Do transporters kill?

[Kamakazie Sith]

Sorry I haven't ready through everything here, but for me, yes they kill. The reason I fear death most is because I like living.. I like experiencing life. If I get teleported I stop experiencing life when I'm disintegrated. Game Over, life for me ends. Then my matter is used to create a copy. Sure he's happy with my memories, thinking as I do, living life.. but for me it ended at disintegration.

So if I would never wish to be teleported as I will cease to experience life.

Actually I thought we'd called bullshit on the claim that "A is identical to B so A is B" years ago.

Reading over the whole thread is kind of a requirement because you miss posts like mine which clearly show you that consciousness does not terminate during transport. In other words. You do not die. Thanks.

[SapphireFox]

Sorry I haven't ready through everything here, but for me, yes they kill. The reason I fear death most is because I like living.. I like experiencing life. If I get teleported I stop experiencing life when I'm disintegrated. Game Over, life for me ends. Then my matter is used to create a copy. Sure he's happy with my memories, thinking as I do, living life.. but for me it ended at disintegration.

So if I would never wish to be teleported as I will cease to experience life.

Actually I thought we'd called bullshit on the claim that "A is identical to B so A is B" years ago.

Reading over the whole thread is kind of a requirement because you miss posts like mine which clearly show you that consciousness does not terminate during transport. In other words. You do not die. Thanks.

PayBack, reading the whole thread IS very much a requirement for this type of topic especially considering the various views and perceptions on it. As for the consciousness's termanation during transport it means the subject is awake during most of the transport while he is being taken apart. A horrifying prospect if ever there was one. At the point of total mass conversion it would not be possible to maintain consciousness as there is no body to maintain it being a cloud of disassociated sub atomic particles but since a body is generated on the other end "exactly" as it was when it went in it perceives no loss or gain of consciousness. Weather you view this disintegration and reintegration as death is up to you. However if this can be meaningfully called death to most is still obviously under debate. Kamakazie Sith doesn't believe that the transporter kills at all, Simon_Jester and I think that the transporter kills the individual who walks into the transporter but since there is a person on the other end the person as a whole survives, and Wyrm thinks that because it reintegrates the person on the other end that the disintegration and period as a cloud of disassociated sub atomic particles does not meaningfully count as death. That is the beliefs in a nutshell but READ THE THREAD to understand the arguments for those positions.

[Simon_Jester]

...Kamakazie Sith doesn't believe that the transporter kills at all, Simon_Jester and I think that the transporter kills the individual who walks into the transporter but since there is a person on the other end the person as a whole survives, and Wyrm thinks that because it reintegrates the person on the other end that the disintegration and period as a cloud of disassociated sub atomic particles does not meaningfully count as death. That is the beliefs in a nutshell but READ THE THREAD to understand the arguments for those positions.

I'm actually tempted to agree with Wyrm. Wyrm correctly points out that the kind of "death" involved here is trivial when compared to what we think of as "real death" in reality... as I myself had said before him. So I think he has a point: insofar as transporters can be said to kill, "death" becomes a meaningless concept.

Sorry I haven't ready through everything here, but for me, yes they kill. The reason I fear death most is because I like living.. I like experiencing life. If I get teleported I stop experiencing life when I'm disintegrated. Game Over, life for me ends.

What definition of "me" are you using?

And for this kind of discussion... yes, you need to define "me." You cannot leave it as an undefined term while saying "transporters kill me," because there are a lot of reasonable definitions of "me" for which that's nonsensical.

Actually I thought we'd called bullshit on the claim that "A is identical to B so A is B" years ago.

See the very extensive discussion on this issue where we went far beyond the trivial level you explore with this. I question your right to bang your head in frustration with our arguments when you don't know what they are yet.

[SapphireFox]

I'm actually tempted to agree with Wyrm. Wyrm correctly points out that the kind of "death" involved here is trivial when compared to what we think of as "real death" in reality... as I myself had said before him. So I think he has a point: insofar as transporters can be said to kill, "death" becomes a meaningless concept.

That's ok the transporter is one of those things that seems to screw with our definitions.....and our sense of logic. While Wyrm does make a good point I still can not call the cloud of sub atomic particles alive, an individual or even a person. Because if I could then I could under the same terms call any grouping of sub atomic particles a person and that wouldn't make any sense. If the particles have stopped being a person then how do we define it becomes very important. For instance can the label of person be suspended and then attached again?
For example was Scotty's existence continuous or has the transporter effectively resurrected him in the TNG ep "Relics"?
Another example would be if someones pattern was saved somehow and the person is killed, now say 100 years later someone uses the pattern to reintegrate the person since the matter itself doesn't matter, was the person dead all this time or has his existence been suspended between death and reintegration? Is it the same person for that matter? If so could we then use the transporter to transcend what we know today as death as we know it like some kind of gamer save file?
Death and the transporter is a very complex problem indeed.

[Wyrm]

I single this out, because others have already beaten you enough over your other post, Payback.

And since transporter-copying hiccups are not extremely uncommon (we see several on the shows), it strikes me as odd that the transporter could do this unless its normal mode of operation did the same thing. It's much easier for a machine to fail by doing what it was designed to do "too well" than for it to fail by doing something completely different that it was never designed to do.

Bullshit. Transporter technology is rather widespread in the Trek universe, with a healthy majority of every sentient race having its own version. This would easily amount to millions of transports per day. Yet the number of cloning incidents can be counted on one hand in two (maybe three) hundred years of history. This makes this kind of accident occur one part in >100 billion. That is extremely uncommon. Not practically impossible, but still, extremely uncommon by any definition. This has nothing to do with the normal operation of the device.

This is true.. there are millions of transports each day, but all accidents only happen on the enterprise, ipso facto accidents are rare cos we haven't seen many.

I see the term "confirmation bias" has no meaning for you. The incidents are highlighted because they are unusual. No one wants to see the legal headaches of the transporter technician as he deals with a transport subject who's bickering with himself. If this happens everyday, or even often, how come no one knows how to deal with it when it does arise?

That's not the end of the story. There's a more subtle problem to this cloning phenomenon being a case of the transporter working "too well," and thus being a common occurence. Namely, it would usher in an age of post-scarcity. Think about it: all you have to do is tweak a transporter to always work "too well" and have an infinite copying machine better than any replicator. The Ferengi trading empire and all economies would collapse as material goods and currencies would become worthless. The very existence of economies in ST speaks against the this being a common "works too well" form of malfunction.

====

Wyrm thinks that because it reintegrates the person on the other end that the disintegration and period as a cloud of disassociated sub atomic particles does not meaningfully count as death.

To put a finer point on this, reversible disintegration into a cloud of subatomic particles cannot meaningfully be called death. However, I do find myself agreeing that it isn't exactly life either. It's an in-between state that SapphireFox and I have agreed to called "suspended existence," a phenomenon similar to suspended animation where the subject isn't dead but isn't alive either.

[Luke SW]

Transporters convernt a body into energy and data them beam it to another location to reconstitute.

You do not "die" you are mearly transformed and then transformed back, the riker incident occoured cos the beam hit a energy field that duplicated it, the duplicate beam was redirected back towards the planet and the original made it back to the ship.

From that point we had 2 rikers...although the second one really should have had a goatee...

[Channel72]

Reading over the whole thread is kind of a requirement because you miss posts like mine which clearly show you that consciousness does not terminate during transport. In other words. You do not die. Thanks.

You seem to think this point is devastatingly strong. Yes, the episode appears to show that Barclay is conscious throughout the transport. But what we see on screen doesn't make any sense. It's simply not conceivable that the neural network of a human brain will continue to exhibit the property of consciousness after it is encoded into a sequence of bits stored in a memory buffer. Nor is it conceivable that Barclay's body would continue to exist as depicted in the scene, after it was encoded into a sequence of bits.

But more importantly, your argument assumes that every second of footage we see on screen must be taken absolutely literally, when that is clearly not the case. Consider, for example, various "court-room" episodes such as this one, where we see footage of various inaccurate PoV recollections. If there was a scene depicting Barclay taking LSD, which then showed footage of pink elephants dancing around the Enterprise, I doubt you'd argue we were meant to interpret that footage literally.

Presumably, the footage of Barclay is meant to represent Barclay's PoV during the transport, but it doesn't necessarily mean he was conscious throughout the entire transport, especially considering that the footage doesn't make any sense if taken literally.

[Srelex]

Reading over the whole thread is kind of a requirement because you miss posts like mine which clearly show you that consciousness does not terminate during transport. In other words. You do not die. Thanks.

You seem to think this point is devastatingly strong. Yes, the episode appears to show that Barclay is conscious throughout the transport. But what we see on screen doesn't make any sense. It's simply not conceivable that the neural network of a human brain will continue to exhibit the property of consciousness after it is encoded into a sequence of bits stored in a memory buffer. Nor is it conceivable that Barclay's body would continue to exist as depicted in the scene, after it was encoded into a sequence of bits.

But more importantly, your argument assumes that every second of footage we see on screen must be taken absolutely literally, when that is clearly not the case. Consider, for example, various "court-room" episodes such as this one, where we see footage of various inaccurate PoV recollections. If there was a scene depicting Barclay taking LSD, which then showed footage of pink elephants dancing around the Enterprise, I doubt you'd argue we were meant to interpret that footage literally.

Presumably, the footage of Barclay is meant to represent Barclay's PoV during the transport, but it doesn't necessarily mean he was conscious throughout the entire transport, especially considering that the footage doesn't make any sense if taken literally.

I'm sorry, but unless I'm missing something here, visuals are the highest level of evidence here, are they not? I mean, if it's supposed to be Barclay's POV, it is his POV.

[Kamakazie Sith]

You seem to think this point is devastatingly strong. Yes, the episode appears to show that Barclay is conscious throughout the transport. But what we see on screen doesn't make any sense. It's simply not conceivable that the neural network of a human brain will continue to exhibit the property of consciousness after it is encoded into a sequence of bits stored in a memory buffer. Nor is it conceivable that Barclay's body would continue to exist as depicted in the scene, after it was encoded into a sequence of bits.

It's sci-fi...not actual science. The force is "inconceivable", but it is a part of Star Wars. Would you argue that the force is simply an exaggeration by people who are telling the story of Star Wars and in reality Jedi were simply really good swordsmen?

But more importantly, your argument assumes that every second of footage we see on screen must be taken absolutely literally, when that is clearly not the case. Consider, for example, various "court-room" episodes such as this one, where we see footage of various inaccurate PoV recollections. If there was a scene depicting Barclay taking LSD, which then showed footage of pink elephants dancing around the Enterprise, I doubt you'd argue we were meant to interpret that footage literally.

If there were a scene in which Barclay was having a LSD trip then it could safetly be disgarded without violating canon, but even if Barclay was under the influence or hallucinating in some way during his transport (which it seems he was because of the slugs) that would still require a functioning brain.

Presumably, the footage of Barclay is meant to represent Barclay's PoV during the transport, but it doesn't necessarily mean he was conscious throughout the entire transport, especially considering that the footage doesn't make any sense if taken literally.

Indeed, however that's why I pointed out the slugs constant movement during one of the transport sequences. If it was moving during the whole sequence then it was also conscious.

[Eframepilot]

Some notes: The "pattern buffer" is described in the TNG technical manual as an actual tank underneath the transporter pad. So when they are talking about someone being stored in the pattern buffer and the transporter pattern degrading etc., they literally mean that the person is swirling in the tank underneath the transporter. Also, being dematerialized in the pattern buffer does not necessarily prohibit consciousness or movement; Barclay was able to move and grab the others trapped in the pattern buffer. So even though the person is dematerialized, the person's particles maintain the same connections to each other in a one-to-one mapping of a materialized state... or something.

Finally, there is another instance of a person being conscious in a dematerialized state: a possessed Picard beamed himself off the Enterprise in "Lonely Among Us" as 'pure energy' into a cloud of energy beings and then returned to the Enterprise in the same dematerialized state, actually leaving a P in the bridge's displays as a message on his way back to the pattern buffer. This is, of course, totally insane, but it suggests that whatever the transporter does, it doesn't automatically kill you.

[PayBack]

This is true.. there are millions of transports each day, but all accidents only happen on the enterprise, ipso facto accidents are rare cos we haven't seen many.

I see the term "confirmation bias" has no meaning for you. The incidents are highlighted because they are unusual. No one wants to see the legal headaches of the transporter technician as he deals with a transport subject who's bickering with himself. If this happens everyday, or even often, how come no one knows how to deal with it when it does arise?

No, the incidents were highlighted because they happened on the Enterprise, unless as I said, you're saying they ONLY happen on the enterprise. Otherwise the show would bounce all over the galaxy to worlds and people we don't know... highlighting their rare incident.

Oh, and as for being "beaten up" over my previous post.. the definition has changed a lot in the last year or two. I recall a time where being beaten up included half a page of flaming and abuse.

[PayBack]

...Kamakazie Sith doesn't believe that the transporter kills at all, Simon_Jester and I think that the transporter kills the individual who walks into the transporter but since there is a person on the other end the person as a whole survives, and Wyrm thinks that because it reintegrates the person on the other end that the disintegration and period as a cloud of disassociated sub atomic particles does not meaningfully count as death. That is the beliefs in a nutshell but READ THE THREAD to understand the arguments for those positions.

I'm actually tempted to agree with Wyrm. Wyrm correctly points out that the kind of "death" involved here is trivial when compared to what we think of as "real death" in reality... as I myself had said before him. So I think he has a point: insofar as transporters can be said to kill, "death" becomes a meaningless concept.

Sorry I haven't ready through everything here, but for me, yes they kill. The reason I fear death most is because I like living.. I like experiencing life. If I get teleported I stop experiencing life when I'm disintegrated. Game Over, life for me ends.

What definition of "me" are you using?

And for this kind of discussion... yes, you need to define "me." You cannot leave it as an undefined term while saying "transporters kill me," because there are a lot of reasonable definitions of "me" for which that's nonsensical.

Actually I thought we'd called bullshit on the claim that "A is identical to B so A is B" years ago.

See the very extensive discussion on this issue where we went far beyond the trivial level you explore with this. I question your right to bang your head in frustration with our arguments when you don't know what they are yet.

Are you serious? You don't know what I mean by me?

And I wasn't refering the trivial level I explore with this, I was referring to some time ago where Wong rather vehemently shot down the idea that A is not B just because it's identical to B.

[Wyrm]

No, the incidents were highlighted because they happened on the Enterprise, unless as I said, you're saying they ONLY happen on the enterprise. Otherwise the show would bounce all over the galaxy to worlds and people we don't know... highlighting their rare incident.

Except that's almost precisely what happens, you boob. Only one transport dup incident occured on any ship named Enterprise (Enemy Within). The other occured to Riker when he was serving aboard the Potempkin (Second Chances) — the Enterprise-D had to clean up the mess, but that's as far as that ship's involvement goes.

So we have two transport dups on two different ships, separated by about a century, and with crewmembers constantly changing ships, there's plenty of chances for news of other dups to filter through the grapevine. Again, if dups were more common, they'd know how to handle them both legally and socially.

Are you serious? You don't know what I mean by me?

And I wasn't refering the trivial level I explore with this, I was referring to some time ago where Wong rather vehemently shot down the idea that A is not B just because it's identical to B.

IIRC, Mike pointed out that "A is identical to B" does not imply A = B, which is true. However, that argument doesn't matter because "me" isn't defined by an equality relation, but an equivalence relation — otherwise the definition of "me" as we recognize the term breaks badly. You are not identical to yourself five years ago, yet you still identify that past self as "me". The challenge is to define "me" in such a way that you can say Payback ≍ Payback-minus-5-years without saying that Payback ≍ the-cow-you-ate-5-years-ago, or a plethora of equally silly equivalences.

[Sela]

So I've been reading this thread avidly for a while now - was afraid to post due to necromancy rules - but now that its live again there's something thats been bugging me.

According to all three of the key-debaters here, the transporter functions as sort of a "Cut-and-Paste" operation in sequence. First it disassembles person A into his constituent atoms, storing his 'pattern'. Next person B is re-constituted onto the landing pad. This goes against what I'd originally thought (that the constituent atoms of the person were beamed into the new location) though indeed it does make more sense.

Well the really obvious question becomes this: Why the deletion step? By all rights its a totally useless first step if you aren't harvesting the person's original matter. I mean, in general I can see the need for wanting there not to be 100s of riker-facsimiles walking around; but what about Data? Starfleet has such a hard time with reduplicating Data and here they have a machine that - given an appropriate mix of raw materials - can spit out Data several times an episode! I'm not trying to invoke a no-limits fallacy here or something but remember: Kivas Fajo was able to procure the exact amount and types of raw material of data to make it look like he died in a shuttle crash. Also, its not as though a complete transport requires a depletion of the stored pattern or something. Dr. Crusher once makes a reference to viewing the results from "the most recent" crewmember's transport and doing some vitals comparisons. It could be that the amount of data required for storage of a pattern is inhibitively high and so they only keep as much of a buffer as is absolutely required - but if they've got RESURRECTION technology on hand you'd think that they'd be using it.

Or that some private citizens would want their patterns stored weekly in a backup bank. After all - it takes like 5 seconds to transport.


My point is, *if* transporters destroy, then quite clearly they also create. The federation under improved management *must* exploit this ability if they are to gain superiority over the other warring factions of the Alpha quadrant.

EDIT: Changed Person A to Person B

[Wyrm]

My point is, *if* transporters destroy, then quite clearly they also create. The federation under improved management *must* exploit this ability if they are to gain superiority over the other warring factions of the Alpha quadrant.

Assuming that the transporter is even capable of such. There are several problems with this claim.

• Problem 1: You assume that the "deletion" step is not somehow required. There has never been a transport-related accident (including a transport dup) without the initial dematerialization. The reason why is not that hard to explain. We use X-rays in crystalography because of their short frequencies, which is required to probe the lattice of most crystals. Those are photons of quite high energy, and there's no way around that. To look closer than a basic cell of a crystal, you need probes of even higher energy. That the deletion is required to scan a subject is not that far fetched.
• Problem 2: You assume that the transporter doesn't use the subject's original matter in normal operation, for some strange reason, even though your characterization of the transport process does not forbid such. See my responses to SapphireFox for a treatment, you avid follower of this thread you.
• Problem 3: You assume that the transport pattern is an ordinary stream of data that may be looked at and copied with impunity. However, you're dealing with a bloated quantum system that is not likely able to stand much disturbance/observation without causing it to decohere into a quantum mess — your pattern is not something that can be copied or reliably stored. (As we saw in Relics, we only have a 50% retrieval rate on a sample of two in what amounts to a desperation move.) A subject's gross vitals is probably the limit of the amount of information that can be extracted from an active pattern without scrambling it, and in no way constitutes complete data enabling exact replication of the subject.
• Problem 4: The only two incidents of transporter dups happening can be traced to the transporter interacting with a highly energetic environment. Even then, only one of them can be considered a true duplication — the other had obvious defects in both arrivals. Also, when these incidents occurred, the transport itself was badly misbehaving and could have easily resulted in no arrivals instead of two.

As such there is no justification that the transporter can be used as a "resurrection technology", and that the "Cut-and-Paste" machine can be easily turned into a "Copy-and-Paste-and-Paste-and-ect" machine. Every incident of creation must be coupled to a destruction, and patterns seem to be highly unduplicatable and destroyed upon use, so the subjects' instance numbers are highly conserved. This explains why dups don't happen very often, and why economies still work in the ST galaxy.

[Sela]

Sorry - please don't think i'm totally ignoring this or just skulking off. I'd like to discuss this, understand it, and concede as needed, but don't want to spend the mental energy till my summer break starts and exams are done. I promise I'll get back to you when that time finally rolls around.

[Dooso]

I was wondering what happens to a Force-User if he'd get transported via Star Trek transporters. I've read a previous thread (Effects of a transporter on a Jedi), but came to no satisfying conclusion. Darth Wongs arguments of the transporters working as a person annihilation clone assembly machine don't strike me as correct. I know of the Riker-clone quandry, and can't explain it, but neither would I expect the Federation to willingly ... substitute persons by perfect clones only for convenience sakes. Quite the opposite, actually, the various shows showed different phases in the development of the technology and human teleportation had to wait until it was deemed safe.

So... why the widespread belief of transporters killing transportees?

Do transporters kill?

Well, my knowledge of their exact workings is limited but from what I understand it's some kind of energy beam they use to vaporiz... I mean disassemble you and then use energy to reconstruct you in a different location.

To me, that's killing. I would never use a transporter myself as I believe there is a quality to humans that cannot be reconstructed with mere technology. Call it the soul or essence or what have you but I find the very thought of transporting to be vomit-inducing.

Overall though I guess it's who you ask this question to. Other people probably would like using this technology though I would have to say that the unauthorized use of this technology on a person should be considered murder.

[Atrophy]

I had to register for this topic

As simple as it gets, Startrek transporter technology is inferred to disassembles a person on one end and reassembles them on the other.
Transporters disassemble an object into transmittable energy in the same fashion as the replicator recycles and the holodeck arguably assembles and disassembles its blend of interactive media however the difference begins there. Where holodecks and replicators store hundreds, thousands or even millions of patterns, it takes an entire station to store just three living transportees. It transmits this data to reassemble the energy stream (which is a disassembled you) into you. The 'consciousness' is transmitted in the stream and the body is recreated from the same energy stream, the end result is arguably the original having been rebuilt from the same converted material and data as the original.
If I recall correctly transporter death has been the plot of a couple episodes of the various trek series where digitized and lost transportees have communicated through the computer systems or 'haunted' locations and were later recovered inferring that the consciousness is preserved and in effect nobody actually died.

[Atrophy]

An afterthought.
A force user has the force or connection to it due to 'midichlorians' in their blood if I am correct, this would also be transmitted. If you reject the midichlorian concept and run with a spiritual connection it still transmits. One however could argue that a transporter might not be able to handle the amount of data that represents the enlightened consciousness of a highly trained Jedi causing it to fail and the fact that they could presumably interfere with the ability to get a lock or transport in the first place.

A transporter as a weapon: It has been stated many times that they can simply beam a pattern scattered into space.

[Wyrm]

Do transporters kill?

Well, my knowledge of their exact workings is limited but from what I understand it's some kind of energy beam they use to vaporiz... I mean disassemble you and then use energy to reconstruct you in a different location.

To me, that's killing.

Translation: "It's death because I say so." If you had followed the thread like a good little boy, you would have realized that the disassembly can be almost trivially reversed, and is a very important disqualification of transportation as death. Your post does nothing to address this point.

[Dooso]

Do transporters kill?

Well, my knowledge of their exact workings is limited but from what I understand it's some kind of energy beam they use to vaporiz... I mean disassemble you and then use energy to reconstruct you in a different location.

To me, that's killing.

Translation: "It's death because I say so." If you had followed the thread like a good little boy, you would have realized that the disassembly can be almost trivially reversed, and is a very important disqualification of transportation as death. Your post does nothing to address this point.

It's death because that's how I view it. To me, the conversion of matter to energy is pretty much the same as being vaporized except, in this case, the energy is transmitted and reconstructed into matter in a different location.

I would have followed the thread if I had wanted to read other's opinions on the subject and I did glance over them. But since the original post asked us our opinion, I stated it. Am I great at putting my thoughts into words? No. Can I guarantee that you will understand my views? Absolutely not.

I'm not looking to stamp down a final statement as to whether it's death or not. This is just my opinion. Sorry if you have an issue with that.

[Wyrm]

It's death because that's how I view it.

Precisely. "It's death because I say so."

To me, the conversion of matter to energy is pretty much the same as being vaporized except, in this case, the energy is transmitted and reconstructed into matter in a different location.

The process of vaporization is governed by thermodynamics and entropy. The target is heated to the point where it undergoes a phase transition from solid to a gas. Inherent in vaporization is that it's highly irreversible — you might be able to recondense the matter, but the information the matter contained is effectively lost. Furthermore, if vaporization did occur, then when the subject is recondensed there will be an inevidable expulsion of a great deal of heat that will fry anyone closeby, amongst other nastiness.

Transporter deconstruction, on the other hand, is by stark contrast highly reversible. What comes out of the transporter is indistinguishable from the original. You can comfortably stand next to a transportation subject (even if you're almost touching) and not suffer any ill effects.

Other than the fact that in both processes the constituent atoms seem to be unbound, the two processes are very much unalike. It's essentially the difference between taking a wrecking ball to a house, and disassembling that house piece by piece while carefully recording how the house is put together, and then re-erecting the building elsewhere.

I would have followed the thread if I had wanted to read other's opinions on the subject and I did glance over them. But since the original post asked us our opinion, I stated it.

The original post asks for discussion, as he was trying to decide how Jedi powers interact with transportation. It's not simply a call for unqualified opinion.

Am I great at putting my thoughts into words? No. Can I guarantee that you will understand my views? Absolutely not.

Oh, I understand your view, all right. You're basing your judgement on a superficial resemblence of two processes that actually differ in basic, and important, key properties and are thus wholely incomparable.

I'm not looking to stamp down a final statement as to whether it's death or not. This is just my opinion. Sorry if you have an issue with that.

Translation: "I can't defend my view, so I'm going to run away." Your mealy-mouthed "It's only my opinion!" bullshit does not impress, especially since it was quite obvious to anyone even browsing through the thread that it was a full-fledged discussion thread, not a "state your opinion" thread.

[Dooso]

Precisely. "It's death because I say so."

Would you rather I say it's because Obama says so or something?

Other than the fact that in both processes the constituent atoms seem to be unbound, the two processes are very much unalike. It's essentially the difference between taking a wrecking ball to a house, and disassembling that house piece by piece while carefully recording how the house is put together, and then re-erecting the building elsewhere.

So basically it's taking the original and reconstructing it. Similar to a clone? I still wouldn't like the idea of myself dying and a clone taking my place even if it has all my thoughts and memories.

As to the taking the wrecking ball to a house, this is how I see it. I don't know if you ever have a sense of being at home or maybe going into the house where you grew up. But it's kind of like you know the house and it's different characteristics that have developed over time by the original builders and your family as they lived in it. If someone was to take that house down meticulously and move it to a different location and reconstruct it I think it would be different as it would still be a copy of the original.

Now you might say I can't prove any difference between either the house or the transported person but I'm one of those people that believe there is an intangible quality to the human body that cannot be duplicated by technology. Are you going to dismiss this part with one of your not tiresome 'translations'? Wouldn't surprise me.

The original post asks for discussion, as he was trying to decide how Jedi powers interact with transportation. It's not simply a call for unqualified opinion.

Read it again... he asked the why the different beliefs and I put mine here.

So... why the widespread belief of transporters killing transportees?

Besides, who are you to call my opinion unqualified? Do you see me disputing your opinion or calling it unqualified? Is it because you've posted more times than me? If so, good job.

Oh, I understand your view, all right. You're basing your judgement on a superficial resemblence of two processes that actually differ in basic, and important, key properties and are thus wholely incomparable.

Welll, apparently you don't understand it if you won't accept that my point of view differs from yours.

Translation: "I can't defend my view, so I'm going to run away." Your mealy-mouthed "It's only my opinion!" bullshit does not impress, especially since it was quite obvious to anyone even browsing through the thread that it was a full-fledged discussion thread, not a "state your opinion" thread.

Uh huh, try reading what I put above. The OP asked why the different beliefs so I stated mine. Not once does he say 'discussion'. He does mention a different thread but that's about it. As for the discussion point of this being obvious to everyone else; that may be, but I've never really seen things the same way as other people do.

Are you really that bored that you want to keep this up and continue to try insulting me?

[Kamakazie Sith]

Would you rather I say it's because Obama says so or something?

Actually, what is customary around here is that when you make a claim you justify that claim by citing observations.

So basically it's taking the original and reconstructing it. Similar to a clone? I still wouldn't like the idea of myself dying and a clone taking my place even if it has all my thoughts and memories.

What? If you took a house apart piece by piece and put it back together with the same pieces how would that be a clone?

As to the taking the wrecking ball to a house, this is how I see it. I don't know if you ever have a sense of being at home or maybe going into the house where you grew up. But it's kind of like you know the house and it's different characteristics that have developed over time by the original builders and your family as they lived in it. If someone was to take that house down meticulously and move it to a different location and reconstruct it I think it would be different as it would still be a copy of the original.

Why do you think it would be different? Do the pieces somehow change?

Now you might say I can't prove any difference between either the house or the transported person but I'm one of those people that believe there is an intangible quality to the human body that cannot be duplicated by technology. Are you going to dismiss this part with one of your not tiresome 'translations'? Wouldn't surprise me.

Why? What observations or information can you cite that backs up your claim?

Read it again... he asked the why the different beliefs and I put mine here.

That is irrelevant. You're still required to justify your position when engaged.

Besides, who are you to call my opinion unqualified? Do you see me disputing your opinion or calling it unqualified? Is it because you've posted more times than me? If so, good job.

Actually, he explained why your opinion is unqualified. You didn't justify it at all. You simply stated "this is how I feel".

Uh huh, try reading what I put above. The OP asked why the different beliefs so I stated mine. Not once does he say 'discussion'. He does mention a different thread but that's about it. As for the discussion point of this being obvious to everyone else; that may be, but I've never really seen things the same way as other people do.

Are you really that bored that you want to keep this up and continue to try insulting me?

Sorry. It is irrelevant whether or not the OP wants a discussion. Discussion is the idea behind this forum and is there whether you like it or not or want it or not regardless if you are responding to the OP or you are the OP yourself.

[Dooso]

You want to have a discussion on something that is a matter of opinion?...

This is a topic that is determined by your own personal views and philosophy. What 'evidence' can be brought into that?

If discussion is the point of this 'forum' then go ahead and discuss. I stated my opinion on the matter which is all I originally intended to do. Unfortunately I forgot how many people don't like it when someone else's opinion differs from theirs. Basically, I believe that it is murder and I already stated why I believe that. Dismiss my belief if you wish. I'll try not to lose any sleep over your disapproval.

And... just because I feel it's relevant here... here's a quote that has relevance to your 'discussion' in this topic.
"You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

With that, I'm done posting in this thread. Take care.