."
Not to mention, if we have the technology to construct human bodies and minds on the other side of that teleporter, what is to stop them from modifying the machines to change your brain (or body). I have lost any trust I once had in any government or company to believe them if, hypothetically, they tell me they have the know-how to change my opinion of Coca Cola upon reconstruction.
Cory Doctorow vibes.