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 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-09 05:38pm 

I think you mean "prosecution". You'll find that absence of evidence is no bar to persecution, and oft-times seems mandatory

However, this is all a philosophical argument. From the "continuity of life" view, a person stops living, therefore they died. From the "Black Box" view, a person goes in, same person walks out. I bet I know which point a view a society with transporters would take.

Dr McCoy's dislike of transporters is perfectly adequately explained by their inherent unreliability. How often did those damn things malfunction?

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-09 05:58pm 

Quite often. The thing is, those problems are a lot of the time what the series' focused on and often happened under unusual circumstances.
We simply never get to see the countless times the transporter functioned flawlessly in everyday situations and even from what we see the thing seems to be reasonably reliable under ordinary circumstances (compare the number of times the transporter malfunctioned/couldn't be used safely because of technobabble to the times it was used without a hitch).

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-09 06:13pm 

Conceded, but even once is enough for a few outlier people to decide "I don't want my damned atoms scattered all over the damned cosmos!"

And anyway, Darth Tedious and others, are we seriously using Dr McCoy as a cool, logical, expert opinion?

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 01:07am 

As I said, the real issue lies in whether on not transporters actually kill. You're not alive at the end of it if it's a clone of you that steps off the transporter pad.


It would certainly appear to be the case in ST. For all the social questions the show raised, they never really addressed that one... would have made for an interesting episode.

I don't think McCoy is terribly logical (just ask Spock!), but ethics aren't always completely about logic. And Bones is an expert on ethics. Also, Dr. Pulaski shared the same opinion. I realise her character was based on McCoy's, but I'm using suspended disbelief. The point was that it seems some doctors (who think a lot about ethics) question the transporter. For a contrary engineering-based opinion, refer to Geordi "They're the safest way to travel" LaForge. But as you pointed out, that is the difference between continuity of life and 'Black-Box' views.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 01:17am 

And if the person steps off the transporter pad cannot be distinguished from the one that stepped onto the transporter pad is it a clone or is it still you?

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 02:27am 

What do you mean it "cannot be distinguished"? You are implicitly assuming that arrangement of form is what dictates identity ("cannot be distinguished" implies that they have the same identity). From a continuity point of view, they sure "can be distinguished"- one no longer exists and the other was just created! Not being able to distinguish these two is as someone unable to distinguish a dead body from a baby. The fact that the atoms happen to be, on purpose, reconstituted so that the arrangement of atoms is identical is not relevant to this fact. I think this is what is confusing the debate: people stop at the fact that both bodies look the same. But that is an assumption that identity is defined as arrangement of form, which, as I keep repeating, is not a viable position.

This is not merely a semantics debate. This is about what we mean when we identify units, whatever those units are. It is a fundamental cognitive issue of being able to make basic differences between things. The Ship of Theseus problem is one example of this. But the transporter is nothing like the Ship of Theseus. The analogy is more like if the Ship of Theseus was wrecked by a tornado, then people painstakingly reformed the Ship using the exact same bits that were wrecked, happening to put them in the exact same order. The fact that they put the Ship together in exactly the same way is incidental: they could have made it slightly narrower, or wider, or taller. But the fact remains that it's not the same ship.

If you don't agree with this fundamental premise, then I guess no debate is possible on the issue, and we're going to keep talking past each other. Again, this is a fundamental issue of how we differentiate objects: disagreeing on this means to disagree on the direct interpretation of what we observe.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 09:25am 

You have both of them in front of you. HOW do you tell the difference between them?

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 03:27pm 

If you are one of them, then you would know which one is not you. Knowing that your clone is in the place you wished to get teleported to you may now happily commit suicide. This process should result in the same outcome as getting disintegrated first and being rematerialized later.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 05:40pm 

I also want to add, people here seem to think that people in Star Trek not batting an eye at transporters is somehow evidence that transporters are ethical and not murderous. And yet... it's been established that humans in Star Trek don't bat an eye at genocide or slavery, either, or at the military controlling basically everything, for that matter. So please don't bring up people in Star Trek as your ethical barometer, mmkay? They also seem extremely bad at understanding the logical or ethical consequences of their own technologies/abilities (such as the holodeck or telepathy, to name only those two).

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 05:54pm 

You didn't read anything I wrote, did you? Also see Hamstray's reply.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 08:38pm 

The sole difference between them is one remembers having gone through the transporting process, while the other was just about to. The same thing happens to every human being every night. It's called 'falling asleep'. There's zero physical difference between them. They're atom for atom the same. How do you know the you that wakes up around Thursday noon is the same that went to bed Thursday morning?

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 08:39pm 

Gee Batman, I didn't know that falling asleep disintegrated you into your component atoms.

Again, if you say that's not a "difference," then you are assuming what you are trying to prove, as I already pointed out.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 08:47pm 

Actually, it is not clear. Transporters are bizarre pieces of technology. In this thread the subject was discussed. In one episode we see a first person (Barclay) perspective of the entire transport sequence from start to finish including the perception of movement from creatures caught in the pattern buffer. However, even disregarding that bizarre piece of sci-fi you're still left with a philisophical question. If you're destroyed and then recreated using the same matter then is it you? I say yes.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 08:52pm 

What examples of genocide and slavery are you talking about? In what way does the military "control everything"?

In the end though your opinion on the morality of Star Trek characters is irrelevant to the claim that the transporter kills you. When I say kill I mean no coming back. Or the other claim that it clones you. These claims are not supported by any canon statements.

What you need to demonstrate is that the person being assembled on the other end is not the same that went into the transporter. Good luck.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 08:54pm 

No you haven't. You've blithely assumed. Yeah, people transported get taken apart. The get reassembled using all the original bits too. The transported body is indistinguishable from the one before transportation. The only difference is one remembers having been transported while the other doesn't. Guess what-yesterday me didn't remember waking up today with a headache. Guess it must've been a different person and I'm a clone.

Why don't you go ahead and actually prove transporters kill people, instead of taking it as a given without ever showing they do so.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 08:58pm 

That might not be the reason the idea was initially formed, however, TRR is absolutely correct that this argument is brought up usually when discussing the morality of the Federation. During the ST vs. SW debates it was often brought up by fanatical pro-SW supporters to make themselves feel better about supporting the Empire. I remember one poster using them as an example that the use of transporters in ST was worse than the destruction of Alderaan.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 09:12pm 

So the Wars side has morons too. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise by now.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-10 09:27pm 

Let me ask you to clarify your premise. What is death? At what point is someone dead? My gut feeling is that to qualify the transporter as "killing" someone (and thus making them dead) you must define death in so broad a way as to make it a useless word.

You mention the Ship of Theseus, and I think it's an excellent example.
1.) Say I used near-magical technology to remove live skin precursor cells from your body each night rather than letting you "slough off" your skin. Over the course of 31 days I'd have acquired a full epidermis. . . but it'd still be you in that bed, right?
2.) Say I hacked off your arms and legs, sample them, then sugically re-attach them. Still you, right?
3.) Say I yanked your heart out and gave you a transplant. . . grown from a synthetic clone so it's an allograft. . . still you right?
4.) Say I forced your new heart to stop beating for thirty minutes ala open-heart-surgery and then re-started it. . .still you, right?
5.) Say I now removed your brain to take some fancy 3D holography pictures and microanatomical structural analyses (again with my magic future-tech) then put it back in again. Still you, right?

Have I at any point actually *killed* you? Have you ever died? The old-England definition of death was that you weren't able to fog up a piece of glass by breathing out. . . so by that definition you've died repeatedly. A hundred years ago Step '4' woulda been considered "dead for a half hour". In modern times, cessation of brain function in Step '5' should qualify. And yet at no point are you "dead" in the sense we use the word on a day-to-day basis. As our ability to restore the body from injury increases, our definition of what qualifies as "dead" narrows. At least it has in common parlance in real life. . . and I see no reason why the same shouldn't hold true in science fiction.

If I understand your issue with the transporter, you're saying the person who walks in dies, and the person who walks out is a different, identical, person. But that's just as ludicrous as saying that if you go in for a heart transplant, the person we put under and cause a cease in his heart function "dies", and the person who walks out (with a new heart) is a new, different person.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-11 03:08am 

In my little list, I also forgot murder (Tuvix's murder, at least). Once again, no one batted an eye except the holographic doctor, who was himself treated as little more than garbage even though he was the only qualified doctor on the ship.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-11 03:17am 

The genocide of the Valakians in Dear Doctor (ENT), for one. Not to mention the countless times TNG has flirted with the idea, based solely on the Prime Directive, and no one could come up with anything better than legalistic counter-arguments, which clearly shows a completely oblivious attitude towards ethics and values.



In Star Trek? What does the military NOT control? We see them boss around pretty much every organization they encounter, civilian or not. We've also seen on Homefront (DS9) how ridiculously easy it was for this military organization to basically occupy planet Earth without resistance.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-11 03:23am 

If you seriously believe that utterly disintegrating someone is not killing them, then what can I say? Again, no further discussion is possible on these premises.




No... my whole point is that it would be a good example of ambiguity as regards to identity, but that the transporter is many orders of magnitude beyond it.




Yes, because I believe in the continuity of form as being the self... therefore my position is not affected. The position of arrangement of form, which you may or may not believe in but which more or less represents your position, however, is plunged into paradox.



Again, you are using Ship of Theseus argumentation. As I said, I agree that Ship of Theseus is a good argument for ambiguity... but the transporter is nothing like the Ship of Theseus. It is not a gradual process, nor is it a partial process. It is a process of near-immediate and complete destruction. Again, and I have to repeat myself, if you blow up the Ship of Theseus, and then reconstitute it in a way which happens to match the original Ship (only one option amongst many), you have not brought the Ship back to life. It is not the same Ship.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-11 04:03am 

Sorry, my point about the occupation of Earth was not technically correct. It was the president of the UFP who ordered it, not Starfleet. However, it was shown as being the result of direct pressure from Starfleet.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-11 04:49pm 

The Genocide of the Valakians? They were dying off due to a natural flaw in their genetics. Phlox did have the cure but choosing to let nature take its course is not genocide. Firing on their cities and actively killing them is genocide.



If your "countless" other examples are like the ENT example then I disagree. Do you feel that National Geographic observers are monsters because they allow nature to take its course?



The military does not control civilian organizations. In certain situations, due to law, Starfleet is able to take command. However, they do not naturally control civilian organizations. For example, Dr. Carol Marcus was in charge of the USS Reliant...not the other way around.

Regarding Homefront. It is a result of direct pressure from Starfleet at the command of the elected civilian president during an emergency situation.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-11 07:04pm 

What do you mean, "let nature take its course"? What do you mean? If a doctor had in his possession a cure to administrate for someone's fatal disease, and explicitly refused to give the cure to someone on the basis that we should "let nature take its course," we would call him a murderer. Wouldn't you?




National Geographic observers are not trained doctors with easy access to cures, neither would they have the ability to explain to foreign doctors how to cure diseases.








Thank you for making my point...




That's what I said.

 Post subject: Re: Tranporters, Atomic Level Murder

Posted: 2011-02-11 07:21pm 

Kindly point out to me where it was stated that Kirk actually had the authority to do that please? A mind controlled Chekov instructed by a guy whose information on the Feds was 15 years out of date and likely spotty at best assuming or pretending he did is not the same as it actually being true.

Absolutely not? And neither would the nebulous 'we', by the way. We'd call him a miserable bastard, and a heartless piece of shit, and any other derogatory terms you care to name, and depending on the laws of the society he lives in he could be charged with refusing to render aid on countless accounts, but he would not be a murderer.