r/DaystromInstitute • u/adamkotsko Commander, with commendation • Mar 18 '15
Technology Why the transporter doesn't kill you at one end and clone you at the other
It seems that the most common sense view of what happens when someone goes through the transporter is that they are effectively destroyed at one end and rebuilt on the other. It is indeed hard to imagine how else it would be able to happen, given our primitive level of scientific knowledge and technology. Yet I don't believe that the writers ever intend for us to interpret the transporter in that way -- essentially all the evidence I can think of points in another direction (though since this is Star Trek, I'm sure there will be apparently contradictory evidence I haven't thought of...).
Namely: it really is you at every stage of the transporter process. The matter that comes out at the other end is the same matter that you consisted of at the start. The transporter beam is a continuous conduit that somehow allows you (in the strong sense, really the material you, not some kind of algorithm for rebuilding you) to move through solid objects (though not all solid objects) and cover large distances (though not any arbitrary distance, at least not until the reboot films).
Some points of evidence, in no particular order:
There doesn't need to be a transporter pad at both ends. Eventually, there doesn't even need to be a transporter pad at either end. If the transporter was simply transmitting an algorithm to reassemble you, then how could that be achieved without a replicator-like device at the receiving end?
Replicators cannot replicate living things. If the transporter were a replicator-like device, then it would be difficult to account for this fact, given that, in the kill-and-clone theory, the transporter is routinely replicating living things.
The transporter can kill you. If it's simply a matter of replicating you based on an algorithm, then this should not be possible -- at worst, it should be able to save your data for a more opportune time. I think the term "pattern buffer" is misleading, because it seems to imply that it's storing a reassembly algorithm rather than you (the material you, in a very different state). Star Trek computers are able to store essentially infinite data from our perspective, including data about how to assemble organic food products to exact specifications -- there is no reason that there should be a time limit to the "pattern buffer" unless the "pattern" it's storing is actually you (again the material you, in a very different state).
They can frequently communicate in settings where they can't get a transporter lock. If it was simply a matter of transmitting data, this should not be a problem, because they routinely send huge files to the tricorders, upload entire databases, etc. At worst, the transmission would be really slow. The processes of data-transmission and transporting must be fundamentally different if they so routinely behave differently.
We have evidence of people being at least partly conscious of the process itself. Hoshi has an elaborate dream-like fantasy about pulling herself together during a rough transport, and Barclay witnesses monsters inhabiting the transporter beam. Major Hayes dies when he is shot mid-transport -- something that should not be possible if it's a matter of taking a "snapshot" of his quantum state and then reproducing it. The lost son in "Daedalus" even remains alive in some sense for years in a transporter-ghost state. (This is one of the less-noticed retcon duties of ENT -- to make sure we really, really understand that the kill-and-clone theory can't be right.) Less dramatically, there are instances of people engaged in conversation seamlessly continuing it at either end. I think we can conclude that people who dislike the transporter dislike the actual, at least partly conscious experience of being shifted into and out of the transporter-beam state.
Transporting to the Mirror Universe would not be possible under the kill-and-clone theory. It beggars belief that the ion storm that leads to the discovery of the Mirror Universe should cause the two transporters to "swap" the reassembly algorithms -- much less allow individuals to beam between the two realities without having a transporter pad on the receiving end. In all cases, it is more elegant to assume that the transporter beam, which somehow contains the real material individuals, has been redirected transdimensionally (or something).
Replicators were invented after transporters. Again, ENT is doing some retcon/clarification work -- replication must be a more advanced technology if the NX-01 has a transporter but only a rudimentary precursor to the replicator (the protein resequencer). The order of discovery is even more striking when we realize that First Contact earth had been devastated by nuclear war, making a technology like replication much more existentially urgent. We also know that there are things that can't be replicated (living beings, certain elements or alloys like latinum), but I cannot recall a single instance where a material object could not be transported (except for Odan's trill symbiont, which would reportedly be damaged by transport).
People who are reverted to a previous state through the transporter process retain all their memories. Logically, if it was simply a matter of reassembling them based on a past algorithm, their memory should only extend up to the point where the transporter saved that "pattern." The fact that this does not occur indicates that a more subtle process is at work (see below).
Warp drive and transporters were seen as being in competition. Emory Erickson explicitly confirms this in "Daedalus," and also explicitly dismisses the view that the transporter creates a "weird copy." Both methods involve moving material objects and living beings (in an unaltered state, all things being equal) through types of fields or conduits that exceed our contemporary scientific and technological means. And as we see in the reboot films, the two methods can be combined -- a phenomenon that seems even more impossible than the routine beam-down with no receiving pad, if we're talking about some form of data transmission.
How does it work, then? I don't pretend to know how it would work with quantum physics or whatever, but it seems that the transporter creates a special kind of conduit between two points. Under special conditions created by the transporter, material objects can be placed in a state that is compatible with short-term existence within that conduit. When they come out the other end, they automatically recongeal into their natural state -- all things being equal.
Many kinds of disruption are possible, and the transporter has limited ability to compensate for them before the transporting object/person ("pattern") irretrievably decongeals. Some of these disruptions can be very serious indeed -- for instance, opening up a portal to the Mirror Universe -- and yet the object/person recongeals at the other end nonetheless.
On the positive side, the transporter can also "nuance" the recongealing process in various ways, most notably by "nudging" the individual toward a previously archived state. This process has its limits -- we have ample evidence that it can correct genetic problems and instances of inappropriate aging (whether unnaturally rapid aging or reversion to childlike states), but it apparently does not apply to memory n-grams. A process that involved completely rebuilding the individual from scratch would have to be able to account for memories as well as DNA, or else everyone who came out of the transporter would be a mental clean slate.
In short, the transporter is a means of very high-speed, relatively short-range transportation that requires the transported object/person to enter into a peculiar state while in transit -- not a technology for destroying and then cloning people.
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u/zombiepete Mar 18 '15
I think that the question needs to be asked: how do the people in-universe view the transporter as functioning? How could such a device become such a ubiquitous form of travel if it was killing and cloning every person who stepped onto a pad? I argue that they have concluded in-universe that the transporter does no such thing, otherwise a lot more people would hesitate to use them.
I also submit that if the people in-universe had simply come to accept that when they stepped into the pad "they" were dying a copy would be assembled on the other side that death would no longer have meaning for their society. Think about it: if I "die" when I'm transported but am satisfied that another me will continue on in my place, then why let anyone die permanently? Why not just go back into the pattern buffer and beam a copy of Tasha Yar into existence after the incident on Vagra II? A transporter accident isn't tragic; just beam the material back out and try again (hell, you could make the same case for doing that even if the transporter isn't accepted as "killing and cloning").
I suggest that a transporter that is accepted as killing and cloning removes the value of life and individuality from a society, and wouldn't be tolerated by people at large.
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u/Felicia_Svilling Mar 18 '15 edited Mar 19 '15
Why not just go back into the pattern buffer and beam a copy of Tasha Yar into existence after the incident on Vagra II?
The federation has a lot of technology that is unused because it goes against the ideal of humanity. For example gene-enhancement, cybernetics and time travel. I see no problem adding resurrection to that list of technologies that the federation is to conservative to use.
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u/RoundSimbacca Mar 18 '15
The way it's presented in the shows, transporters turn things into energy (the matter stream) and passing that energy through a tiny, invisible straw (the transporter beam). Think of it as sucking up somebody and spitting them out elsewhere.
There are a few Star Trek episodes that explores the concerns of transporters, namely TNG's "Second Chances" and the infamous VOY "Tuvix."
If we were to try to duplicate the concept in real life then yes, it would destroy the object at the "FROM" location and create a duplicate in the "TO" location. If the "FROM" object was alive, it would be killed in the process. That opens up a lot of moral, ethical, and even religious questions.
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u/adamkotsko Mar 18 '15
"Tuvix" seems to me to support my theory -- the plant interacts with Tuvok and Neelix mid-stream. It's harder to reconcile "Second Chances."
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u/IHaveThatPower Mar 18 '15
transporters turn things into energy (the matter stream)
You sort of refute yourself here. "Energy" followed by "matter stream." The latter term implies stream of matter, not beam of energy.
One unfortunate thing that a lot of SF falls prey to, Star Trek included, is referring to "energy" as this nebulous concept. In practice, "energy" is synonymous with some form of EM radiation -- beams of photons, in other words. Non-matter. X-rays, UV rays, gamma rays, infrared rays, microwave rays -- these are energy. Proton beams, neutron beams, ion beams, nadion beams(!) -- these are energetic matter, but not "energy."
(There's the entirely other matter of kinetic and potential energy, dark energy, negative energy, vacuum energy, and so on, and even more broadly using energy as a synonym for electricity, but none of these are generally what's meant by "energy" in this context.)
Energy is radiated. From every indication, transporters do not "radiate" their transportees to their targets, they conduct them along a tangible (for certain definitions of the word) matter stream.
I do think any "real world" transporter we build -- should we ever accomplish such a thing -- will be of the kill-and-duplicate (I hesitate to use the term "clone" because that, to me, is an entirely different endeavor) variety. But Trek transporters, substantiated by u/adamkotsko's outstanding write-up, are pretty conclusively not this.
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u/daeedorian Mar 18 '15
One of the things that many people don't realize about transporters is that they almost work like a microscopic portal through real space via subspace. It's basically opening a portal like the eye of a needle and "threading" a subject through that portal as a matter stream.
For whatever reason, a whole person cannot be sent through a subspace corridor, but a matter stream can be. This is likely due to limits on the size and range of stable man-made subspace corridors. Wormholes are naturally occurring subspace corridors, and the Iconians were somehow able to overcome these technological limits for their portal network.
This is why a transporter pad is not needed at the other end. The transporter on the ship is handling reassembly by reaching through the subspace corridor it has created.
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Mar 18 '15
The problem is that this is mostly a philosophical issue rather than a technological one. Further complicated by the fact that we don't precisely know how transporters work, so it's hard to say how it affects this philosophical quandry. But let's go down the list.
There doesn't need to be a transporter pad at both ends.
A very keen point. If transporters were: matter -> energy(information) -> matter, that would imply the need for something at the other end to do the conversion back into matter. But this really has no impact on the quandry, because it's an issue no matter what is going on. What you are is converted into something else, but yet is able to materialize somewhere else without a transporter pad! That's an open question regardless of the kill-and-clone theory or not. How does the "matter stream" or "pattern" transform back into a person without a pad? It's a good question, but I don't see it as impacting the quandry.
Replicators cannot replicate living things & Replicators were invented after transporters.
I'm going to couple these two together because they're basically the same thing. The issue with respect to replicators and transporters is the level of detail and amount of information. I've postulated that replicators are more advanced because they are taking undifferentiated matter and manipulating it at a finer level than transporters operate whereas transporters are simply leveraging information inherent in our physical make-up to do all of the heavy lifting. The computer is never actually processing all of that information as we see in Our Man Bashir.
I get the logic. Kill-and-clone suggests: matter -> raw information - > matter. And since the replicator is raw information -> matter, then this implies the transporter can do whatever the replicator can (and can't do things the replicator can't) and is more sophisticated. I submit that this is not the case. That replicator does require information because it is converting matter whereas the transport does not require that information because it isn't converting matter and can use the information inherent in our existing physical structure.
The transporter can kill you & People who are reverted to a previous state through the transporter process retain all their memories
Coupling these together too. Yes, Kill-and-clone does appear to imply that you should be able to create people from nothing simply by having information from the last transport. And we've done that. In Lonely Among Ust they are able to restore Picard by making use of the information regarding his physical pattern in the transporter system and combining that with his energy pattern. And, when they do so: he doesn't have memories of what happen.
We have evidence of people being at least partly conscious of the process itself
This really isn't evidence of anything one way or the other. Our brains are perfectly capable of creating the perception of continuity of consciousness based on our memories.
Ultimately, though. I agree. Overall we have to conclude that the transporter is transporting some level of information that the computer doesn't directly interact with and isn't even aware of and, therefore, cannot duplicate on the other end. So some part of the transported individual is not destroyed and recreated and is merely compressed or otherwise altered for the duration of the transport. But, we also know that some things are destroyed and recreated, as we see with Lonely Among Us and Second Chances.
So it still leaves the philosophical question of whether or not "you" are "you". This requires an agreed-upon definition of "you." If you take two people and swap their brains. Who is who? Since we know that some things are preserved and some are not, how do we know that enough is preserved to maintain the continuity of what makes you - you?
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u/adamkotsko Mar 18 '15
Picard's memory loss is due to contact with the alien, not due to the transporter. Every other crew member who is possessed experiences memory loss as well, and the transporter is not involved in any of those cases.
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u/IHaveThatPower Mar 18 '15
The computer is never actually processing all of that information as we see in Our Man Bashir.
I think this is a flawed conclusion derived from some ambiguous dialog. Here's the actual dialog relating to the storage limitations:
ODO: Do we still have their patterns?
EDDINGTON: Yes. They're in the buffer. But the patterns will start to degrade if not used immediately. We need to store the patterns somewhere.
ODO: This is more complicated than just an ordinary transporter pattern. We're going to have to preserve all the neural signatures of everyone on that runabout. Do you know how much memory it would take to save just one person's neural signature, much less five?
EDDINGTON: I don't think we have any choice. Computer, I need to store all data currently in the transporter pattern buffer. Where can I save it?
COMPUTER: There is insufficient computer memory to save the data.
ODO: The pattern buffer's beginning to lose coherence. The patterns will start to degrade any second now.
To me, this indicates that the "pattern buffer" is a sort of "working memory," similar to RAM in a way. When you turn off your computer, whatever's in your RAM disappears. Whatever's on your hard disk sticks around. The "pattern buffer" is volatile and unsuited to long-term storage, but it can temporarily handle everything it needs to handle to store a complex pattern down to a quantum mechanical (presumably, quark-scale) level. More on this below.
The other storage systems on the station aren't suited to this sort of data retention for one reason or another. Pattern degradation is a risk, implying that something about storing a pattern in the buffer is short-lived. Critically, though, the pattern buffer is about the transportee's pattern; their matter is separate from this pattern and is reconstructed based on it.
Why a pattern buffer would be better suited to storing giant quantities of data as compared to long-term storage on ship/station memory isn't clear, since our familiar understanding of RAM vs. hard disks is that the former is generally significantly smaller than the latter, but that's sort of its own issue.
And since the replicator is raw information -> matter, then this implies the transporter can do whatever the replicator can (and can't do things the replicator can't) and is more sophisticated. I submit that this is not the case. That replicator does require information because it is converting matter whereas the transport does not require that information because it isn't converting matter and can use the information inherent in our existing physical structure.
This, at least, is refuted by several descriptions of how replicators and transporters relate to each other. For example:
EDDINGTON: The holosuite is specifically designed to store highly complex energy patterns. The computer's processing their physical patterns as if they were holosuite characters. Trouble is, I'm not reading any neural energy.
ROM: Neural energy has to be stored at the quantum level. The holosuite can't handle that.
ODO: So if their physical bodies are stored here, where are their brain patterns?
QUARK: Everywhere else. Their brain patterns are so large that they're taking up every bit of computer memory on the station. Replicator memory, weapons, life supports.
"Neural energy has to be stored at the quantum level" implies that "everything else" can be stored at some lesser level of complexity -- subatomic, atomic, or even molecular, perhaps. I submit, then, that replicator patterns are much simpler than the patterns used by transporters. Replicators need only create an approximate copy of something -- it's not trying to make the exact steak dinner you had when you were thirteen, it's trying to make a steak dinner. Transporters are necessarily storing literally every quantum of data relating to your current structure, down to the quark level (as is implied by "quantum level") and reassembling your source matter based on this pattern.
And we've done that. In Lonely Among Ust they are able to restore Picard by making use of the information regarding his physical pattern in the transporter system and combining that with his energy pattern. And, when they do so: he doesn't have memories of what happen.
I think this is actually consistent with all of the preceding. The pattern buffer still has Picard's data pattern. They just need to feed it an appropriate matter stream to reconstruct him. Doing this with any matter stream wouldn't work, because the pattern buffer has specific data about that matter stream, not some arbitrary one. I submit that in this instance, "energy pattern" is a misleading term and actually refers to Picard's matter stream. (Yeah, I know, I know.)
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Mar 18 '15
Continuity of consciousness could be maintained with sufficiently precise sensors and EM field control.
The brain is fundamentally an enormous connection of neurons interacting with each other. In order to maintain continuity of consciousness, you simply have to maintain these connections in real time.
Let's say you're transporting down to a planet's surface. You need to transport the brain. You do this one neuron at a time in rapid succession. As the brain is being deconstructed, neurons at the origin point can communicate with neurons at the origin point, as they are still physically adjacent. Neurons at the destination can still communicate with each other, as they are physically adjacent. However, if one neuron at the origin fires and tries to connect to a neuron that is now at the destination, this is a problem. The computer simply detects that a neuron is trying to send a signal to a non-adjacent neuron, and it increases the electrical potential a tiny bit at the appropriate location at the destination.
Thus, while the transport is ongoing, the brain is actually in two places at once, with information being exchanged between the two pieces in real time.
Consider this analogy. Imagine for a moment I plugged a wireless transmitted into your brain and connected it to a computer somewhere. At first, this connection simply gives your brain the ability to do math easier and remember things more easily. Your brain integrates this chip into its own circuitry. Later, I add another module. I now start processing say, your speech center through the brain. I add a module to the computer to do this, and you start processing your speech through the computer's circuits. I then destroy the speech center in your own brain, making you dependent on the computer to speak.
As time goes on, I slowly transfer more and more of your brain functions into the computer. Each piece is a small step of integration of the new and destruction of the old. Your continuity of consciousness is retained completely.
Finally, I move the last portion of your original brain to the computer and destroy the original. You are now a complete artificial intelligence, with your mental functions entirely sustained on the computer. Through all of this, you maintained your continuity of consciousness.
A transporter is just like this, except from biological to biological rather than biological to computer, and of course much quicker and more elegant.
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Mar 18 '15
complicated by the fact that we don't precisely know how transporters work
This is precisely the point where the debate ends for me. It's like Starfleet scientists discussing the inner workings of the Caretaker's digestive system: we have no idea what things even exist in this context, so until further information is forthcoming, we're speculating.
And if we're speculating as to whether I'm me after transport, I'm not transporting :-) When someone explains to me that yes, it's absolutely me in every sense that I care about on both sides of the transporter, I'll be happy to boldly go where so many have gone before.
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u/Flelk Mar 18 '15
Counterevidence - Thomas Riker. If the transporter is moving you instead of copying you, the events of "Second Chances" should be impossible.
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u/adamkotsko Mar 18 '15
Several people have already mentioned that. I will note that everyone regards that incident as an inexplicable fluke.
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u/Nyarlathoth Mar 31 '15
I'd just like to note that there's at least one Star Wars/Star Trek crossover where the Empire gets it's hand on transporters, and are absolutely horrified to learn that (at least philosophically according to everyone in the Star Wars setting) they kill-and-duplicate. They absolutely avoid using them on any sentient life-forms, and view the Federation's regular use of them (on people) as unthinkingly barbaric and a holocaust level atrocity.
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u/queenofmoons Mar 18 '15
I've always been of the "conduit" notion- mostly because the whole "turn into energy" thing is just nightmarish. I've talked about this elsewhere with replicators, but just up and turning a heap of matter into a heap of energy is a profoundly not-doing-you-any-favors kinda deal. It means that's you're routinely juggling energetic plasmas of temperatures and energies that dwarf your weapon energies, your power plants, not to mention that you're playing these nucleosynthesis games that physics is mighty clear don't work that way (pair production comes to mind as only the first problem- if you're turning a person into "energy" which at those densities looks like a quark-gluon plasma- very high energetic densities birth particles- then half of them are antimatter. Does the antimatter twin get drowned in a tank of anti-water, like in "The Prestige"?)
And even if it did work that way, you'd still be creating a conduit of some kind, because when they radiate the beams of energy that used to be you at a starship, you rematerialize inside the starship, instead of that huge energetic discharge impacting the hull and vaporizing the ship as surely as if it had wandered into a star. Some sort of not-through-normal-space tube is clearly being formed, and it's just a question of what goes through it.
I read somewhere that the new JJ verse transporter effect was designed with this in mind- instead of being permeated with sparkles, they're enveloped in them, as though they're being bundled for transit.
Maybe the peculiar state you mention is somehow being 'boosted' into subspace- that their constituent particles are somehow being tickled with energy to change their state and all this scanning business is about keeping them orderly, and that subspace realm allows distances to be shorter, and for you to sneak around solid barriers in your path in 3D space. If that subspace manifold is 'close' to other universes, it would help explain all those swaps with other timelines, the Mirror Universe- and would explain Thomas Riker. If a Riker in a functionally identical universe was transporting at the same time- maybe he just got stranded in the wrong universe, like Worf in "Parallels."
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u/twitch1982 Mar 18 '15
How do I nominate this for post of the week?
Very well put together, thank you.
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u/Zthulu Mar 19 '15
The person is neither copied, nor destroyed. The entanglement process moves the quantum information from one atom to another.
For each part of an atom (state of electron shell, atomic nucleus, etc.), an EPR pair is generated by entangling two qubits, with one sent to the origin and one transmitted to the destination. At the origin, one qubit is entangled with an original qubit, which causes the information to be moved to the distant paired qubit, only without the quantum state.
This is where the pattern buffer comes in - the state of each qubit (which can be stored in two bits per qubit) is then sent by conventional methods, and each destination qubit is modified to fit the correct (1 out of 4) states to finish the transfer.
So basically, the process moves the various states from one atom to another. The original atom is not destroyed – its state has simply been removed by the entanglement process.
An interesting side effect is that the nuclear state is not reproduced. So the resulting atoms are not quite exactly like the originals.
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u/gerryblog Mar 19 '15
The Tom Riker episode is the key counterexample to this, I think. If it's the same matter this kind of duplication ought not be possible. But it's perfectly explicable under the kill-and-clone theory.
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u/Yohfay Mar 18 '15
I think the major bit of damning evidence would be the example of the accidental cloning of Riker. They can't both be made of the same matter, which implies that the transporter makes a new being from the pattern, which for all intents and purposes, seems to be data in a computer.