not if they didn’t built the hub in first place…
But that was my point: if the soul exists, it’s an intangible quality. There’s no way to know whether it downloads, transfers, or whatever. If it doesn’t exist, on the other hand, the totality of existence consists only of body (which is duplicated) and mind (which, for all intents and purposes, is downloadable data). The loss of the original is undeniable, but does its loss matter if it’s all infallibly replicated?
But that’s the issue exactly. If you discount the nebulous existence of a transcendent soul (and I’m assuming you are), all that’s left are things which are in fact empirically measurable. Yes, by pure logic, they are not literally the same, but that’s basically semantics. Without some mystical “x-factor” to differentiate them, they are essentially the same.
I know I may seem to be splitting hairs here, and I’m sure it doesn’t really matter in the overall story.
Hairs? You’re practically splitting atoms! 
Perhaps I’ll pose this question: How many of us GWC posters would voluntarily accept termination a la D’Anna or Athena in order to test the hypothesis? Especially give then doubts I may have raised that, sure, a new body with your thoughts and personality will come back, but there’s a chance that you will not.
Me? Not a chance in the world. No way. But then, I would not get in a Star Trek transporter either. You die in resurrection. You die in transporting. You die in rings. And you die in a Stargate. I tell you, future transport is risky.
Obviously we wouldn’t. But if the technology was more or less perfected and (probably most importantly) we had grown up in a culture that accepted them as valid, I doubt that many of us would give it a second thought. (By that same argument, veteran Trek watchers will note that many people in that universe doubted the safety of the transporters.) The question you’ve posed is analogous to asking someone from the Bronze Age to ride in a 747. They’d think you were insane.
Yeah, I always thought about that when people are moving during transport. It never happened on TOS (due to the special effects of the time) but was very prevalent from TNG and after. What if the computer tracks, say, your hand’s position when the transport begins, but you move it before it’s finished? It never happened, of course, but I always imagined disembodied limbs, ribs poking through lungs, etc.
I much prefer the Farscape-style wormholes, where space and time just bend around you without subatomic disassembly. On the other hand, I guess, in a way, the universe is getting ripped apart and put back together, so I’m not really sure that’s any better. 
I am going out on a limb and guessing that you don’t believe in an afterlife, so the you that goes through the transport would never know they made a mistake.
Now there’s a terrifying thought. What if each new transportee has its own soul? And Hell is full of all the previous transporter “victims” (suicide is a sin, after all)? :eek:
Any transport that can be described with the phrase “subatomic disassembly” is one I will pass on.
Yes, yes, yes. I know you are all saying this. And you are correct. From an exterior perspective.
Let’s go back to the Two Rikers. To all science, observation, etc, they are the same. But we know they are not. They do not think with one mind, experience with one set of senses. And if one dies his… continuity… is not suddenly transferred to the other Riker. They are separate individuals.
It is the continuity of consciousness that matters here. Once a person dies (ie all brain activity ceases) that individual is gone. Forever. Does not matter if there was a clone copy or a transporter copy, or a copy from another dimension.
Obviously we wouldn’t. But if the technology was more or less perfected and (probably most importantly) we had grown up in a culture that accepted them as valid, I doubt that many of us would give it a second thought.
And people wouldn’t because the end result (the transported person) actually does seem the same as the original was - even to themselves! Of course they will say it’s perfectly safe, because to them it is.
(By that same argument, veteran Trek watchers will note that many people in that universe doubted the safety of the transporters.)
At least a few smart people in the 24th century.
The question you’ve posed is analogous to asking someone from the Bronze Age to ride in a 747. They’d think you were insane.
Perhaps more like jumping off a mountain with a bag of silk strapped to ones back.
Well, not to outside observers. And not the the reconstituted person. But it sure matters to the original (or it would, but for the fact that he’s dead, Jim).
This is why I posed the question of which of us would choose to use this method of transport/resurrection if it existed in the real world. I don’t deny the ‘copy’ may well be identical, down to the very atom and even electron shell, and even identical in memories and personality. But what happens at the instant you are disassembled? Do you experience your thoughts and consciousness wafting across to the ‘new’ body?
As I said, if you believe in a ‘soul’, and also believe that this (admittedly totally impossible) technology can transfer that intangible essence as well as the physical/mental duplication, then there are no problems here.
But, given what we have seen on BSG so far, it does not appear to me that resurrection does that at all. And further, in Trek, given their supposedly ‘hard science’ technobabble explanation for everything I don’t imagine their transporters have built-in soul transport capability.
So… the logical conclusion is that either the ineffable ‘soul’ is copied/transported as a lucky consequence of the resurrection/transportation process, or… the soul does not exist (and even if it did technology could not ‘transport’ it), and the conclusion from this can only be that the original individual dies.
(I am not certain I have described my thoughts here as clearly as they appear to me. If only I could share my… consciousness with you all, and you could see the wisdom of my insights…)
Well, in Stargate, consciousnesses are downloaded all the time, especially by the Asgard. (If you don’t watch Stargate, that last sentence will make no sense.) So, maybe the Ancients added one of those widgets to the stargate?
Star Trek science is painful. On Stargate they at least admit they have no idea and just hand-wave it or invoke Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And, of course, Gehm’s Corollary, “Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.”
Oh yes, I’ve seen Stargate. Was fun for the first twenty or thirty years. But the moment they started talking about humans evolving into ‘ascended beings’ (and not even over thousands of generations, getting more and more like a big white ball of energy, but like… instantly - and then this instantly happening to a ‘normal’ person!) I started treating it more like a sort-of childlike sciency fantasy. And then I started enjoying it more.
(For many years it seemed like the only American show featuring an attractive lead woman with short hair. Dunno what it is with Americans and their women and their hair. Europeans and Poms and Australians don’t have this 99% obsession.)
Well, not every human, just Daniel…
And I have no idea what it is with Americans and long hair on women either.
Not to take this thread into a new direction, but I wanted to agree with you about Stargate. I will watch both Stargate series but they’re mostly fluff. If BSG is at the university level, let’s say, then Stargate has just started high school. But that’s okay as long as you take it for what it is and just enjoy it (like you said.)
I rented the Stargate straight-to-DVD movie “Ark of Truth” or something like that last night. It was about 90 minutes of mediocre scifi cliches, but I don’t regret it.
Of course, no more than identical twins share memories. But, like newborn identical twins (actually, even moreso), the Two Rikers are perfect copies at the moment of creation, one thinking he was abandoned and the other thinking he got home safely. From that moment on, their experiences diverge, and they gradually become effectively different people. They still share all their history before that failed transport, of course, including childhood memories and every random thought and feeling. And neither is the original Riker, who obviously would have died during the initial transport down to the planet (if not much, much earlier).
It is the continuity of consciousness that matters here. Once a person dies (ie all brain activity ceases) that individual is gone. Forever. Does not matter if there was a clone copy or a transporter copy, or a copy from another dimension.
Agreed. Actually, I agree with most of your argument on this topic, oddly enough.
And people wouldn’t because the end result (the transported person) actually does seem the same as the original was - even to themselves! Of course they will say it’s perfectly safe, because to them it is.
For the sake of argument, that’s an existential dilemma that could apply even to our world. Can you really be absolutely certain that you didn’t die at some point in the past but were replaced with an exact replica? That the you that believes itself to be the original Roman Sandstorm is not in fact just a self-deluded copy? “Of course not”, you tell yourself. But could you ever really know for sure? I’d imagine that these sorts of questions would just be avoided by a culture that may well find itself at risk of galaxy-wide existential angst.
But that is exactly where we differ. Up until the moment of death, the original believed that it would not die. If the original is dead, his or her point of view ends at the time of death. Maybe it is all self-delusion, but most happiness is.
This is why I posed the question of which of us would choose to use this method of transport/resurrection if it existed in the real world. I don’t deny the ‘copy’ may well be identical, down to the very atom and even electron shell, and even identical in memories and personality. But what happens at the instant you are disassembled? Do you experience your thoughts and consciousness wafting across to the ‘new’ body?
The mind relies on the interaction between cells in the brain. Instantaneous disassembly of the atomic structure of said cells would preclude any awareness, either of transfer or brutal death. Presumably, such technologies would do what they do roughly at the speed of light, much faster than any nerve impulse. I can’t imagine that it would “feel” like anything, much less hurt, and there’s always a chance that you could become Dr. Manhattan. 
As I said, if you believe in a ‘soul’, and also believe that this (admittedly totally impossible) technology can transfer that intangible essence as well as the physical/mental duplication, then there are no problems here.
But, given what we have seen on BSG so far, it does not appear to me that resurrection does that at all. And further, in Trek, given their supposedly ‘hard science’ technobabble explanation for everything I don’t imagine their transporters have built-in soul transport capability.
So… the logical conclusion is that either the ineffable ‘soul’ is copied/transported as a lucky consequence of the resurrection/transportation process,
First off, I’m referring only to the “soul” in a traditional sense and only within the context of fiction. (Frankly, that is where I personally believe such a construct belongs.) That said, if it exists, I’d imagine that a “soul” would be bound to that “continuity of personhood” by its very nature. So a technological “re-ensouling” device would not be necessary.
or… the soul does not exist (and even if it did technology could not ‘transport’ it), and the conclusion from this can only be that the original individual dies.
But as I’ve said before, without the quasi-mystical concept of a soul to define a person’s uniqueness, all that a person is comes down to the exact arrangement of matter and energy in his or her body. If that arrangement is perfectly duplicated, it is the same person. Without a soul to make that person unique, the loss of the original is meaningless. Yes, every sheet of paper in a ream is separate and “unique”, but they are also all the same. People are only more complex.
(I am not certain I have described my thoughts here as clearly as they appear to me. If only I could share my… consciousness with you all, and you could see the wisdom of my insights…)
I believe I understand what you’re saying. It’s just that I don’t agree with your conclusion. I get the logic of your argument, but that’s all it is. It is, as you said, “splitting hairs”. The loss of the original is meaningless, except for the existential angst that the copy may (or may not) feel. Even the original wouldn’t care as it was dying. Obviously we’ve muddied the waters with the different concepts of transporters and Cylon Resurrection, but the same argument applies. Of course, the suffering up until the moment of death would matter, as crazy Six the Barolay Slayer shows us, but a faster and/or less traumatic death (like in a transporter) would make this “transition” much smoother.
The “instant” ascensions required assistance from someone who was already ascended (Oma Desala, who helped Daniel ascend, was the only one, as far as I can recall). All the other “spontaneous” ascensions were with people who had evolved just shy of that point, either naturally or otherwise.
My biggest pet peeve was the moment they decide to use the alien ray gun that they know doesn’t always work (particularly since they had to go find one) instead of the regular old human-ingenuity bullet gun that everyone has and that always works.
Stargate=Star Trek, but without all the namby pambiness.
Stargate also had a sense of humor.
I think the whole resurrection concept is further clouded by the fact that each “individual’s” knowledge and experience is shared with at least all the other examples of that line. It’s better to consider the Cylons as a hive mind than as a group of individuals.
RMHPH,
You are correct, I cannot be sure. But the ‘original’ Roman who thought he was being transported to the surface of some planet knows. 'Cos he is dead.
But that is exactly where we differ. Up until the moment of death, the original believed that it would not die. If the original is dead, his or her point of view ends at the time of death. Maybe it is all self-delusion, but most happiness is.
In fact, I agree 100% with this.
First off, I’m referring only to the “soul” in a traditional sense and only within the context of fiction. (Frankly, that is where I personally believe such a construct belongs.)
And I’m with you on this too.
If that arrangement is perfectly duplicated, it is the same person. Without a soul to make that person unique, the loss of the original is meaningless.
Not quite. One can still be unique and have individual consciousness without invoking a soul. I, for example, would be most upset if I was disassembled at the quantum level. And I’m pretty sure I don’t have a ‘soul’. So the loss of this ‘original’ would mean a hell of a lot.
I believe I understand what you’re saying. It’s just that I don’t agree with your conclusion. I get the logic of your argument, but that’s all it is. It is, as you said, “splitting hairs”.
Happy for you to disagree. Obviously a deep and thought-provoking thread.
The loss of the original is meaningless, except for the existential angst that the copy may (or may not) feel. Even the original wouldn’t care as it was dying.
I just can’t get my head over the idea that all of those people who ‘ring’, or ‘transport’, or ‘resurrect’ really die. True, apparently identical replacements, who appear to themselves and to others to be the same person as the one who died, carry on regardless, but surely every life is precious? A technology that kills as part of its basic operation should not be acceptable.
Another example may be to not use the ‘identical comes out’ idea, but rather suggest that when Roman gets in the transporter, some other dude emerges. Looks different, acts different, has different memories. What then? According to your reasoning the “the original wouldn’t care”, because they believe they are beaming down somewhere. And have quietly and painlessly died.
Of course this would not be acceptable. So then neither would it be OK just because the one who gets resurrected or ringed appears to be the same as the original.
I accept my thoughts here are somewhat… esoteric… somewhat academic and hypothetical, with no prospect ever of being a reality. But hell, I haven’t thought this extensively about existentialism or what individual identity actually means since… well, maybe second year at uni. Quite some time. So please bear with me…
The “instant” ascensions required assistance from someone who was already ascended (Oma Desala, who helped Daniel ascend, was the only one, as far as I can recall). All the other “spontaneous” ascensions were with people who had evolved just shy of that point, either naturally or otherwise.
Oh-oh. The Creationists would be asking: “Where are the transitional forms?”
(And frankly, their explanations (that a big old guy with a white beard) just made it happen probably would make more sense and science than what is presented on screen.)
Roman 2.0,
Would you lay down your life to restore the original Roman? I’d argue that he knows nothing of the sort. 'Cos he is dead. And without a soul, there is no awareness after death. And IF he had a soul, you have it now, so his death is ephemeral.
Not quite. One can still be unique and have individual consciousness without invoking a soul.
One is unique until someone makes an identical copy. The death of the original preserves that uniqueness.
I, for example, would be most upset if I was disassembled at the quantum level. And I’m pretty sure I don’t have a ‘soul’. So the loss of this ‘original’ would mean a hell of a lot.
You think you’d be upset, but you’d never even know.
Happy for you to disagree. Obviously a deep and thought-provoking thread.
And getting deeper all the time.
I just can’t get my head over the idea that all of those people who ‘ring’, or ‘transport’, or ‘resurrect’ really die. True, apparently identical replacements, who appear to themselves and to others to be the same person as the one who died, carry on regardless, but surely every life is precious?
Which is why it’s replaced by one of equal value.
A technology that kills as part of its basic operation should not be acceptable.
If transporters are outlawed, only outlaws will have transporters.
Another example may be to not use the ‘identical comes out’ idea, but rather suggest that when Roman gets in the transporter, some other dude emerges. Looks different, acts different, has different memories. What then? According to your reasoning the “the original wouldn’t care”, because they believe they are beaming down somewhere. And have quietly and painlessly died.
Of course this would not be acceptable. So then neither would it be OK just because the one who gets resurrected or ringed appears to be the same as the original.
The original still wouldn’t care. He’ll be dead and replaced by a random stranger. Although I can guarantee that he’d be the only one who wouldn’t care. This only needs to happen once before everyone starts using the shuttle.
I accept my thoughts here are somewhat… esoteric… somewhat academic and hypothetical, with no prospect ever of being a reality. But hell, I haven’t thought this extensively about existentialism or what individual identity actually means since… well, maybe second year at uni. Quite some time. So please bear with me…
Considering that these sorts of questions have been asked and never really been answered over the course of millennia, I think some degree of patience is a given.
Oh-oh. The Creationists would be asking: “Where are the transitional forms?”
The body turns to energy as it ascends, so there’s not much a fossil record.
(And frankly, their explanations (that a big old guy with a white beard) just made it happen probably would make more sense and science than what is presented on screen.)
It’s hard to argue with a deus ex machina.