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But is it still you on the other side, or is it a copy?
There’s another, more famous version of the paintbrush example: a thought experiment known as the Ship of Theseus. Theseus wants to keep his ship in tip-top shape, so whenever a board rots, he replaces it with a new one and keeps doing so until none of the original planks remain. Is it still the same ship?
But is it still you on the other side, or is it a copy?
If the latter, does that mean the transporter is a suicide box?
To be clear, our purpose isn’t to get into the nitty-gritty of the science of the transporter. After all, if we could figure out exactly how a transporter works, we could build one. Instead we’ll touch on it only when the science becomes relevant, but—as was the case in our discussion of time travel in Trek—we’ll focus mostly on the transporter’s effects. And those effects have some interesting consequences. After reviewing the evidence, in fact, there might even be some hope that transport isn’t a death sentence and that “beam me up, Scotty” were not Kirk’s famous last words. (Kirk never said those exact words on the show, of course, but you get the idea).
Full Article: 3 pages, 10-15 minutes to read maybe. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/is-beaming-down-in-star-trek-a-death-sentence/
#ScienceFiction #SciTech #StarTrek #Transporter