Season 2 of the critically acclaimed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds premiered June 15 (streaming on Paramount+). So today, Short Wave Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber chats with two Trekkie physicists about the science powering the show and why they love the franchise. Astrophysicist Erin Macdonald is the science consultant for Star Trek, and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical physicist and author of the book The Disordered Cosmos. This episode, the trio discusses not only the feasibility of warp drive, global cooperation and representation and how the transporters that beam crew members from the surface of a planet to the ship might be breaking fundamental laws of physics.Questions about the "scientific" underpinnings of other pop culture? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We'd love to hear from you!
In practice, I agree with you. The transporter scans, disintegrates, and reconstructs the thing being transported. But when the thing being transported is reconstructed at a subatomic level it is effectively identical.
I can imagine the society we see in startrek having already worked through the moral and philosophical implications. I would have loved to see that addressed in an episode tho.
Outside of measure of a man-type episodes, I don’t think they’ve ever had a super in-depth discussion on selfhood and the soul as characters see it in universe. , but it seems like materialism is the generally accepted philosophy. Post Enterprise, people who have hangups on the transporters (perhaps more based in dualism) are treated as weirdos.
More evidence for materialism: Q, the godlike being who might be able to tell the difference, treats Golem-Picard the same entity. And last I checked nobody’s going around saying that Thomas Riker and William Boimler are p-zombies.
(I guess Gray Tal is the odd man out, since there was some consciousness that got somehow ceremonially split off before shoving it in a golem. Maybe that’s just trill symbiont weirdness though).
The fact that everyone treats Golem-Picard as True-Picard felt to me like confirmation that, in the ST universe, what makes you you is your mind. Memories, thought patterns, etc… I know it was tv-show hand wavery but the fact that no one mourned the death of their friend, or really ever once questioned the validity of the golem taking his place bothered me a little.
Is one carbon atom the same as another carbon atom, philosophically? Can you keep your identity when all your atoms are replaced by other atoms of the same kind? It’s the ship of Theseus problem
Irrelevant to the transporter as the same matter is moved by the matter stream and reassembled in the same order. This is less asking if the ship of Theseus is the same ship after the hull and the mast were replaced and more asking if my kitchen table is still the same after I took the leaf out, folded the legs in, put it in a truck, moved to a new house, and set it back up
Do you think you have the same skin cells as last week, yesterday, 20 minutes ago?
Do you think the new cells come from the same carbon atoms?
We’re already being disintegrated. It’s just a lot slower with imperfect replication. In fact, one could make the argument that that is a decent argument for life. Although it does include viruses and prions, so maybe not that far.
In practice, I agree with you. The transporter scans, disintegrates, and reconstructs the thing being transported. But when the thing being transported is reconstructed at a subatomic level it is effectively identical.
I can imagine the society we see in startrek having already worked through the moral and philosophical implications. I would have loved to see that addressed in an episode tho.
Outside of measure of a man-type episodes, I don’t think they’ve ever had a super in-depth discussion on selfhood and the soul as characters see it in universe. , but it seems like materialism is the generally accepted philosophy. Post Enterprise, people who have hangups on the transporters (perhaps more based in dualism) are treated as weirdos.
More evidence for materialism: Q, the godlike being who might be able to tell the difference, treats Golem-Picard the same entity. And last I checked nobody’s going around saying that Thomas Riker and William Boimler are p-zombies.
(I guess Gray Tal is the odd man out, since there was some consciousness that got somehow ceremonially split off before shoving it in a golem. Maybe that’s just trill symbiont weirdness though).
The fact that everyone treats Golem-Picard as True-Picard felt to me like confirmation that, in the ST universe, what makes you you is your mind. Memories, thought patterns, etc… I know it was tv-show hand wavery but the fact that no one mourned the death of their friend, or really ever once questioned the validity of the golem taking his place bothered me a little.
Also, M’Benga’s daughter is still the same person, despite being an energy being now, without a physical body.
If my consciousness is continuing, especially into a physical form that looks exactly like myself, what practical difference does it make?
Which is absurd as souls objectively exist in Star Trek and at least two major species objectively have them-- which implies most do.
It’s not just effectively identical, it’s completely identical. The same matter, the same quantum state, the same consciousness.
Is one carbon atom the same as another carbon atom, philosophically? Can you keep your identity when all your atoms are replaced by other atoms of the same kind? It’s the ship of Theseus problem
Irrelevant to the transporter as the same matter is moved by the matter stream and reassembled in the same order. This is less asking if the ship of Theseus is the same ship after the hull and the mast were replaced and more asking if my kitchen table is still the same after I took the leaf out, folded the legs in, put it in a truck, moved to a new house, and set it back up
Do you think you have the same skin cells as last week, yesterday, 20 minutes ago?
Do you think the new cells come from the same carbon atoms?
We’re already being disintegrated. It’s just a lot slower with imperfect replication. In fact, one could make the argument that that is a decent argument for life. Although it does include viruses and prions, so maybe not that far.