I'll confess something here: when the Trek Fanboy Nation rose up as one in the spring of 2020, after the Picard Season One finale (in which the dying Picard’s mind is uploaded into an android “golem”), I was thrilled that almost nobody bought into it.
That’s not Picard! they all shouted into social media, It’s just a copy! The real Picard is dead! Everyone felt cheated.
The thing is – 20 or 30 years ago, even 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have heard that reaction; it would have been taken by faith, as a kind of default position, that the downloaded information from a brain residing in an android constitutes a “transfer” of a person from a meat body to a metal one.
Today, we know enough about brains and computers and AI to know that it isn’t that simple, by a long shot.
Our fanboy and fangirl have just watched the first-season finale of Star Trek: Picard, in which (SPOILER ALERT!!!) the mind of a dying Jean-Luc Picard is downloaded into a synthetic body designed and built by Dr. Alton Soong, the human son of Data’s creator...
FANBOY FANGIRL
Well, that didn’t last long.
What didn’t last long?
Picard. Ten episodes in, and he’s already gone.
What are you talking about? You saw them put his mind in the synthetic body!
That wasn’t Jean-Luc Picard. That was a copy of Jean-Luc Picard.
Of course it was Jean-Luc Picard! The human brain can be completely described as data, and if you capture all of that data, you’ve captured the brain! Jean-Luc Picard is alive and well and living in a new android body.
Your own brain would make for a curious batch of data.
I’ve got you this time! Because Trek itself is full of examples of that principle.
Oh, don’t stop now, you’re on a roll...
In the NextGen episode “The Schizoid Man”, Dr. Ira Graves is dying, and does exactly the same thing – he downloads his consciousness into Data’s positronic brain.
See, now you’ve done it – you've used the ‘c’ word...
‘Consciousness’?
You’re making my point for me. Every version of Trek plays fast and loose with the concept of consciousness. It’s like the writers, across all the different series, were determined to roll out every possible definition and interpretation of ‘consciousness’, no matter how mutually contradictory.
What’s your point?
Not sure how much faith we can put in the understanding of how human minds work demonstrated by those writers.
Example?
The writers of Star Trek, more often than not, treated human consciousness metaphysically, as ‘ghost in the machine’ - like a spirit that can possess one meatsack and conveniently relocate in another. It was probably the least scientific thing about Star Trek.
Name of time that happened!
Sargon and his pals in “Return to Tomorrow”; ‘Redjac’ in “Wolf in the Fold”; Kirk’s body-swap with Janice Lester; the entire concept of the Vulcan katra -
Well, that’s not the same thing!
No, it’s not.
Then what -
I was just screwing with you.
Those were all body-to-body transfers!
Even more impossible...
I’m talking about brain-to-machine – like Uhura wanted to do in “I, Mudd”!
Also not the same thing; Uhura didn’t want her brain downloaded into a machine; she wanted it physically implanted in a machine – like when they removed Spock’s brain in “Spock’s Brain” and put it in a computer on Sigma Draconis VI.
Oh yeah.
Don’t stop now!
All right, “The Ultimate Computer”! Dr. Richard Daystrom built the M-5 computer using his own engrams, the data describing his own brain – and that gave M-5 Daystrom’s own moral conscience!
It did, indeed.
So?
So does that mean M-5 is Richard Daystrom? Or even a copy of Richard Daystrom? Nope; it only gave M-5 a set of cognitive biases that reflected those of Richard Daystrom. AI is doing that already today. Not a download of ‘consciousness’ at all.
Well, then, let’s go back to Picard. Why isn’t the new Picard the real Picard?
First, let’s agree on one thing: the original Jean-Luc Picard is dead...
Yes...
He’s passed on... ceased to be! Expired and gone to meet his maker!
Yes!
He’s kicked the bucket, shuffled off his mortal coil, joined the choir invisible-
Move on!
...so we now have to determine whether the synthetic Picard is in fact the ‘real’ Picard.
Easy-peasy!
Pray tell.
Everyone around the new Picard – and some of them have known him many years! - found him indistinguishable from his original self.
Yes, and I find my laptop picture gallery indistinguishable from its backup in the cloud, but one of them is original and the other is still a copy.
-and where they’re stored makes no difference!
Doesn’t it?
Even though he’s now in a synth body, the downloaded Picard believes himself to be Jean-Luc Picard! That means his consciousness was successfully transferred!
Does it?
Well, how is it not?
Okay, my dedicated young philosopher: follow me closely!
As Picard was dying earlier, they scanned his brain and imaged it completely...
Yes...
So, in the synthetic brain, there are positronic neurons and axons and synapses that are exactly like the originals, configured in exactly the same way...
Yes...
...so all of the synth Picard’s thoughts and cognitive behaviors will be exactly as before, right down to his conviction that “he” is the “real” Jean-Luc Picard.
This is what I’m saying!
Now, my bright young genius; what if the original Picard hadn’t died?
Well?
I’m getting old over here..
But he did die, so -
...so he “transferred” to the new body? Was this a desperation jump? It’s somehow different if the original brain dies? I can’t see how...
I didn’t say that -
Yes, you did, you said his consciousness “transferred”...
I meant-
“I’m Captain Kirrrrrrrrrrk!”
“Climb Mt. Seleya, Jim!”
“Redjac Redjac REDJAC!!!”
Flawless impersonation.
Is the synth Picard the real Picard, or is the original Picard the real Picard?
I-
Let’s make it more interesting: suppose Alton Soong had had six of those synth bodies, not just one, and they’d downloaded Picard’s engrams into all six; which of the six would contain Picard’s “consciousness”?
All six!
All six will believe that they alone are the original Jean-Luc Picard, the real Jean-Luc Picard, but will be faced with the clear evidence of the other five that they are not.
A universe with six Jean-Luc Picards would not be a bad thing.
We agree on that, at least. But there’s one final test...
Okay.
Let’s say it’s you. We copy all of your engrams, all of the data describing your brain, and we download them into an android.
...which is sure to occur someday! The android would then think like me, act like me, be indistinguishable from the original me to you and my friends and family, and actually believe it is me.
Right.
Okay. So?
So, would it be okay for me to then shoot you dead?
What???
Are you so confident that your consciousness, “you”, would be alive and well in the android body that you’d be okay with the original you dying? Because that’s what you’re claiming for Picard.
If I’m going to die, I’d rather have my brain downloaded into an android than not!
I would, too, but not for the same reason, and that’s not what I asked.
The answer, of course, is No; your consciousness is right where it’s always been at the moment of your death, and whatever’s already in the android is something else, despite the resemblance; and when your body and brain die, your consciousness dies, android or no.
You take the fun out of everything.
No, the writers of the episode did. I honestly don’t know if I can watch Fake Picard in season two.
Oh, you’ll watch...
Eat your Cheetos, synth boy...