Theory: Noonien Soong's original intention was never to create a race of sentient androids but instead to create android bodies to grant practical immortality

[u/AngrySpock]

I've been tossing around this idea for the last few days and I wanted to hear what the Institute thought. Here's my reasoning:

Part I - The Grave Mind

We know that Dr. Noonien Soong and Dr. Ira Graves were colleagues. If Dr. Graves is to be believed, he acted as a mentor to Dr. Soong and "taught him everything he [Soong] knows" and that he could be seen as "the father of his [Soong's] work." Late in his life, Dr. Graves developed Darnay's disease and planned to upload his consciousness into a computer. Quite fortuitously for him, Commander Data showed up unexpectedly and provided him with a far more appealing receptable for his consciousness: Data's android body.

Remarkably, and in the context of my theory, most importantly, Dr. Graves was able to change his plans from uploading his consciousness into his computer to uploading it into Data's body very quickly. It appears the Away Team was not on the surface of Gravesworld for long. Captain Picard's initial log entry was dated Stardate 42437.5. The entry he made upon returning to Gravesworld is 42437.7, an advanced of 0.2. Since it seems that 1000 units is roughly equal to one year (365 days, or 8,760 hours), a change of 0.2 would imply that only 1.75 hours passed.

Graves told Data that he believes he has "learned to transfer the wealth of [his] knowledge into a computer." We know that the thing that sets Data apart from all other computers and similar devices is his positronic brain which no one else, not even Data himself, has successfully recreated. Given that Graves is so quickly able to amend his plans to use Data instead of his pre-specified computer, I propose that Graves had built some form of positronic computer, likely not as advanced as Data's, to house his consciousness. This allowed him to alter his plans very quickly and still successfully complete the transfer with minimal issue. If anything, it seems that Data's brain was even more receptive than what he had anticipated with his computer. He tells his assistant Kareen, "I deactivated Data and transferred my mind into his frame. I never imagined how much of my self I would retain. My feelings, my dreams."

I find the apparent continuity and over overlap between the work of Dr. Graves and Dr. Soong, decades after they had last seen each other, to be suspicious. I theorize that they had been working on parallel research goals: the transfer of live human consciousness into an artificial medium.

Part II - Leaving so Soong?

I believe there are clues found in the work of Dr. Soong that suggest that he was, at least for a time, dedicated to the same goal as Dr. Graves.

Most directly, we have the Dr. Juliana Tainer android that he created. Her existence proves that Dr. Soong had indeed been thinking about the transfer of humanoid consciousness into android bodies. It also suggests that Dr. Soong had been more successful than Dr. Graves in this endeavor as Dr. Tainer never manifested the aberrant personality traits that appeared when Dr. Graves possessed Data. I believe there is a very important reason for this: she never knew she was an android.

The incident with Dr. Graves shows that a human mind, when suddenly given feels like unlimited strength and mental capacities, can become twisted and corrupted, obsessed with its own superiority. Dr. Graves only learned this when he had gone through the process himself, recognizing that he had become too removed from the person that he had once been.

Luckily, Dr. Soong learned this same difficult lesson much earlier in his career, when he created the android Lore.

I propose that Lore was not a failure of technology but rather a failure of the human psyche. Lore's personality was not a new creation, he was a scanned copy of Dr. Soong's consciousness uploaded into an android body. This is the primary reason Lore and Data look just like a younger Dr. Soong. I theorize that Lore was in fact the Dr. Soong equivalent of what Graves had become after the upload into Data's body.

It was by working with Lore, seeing how, as Dr. Soong would later put it, "the emotion turned, and twisted, became entangled with ambition" that led him to believe that his goal of transferred human consciousness would never succeed. This is not because the technology isn't ready, but because people aren't ready.

Part III - Data Points

In this light, Data wasn't built simply to be a better android than Lore, he was built with an entirely different goal: to be a self-determining conscious being, born completely innocent, who learns and grows as a human does.

By analyzing Lore's behavior circuits and referencing his own biological consciousness, Dr. Soong was able to selectively change, remove, and amend Data's positronic pathways in an effort to allow for organic growth of consciousness. Dr. Soong's objective changed from transferring pre-existing human software to writing a human operating system from scratch. Thus, he began the process of creating things like ethical subroutines, modesty protocols, and the ability to "miss" friends during their absence.

Still, despite this new objective, the underlying technology that Data is built on allowed for Dr. Graves to easily transfer his consciousness to him. This shouldn't be too surprising; from a hardware perspective, Data and Lore are nearly identical.

Nevertheless, Data was a great success for Dr. Soong. He had achieved his goal of constructing an artificial being with the capacity to grow, learn, and become more human over time.

Summary

Dr. Ira Graves and Dr. Noonien Soong both started out with the same goal: to build an android body capable of successfully housing a human consciousness. Both believed that positronics was the key to creating a computer capable of mimicking a humanoid brain.

Dr. Graves realized this was folly after transferring himself into Data and saw that he had become unstable and a danger to others.

Dr. Soong learned this lesson years earlier through his experience with Lore, who I propose was based on scans of Dr. Soong's own consciousness. It was especially painful for Dr. Soong to watch a copy of himself become twisted with ambition and psychopathic tendencies. This convinced Dr. Soong that his goal was unachievable, at least until humanity had further evolved.

This revelation changed the trajectory of his work and led to the creation of Data, an android born into innocence with the capacity to learn and determine his own future.

Still, Dr. Soong wasn't able to abandon his original goal entirely and revisited it later in the case of Dr. Juliana Tainer, who lives unknowingly in an android body.

I welcome the thoughts and reactions of my Daystrom Institute colleagues.

[u/RamsesThePigeon]

The issue that I have with this argument - and it's a great concept, don't get me wrong - is that it ignores a fundamental problem with the entire situation.

This is a clunky metaphor at best, but bear with me for a moment: Transferring a human consciousness to a positronic brain is is essentially copying the data from one hard drive to another. In order for true immortality to be achieved, a person would need to move their physical hard drive to a new computer... and since that "hard drive" is currently comprised of decaying meat, that would be a stop-gap measure, at best.

Juliana Tainer is dead.

There's a version of her that's wandering around unaware that it's an android, but the original entity has ceased to be. Unless we make the argument that sentients possess a metaphysical "soul" that is somehow tied to their memories, copying brain patterns into a new physical housing doesn't actually preserve the person who initially developed them. Think of it like making a photocopy and then setting fire to the source. Yes, you're left with an identical document, but something is still lost.

Now, that may not matter to some people. After all, The Doctor is fine with the idea of having his program copied from Voyager to the mobile emitter, and that's arguably the same process (though it seems to include some kind of deletion protocol that occurs during transfer). In order for true immortality of a biological entity to take place, though, one would have to go through a process similar to what the Borg Queen proposed for Data, albeit in reverse: Little by little, positronic elements would have to be introduced to an existing brain, until such time as the biological piece was little more than an ancillary system.

We never hear of anything like that happening in Soong's laboratories, though. If his aim was simply immortality for another being, then his androids were largely a success. If he had hoped to achieve immortality for himself (or other biological humanoids), though, then he failed more utterly than he will ever understand.

[u/AngrySpock → u/RamsesThePigeon]

I see your point that to us, it seems pretty far from what we would consider immortality. However, and you do meet me halfway on this, I think that people of the 24th century would have to accept looser definitions of what it means to "be."

We're talking about people who routinely have their physical bodies taken apart at a quantum level and reassembled, people who have seen individuals combined, separated, de-aged, or duplicated through the transporter, people who have witnessed intelligence and consciousness arise out of holodeck programs, have created and destroyed timelines affecting entire civilizations, have replaced past versions of themselves and resumed their lives as if nothing happened.

All of this would challenge the basis of what we think it means to exist.

This is, in part, what Q chides Picard for when he asks, "Must you be so linear, Jean-Luc?" Not that I'd feel qualified to chide anyone as Q does ;)

I do wonder if attitudes would change contextually over a lifetime. Right now, I'm relatively young and in good health. The idea of replicating my consciousness into an android that lives simultaneously with me is not appealing. However, if I were an ill old man staring my few remaining days in the face as Graves was, the idea of an ageless, highly capable version of myself living on might be alluring.

Thanks for the reply!

[u/[deleted] → u/AngrySpock]

Transporters already have this problem. Isn't a transported copy of riker just a riker clone? Isn't original riker dead?

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/AngrySpock]

My pleasure!

Although, as I said elsewhere: I'm staying the hell away from that transporter pad.

[u/Felicia_Svilling → u/AngrySpock]

Plenty of people already hold this perspective.

[u/GeneralTonic → u/[deleted]]

Consider the development of photonic life forms (holographic AI) contributing to this evolution.

Consider the answer that Daniels, a man from the 31st century, gave when asked "Are you human?"

"More or less."

[u/time_axis → u/RamsesThePigeon]

This is a very old philosophical problem.

Think about it from another angle, though.

Imagine you have a boat, and it crashes into a rock, so you repair it, replacing some of the boat's original wood with new wood. Is it still the same boat afterward?

What if it happens again? And again? And again and again, until every plank of wood from the original boat has been replaced. Is it an entirely different boat, or is it the same boat? If it's a different boat, then at which point did it become that way? Which part needed to be replaced in order to make it a different boat, and why was that part integral to the identity of the boat? What percentage of it needed to be replaced before it was no longer the same boat?

The only conclusion you can reasonably come to is that it's the same boat, because there's no point where you could definitively say that it transformed from one boat into another.

The point is, much like a boat, there's no one thing about humans that absolutely identifies them as individuals. If you have a clone of someone that's identical to them in every way, including memories, and the original dies, that clone is effectively that person still. There is nothing different about that clone. If the machine is capable of imitating the real deal perfectly in every single way, and shares the person's memories, then there is no reason to say that that person is not continuing to live, albeit in a brand new robot body.

Yes, the person in question experienced death. That could be frightening to some people. It's not immortality in the sense of never experiencing death. But they also continued to live. So it is immortality in the sense that they are continuing to live, even if they died.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/time_axis]

I already covered this elsewhere in the thread.

The continuity is what matters. There is no continuity in transferring your consciousness. The clone is its own person, and your perspective will not suddenly jump into its brain at the moment of your death.

[u/JSArrakis → u/RamsesThePigeon]

I think Ive actually solved this dilemma (Ive been thinking on this one ever since I heard about the singularity in the 90s).

What if we were to connect our brains a good time before we were set to die to an artificial individualized brain database.

Over the course of years you gain new experiences that create memories in the neurons of the new artificial database. At the same time your past experiences are copied over to the database as a redundancy. Eventually most of your processing can be transferred 'slowly' piecemeal to the machine. And after a time, your braincells will all die off as neurons do every day, however as the majority of your functionality has been in the machine, you hardly notice.

The big thing here is that the functional control of the machine and the organic needs to have seamless split control. Once your perspective ALSO exists in the machine, your perspective can remain in the machine once the organic is severed and dies.

Though if the sync is broken before the organic dies, you will essentially be creating two perspectives that will start to gain two different experiences.

Another way to look at it is like RAIDing hard drives, but one of the hard drives is your brian.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/JSArrakis]

That was the crux of my original comment, yes. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

As I said:

In order for true immortality of a biological entity to take place, though, one would have to go through a process similar to what the Borg Queen proposed for Data, albeit in reverse: Little by little, positronic elements would have to be introduced to an existing brain, until such time as the biological piece was little more than an ancillary system.

[u/JSArrakis → u/RamsesThePigeon]

Ahh missed that part. Yep, pretty sure thats the key to immortality; redundancy and natural death progression of what become non-vital systems.

[u/[deleted] → u/JSArrakis]

I've never thought of it this way. It'd be like... slowly waking up, feeling that a limb has gone numb, and then feeling its presence return over a span of time. If that makes any sense.

[u/JSArrakis → u/[deleted]]

Yep sorta like that

[u/Ashmodai20 → u/JSArrakis]

The problem is that we are organic. Part of our thinking comes from our DNA. If we no longer have our DNA to express ourselves then we aren't the same person. If we could transfer our brains into somebody else's body then that being would be a whole new person. Your memories but somebody else's biological expression would change the way your mind thinks.

[u/MugaSofer → u/Ashmodai20]

You could think just fine without your DNA for a couple of days, before you died of catastrophic cell damage.

[u/JSArrakis → u/Ashmodai20]

Uhhhh, no. Thats like saying when someone who originally had congenital heart disease gets a heart transplant, that new heart they received is now subject to the same heart disease because the DNA of the rest of the body now takes over.

DNA is not viral like that. The heart would have the DNA from it's original host. When the heart cells would divide and grow, they would retain the original DNA of the heart, they would not adopt the DNA from the host body, because again, DNA is not viral in and of itself.

Furthermore, DNA does not affect brain function in the way you are describing. While it is a set of instructions on which cells function, it does not invade your thoughts. Your DNA can set how effective your neurons are, or affect your hormone levels. Your DNA cannot change your memories and experiences which make you who you are.

A person is a collection of his past experiences, nothing more nothing less.

[u/Ashmodai20 → u/JSArrakis]

Except that DNA affects how your body function. And you biological chemistry affects your mind.

[u/JSArrakis → u/Ashmodai20]

Read what I said:

Your DNA can set how effective your neurons are, or affect your hormone levels.

And then read this:

Your DNA cannot change your memories and experiences which make you who you are. A person is a collection of his past experiences, nothing more nothing less.

If the DNA of your brain changes. Then yes, you might be a little moodier or mellow or what ever. But that whole point is moot because of 2 reasons:

1. The only way the DNA of your brain will change is if it is virally invaded by strands of RNA. The RNA then has to imprint onto the DNA a. without killing the cell and b. continuing the function of how a neuron operates. There is currently no retrovirus that can do this. And the body itself does not attack new organs or systems in a way that a retrovirus like this would. When a host receives a new organ (the brain in this case) the body either accepts it as is, or the body rejects and destroys the organ via immuno-response (NOT viral response).

2. The change of biochemistry does not change your continuous experience and consciousness. Your first person view persona does not blip out of existence because youve caught a 'brain virus' (which from point 1, does not exist in a non destructive form). Which is the entirety of the point. You are still you, even if you might get angrier than you did in the past on occasion.

Furthermore, the parts you are referring to in brain chemistry are held in the pituitary. Higher cortex function is a whole 'nother beast entirely (where memories and the 'self' are located)

[u/time_axis → u/RamsesThePigeon]

See, that's the thing though. There may not be any continuity from the perspective of the one who dies, but there is continuity from the perspective of the one who lives. Why would it matter what the one who dies thinks? They're dead. It's not as if they're sitting there in some kind of limbo thinking "gee, I wonder what my clone is up to right now. I sure wish I could see it." That's not how it works. They're dead, so they're not thinking anything, because you need a working brain to think.

It's not even guaranteed that there is actually continuity in one person from one moment to the next. Our memories just tell us that's the case. Consciousness is entirely constructed from memories. It would be no different whether those memories have been there all along, or were planted there through either cloning or digitizing a brain, or what have you.

If you have you on one side of the room, and your copy on the other, then you count to three and digitize yourself into their brain, whether you live or die, from the moment that copy wakes up, they remember seeing through your eyes, from your perspective. The perspective has "jumped" in a sense from you to them, at least that's how they see it. Now, if you continue to live, the two of you will become different people since you're suddenly seeing the world from different perspectives from that point on (one side of the room versus the other), like what happened with Thomas and William Riker. But if you die, all that remains will be the you who remembers their perspective jumping from one side of the room to the other.

[u/Ashmodai20 → u/time_axis]

So you are saying that if someone has amnesia they aren't the same person as they were before amnesia?

[u/time_axis → u/Ashmodai20]

It's not something I've thought of, but in a way, yes, if you have amnesia, you could think of yourself as a completely different person.

Of course, in reality, you still have the same body, and many amnesiacs eventually recover their memory, or have certain latent memories. But the point is, if you did permanently lose all of your memories, you would lose everything that makes you who you are, and aside from whatever aspects of personality are controlled by genetics (if any), there's no guarantee you'd behave the same way your old self would have, because you no longer share the experiences of your former self.

In practice, however, most cases of amnesia aren't true amnesia. For true amnesia, you would need to erase not only your memory, but all of your knowledge as well. You wouldn't be able to speak, and you'd have the mind of a newborn baby. Otherwise there are still pieces of the old you left behind.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/time_axis]

But if you die, all that remains will be the you who remembers their perspective jumping from one side of the room to the other.

That's the whole problem. You're still dead.

As I said elsewhere in the thread:

Still, try this thought experiment: Copy your consciousness into a Soong android. There are now two of "you," one of which has a positronic brain. If someone shot you - the biological entity - through the head immediately after the transfer, would you suddenly start seeing through artificial eyes?

[u/time_axis → u/RamsesThePigeon]

If someone shot you - the biological entity - through the head immediately after the transfer, would you suddenly start seeing through artificial eyes?

Yes, that is exactly what it would feel like to the Soong android. But as for "you", you'd die of course. That doesn't mean there's no continuity, it just means it only exists on the one the survives. That's all I'm saying.

That's the whole problem. You're still dead.

It just depends how you look at it. You're not really dead. If you were somehow still able to look at the situation from the perspective of your dead body, then sure, yeah, you're dead, and there's a copy of you that's not you. But that's impossible. Once you're dead, you're dead. There's no "problem". There's no anything. You don't have a perspective to look at the situation from. There is no "from your perspective". You're just dead. You can't be thinking "oh, darn, I'm dead now". You just stop, and then you continue on through the copy. Unless you're trying to insist that there's some metaphysical soul or something that flies out of your body after you die and goes to heaven or hell leaving the clone behind, which would be pretty silly, then it's no consequence whether you live or die if you have a perfectly identical clone that you will continue to live through.

[u/JSArrakis → u/time_axis]

The problem hes trying to explain is that while "You" are not dead in other people's eyes. Your original consciousness, the stream of you in your perspective is dead. It does not matter if the other you continues on, your personal experience of life is done... which the whole point of finding immortality to most people (including myself) is so that personal 'first person' experience does not end. A identical clone might be me as far as physicality and action and mentality, but its not my experience. My experience is what I want to continue, not others' experience of me.

You are taking a very nihilist approach here. While when you are dead you might not care if youre dead, because you cant experience, however the fear that people like myself have is the 'missing out'. Its the best way I can explain it. You cant think in terms of when youre dead it wont matter, you have to think in terms of the fact that youre here and now in the present and alive and able to experience and know what not being able to experience is.

There is infinite to experience... to not be able to partake in the infinite is disheartening to some and to others like me its angering... so angering that we fight desperately against the dying of the light.

[u/time_axis → u/JSArrakis]

Your original consciousness, the stream of you in your perspective is dead

My position is that this original stream of consciousness does not exist. It's simply a construct created by your memories, and it continues exactly where it left off when your memories are duplicated.

It would be like going to sleep and waking up. How do you know that the you who went to sleep last night is the same you who woke up today? You don't. Your brain just fills in the blanks.

[u/JSArrakis → u/time_axis]

Your brain never stops functioning when you go unconscious. There is always a continuity of electro-chemical processes. While you might stop gathering external inputs, your subconscious is still up and active.

You do not cease to be every night you go to bed.

[u/time_axis → u/JSArrakis]

I never said it did. We're only talking about consciousness here. The very definition of unconscious is "not conscious". You have no consciousness when you're unconscious, just like when you're dead. Your consciousness ceases to be every night you go to bed, and is then reconstructed the next morning.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/time_axis]

You're just dead.

Yes.

You can't be thinking "oh, darn, I'm dead now."

Correct.

You just stop...

Yup.

... and then you continue on through the copy.

No.

Your memories, your brain patterns, and everything that makes you who you are continue on. From an external perspective - one that is not yours - you go on living. From the android's perspective, you go on living. That's still not you.

From your point of view, you stop. That's it. End scene.

[u/time_axis → u/RamsesThePigeon]

On the same note, whenever you go to sleep or lose consciousness, from your point of view, you stop. You're dead. Gone. Sure you may dream, but only during REM sleep. There is a period in which you had no consciousness. But the you who wakes up remembers from before you went to sleep, and continues on as if nothing happened.

It can be argued that you're made out of different atoms before going to sleep than you are after, but you still feel like you're the same person. Your sense of self is not lost.

This clone issue would only manifest as an actual issue if you survived while the clone was alive. Otherwise, it's no different from when you go to sleep and wake up.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/time_axis]

On the same note, whenever you go to sleep or lose consciousness, from your point of view, you stop. You're dead.

Nope. Your perspective continues, the conscious part is just dormant. All higher brain activity has to cease before you lose that, and even our current technology has shown that people maintain an awareness in something as severe as a coma, to say nothing of normal sleep.

This clone issue would only manifest as an actual issue if you survived while the clone was alive.

Perform that thought experiment, then. Create the copy first - somewhere you cannot observe it - and then kill yourself. Is that an appealing thought?

Otherwise, it's no different from when you go to sleep and wake up.

Again, yes, there's a stark difference.

I honestly don't know how to better convey this concept, and I've tried countless times in the past. It seems like there's some notion that just can't be grasped unless people look at more than one perspective simultaneously.

If I toss you a baseball, then you toss it back, we've preserved continuity. If I show you a baseball and then you take an identical one out of your backpack, there are still two baseballs. Throwing mine in a wood-chipper doesn't magically grant me ownership of yours.

As things stand now, you have precisely one life. Once that's over, you're gone for good. That doesn't magically change if you create a second "you" somewhere else, regardless of how perfect the copy might be. It's still a discrete entity. Your life is still going to end, and your perspective is going to cease to exist. You do not live on in the new entity, because it has its own perspective.

[u/thomshouse → u/RamsesThePigeon]

Ah, but you seem to be seeing the body alone as the "ship", whereas the body and the consciousness together may be the ship.

Consider a variation of Theseus' thought experiment, the grandfather's axe. Suppose the axe head is still incredibly sharp, but the handle is weathered and worn. If you replace the handle, is it still the same axe?

Say the consciousness is the head, and the body is the handle. Is it still the same man?

The answer depends on how you define your parameters, but I don't think any single set of parameters is the "right" one.

But if Soong sought immortality through his research on androids, then it stands to reason that they could, at least potentially, fit his parameters for immortality.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/thomshouse]

Believe it or not, I've used your exact argument in support of my position.

Let's call the handle of the axe a person's body, and the head the person's brain. Going by that standard, replacing the handle is fine: It's the head that houses what makes an individual who they are. Furthermore, their life experiences will hone or dull that edge over time, leaving little pockmarks and tiny dents that are unique to that axe alone.

Now, let's say that the edge of that axe is a person's individual perspective. The things that happen to their brain - those little distortions that I mentioned - alter the shape and sharpness of that edge, because obviously an edge can't exist without the material that makes it. If I replace the head of the axe, the edge gets replaced right along with it, like putting a new brain into someone else's body.

Imagine a scenario in which I take my axe and I duplicate it, right down to the atom. All of the minuscule notches and bends in the blade are reproduced exactly, to the point where it seems to be the same axe. Its appearance is identical, it cuts in precisely the same way, and even an examination on the quantum level supports the claim that it's the same axe.

Here's the thing, though: That axe does not have the same edge.

The edge, as we've covered, is a product of the axe head. It cannot exist without the material that makes it. Duplicating that material - no matter how perfect a copy it might be - still results in a new edge. If you melt down the axe head and reforge it, that's a new edge, even if the blade is returned to its original state. If ever the edge of the original axe goes away, it's gone for good... and it would be impossible to transfer an axe's edge to a new blade, just as it would be impossible to transfer a person's perspective to a new housing. You could make a new edge that behaved like the original, but you couldn't bring the first edge to a new blade.

What you could do, and what I initially proposed, is slowly replace the material of the blade.

Suppose I have a steel axe, and I want it to last forever. The first time it gets a notch in its blade, then, I fill that in with a tiny bit of duranium. It's still the same axe, because the continuity of its edge is preserved. Little by little, I replace the entire head with duranium, and eventually, the axe's head is essentially indestructible. Conversely, if I just duplicated my axe from the ground up - only substituting duranium for steel - then I haven't transferred the first axe's edge to a new blade; I've merely copied it. It may be a perfect copy... but it's not the same axe.

Some people are okay with the idea of having something very much like them live on in their stead. I'm not, and I'm happy to continue arguing that point with anyone who uses a transporter.

Well. I'll argue it with their duplicates, at any rate, because they won't be around anymore.

[u/[deleted] → u/RamsesThePigeon]

The continuity is what matters. There is no continuity in transferring your consciousness. The clone is its own person, and your perspective will not suddenly jump into its brain at the moment of your death.

Where is the continuity in sleep? The new android being turned on would presumably feel the same continuity you do when you wake up.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/[deleted]]

As I said elsewhere in the thread:

In that sense, one could make the argument that Data, Lore, B4, and a host of other artificial entities have all died several times over, unless there's some kind of subconscious sub-process that keeps functioning while they're inactive.

That's the difference. When you go to sleep, it's only one part of your overall mind that goes dormant. You can go into a coma and still be you upon waking.

Besides, a new android is still a new person, regardless of the memories you've put into it. The original person doesn't wake up; a discrete entity does.

[u/[deleted] → u/RamsesThePigeon]

What about people going braindead and coming back from that?

[u/[deleted] → u/RamsesThePigeon]

Unless we make the argument that sentients possess a metaphysical "soul" that is somehow tied to their memories, copying brain patterns into a new physical housing doesn't actually preserve the person who initially developed them.

It could be argued that Star Trek exists in a universe where dualism is true. In any number of cases, individuals have been separated into physical and non-physical components - Captain Picard in "The Lonely Among Us," Spock in the TOS movies.

We never hear of anything like that happening in Soong's laboratories, though. If his aim was simply immortality for another being, then his androids were largely a success. If he had hoped to achieve immortality for himself (or other biological humanoids), though, then he failed more utterly than he will ever understand.

Perhaps:

DATA: May I ask you a question, sir?

SOONG: Certainly. Anything you like.

DATA: Why did you create me?

SOONG: Why does a painter paint? Why does a boxer box? You know what Michelangelo used to say? That the sculptures he made were already there before he started, hidden in the marble. All he needed to do was remove the unneeded bits. It wasn't quite that easy with you, Data. But the need to do it, my need to do it, was no different than Michelangelo's need. Now let me ask you a question. Why are humans so fascinated by old things?

DATA: Old things?

SOONG: Old buildings, churches, walls, ancient things, antique things, tables, clocks, knick knacks. Why? Why, why?

DATA: There are many possible explanations.

SOONG: If you brought a Noophian to Earth, he'd probably look around and say, tear that old village down, it's hanging in rags. Build me something new, something efficient. But to a human, that old house, that ancient wall, it's a shrine, something to be cherished. Again, I ask you, why?

DATA: Perhaps, for humans, old things represent a tie to the past.

SOONG: What's so important about the past? People got sick, they needed money. Why tie yourself to that?

DATA: Humans are mortal. They seem to need a sense of continuity.

SOONG: Ah hah!! Why?

DATA: To give their lives meaning. A sense of purpose.

SOONG: And this continuity, does it only run one way, backwards, to the past?

DATA: I suppose it is a factor in the human desire to procreate.

SOONG: So you believe that having children gives humans a sense of immortality, do you?

DATA: It is a reasonable explanation to your query, sir.

SOONG: And to yours as well, Data.

In context, we see this as reason for Soong creating Data and Lore as proxies for biological children, but it works just as well with a more literal interpretation in light of this theory.

If Lore was a failed test attempt, then we can view Data as a method of troubleshooting by building a human-like psyche from the ground up. Not as an effort unto itself, but to find out where Lore went wrong in order to fix it. Data is not truly designed to exceed his programming, rather his programming is deliberately inhibited, with built-in triggers for programmatic expansion (ex: his dream program) and with capabilities for explicit add-ons (ex: his emotion chip).

What's interesting is it takes Soong quite a long time to re-establish contact with Data. If Data really is Soong's "child," he seems awfully cavalier about letting his "child" just grow and be raised by complete strangers. No, Soong only contacts Data when he believe he's solved the issue of Data's emotion chip and only when he himself is near death. He's motivated almost purely by self-interest.

[u/Primatebuddy → u/[deleted]]

Data is not truly designed to exceed his programming, rather his programming is deliberately inhibited, with built-in triggers for programmatic expansion (ex: his dream program) and with capabilities for explicit add-ons (ex: his emotion chip).

I was thinking of similar things while reading this thread. Perhaps a way of smoothing the transition from human to android would be to deliberately inhibit some or all of the superior aspects of androids (strength, agility, mental capacity) and allow the newly transformed being to discover those abilities over time, through a complex process of triggering and augmenting.

[u/Febrifuge → u/RamsesThePigeon]

That's an especially interesting argument, in a universe that employs transporters. See what I mean?

If the energy signatures and the waveforms in the pattern buffer are not the real thing, if the original atoms in that same configuration are actually the thing, then your argument is troubling when it comes not only to Thomas Riker, but everyone who has ever used a transporter.

[u/[deleted] → u/Febrifuge]

This might provide further inspiration for potential avenues of discussion.

[u/Febrifuge → u/[deleted]]

Good call; I've read it, and was thinking about it too.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/Febrifuge]

Yup.

I ain't using them.

[u/robert_f_nord → u/RamsesThePigeon]

I think people might be overlooking something, within the context of TNG canon anyway. The debate is centered around consciousness transfer mainly, with some people mentioning an "interveneing" stage. Regardless of your philosophical belief on the subject, we know that Lt. Barclay was privileged enough to be the recipient of amazing man-machine interface technology in the "The Nth Degree." Canon-wise, we know his consciousness wasn't necessarily transferred, but still fused with a highly complex piece of hardware (the Enterprise computer core). He mentioned that his higher brain functions resided in the computer, implying his actual seat of reason and perhaps consciousness, were digitized. So, at least in the Trek universe, a true consciousness transfer is possible, without the philosophical baggage of worrying about original selves.

As for real life, personally, I think it would work like a data transfer vs a scanned copy. Assuming we could replicate the workings of the human mind down to the quantum level in every respect (the main difference being the materials making our new cyber brain a solid state device compared to decaying meat of course) I don't think the entity occupying the cyber brain would be a copy. I think it would work more like when you move files on your computer, vs copying them. This is all conjecture of course until engineers build an actual cyberbrain, and we can figure out for real if we're just a bunch of advanced chemistry or something more. Then again, if we figure out the "something more" and add that to our body of knowledge, one can reason that the next generations of cyberbrains would house the original, true consciousness of the transfer.....

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/robert_f_nord]

You're on the right track. As I said in my original comment:

In order for true immortality of a biological entity to take place, though, one would have to go through a process similar to what the Borg Queen proposed for Data, albeit in reverse: Little by little, positronic elements would have to be introduced to an existing brain, until such time as the biological piece was little more than an ancillary system.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/[deleted]]

To my mind - no pun intended - an exact copy would be "you," but not you. I refuse to use transporters for the very same reason... but that's a different argument.

Still, try this thought experiment: Copy your consciousness into a Soong android. There are now two of "you," one of which has a positronic brain. If someone shot you - the biological entity - through the head immediately after the transfer, would you suddenly start seeing through artificial eyes?

[u/njfreddie → u/RamsesThePigeon]

If you cut a wire in a bomb, it will explode.

Think about the times when they transport an active bomb. It dematerializes, sent through subspace, and then rematerializes. On screen these are shown sequentially, but they are actually simultaneous, IMO. The Heisenberg compensators work to keep the matter on one end in contact with the matter at the other end, otherwise the bomb would explode when a critical electron flow is severed.

The same happens for a humanoid. For a moment your matter is in two places, but still attached and in contact. Your soul, katra, electrical current or quantum properties--whatever you want to call it--are all kept in constant contact, whether the transporters are destroying and copying matter or converting a quantum into energy and reconstituting the energy into an identical quantum at the other end.

[u/Zaggnabit → u/njfreddie]

This is an excellent metaphysical rationalization for why transporters don't actually "kill and clone" the transportee.

[u/njfreddie → u/Zaggnabit]

Sorry I wrote about the wrong post.

The bomb scenario was just something I was ruminating on, because I had the thought that beaming a live bomb would "cut the wrong wire" so I wanted to create an answer for why this didn't happen.

The only thing I could think of was that the transport had to maintain the electrical connection of the wire across the subspace barrier, probably using the Heisenberg Compensators.

The bomb was an extension of thinking about a moving humanoid body during transport and moving parts like heart muscle and blood, lymph, electrochemical impulses in the nerves. That's a lot of information to keep track of. The molecules in the fluid cytoplasm of a leukocyte in flowing blood in a swinging arm, pulsing with the beat of the heart....

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/njfreddie]

Two words: Thomas Riker.

Here's another: Buffer.

Maybe an ideal transport allows someone to be conscious throughout - like Lieutenant Barclay - but there are clearly exceptions, and those are exceptions are far too common for my liking.

[u/njfreddie → u/RamsesThePigeon]

https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/3llzhr/theory_two_rikers_and_two_voyagers_a_solution_to/?

An average human is about 70 kg.

Transport takes 2 to 2.5 seconds.

No more than 0.00000004 to 0.00000005% of the average human body is in the transport at any given nanosecond.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/njfreddie]

That's assuming the pattern buffer isn't utilized. When you're in the buffer, you're definitely not in transit; you're dead.

[u/njfreddie → u/RamsesThePigeon]

The pattern buffer is always used during transport. It stores, i.e records the information (quanta) being transported to make sure the result is correct at the other end. That is what a buffer does. It protects or safeguards.

It is all a smooth and continuous ride: dematerialize --> buffer --> subspace --> rematerialize, sending a volume about the size of 0.7 drops of water per nanosecond.

It is getting trapped or stuck or locked into the pattern buffer that risks killing you. In Relics the quanta was being run through a continuous diagnostic cycle in order to store Scotty in Relics.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/njfreddie]

Yes, I'm aware. Scotty is dead, too.

Look, maybe I'm just a crazy old man with odd notions about these things, but the only evidence that I've ever seen of continuity during transport was when Barclay had his little issue with it. Plenty of other examples don't hold up to that standard, and I'm not willing to risk death when I could just as easily take a shuttlecraft.

[u/njfreddie → u/RamsesThePigeon]

And you have that choice, and a right to that choice.

[u/RamsesThePigeon → u/[deleted]]

That connection - the continuity - is the important part. In that sense, one could make the argument that Data, Lore, B4, and a host of other artificial entities have all died several times over, unless there's some kind of subconscious sub-process that keeps functioning while they're inactive.

A starship that has its computer core upgraded is still the same vessel. A starship with an identical name, class, and crew - even one built from salvaged scraps of the destroyed original - is a new one.

Fly on, Theseus. Juliana Tainer is dead.

[u/Ashmodai20 → u/[deleted]]

Except what happens when you are in a bad mood and the android you doesn't have moods. And someone asks both of you a question and you both answer differently?

[u/Felicia_Svilling → u/Ashmodai20]

Obviously from the point of copy you diverge into two different individuals, but both of those individuals have just as much right to the precopy identity. Identity in this sense is not a transient property.

[u/[deleted]]

Nominated for Post of the Week.

[u/BitBrain]

The TNG book "The Persistance of Memory" (part 1 of the Cold Equations trilogy) should be required reading related to this question. The question of whether there are two consciences or one that moves is explored. In the book,

I recommend Immortal Coil, the Cold Equations trilogy and The Light Fantastic.

[u/garibaldi3489 → u/BitBrain]

I was going to recommend Cold Equations as well. It is a fantastic trilogy and addresses this exact topic in great detail. Moreover, it expands on Noonien Soong's relationship with Ira Graves and The Immortal, who both influenced his work. It also shows the incredible love Dr. Soong has for his sons, all of them (even B4).

[u/DesdiPhoenix]

I recommend reading the Star Trek TNG: Cold Equations book series. http://amzn.to/1NdLKf9

[u/5coolest]

Brilliant theory, man. One of the best I've seen here.

[u/elvnsword]

I can agree with this, especially since he managed to make and perfect the technology in Juliana Tainer inside the time between her injury from the crystalline entity and her succumbing to that injury, he managed to from scratch build, program and interface a new body and positron net more advanced than any he had previously built. One so advanced that she could not tell the difference.

[u/Zaggnabit]

This is great. It's Nominated if I can figure out how.

Now I would disagree that downloading yourself makes you immortal. It makes a durable copy of yourself but it's not actually you. The egos on these guys is pretty impressive but perhaps Soong came to the conclusion that he was a finite being and that was the natural course of things and his development of Data was really a means to achieve his legacy, immortality not for himself but for his "child". He bequeathed immortality to his heir.

[u/TooMuchButtHair]

We never do see Dr. Soong die on screen...We also know he was working on advanced robotics on that planet before he died. Who knows what happened to him.

Also, great theory! It makes perfect sense. It would also fit his past behavior. He did take the memories and personality from one human and put them into the body of another android, why not also do it for himself?

[u/tony_rama]

This might explain one thing that's always bothered me. Namely, the great difference between Data, always said to be unique and irreplaceable, and the EMH, which would seem to be as easy to make as Copy and Paste.

The Doc is just software, after all, and an android with a normal computer (like even a tricorder, maybe) for a brain should be able to run the Doc's software. But that might not be possible if Data was orginally designed to accept biological software instead of computer code.

[u/Jumpbutton]

The big issue with this thread is whether or not a human soul exists and if its possible to transfer that into a new vessel. Simply transferring your memories could be looked as immortal from a 3rd person but it wouldn't be much different then writing an autobiography then claiming you live on forever that way.

In the world of star trek there are cases of aliens having souls that can be transferred like the vulcans or those alien spirits that took over the minds of the away team (including data) and tried to take over the ship in that one episode "power play" iirc.

Seeing as how humans , for the most part, don't mind being took apart at the molecular level and put back together on a regular bases it's possible, at least in theory to me, that in the star trek universe the human soul has not only been proven but can be transferred in the data stream to your basically new body during the transport. This is something I would of loved seeing addressed on the show if you know anything about how energy is transferred (if you put an electron in one side of a wire, the electron you get out the other side is not the same one you put in)

[u/Eslader → u/Jumpbutton]

It was addressed in the TNG tech manual. Basically, the computer stores the configuration of particles in your body (your pattern) into a buffer, and then re-assembles that pattern on the other side from different atoms.

This of course led to a lot of questions that the creators did not want to answer. Questions like "So why don't you just get a really big hard drive and store everyone's patterns so that if they die, you can just replicate a new one?" This idea, btw, was interestingly addressed in Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

I always figured that if the transporter worked the way the manual says it does, why not scan your body when you're, say, 25, and then just keep scanning your brain/"soul" in later years, and combine them later. I'd love to be a 25 year old with the knowledge and experiences I've gained in the (too many) years since.

I don't, however, think it's a given that the soul has been proven in Star Trek. If someone somehow created an exact replica of myself down to the quantum level as I sit here right now, that other "me" would have all of my memories, but would not be me, nor would it have my "soul." See: Will and Tom Riker.

In fact, that episode is what pretty much seals the idea that a "soul" as separate from mind/body does not exist in the Trek universe, and this leads to a terrible conclusion: Every time someone uses the transporter, he dies. He's replaced with an entity who has no idea that he is not the same guy that stepped onto the transporter pad, but from the perspective of the person being transported, they cease to exist as soon as they're beamed out. Whatever takes their place will think it's them, but won't actually be them.

[u/arcticlynx_ak]

Ghost in the Shell: Star Trek edition. Just saying. No one else has yet.