My favourite take on this (and my introduction to the transporter problem)
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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Here’s what I don’t get.
Okay. All that is true. Yet they clearly still retain a certain sense of self. The same memories, experiences, personalities and such.
Remember reading about a guy who cloned several generations of cats, all the same stock. Each cat was clearly unique.
Maybe the distinction is that the experiences are basically the same going though it.
In any case. Why can’t they keep generic information on hand and and clone up a fresh body and plant the bits relevant to memory and experience and stuff?
Cloning is very different though. In cloning you aren't exactly copying the neurons and their connections. That means the cloned cat will learn different things, be different, just from that very fact. All it takes is one or two small daily differences in routine as the kitten grows and bam, different personality.
It's the classic struggle of how much is nature (genetics) and how much is nurture.
With teleportation the neutral pathways are copied. It becomes more of a question of what makes you "you". Is there some spirit that gets left behind? Is it the memories that do get copied? Is it merely enough that you believe you're you?
Your question pretty much answers the other. If they were destroying and making a copy at the destination, then there could be 20 Piccards, or they could always bring the dead right back to life at any age they'd want. They could just re-maie a person any time.
Since that never happens, it means they must be converting them into energy or something like that, and then reassembling, and not making a copy
Except, not. Thomas Ryker was a copy, for example.
They only became different people as their experiences changed. (Which started pretty much as they came through the transport.)
Well then they are just making copies, I suppose.
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My question is, what if say, Wolverine went through it.
Would his healing factor overcome the molecule destruction and leave a copy?
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I'm an identical twin none of this scares me. Ive been a duplicate my entire life.
Do you have that intoxicating ditto scent?
(Oof, there's a good chance you're too young to remember that smell, whereas I'm so old I not only huffed it as a child, I ran off dittos for my pupils as an adult)
Edit for the youths: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MdOjjZK0INM
so you were the kid huffing the mimeo too huh
Until the end I thought you were talking about a Pokémon reference I didn't get, and I'm old enough that Pokémon wasn't a thing until I was an adult.
Is there a way to make text indigo on Lemmy? 🤔
The scary part isn't being a duplicate, it's more like if someone killed you and then said "but you have a twin so it's fine"
Thomas Riker wasn't the one at the destination, so he's not the original.
Gotem.
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Given the discussion surrounding this, anyone who’s into gaming should check out Soma; as it tackles a lot of the questions/scenarios in this thread but with robot host instead of clones. Minor spoiler:
Tap for spoiler
Including one of the copies still being there (and conscious) after you transfer to a new “body” and the protagonist freaking out at the implications of this occurring.
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Why can't we accept that the transporter "moves" matter, but warp travel does. I always saw it as similar things at the end of the day.
I get you. I want it to be that too.
But there's a difference. Don't read on if you prefer your version of reality (it's all just made up anyways... to a large extend, at least).
Transporters don't technically "move" matter in the traditional sense. They dematerialize a person or object into an energy pattern, transmit that pattern to a destination, and then rematerialize it using stored molecular data.
Philosophically, this raises questions about continuity of consciousness. Some argue it's more like copying and deleting than moving.
The Warp Drive on the other hand manipulates spacetime. It creates a subspace bubble around the ship, allowing it to travel faster than light by distorting the space ahead and behind it. This means that matter isn't converted or transmitted. It stays intact and is carried through warped space.
So yes, both are “movement” technologies. One is teleportation via disassembly, and the other is locomotion via spacetime manipulation. But they are inherently different.
I will geek out for the rest of my day after this.
Then yes, they're mercifully killing the originals and replacing them with clones.
I wonder if there ever has been someone in the ST universe that didn't want to be teleported due faith or ethics reasons.
They make consciousness transfer via transporter canon in the episode where Picard's consciousness gets lost in a gas cloud for part of the episode due to a transporter accident. Thomas Riker is a replicated clone with a new consciousness created by a freak accident.
It's not like the concept of a soul isn't canonically a thing in Star Trek. It's outside the realm of the federations science, but clearly still a thing the enterprise encounters on multiple occasions.
The dark mountain...
Why is he always smiling?!