> B. Skutvik wrote:
>
> > Diana wrote on Fri, 29 Jan 1999:
> >
> >
> >
> > > * Suppose there is a teleportation system that copies your dna, kills
> > > you then instantaneously builds a perfect copy of you at a different
> > > location would you agree to travel by it?
> >
> > The "travel" part is a little too SciFi, but as it touches upon the
> > extremely interesting topic that Glove, Pete and Maggie has been
> > discussing about cloning and its ramifications for the various
> > Q-levels (that I have been pondering for a long time), I go for
> > that.
> >
> > Bo
hi squad
Bo, i believe you one of the smartest contributers to this mailing list,
so i was sadly taken a back by your seemingly casual comment:
"The "travel" part is a little too SciFi,"
Since Mary Shelley first recreated Prometheus, Science Fiction as been a
useful and accepted literary and philosophical tool for examining the
intricacies and paradoxes of the human condition. Whether we are
speaking of alien cultures as a way to step back and objectively view
our own culture (see: Ray Bradbury), or androids as an ethical acid test
of exactly what makes us human (see: Phillip K. Dick), or predicting how
future advances in our science will effect the cultural evolution of our
race and self perception (see: Arthur C. Clarke), SciFi can guide us
closer to the true nature of Life, the Universe, and Everything (see:
Douglas Adams).
To present a more immediatly relevant example of this, let me use SciFi
to try and add a dimension to this current question of teleportation in
relation to the nature of self. I'll use Star Trek, seeing how well
David(?) used it to sum up the doctrines of Jung via the Kirk, Spock,
McCoy Triumvarate.
Take here the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled "Second
Chances" in which William Riker returns to the site of an eight-year-old
mission, where he encounters an identical double of himself created by a
transporter failure. According to the transporter specs of the time, the
Enterprise teleportation system works as following: the machine catalogs
the exact molecular stucture of the target (riker), atom for atom,
disintegrating them in the process, and then transmits this data to the
corresponding machine at the proposed point of arrival. The recieving
machine then, using the data, reconstructs the target atom by atom at
the p.o.a. This is the accepted method of teleportation and is, for our
purposes, the same mechanism that Diana originally proposed.
Now i know that all of you physicists from the 'Many truths and
Schroedingers cat' thread see this teleporter to be impossible for
myriad reasons. First off, we must accept that in Gene Roddenbury's
fictional future, the computer technology exists to hold and transmit
the huge amounts of data ( including the direction of the atom's spin;
we dont want any RIGHT spiraling boar's penises) that are needed to
catalog each and every atom that makes up Will Riker. Also, the
machinery and vast quantities of energy needed to read the atomic
structure and then reconstruct it is far beyond anything currently
thought possible. The only solution to this is that the Enterprise is
powered by "dilithium crystals" which are essentially containment
crystals for antimatter ( both produced by the ship and harvested during
the journey; as Hawking shows, antimatter constantly trickles out around
black holes and other such anomalies) that is combined with matter to
release a proverbial shitload of energy. But this isnt even important in
this situation. This is (to mispell Einstienian terms) a Gedanken
experiment.
So in this episode there is a malfunction in the teleporter and for some
reason it doesnt take apart the original riker at the point of
departure, unknowingly leaving him on the planet for 8 years. When
Riker2 is found, should he be given back his job? what will happen to
the Riker1? is one of them not a real person? or just not the real
riker? can there be 2 real rikers?
Well, the stranded Riker2 is a real person. In fact, it could be said,
seeing how he is more the "original" riker, that he is more the real
riker than the riker we've known since the beginning or the series. But
then what does that leave us with? If that malfunctioning transporter
had worked correctly it would have killed riker2. millions of rikers and
crewmen would have been killed over the years.
but at the moment they both exist and interact with each other, both
probably secretly wondering which one of them has the soul, if either,
since they have both teleported correctly in the past.
does anyone on the ship have a soul left?
{PS. Bo is right about this applying fantastically to cloning.}
I'm not proposing any answers here, there are no answers, im just adding
to the question, trying to give it more concrete feelings in your heads.
these questions over which one is real will probably become more real to
us after the mailinglist splits into this and the new Lila Squad. Good
luck copeing with senses of identity then.
For those of you who are interested in the resolution to this particular
space parable, the stranded riker2 is renamed Thomas Riker, and, since
he is as experienced and knowledgeable as the officer that was recreated
aboard the ship 8 years ago, is given a position in Star Fleet according
to his rank at the time (leutenant) and later even shows up in the DS9
episode "the defiant"
--paul n
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