Surprisingly, our first revisitation of a popular fanboy debate focuses on a question that really wasn’t asked much back in the first nerd generation, to wit: when Scotty beams Kirk down to the surface of a planet, is it really Kirk that arrives, or a copy? And if it’s a copy, then isn’t the original Kirk destroyed? And doesn’t that mean that the first time a person goes through the Transporter, they’ve basically been killed?
No, this particular fanboy debate is a modern one, rather than a classic: but it’s apropos to bring it up now, as we’ve just seen the eight-year-old me engage in the somewhat similar (but much less informed) question of how one breathes while beaming.
Let’s imagine two fans watching an episode of classic Trek and seeing Kirk beam down...
FANBOY FANGIRL
...and another Kirk bites the dust.
What?
What does that make, counting from “The Man Trap” Fifty or more?
I have no idea what that even means.
Kirk just died again. Surely you noticed? Except, of course, that wasn’t the original Kirk; that was Kirk 57 or something.
You want to pick another fight? In the middle of an episode?
No better time.
What are you saying?
I’m saying that every time somebody steps into that thing, they die, and what comes out the other end is someone brand new.
Oh, for gods’ sake...
Prove me wrong.
At least pause the episode first!
Paused! Prove me wrong.
You and I have both had this debate with other people. You’re slipping into the Information Fallacy again.
The what?
Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! The Information Fallacy!
Remind me.
There are two understandings out there in fandom about how the transporter really works.
Only two?
The two main ones! The first one is that the transporter disassembles the particles of your body,
sends them to another location in an annular confinement beam,
and reassembles them exactly as they were.
Got it.
That’s the popular description of the process. But there’s this other idea that the transporter simply scans every particle of the body, assembles the information, sends the information to the target location, and assembles a new version there.
And the scanning process destroys the original. Yes.
That’s what I meant by the “Information Fallacy” version.
Why is it a fallacy?
Because that’s not how Scotty and Geordi and all the other engineers in Starfleet say it works,
for one thing.
Okay.
First, let’s review the process: the person to be transported is scanned, as we were saying, with “molecular imaging scanners”, creating a pattern image of the person; next, they are subatomically deconstructed, and the "matter stream” of resulting particles goes into a buffer...
Okay so far...
Then that “annular confinement beam” is fixed on the destination, the matter stream is pushed into the beam, and the particles collapse back into their original configuration according to the information collected in the imaging scan. Call it the Matter Stream transport.
That was almost perfect. I am in awe.
“Almost”?
You forgot to mention the Heisenberg Compensators.
Not germane to my argument.
Well, we’re going to stop calling it the “Information Fallacy” argument and start calling it the “Information Only” argument.
If you say so.
We have plenty of evidence that the transporter sends information, not matter itself, to the target location.
Enlighten me.
“The Enemy Within”. If the transporter can only re-materialize the matter of which the original person was composed, then where did the extra matter for the extra Kirk come from? Answer me that!
Same goes for the duplicate Riker in “Second Chances.”
Okay.
Also, the Information Only version is far less energy-intensive than the matter-stream thing; moving information from one place to another has a very low energy cost; moving the mass-equivalent of a human body thousands of kilometers in a matter of seconds has a huge energy cost. Why move the entire body when you only really need to move the information?
Well, now we have all kinds of problems.
Such as...?
In any transport, not just “The Enemy Within”, where does the matter to re-assemble the transporting person come from?
I’ll admit that’s never made clear, but we can assume it’s the same basic technology as the replicator.
No, we really can’t; replicators only work within a chamber where the replicated object materializes. We can safely assume there is a store of starter matter that they exploit.
I guess...
But the transporter re-assembles people and objects in the open air, with no receiving chamber. There isn’t any source of matter for them to work with for the re-assembled object or person, if not the original matter of the transported person or object.
We don’t know that!
Of course we know that. If the transporter worked the way you want it to, there would need to be a receiving station for every transport; no open-air “landing” would be possible.
So it’s your position that the Information Only transporter kills you, but the Matter Stream version doesn’t.
I didn’t say that.
I’m lost. What exactly are you saying?
They both kill you.
Okay. How does the Matter Stream transporter kill you?
It disassembles your molecules into their subatomic constituents completely. That’s disintegration, by definition. It’s exactly the same thing, from a physics standpoint, as being hit with a phaser set on Kill, except that your particles don’t dissipate into the air.
Exactly, your particles don’t dissipate into the air! They’re all preserved in the matter stream and perfectly reassembled.
Yes, but in the meantime, you die.
Okay – even stipulating that you are “dead” when beaming, aren’t you brought back to life?
Are you?
It’s your musical, you sing and dance it.
Let’s say you have a laptop...
Okay.
We scan the laptop and get a perfect image of every last physical detail of it, down to the subatomic level.
Okay.
Now – we take it completely apart, and melt down every single component into liquid.
Okay...
Then we recreate every single component necessary for building a laptop
to the exact specifications of the original and assemble all the parts,
according to the instructions provided by the original scan.
What’s your point?
Would anyone in the world say it’s the same laptop? No; they’d say it’s a new laptop, built from the raw materials of the old one.
That’s nitpicking. That’s pure semantics!
Is it?
Yes! No matter how you say it, you get taken apart and put back together, and as long as you’re back together, exactly as you were, that’s all that matters! And you’re built out of your original molecules, which is even more than my version requires!
That part doesn’t help my argument.
What? What does that mean?
I’m telling you your Information Only transporter kills because the result is a copy – and so, in essence, is yours.
It isn’t a copy if the molecules are my original molecules!
Sure it is. The fact that the original molecules are used is philosophically arbitrary:
the preservation of the original molecules, we’ve already established,
isn’t about the integrity of the original object of transport;
it’s a necessity if the transporter is to reassemble it in open air,
with no receiving station or starter matter source.
Now you’re just making shit up.
I’m not! Let’s do one final analogy.
If you insist.
Let’s imagine a Play-Doh version of you.
Seriously?
Let’s do an image scan of Play-Doh you, then smoosh up the Play-Doh into a lopsided ball. Can we agree the Play-Doh is no longer you?
I suppose.
Now, let’s make a new Play-Doh you from our image scan. It’s the same Play-Doh. But is it the original you?
There’s absolutely no difference between the two!
We’re already established that isn’t our criteria. Suppose you had a kid, and they brought you the first Play-Doh sculpture, then smooshed it up and made a second one – what would you say to your kid? You’d say, “You made a new one! How nice!”
This is getting ridiculous.
The whole premise is ridiculous. Transporters are ridiculous. But now, every time you see someone transport, you’ll think Play-Doh.
This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?
Un-pause the episode, Play-Doh Boy...
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