Think about it for a second, guys. The way transporters worked was by literally disassembling every molecule in your body and reassembling an identical copy somewhere else. Sure, your neurons would be reconstructed in the exact same configuration leaving your memory intact, but your previous self is dead. Every time anyone transported in Star Trek, they were dying and an identical copy was being assembled elsewhere. No wonder Bones hated transporting, he understood how this shit worked. This raises a lot of questions as to the nature of consciousness. What does it take for one's "consciousness" to be "killed"? Is there a certain percentage of neurons that have to be replaced in order for one to cease existing in the previous state of consciousness? Every cell in our body is replaced roughly every 10 years, so it's not like our current selves survive forever, but regardless... What if our consciousnesses are actually falling from this plane of existence every millisecond as individual neurons die, and minds are simply modified with identical memories leaving no evidence of change to the individual? Discuss
There was an episode where someone is fully conscious whilst they transport I think
Although you do make a very accurate point in that if we had a teleporter that broke down matter and then put it back together, you would die when it was turned on
DEEP
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Ocx
>>28177476
Great, some other dipshit that has never seen Star Trek parroting that stupid fucking "theory." Watch the episode "Realm of Fear" then eat shit.
>>28177476
You do realize that you "teleport" every time you move, right? There is a minimum possible distance, known as the Planck distance, beyond which distance cannot be subdivided. Xeno's paradox is solved by having a very large but finite number of subdivisions. As you move, each of your particles jumps the quantum gap, teleporting you from place to place.
When a particle "teleports," what actually happens is the original particle ceases to exist, and then an identical particle with the same spin pops into existence somewhere else. A particle with the same properties as another particle is considered to be the same particle. Whether or not it really is the same particle depends on how you interpret the ship of Theseus paradox.
>>28177602
Interesting, though one must then look into the electrochemical makeup of what comprises a person's thoughts. Subatomic theories aside, one must establish whether or not, as you said, the abstract nature of particle movement has any grasp on the chemicals that make up one's consciousness. Are only a portion of the particles in a substance (such as serotonin, for example) enough to disturb neuron communication enough to effectively destroy conscious thought for any real period of time?
>>28177538
>Too stupid to contribute anything to this conversation
>I know! I'll call them deep fedora tippers xDDDDDDDD
>>28178005
Well, it depends on how you define consciousness. I tend to agree with Penrose's model of the quantum brain, that consciousness is a standing probability wave expressed through the quantum superposition of proteins lining the microtubules in the neurons of the brain. One of the more interesting aspects of this model is that it explains why anaesthetics work. We know how they work, but not *how* they work. In fact, is was an anaesthesiologist who initially piqued Penrose's interest. We know that anaesthesia makes a person non-conscious. They're not asleep; they're wide awake but not aware. Penrose theorizes that anaesthetics freeze the proteins into a single eigenstate, collapsing the probability wave of consciousness.
If this is the case, then the brain is more of a radio receiver for consciousness than the seat of consciousness. The brain is merely the way consciousness expresses itself. Indeed, any sufficiently complex stochastic system is conscious if Penrose is right, and certain complex, self-referential systems like the stock market show classic signs of consciousness. Consciousness, then, doesn't actually rely on the physical properties of the particles which make up the brain.
>>28178039
>pretends to be informed on a subject
>says absolutely nothing at all despite paragraphs of electronic signals onscreen
>>28178158
This type of thing really does make me love this field of study. Penrose's suggestions as to the nature of consciousness often convince me that perhaps the Greek philosophers weren't too far off after all with the concept of logos. In regards to the initial question, however, I'm not sure if it can justify the preservation of consciousness over indefinite distance and time, however. Even if, as you said, the physical brain is merely the seat of consciousness, that entity is still being destroyed and recreated elsewhere.
>>28177476
Star Trek was just a bunch of stealing from Star Wars. True story. You know William Schatner spent time with George Lucas and that's how he got most of his ideas for Star Trek.
Also, George Takei is a straight rip off of Luke Skywalker. Skywalker was originally supposed to be asian, but a script castor made a mistake. Why do you think Mark Hamill's acting is so bad?
>>28178562
The real question which should be keeping you up at night is whether anaesthetics kill you. Even when you're asleep, the probability wave which expresses consciousness still exists. But under anaesthesia, if Penrose is correct, consciousness is entirely gone. When your brain awakens, an ENTIRELY NEW PERSON is constructed from the stored, imperfect memories of the person who died. Again, this is a case of the ship of Theseus; what we call "I" is the seeming persistence of self. If that persistence is interrupted, then the "I" no longer exists. and this is the definition of death.
Recently I spent some time in the hospital and explained all this to a nurse one night who had come in to change my IV bag. She stared at me with horror and then said, slowly, "I... don't think I'll be talking about this my other patients."
>>28178628
>because sulu and skywalker have similar characters
>>28177476
Baby's first philosophical thought
>>28177476
>Every cell in our body is replaced roughly every 10 years,
Not true. The neurons in your brain aren't replaced like that.
>>28178760
>Baby
You misspelled "babby," newfriend.
>>28178719
Look in your heart. You know it to be true.
I mean, look at the USS Enterprise. The disc shape--hello Millennium falcon anyone?
>>28178692
I have been under anaesthesia twice and I have to say I felt really fucking weird when I woke up, like in one case I had been asleep for maybe half an hour but it felt like forever. Although this hypothesis is disturbing, if you told me I was actually awakening for the first time I can believe it.
>>28178692
Pretty spoopy stuff. The way I see it (and the way any "woke" person in the ST universe would probably see it too), almost everyone has been anesthetized at least once, and therefore their current consciousness is merely a replica of an original. In this case, "life" has very little meaning, and avoiding further "deaths" (through transporting or surgery) seems futile... go ahead, drug yourself, teleport yourself, we're all dead already desu
>>28178158
Wow anon. Very well put and really interesting stuff there.
You've got a talent for taking complicated ideas and conveying them in a straightforward and succinct way that even a layperson like me could understand. Are you a writer professionally? If not you should definitely consider it.
>>28178786
Every particle in the human body is swapped out roughly every 20 years or so with a different particle through metabolism and cell repair.
>>28177476
Someone could knock you in the head with a baseball bat and you'd become retarded ie your state of consciousness would completely shift. Someone could put a bullet in your brain and end your consciousness. You could be lobotomized and turned into a zombie.
You could have been born with Down's Syndrome. You could developed a malformed brain in the womb.
Consciousness is just biologically stored memory. The same way a computer uses silicon to store memory via technology. DNA is the code that runs your body's program. Fuck up your DNA, such as with radiation, and it falls apart.
You're nothing but a biological automaton.
>>28178829
"Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep." -- Alan Watts
>>28178833
Well that's just it, isn't it. We're pretty much forced to take a utilitarian approach to self and identity and say that to exist is whatever it is we happen to be experiencing, because to what else could the word "exist" apply? This, of course, is the basis of phenomenology, and how it tries to do an end-run around metaphysics -- and how you end up with Husserl writing three-page sentences with multiple nested predicate clauses with no verbs (until the end of the sentence, when there's suddenly a train wreck of 20 verbs, all of which have to be sorted back into inverted order to make sense of all the preceding clauses).
>>28178836
Thank you. I am a professional published writer as it happens. I write mostly Lovecraftian horror and porn, although I studied journalism in college.
>>28178950
Izzat so.
Perhaps, then, you'd care to explain the famous Lorber case, then? The noted neuroscientist, John Lorber, was doing baseline brain scans on his students and discovered one of his students had almost no brain. Cranial pressure had crushed his cerebellum to less than 2% of its original volume, yet he had an IQ of 128 and a degree in mathematics.
I also encourage you to investigate Rupert Sheldrake's work on morphic resonance, and his research into "the sense of being looked at." Sheldrake isn't just some kook, either; he's a respected biologist.
>>28179002
don't get too verbose, captain loquacious.
>>28179094
I do not esteem loquaciousness to be perforce meritorious, yet a certain sesquipedalian predilection is demonstrative of erudition.
>>28178950
Consciousness is mot shifted in trauma victims, but its expressions are. Experiments with fMRI show that people who become vegetables after car crashes are nearly the same, but they cannot express it.
>implying braga didn't make this uncanon
back to TNG noob
>Afraid of anaesthesia now
Th-thanks, internet
>>28178833
What if you'd been using transporters all your life and then discovered one day that the way they actually worked was they made a perfect duplicate of you at the other end, and the original was led away and shot? Would you ever use a transporter again?
>>28180063
Reminds me of some of the themes explored in SOMA. As far as the execution goes, the game could have been better, but the subject matter and themes were quit interesting
>>28177602
Where can I read more about this "teleporting every time you move" idea
