When a person is beamed up it's not the same person

If you really want to discuss excessive metaphysics, cells in the body die and get replaced many times throughout our lifetime.

So even without beaming you could argue that we are not the same people tenfold from when we are born to our deaths.

Beam that one up, suckas!

 

Let's say the transporter destroys the original and makes a copy.

What if the transporter won't destroy the original? In this case, you have the original and the copy both alive - and no one will be able to say they're the same person.
The only way one maintains the illusion that the person beamed down is the person that materializes on the planet is by destroying the original - by comitting cold blooded murder.


And, since in TNG, during a transport, Riker's original was NOT KILLED - as per regulations - and we ended up with 2 Rikers, we KNOW that during every transport, the person who steps out of the transporter is a copy and the person who stepped in was killed by the butcher who manned the transporter controls, with the complicity of the entire crew.

 

What makes you think that -both- Rikers weren't copies?

 

The mere fact that they were 2 Rikers instead of 1 PROVES that the transporter makes copies of what it 'beams', that it is designed to do exactly this.
Making copies of a human being is exceedigly difficult - if the transporter is not designed specifically for this, it shouldn't be able to do it; at most, it would only manage to create failed genetic experiments, not perfect copies.

And the fact that, normally, only 1 person steps out of the transporter proves that 1 of the two beings that exist during transport is MURDERED.
I'm assuming that only one copy is created - mostly because making more seems redundant, unnecessary for transport.

 

Just as a side note Tos had replicators. The kids with data chips got their ice cream and the police officer got his chicken soup with the same.

 

Murder is killing someone in a illegal fashion, what the transporter does might be perfectly legal.

Not replicator, fabricators. The food comes from bins of basic materials, flows into a machine and is move by small turbo-lifts to the food slot. It non-canon, but it is in The Making Of Star Trek and Roddenberry spoke of it often at conventions.

 

it did seem a little too quick for that. They put the card in and the food came out. How about the 'real' turkey in Charlie X. It might have as well have been a replicators and synthetic turkeys. No?

 

double post

 

Are you serious?
Killing a person in cold blood IS MURDER (no other attributes required), and it's ALWAYS IMORAL!
If there's a law condoning murder, then this law is imoral. And this law doesn't make the murderers any less monstruous!

 

Actual I'm very serious, This comes from a story my father told me. When you go through military basic training, at some point the sergeants sit everyone down and explain that murder is killing someone in an illegal fashion. Since what you will be doing on the battlefield is perfectly legal, it isn't murder. It a philosophical nicety that allows moral men to engage in combat.

Similarly, if I break into your house in the dead of night in order to harm you or take your possessions, you can kill me without warning (coldblood). And it would be completely legal and moral in the eyes of society.

Personal I believe that what completes the transport process is the individual that existed at the begining of the proess, that there would be no death of personality. However, if what materializes in the end is, in fact, a exact copy AND you fully realize this prior to entering the chamber (you've given inform consent), then no, it would not be a legal murder. Debatably it might not even be immoral. Now I would not under those circumstantial allow myself to be transported, others might feel differently.

If you have a philosophic objection to being transported, most likely you would not be a Starfleet member.

 

BTW, in Enemy Within, there was that unusual alien dust on the rocks that could have acounted for the seemingly missing mass required to create two full Kirks. Same with the two Rikers. Where alien stuff or aliens are concerned anything is possible even the impossible.

 

Killing in self-defence isn't immoral simply because you have the right to protect your own life.

As for what your father told you - that just strikes me as brainwashing meant to turn recruits into killing machines by providing them with a flawed justification for their actions:
If your commanding officer orders you to do something - anything at all - doing this is not imoral or wrong simply because it's an order.
Well, the fact that the extermination of a village has the blessing of some general doen't make this atrocity moral. You see, morality can be quite different from law or from what authority dictates.


About the transporter - the Riker episode clearly establishes that the transporter copies one. This means you are the original and have a copy.
Further, the same episode establishes that the transporter operator can bring back from that never never land both the original and the copy - PROVING you and the copy are separate beings with different souls.
But the transporter operator doesn't bring the original - you - back. He kills you; you die on that transporter platform, you atoms scattered across half the quadrant, your consciousness extinguished - and the copy continues living your life. The copy may beleive itself to be you - but it's not.
You DIE - and a new being is born,

 

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

 

By way of LaForge's dialog, the episode clearly establishes that both Rikers are original and that neither are copys. NO, I don't know how that would work, but that is what the episode clearly establishes.

No soldier, sailor, airman or marine is required to follow an illegal order, this is something that is absolutely pounded into their heads, if there is any "brainwashing," that would be it. The American military spends a considerable amount of time explaining to service members what they can and can not do. And what constitutes an illegal order.

 

T'Girl, as per the definition, you can't have two original anything.
You could have an original and an identical copy - that's as close as you can get and that's established in the episode.

Well - what constitutes an 'illegal' order, exaclty?

 

Neither is an "off-shoot" of the other, neither is a copy of the other. They both were rematerialized from a single dematerialized pattern. But as I understand your basic hypothesis, you believe both Rikers to be copies of copies of copies. The original Riker having been murdered decades ago.

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A military order must have a military connection and must not contravene existing law, such as the Constitution, treaties, and statutes. An illegal order as one which orders someone to commit a crime.

The US government decide what a legal and a illegal order is, not some General.

 

The Second Chances dialog is interesting... and they didn't bother trying to use the transporter to correct the dilemma... like it was done at the end of Rascals.

 

The dialogue you quoted proves little. These are people who daily, as a matter of course, kill everyone who uses a transporter. It's normal they wouldn't think of the person who dies as a different person from the new born one; it's normal they would call it 'the same person'.

There's only a problem - there are TWO Rikers - They are definitely NOT the same person!
And the transporter made them - meaning the transporter works by copying people.

So - all orders that contravene the constitution, criminal codes, laws are illegal?
Well, then the vast majority of military orders given and executed throughout history are 'illegal'.

And the US Government is not competent to decide what's moral and what not, just as a general's judgements on this matter are irrelevant. US Government, General - little difference.

 

Kind of like the way Janeway ordered Tuvix separated into Tuvok and Neelix, but in reverse.

Incidentally, the US government decides what is LEGAL for US solders.

 

Yes - Janeway, the dr. Mengele wannabe episode.
How is it that the scenarists always manage to portray the characters as sociopaths when they want to make them look moral and righteos?

What is legal and what is moral can be two very different things - depending on the law in question.