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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday. We're closing out Star

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Speaker 1: Trek Week with an episode from last year's Star Trek Week.

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Speaker 1: This one originally published 9-11-2025. It is Transporters and Consciousness

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Speaker 1: in Star Trek. This one was a lot of fun

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Speaker 1: to discuss, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And we are back with another Star Trek Week episode

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Speaker 1: here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. We're going to

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Speaker 1: be talking about transporters and consciousness, but I do want

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Speaker 1: to go ahead and get this out there. We are

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Speaker 1: not going to fully explain consciousness, nor are we going

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Speaker 1: to fully explain Star Trek transporters or teleportation in the

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Speaker 1: Star Trek universe. This is a big topic. Yes, yes.

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Speaker 1: So we're basically going to, yeah, we're going to chat

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Speaker 1: about it. We're going to discuss some interesting concepts. We're

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Speaker 1: going to discuss some thought experiments tied into the whole thing,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to reference... some novel uses of teleportation

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Speaker 1: on Star Trek, in Star Trek motion pictures and so forth. But,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're still trying to figure out how consciousness

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Speaker 1: works and actually being able to teleport a living conscious

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Speaker 1: being from point A to point B remains somewhat beyond

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Speaker 1: our grasp and reach as modern humans. I'll also go

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Speaker 1: ahead and add the caveat here that we are not

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Speaker 1: Star Trek experts or Trek's I guess. And as always,

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Speaker 1: invite additional insight and observations from all of our listeners,

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Speaker 1: many of whom have seen far more Star Trek than

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Speaker 1: both of us combined.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, we talked a bit about our individual Star Trek

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Speaker 3: viewing histories in the last episode, which if you haven't

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Speaker 3: heard the other one from earlier this week, go back

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Speaker 3: and check that out, too. That's the one where we

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Speaker 3: talked about the salt vampire featured in the first ever

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Speaker 3: episode of Star Trek and some fascinating analogs in the

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Speaker 3: real world in biology. But yeah, as I mentioned in

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Speaker 3: the last episode, I have always liked Star Trek. I'm

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Speaker 3: not like an anti-Trek person by any means, but I'm

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Speaker 3: just way less exposed to Trek than people might assume.

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Speaker 3: You know, I've seen most of the original cast movies,

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Speaker 3: a handful of episodes of the original series, and mainly...

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Speaker 3: The solid, the first whole season of Star Trek The

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Speaker 3: Next Generation, which people tell me is not the best

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Speaker 3: there ever was.

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Speaker 1: The uniforms are super tight and uncomfortable looking on that season,

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Speaker 1: for sure.

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Speaker 3: I was making a go at watching the entire Next Generation,

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Speaker 3: and the effort petered out. But I know there's a

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Speaker 3: lot of good stuff in there. I never got to.

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Speaker 1: It's probably one of those shows where you really need...

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Speaker 1: a curated list of which episodes to hit along the way, which,

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Speaker 1: which I'm to understand is it's much the same with

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Speaker 1: the X-Files, which as we've discussed in the show, I'm very, um,

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Speaker 1: under familiar with. I've only seen like one or two

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Speaker 1: episodes of that. Okay.

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Speaker 3: So we're the other way around on that. I've seen

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Speaker 3: basically all of the X-Files and yeah, uh, X-Files is,

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Speaker 3: I believe the show with the widest distribution of episode

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Speaker 3: quality of any show I've ever seen. Like Best X-Files

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Speaker 3: episodes are among the best television ever made. A lot

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Speaker 3: of episodes are some of the worst stuff I've ever seen.

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Speaker 1: Now, coming back to Star Trek here, as I mentioned

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Speaker 1: in the last episode, I was mostly a Star Trek

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Speaker 1: The Next Generation kid, watched most of, if not all

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Speaker 1: of that, then moved on to Deep Space Nine and

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Speaker 1: watched at least a sizable chunk of all that. And

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Speaker 1: more recently, I've watched Star Trek Strange New Worlds. I'm

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Speaker 1: only two seasons into that, but I think that's an

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Speaker 1: excellent show. There are whole other series that I have

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Speaker 1: seen nothing of. But when it comes to the original

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Speaker 1: Star Trek series, certainly I watched the films, but the

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Speaker 1: original series, I don't know, I always felt like I

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Speaker 1: felt this brand loyalty or show loyalty to Next Generation.

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Speaker 1: I was like, this is the Trek for me. I

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Speaker 1: don't need the old stuff. And and I just I

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Speaker 1: tended to sort of dismiss it as I don't know,

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Speaker 1: as an inferior product or something without giving it a

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Speaker 1: tremendous amount of thought. So I have. historically not watched

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Speaker 1: much of the original series, but as part of Star

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Speaker 1: Trek week here, uh, in our preparation for it, I've

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Speaker 1: watched a couple of the episodes from the original run

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Speaker 1: and it's some pretty fun stuff. I think, and I

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Speaker 1: think it holds up really well. So I don't think

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Speaker 1: I gave the original series enough credit and enough attention

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Speaker 1: when I was younger.

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Speaker 3: I mean, just this week I've discovered it has a

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Speaker 3: lot more screaming plants than I would have imagined.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And Lucha moves. We both watched one of the

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Speaker 1: same episodes in preparation. And yeah, there's Captain Kirk busting

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Speaker 1: out like not quite a Frankensteiner, but some sort of

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Speaker 1: like a Lucha head scissors takedown.

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Speaker 3: You're talking about Space Seed, the first run with Ricardo Montalban.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So we both watched that for the first time this week.

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Speaker 3: And yeah, you know, in that episode, I really expected

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Speaker 3: Kirk to finally get the better of of con with

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Speaker 3: some kind of clever trick. You know, he uses like, ah,

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Speaker 3: bet you didn't think of this, but really he just

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Speaker 3: sort of hits him.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He pulls something out of the wall there.

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Speaker 1: It looks kind of like, uh, the, the pump from like, uh,

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Speaker 1: an industrial ketchup dispenser. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Just, uh, yeah. Grabs that hits him with.

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Speaker 3: It, but that episode, not without a lot of cleverness

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Speaker 3: in it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I really, I really dug that episode. All right. We'll,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk more about that episode tomorrow, but, let's go

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Speaker 1: ahead and get more focused here for this episode. So

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Speaker 1: Star Trek obviously features various technologies that have come to

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Speaker 1: define the franchise. You've got your phasers, your tricorders, your

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Speaker 1: tractor beams, your photon torpedoes, your holodecks, and, of course,

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Speaker 1: the transporter. And while the crew of the Enterprise and

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Speaker 1: other starships can also travel ship to ship and ship

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Speaker 1: to planet in the show aboard shuttlecraft, that's a common

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Speaker 1: feature of, I think, all of the series, the transporter...

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Speaker 1: enables swift teleportation from one point in space to another,

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Speaker 1: generally within a localized range. And as such, the transporter

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Speaker 1: serves as a key means of moving from orbit to surface,

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Speaker 1: from ship to ship, in both tactical and casual uses.

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Speaker 3: One interesting technical design feature of the transporter is that

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Speaker 3: you only need the technology to be at one end. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: You know, so you can beam from the transporter room

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Speaker 3: down to a planet where there's nothing there. There's not

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Speaker 3: like a pad for you to land on or something.

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Speaker 3: It just sends you wherever and it can beam you

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Speaker 3: up from anywhere nearby to the transporter room.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It's a different deal compared to the telepods

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Speaker 1: of the fly where you have one pod taking you

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Speaker 1: apart and one pod putting you back together again, which

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Speaker 1: is probably like a cleaner way of thinking about some

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Speaker 1: of the basics of the technology. You know, for our

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Speaker 1: purposes here today. But yeah, but yes, this is an

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Speaker 1: important point you make here about teleportation as we see

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Speaker 1: it in Star Trek. Now, the basic teleportation principle here,

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Speaker 1: as in other works of science fiction, is, of course,

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Speaker 1: matter-energy conversion. So break down matter into energy slash information,

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Speaker 1: transmit that energy pattern to the destination, and then put

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Speaker 1: it all back together again, transforming energy and information back

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Speaker 1: into matter.

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Speaker 3: Years ago, I read some physics attempts to model like

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Speaker 3: how much energy, if you were to think, is this

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Speaker 3: process doable in reality, how much energy this would take theoretically,

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Speaker 3: how much information would need to be encoded to trans,

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Speaker 3: you know, to turn an entire human body fully into

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Speaker 3: information and recreate it from that. And it seems to

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Speaker 3: say the least implausible.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I, we have to remember that in any

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Speaker 1: of these discussions of Star Trek technology, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: important that it creates drama, that it's cool looking and

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Speaker 1: that you can tell stories around it. And, but beyond that,

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Speaker 1: it's like, we are essentially talking about a civilization that

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Speaker 1: is depending on how you cut it, like 1.5 to

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Speaker 1: two on the Kardashev scale. So whatever they're doing in

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Speaker 1: pretty much any realm of science, it's a, it's a

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Speaker 1: good bit beyond what we can, you know, scientifically comprehend

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Speaker 1: in many ways from our point of view. But it

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Speaker 1: is certainly cool, and it does certainly produce drama. I

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Speaker 1: have to say, when I first really started watching Star

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Speaker 1: Trek in earnest via The Next Generation in the 90s,

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Speaker 1: I mostly just bought into the technology wholesale at first.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's just amazing. It's nearly limitless in its possibilities.

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Speaker 1: But the more you watch and the more you think

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Speaker 1: about it, essentially two things kick in, I think, for

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Speaker 1: the Star Trek viewer. First of all, teleportation via transporter

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Speaker 1: is raises a number of ethical and philosophical questions just

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Speaker 1: the more you think about it and the more you

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Speaker 1: pull in ideas about just what consciousness is. And then,

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Speaker 1: of course, various episodes of Star Trek just outright confront

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Speaker 1: the philosophy and ethics of teleportation as well, often getting

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Speaker 1: into teleportation mishaps that, you know, create some interesting plot developments,

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Speaker 1: but also... cause the viewer to to think and contemplate

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Speaker 1: uh you know exactly what we are and how we

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Speaker 1: work and what is the individual and so.

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Speaker 3: Forth even as early as the original series just in

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Speaker 3: some of the episodes we were watching this week already

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Speaker 3: characters are complaining about the principle behind the the transporter

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Speaker 3: like mccoy says in the original series that he does

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Speaker 3: not want to get on the transporter. I mean, he

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Speaker 3: does it anyway, but he doesn't like it. He finds

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Speaker 3: it conceptually abhorrent.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It's like he realizes that it is a

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Speaker 1: death he's about to engage in, that there's maybe something

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Speaker 1: a little unnatural about it, right? Because, I mean, that

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Speaker 1: is a frequent interpretation and contemplation about the teleportation in

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Speaker 1: the Star Trek universe. Are they just killing themselves every

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Speaker 1: time they climb into one of these things and then

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Speaker 1: recreating an exact copy of themselves elsewhere? And then when

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Speaker 1: you move past that sort of gut feeling of horror,

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Speaker 1: you have to ask yourself, well, is that terrible at all?

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Speaker 1: Is that really any different than what happens just moment

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Speaker 1: to moment with our own consciousness and so forth? So

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Speaker 1: I think that's one of the lovely things about it

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Speaker 1: is just. Just just considering it on that level, it

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Speaker 1: forces you to deconstruct a lot of what you think

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Speaker 1: you know about who you are and how your brain operates.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Obviously, if the idea is that your

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Speaker 3: body is decomposed entirely, it's like completely taken apart at

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Speaker 3: the point of origin and then reconstituted somewhere else. The

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Speaker 3: most straightforward way to understand that is that the original

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Speaker 3: you is destroyed. And that a new copy of you

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Speaker 3: with all of the same thoughts and memories and all

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Speaker 3: that is recreated in the target location and it can

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Speaker 3: just continue going about your business. But I think our

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Speaker 3: intuition about that is just that like, okay, that means

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Speaker 3: like whenever the first time I use a transporter is

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Speaker 3: I just die. That's just the end of my life.

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Speaker 3: And then there's something that's exactly like me that is

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Speaker 3: going on with my life. But my experience of life,

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Speaker 3: will not be continuous. I will step into the transporter

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Speaker 3: and then that is death. My experience ends. Now something

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Speaker 3: else exactly like me is having an experience. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: as you bring up, of course, our bodies are changing

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Speaker 3: moment to moment. I, this one moment, I'm a different

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Speaker 3: being in a way than I was a few moments earlier,

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Speaker 3: but I have the sensation that my conscious experience has

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Speaker 3: been one continuous thing. And so the death in time

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Speaker 3: of the me from a few moments ago, just as

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Speaker 3: the seconds tick by, that doesn't really feel like a

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Speaker 3: death or like anything came to an end, even though

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Speaker 3: I am a different being now than I was just

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Speaker 3: a few moments ago. It does feel like that would

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Speaker 3: be something different than what we're imagining with the transporter,

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Speaker 3: where your body is decomposed into atoms or even, I

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Speaker 3: don't know, decomposed into what. And that does seem to

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Speaker 3: more intuitively... suggests there will be a final kind of

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Speaker 3: end to your conscious experience, even if something like you

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Speaker 3: is getting to carry on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah, the teleportation here, the transporter

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Speaker 1: seems to, in a lovely way, exaggerate, greatly exaggerate some

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Speaker 1: of what may already be going on with us. Because, yeah,

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Speaker 1: like you said, our bodies are constantly changing. Our identity

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Speaker 1: changes over time to varying degrees. And we periodically have

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Speaker 1: interruptions in consciousness. I mean, if nothing else, we go

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Speaker 1: to sleep every night. We may undergo surgery at some

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Speaker 1: point in our life. And then we have little altered

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Speaker 1: states of consciousness that arise along the way as well.

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Speaker 3: I have had this thought going into general anesthesia before.

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Speaker 3: I've thought, what if the me that is going under

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Speaker 3: now just dies? And the thing that wakes up will

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Speaker 3: feel always like it is me. it is me and

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Speaker 3: it will feel like it has had just a continuous experience,

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Speaker 3: woke up after surgery and all that. But what if

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Speaker 3: somehow I right now before surgery never get to wake up? Uh,

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Speaker 3: it is, there's no way to prove that or disprove.

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Speaker 3: I mean, you know, that's not like an empirically testable thing.

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Speaker 3: There is just, uh, it's just a weird kind of

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Speaker 3: head space you can get into.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you can ask the same question about

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Speaker 1: going to sleep each night. Like, You close your eyes,

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Speaker 1: you enter a different state of consciousness and become unconscious.

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Speaker 1: You engage in dream activity. Your brain is undergoing various changes,

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Speaker 1: sort of a defragmentation, you know, to some degree. And

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Speaker 1: then the next morning, oh, well, you feel a little

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Speaker 1: bit different. You feel refreshed. But are you feeling refreshed

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Speaker 1: as in you just stepped out of the telepod and

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Speaker 1: now you have brundle fly energy, you know? Yeah, so again,

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Speaker 1: the sci-fi exaggeration forces you to rethink all of this,

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Speaker 1: the day-to-day things about our consciousness and existence. And indeed,

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Speaker 1: a lot of it does boil down to consciousness and identity.

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Speaker 1: Because to be clear, Star Trek's teleportation, to my knowledge,

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Speaker 1: has never engaged in any direct contemplation of life. at

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Speaker 1: least as far as teleportation goes, a soul. I know

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Speaker 1: that some episodes get into more spiritual territory, and you

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Speaker 1: do have entities that are encountered that do not have

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Speaker 1: physical bodies. So it can kind of be all over

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Speaker 1: the place and contradict itself in places as well, because again,

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Speaker 1: this is a decades-long franchise. It tells many different stories

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Speaker 1: created by many different people. It's not going to be

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Speaker 1: entirely consistent on all of this. But when it comes

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Speaker 1: to the transporter itself, the show does seem to lean

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Speaker 1: materialist more often than not. So, you know, it's not

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Speaker 1: getting into what we would call mind-body dualism, the idea

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Speaker 1: that consciousness exists separate from the body, as opposed to

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Speaker 1: a thing that is generated or cast by the body,

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Speaker 1: the basic materialist view.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree that most of the Star Trek

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Speaker 3: I'm familiar with has a basically materialist approach to the mind.

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Speaker 3: Though I would add that I think that's not necessarily inconsistent, actually.

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Speaker 3: with speaking about a soul, depending on how you speak

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Speaker 3: about it. I mean, I just say from my personal

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Speaker 3: point of view, I personally have a materialist view of

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Speaker 3: what the mind is, and I also am quite comfortable

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Speaker 3: speaking of a soul. I'm using it more in the

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Speaker 3: metaphorical sense in that the word soul in English captures

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Speaker 3: things about our personality and integrity and stuff like that

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Speaker 3: better than any other word does. And yet I don't

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Speaker 3: think it refers to like a ghost that is physically

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Speaker 3: separable from the brain.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And I think that one of the key things,

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Speaker 1: and we've discussed this in the show plenty of times before,

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Speaker 1: is that, you know, we ultimately can have it both ways.

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Speaker 1: We can have it multiple ways. We can have, you know,

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Speaker 1: contradictory even ideas floating around our brains when it comes

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Speaker 1: to understanding who we are and how we work. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, for my own part, I tend to be

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Speaker 1: more of a materialist. when I think about my consciousness, but,

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Speaker 1: you know, depending on how, you know, the mood hits me,

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Speaker 1: I might also engage in more of a, um, more

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Speaker 1: of a dualist approach to it and think more in

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Speaker 1: terms of like a soul and a body, either casually

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Speaker 1: in turn, or just interacting with language and I don't know,

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Speaker 1: poetry and song and so forth, or, you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: at times feeling more like religious about things or more

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Speaker 1: spiritual about things. Like you can, you can engage in

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Speaker 1: different ways. And in the same way that a show

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Speaker 1: like Star Trek can have it both ways and sort

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Speaker 1: of like follow whichever directions is in the moment providing

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Speaker 1: the best story or the best thought-provoking content. But it

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Speaker 1: is crazy then to think though, okay, we're engaging in

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Speaker 1: a very, again, materialist idea of what consciousness is. Consciousness

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Speaker 1: is generated via the physical brain, the inner workings of

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Speaker 1: the physical brain. And then we're thinking about it being

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Speaker 1: the physical body being broken down, destroyed, transmitted, and then recreated.

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Speaker 1: And then consciousness kind of cuts back on again or

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Speaker 1: doesn't cut out in completely. Or the same consciousness is reawakened,

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Speaker 1: but it is not the exact same consciousness in terms

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Speaker 1: of there was consciousness one and now there's consciousness two.

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Speaker 1: But consciousness two is identical to consciousness one, which no

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Speaker 1: longer exists.

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Speaker 3: One way I've always imagined this within the narrative is,

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Speaker 3: I mean, if you stop to think about it, and

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Speaker 3: sometimes they just don't really encourage you to worry about

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Speaker 3: this too much. But if you do stop to think

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Speaker 3: of it, I tend to assume that, okay, if the

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Speaker 3: person who goes into the transporter is in fact destroyed,

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Speaker 3: it's not possible for that person, that brain, that body

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Speaker 3: to think, I am still the same person who came

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Speaker 3: out the other end. They don't exist anymore. But the

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Speaker 3: person who does come out the other end does think

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Speaker 3: I am still the same person. So the experience of

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Speaker 3: consciousness is continuous for the person who came out the

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Speaker 3: other end, not for the person who went in. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And maybe it's also like just maybe ultimately they think

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Speaker 1: differently about consciousness and self. Like your consciousness is like

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Speaker 1: just disregarding any idea that you have some sort of

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Speaker 1: a soul or anything and just know that you were

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Speaker 1: a shadow puppet. You know, you are a silhouette or

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Speaker 1: rather you are a silhouette cast by a shadow puppet.

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Speaker 1: That is what your consciousness is. That is what your

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Speaker 1: sense of self is. That shadow puppet that is used

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Speaker 1: to cast that silhouette, let's say of a king on

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Speaker 1: a wall or on a screen, that puppet can be

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Speaker 1: disassembled and then shipped to the other side of the world, reassembled,

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Speaker 1: and it can cast the same silhouette on the screen,

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Speaker 1: on the wall. And likewise, you could destroy the puppet,

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Speaker 1: write down instructions for how to build an identical puppet,

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Speaker 1: and that identical puppet can be built on the other

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Speaker 1: side of the world or on another planet, what have you,

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Speaker 1: and used to cast, again, the exact same king upon

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Speaker 1: the wall, that exact same silhouette. So ultimately, maybe that's

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Speaker 1: how someone in the Star Trek universe is supposed to

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Speaker 1: think about themselves. And, you know, don't get caught up

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Speaker 1: in lofty ideas about your eternal soul. You know, you

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Speaker 1: were a silhouette on a wall.

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Speaker 3: I can see how that could be a very comforting framework,

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Speaker 3: though at the same time, I think a person going

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Speaker 3: into a transporter, were this a real technology, could be

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Speaker 3: forgiven for not wanting their experience of the world to

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Speaker 3: cease and to essentially die from their own first-person perspective

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Speaker 3: just to get a copy of themselves somewhere else. It's

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Speaker 3: almost taking on a kind of, I don't know, like

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Speaker 3: a worker ant kind of point of view about like,

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Speaker 3: as long as there's something that can continue doing my

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Speaker 3: job at the other end, then it's okay.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Or if you believe in the great work of the

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Speaker 1: Federation of Planets, or the might of the Klingon Empire,

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Speaker 1: whatever faction you happen to represent. Yeah, if you believe

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Speaker 1: firmly in something greater than yourself, then you're just like,

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Speaker 1: all right, I'm going to sacrifice myself once again in

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Speaker 1: order to pursue this end. Now, I don't think we

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Speaker 1: mentioned this, but of course, a common thought experiment and

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Speaker 1: analogy that comes up all the time is the ship

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Speaker 1: of Theseus, which we've talked about in depth in the

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Speaker 1: show before. The idea that if you have, here's the

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Speaker 1: ship of Theseus, and then over time, stuff breaks, pieces

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Speaker 1: of the ship rot, pieces of the ship have to

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Speaker 1: be replaced. And after enough time, you will have replaced

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Speaker 1: the entire ship. Is it still the same ship, right?

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Speaker 1: And of course, again, a sci-fi technology like this just

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Speaker 1: speeds everything up. It's the ship of Theseus on Fast Forward.

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Speaker 1: We're going from the ship at the beginning to the

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Speaker 1: ship at the end, with destruction in the middle. Is

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Speaker 1: it the same ship at all? As always, the answer

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00:21:48,130 --> 00:21:51,560
Speaker 1: is yes and no, yes but no, and also no

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Speaker 1: but yes. Another sort of navel-gazing thought that I've often

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Speaker 1: had watching Star Trek is, What if you do have

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Speaker 1: an eternal soul? What if we were to have a

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Speaker 1: religious view of the Star Trek universe? What if the

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Speaker 1: first time you use the technology, you die and your

395
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Speaker 1: soul leaves your body? Then what are you when you're

396
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Speaker 1: recreated on the other end? Just sort of like a

397
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Speaker 1: soulless living automaton, a copy of what you were, and

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Speaker 1: then that just continues, the cycle continues? I don't know.

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Speaker 3: You get a new soul. You multiply souls just by

400
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Speaker 3: going through the transporter. And then what happens when the

401
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Speaker 3: new one dies? Now there are two yous in heaven

402
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Speaker 3: or in hell.

403
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Speaker 1: Well, but then we're materialist again, though, right? Because a

404
00:22:39,330 --> 00:22:43,070
Speaker 1: soul pops into being because the body exists. But what if,

405
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Speaker 1: I guess if we're doing.

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Speaker 3: Well, no, if you're dualist, you could have a view

407
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Speaker 3: of dualism. It's like we have to make a soul.

408
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Speaker 3: A soul must be created for each new copy of

409
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Speaker 3: the body. Therefore, every time the body is copied, a

410
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Speaker 3: new soul is made. Now, the bodies are never going

411
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Speaker 3: to end up in the same place at the same

412
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Speaker 3: time unless something goes wrong, but they're never supposed to.

413
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Speaker 3: So you wouldn't have this problem with the bodies, but

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Speaker 3: wherever the souls are going, they're just accumulating, right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:12,960
Speaker 1: Okay. Good point. Now, I want to make another quick

417
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Speaker 1: note about memory without just really going down the rabbit

418
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Speaker 1: hole of memory, because we've done whole episodes about different

419
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Speaker 1: forms of memory and so forth. But Obviously, memory plays

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Speaker 1: a huge role in identity and consciousness. And just thinking

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Speaker 1: about the role of memories in teleportation is pretty mind-boggling

422
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Speaker 1: because the transporter here wouldn't just be recording, breaking down,

423
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Speaker 1: and rebuilding your body and your brain and the cells,

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Speaker 1: the molecules, and every atom and so forth. But we'd

425
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Speaker 1: also have to copy, send, and then replicate Patterns of

426
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Speaker 1: neural activity, so neurons, synapses, electrochemical signals and synaptic plasticity,

427
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Speaker 1: copying of a person's engrams, you know, the physical trace

428
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Speaker 1: of their memories. And again, like this in and of

429
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Speaker 1: itself may be more feasible for a type one and

430
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Speaker 1: a half to two civilization on the Kardashev scale, but

431
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Speaker 1: almost inconceivable by today's technological standards. It's just so much

432
00:24:15,040 --> 00:24:17,260
Speaker 1: that would have to, so much information here that would

433
00:24:17,300 --> 00:24:19,850
Speaker 1: have to be recorded scent and then reproduced.

434
00:24:20,490 --> 00:24:25,449
Speaker 3: Though, presumably, if you are a materialist about what the

435
00:24:25,490 --> 00:24:29,610
Speaker 3: mind is, then if you were to make a perfect

436
00:24:29,690 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 3: and actually perfectly exact physical copy of the brain, that

437
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:38,699
Speaker 3: would seem to imply, unless there's a contingency I'm not

438
00:24:38,720 --> 00:24:40,680
Speaker 3: thinking of, that would seem to imply that the perfect

439
00:24:40,740 --> 00:24:43,459
Speaker 3: copy of the brain would come with all of the

440
00:24:43,500 --> 00:24:47,120
Speaker 3: same memories and tendencies and everything else, because If you're

441
00:24:47,140 --> 00:24:50,990
Speaker 3: a materialist, you think that that information is somehow represented

442
00:24:51,190 --> 00:24:54,030
Speaker 3: in the internal structure of the brain. That's what the

443
00:24:54,070 --> 00:24:57,390
Speaker 3: storage of the information is. Now, again, you could have

444
00:24:57,430 --> 00:25:00,750
Speaker 3: another view where there's something that the physical copying of

445
00:25:00,790 --> 00:25:03,260
Speaker 3: the brain or physical copying of the body in the

446
00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 3: brain doesn't capture. There's something outside the body. But yeah,

447
00:25:07,660 --> 00:25:10,020
Speaker 3: if you think it is there in the body somewhere,

448
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:14,930
Speaker 3: then perfectly copying the body should bring everything like that along.

449
00:25:14,950 --> 00:25:18,820
Speaker 3: But then again, Maybe that raises questions about like just

450
00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:23,980
Speaker 3: how much impossibility almost would be involved in actually trying

451
00:25:24,020 --> 00:25:26,189
Speaker 3: to create a perfect copy of a living body.

452
00:25:26,590 --> 00:25:28,270
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it kind of comes out of a question

453
00:25:28,310 --> 00:25:31,830
Speaker 1: of like how how high detail is the the snapshot

454
00:25:32,270 --> 00:25:35,369
Speaker 1: of the body and then ultimately how much information are

455
00:25:35,390 --> 00:25:36,130
Speaker 1: we talking about?

456
00:25:36,550 --> 00:25:36,730
Speaker 2: Yeah.

457
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:40,480
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's let's get into a couple of

458
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:45,640
Speaker 1: different philosophical takes on all of this. These are both

459
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,330
Speaker 1: going to be things that we've discussed in the past

460
00:25:48,390 --> 00:25:51,190
Speaker 1: on the show before, but I think it's good to

461
00:25:51,210 --> 00:25:55,070
Speaker 1: get into them here again when we're talking expressly about really,

462
00:25:55,109 --> 00:26:00,179
Speaker 1: I think, the most famous pop culture vision of teleportation.

463
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:00,840
Speaker 1: All right.

464
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 3: Now, one thing I know we've talked about is a

465
00:26:04,420 --> 00:26:07,830
Speaker 3: couple of years ago in an anthology of horror episode,

466
00:26:07,869 --> 00:26:10,129
Speaker 3: we talked a bit about teleportation, didn't we?

467
00:26:10,790 --> 00:26:13,530
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah. We, we talked about, um, we talked

468
00:26:13,550 --> 00:26:16,210
Speaker 1: about two as, as is our practice on anthology of horror.

469
00:26:16,250 --> 00:26:19,100
Speaker 1: We each picked out, uh, an episode from an, uh,

470
00:26:19,230 --> 00:26:22,679
Speaker 1: a TV horror and thought horror or sci-fi anthology series.

471
00:26:22,740 --> 00:26:25,119
Speaker 1: And we discussed like some of the ideas there. And

472
00:26:25,140 --> 00:26:27,040
Speaker 1: the one we talked about, uh, in two, one of

473
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:28,899
Speaker 1: the two that we talked about in this episode was, uh,

474
00:26:28,940 --> 00:26:31,560
Speaker 1: from the 1990s outer limit series. It was an episode

475
00:26:31,580 --> 00:26:34,659
Speaker 1: titled think like a dinosaur based on a short story

476
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 1: of the same name. You can go look up that

477
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:39,500
Speaker 1: episode if you want a full breakdown of that. But, uh,

478
00:26:40,380 --> 00:26:44,220
Speaker 1: The concepts explored in that episode line up rather perfectly

479
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: with the work of Derek Parfit, a British philosopher who

480
00:26:48,100 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: specialized in personal identity, among other subjects. He lived 1942

481
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:57,380
Speaker 1: through 2017. He gets into this in his 1987 book,

482
00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:00,640
Speaker 1: Reasons and Persons, and he lays out what has come

483
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:05,460
Speaker 1: to be called the teletransporter paradox. And in this, he

484
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:10,060
Speaker 1: presents a basic teleportation idea and resulting paradox where you

485
00:27:10,100 --> 00:27:14,400
Speaker 1: have somebody that's being sent to Mars. So they're standing

486
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:17,990
Speaker 1: on Earth, their body's destroyed in the scan, and then

487
00:27:18,590 --> 00:27:20,969
Speaker 1: this is what's supposed to ideally happen. The information then

488
00:27:21,030 --> 00:27:24,090
Speaker 1: is sent to Mars and they're recreated there. But uh-oh,

489
00:27:24,310 --> 00:27:28,850
Speaker 1: something messed up and the original was not destroyed. So

490
00:27:29,310 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: which is the individual, the original copy or the new copy?

491
00:27:33,180 --> 00:27:37,900
Speaker 1: Or the original or the copy, rather. And so, yeah,

492
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:42,180
Speaker 1: he gets into this and chews over the philosophical contents here,

493
00:27:42,260 --> 00:27:45,240
Speaker 1: you know, and acknowledging that this is a common feature

494
00:27:45,260 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 1: in science fiction, that some people say, well, the first

495
00:27:48,220 --> 00:27:51,570
Speaker 1: person is destroyed and the new person is not me.

496
00:27:51,619 --> 00:27:54,770
Speaker 1: It's like my doppelganger. Others say, well, no, that is me.

497
00:27:54,810 --> 00:27:59,490
Speaker 1: That's just a complete continuation of who I am. And

498
00:27:59,530 --> 00:28:02,010
Speaker 1: so he uses the thought experiment here to discuss what

499
00:28:02,050 --> 00:28:06,500
Speaker 1: he calls two kinds of sameness. There's qualitative identity and

500
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:10,300
Speaker 1: numerical identity. So the scanner and the replicator in his

501
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:16,460
Speaker 1: scenario produce a double that is qualitatively identical, but not

502
00:28:16,550 --> 00:28:20,270
Speaker 1: numerically identical. In other words, the two were otherwise the same,

503
00:28:20,310 --> 00:28:23,050
Speaker 1: but not literally the same person in a physical sense.

504
00:28:23,490 --> 00:28:24,709
Speaker 3: Kind of in the same way that you can have

505
00:28:24,850 --> 00:28:28,910
Speaker 3: two copies of the same book, but they're not literally

506
00:28:28,990 --> 00:28:30,270
Speaker 3: the same object.

507
00:28:30,670 --> 00:28:35,510
Speaker 1: Right, right. And likewise, numerically identical individuals, he points out,

508
00:28:35,590 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 1: can also become qualitatively different. And this is something, I'll

509
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:43,580
Speaker 1: bring this up again here in a bit, this is

510
00:28:43,620 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 1: also something that's explored in Star Trek. What happens if

511
00:28:48,020 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: you have two copies, but then they're essentially the same person,

512
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,930
Speaker 1: but then they have different events that occur to them afterwards.

513
00:28:55,730 --> 00:28:55,870
Speaker 2: Yeah.

514
00:28:56,590 --> 00:28:59,970
Speaker 3: That would actually be really if you could do that,

515
00:28:59,990 --> 00:29:02,610
Speaker 3: that would be great for like psychology and medical experiments

516
00:29:02,690 --> 00:29:03,070
Speaker 3: and stuff.

517
00:29:04,590 --> 00:29:07,050
Speaker 1: Not in the Federation. The Federation wouldn't do that. Maybe

518
00:29:07,070 --> 00:29:08,230
Speaker 1: the Romulans are up to that.

519
00:29:08,370 --> 00:29:10,410
Speaker 3: Well, no, not to do that on purpose. Let's just

520
00:29:10,450 --> 00:29:14,610
Speaker 3: say as you accidentally create a bunch of exact atom

521
00:29:14,650 --> 00:29:18,030
Speaker 3: for atom copies of people that they exist anyway, that

522
00:29:18,170 --> 00:29:21,570
Speaker 3: those people would be great to volunteer for various kinds of,

523
00:29:21,850 --> 00:29:24,330
Speaker 3: you know, human experiments, because then you could have like

524
00:29:24,490 --> 00:29:25,910
Speaker 3: perfectly controlled experiments.

525
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:30,630
Speaker 1: True, true. So Parfit sums this up by writing, quote,

526
00:29:30,710 --> 00:29:35,310
Speaker 1: though our chief concern is our numerical identity, psychological changes matter. Indeed,

527
00:29:35,450 --> 00:29:39,969
Speaker 1: on one view, certain kinds of qualitative change destroy numerical identity.

528
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: If certain things happen to me, the truth might not

529
00:29:42,780 --> 00:29:45,240
Speaker 1: be that I become a very different person. The truth

530
00:29:45,300 --> 00:29:47,580
Speaker 1: might be that I cease to exist and the resulting

531
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:52,480
Speaker 1: person is someone else. So again, highlighting that this idea

532
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:57,810
Speaker 1: of the teleporter or the transporter creating this new individual

533
00:29:57,850 --> 00:30:01,650
Speaker 1: that might not be me. Well, that same consideration occurs

534
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 1: in our own life. If something significantly alters your identity

535
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:08,060
Speaker 1: and changes who you are, maybe you just have a

536
00:30:08,180 --> 00:30:11,600
Speaker 1: really awesome meal or see an amazing movie, read a

537
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 1: great book. Well, congratulations, you just destroyed yourself and recreated

538
00:30:16,060 --> 00:30:20,820
Speaker 1: a doppelganger of yourself that is qualitatively different than who

539
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:21,160
Speaker 1: you were.

540
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:24,570
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a philosophical question that has been explored

541
00:30:24,610 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 3: and it in other formats, like the question of how

542
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,820
Speaker 3: can you really know if you want to make a

543
00:30:32,940 --> 00:30:36,350
Speaker 3: major decision in your life? And, you know, common ones

544
00:30:36,390 --> 00:30:38,990
Speaker 3: are like, if I want to move, you know, move

545
00:30:39,050 --> 00:30:42,030
Speaker 3: across state lines or have a child or something like,

546
00:30:42,110 --> 00:30:44,130
Speaker 3: or like change jobs, you know, something that's like a

547
00:30:44,250 --> 00:30:48,590
Speaker 3: big change in your life, you are making the decision

548
00:30:48,650 --> 00:30:53,190
Speaker 3: in a prospective way by like you know, presumably evaluating

549
00:30:53,210 --> 00:30:55,410
Speaker 3: the pros and cons. You have a set of things

550
00:30:55,450 --> 00:31:00,340
Speaker 3: you think you want, and then you imagine, will doing this,

551
00:31:00,380 --> 00:31:02,780
Speaker 3: will making this big change in my life better get

552
00:31:02,860 --> 00:31:05,140
Speaker 3: me toward the things I want out of life? But

553
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:07,860
Speaker 3: the truth is, when you go through a big change

554
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 3: in life, the things you want can change. So in

555
00:31:12,060 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 3: some way, it's hard to predict whether going through a

556
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:16,760
Speaker 3: big change will get you closer to what you want,

557
00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:19,420
Speaker 3: because what if going through the big change changes what

558
00:31:19,460 --> 00:31:21,130
Speaker 3: you want? And we know it often does.

559
00:31:22,180 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've mentioned it before, but there's a Terrence McKenna

560
00:31:24,600 --> 00:31:27,860
Speaker 1: quote that is at once reassuring. I sometimes turn to

561
00:31:27,900 --> 00:31:30,720
Speaker 1: it for reassurance, but also it kind of lines up

562
00:31:30,740 --> 00:31:33,420
Speaker 1: with what we're talking about here. He says, if something

563
00:31:33,460 --> 00:31:35,680
Speaker 1: needs to be done, you will find yourself doing it,

564
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:39,700
Speaker 1: which is like, yeah, like if something happens, I'll deal

565
00:31:39,720 --> 00:31:41,990
Speaker 1: with it when it happens. But it's also like, I

566
00:31:42,010 --> 00:31:45,030
Speaker 1: don't know, it kind of reverses the flow of how

567
00:31:45,050 --> 00:31:48,970
Speaker 1: we think about our own our own agency in life. Yeah.

568
00:31:49,250 --> 00:31:51,890
Speaker 3: Anyway, Rob, you cool if I talk about Swamp Man now?

569
00:31:52,190 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's summon the swamp man.

570
00:31:53,740 --> 00:31:57,660
Speaker 3: So this is another philosophical thought experiment that is very

571
00:31:57,860 --> 00:32:01,340
Speaker 3: similar to the transporter question, and it has come up

572
00:32:01,420 --> 00:32:05,420
Speaker 3: on the show before. This is the American philosopher Donald

573
00:32:05,500 --> 00:32:12,240
Speaker 3: Davidson's swamp man analogy. Davidson introduces this idea in a

574
00:32:12,260 --> 00:32:16,430
Speaker 3: paper called Knowing One's Own Mind from Proceedings and Addresses

575
00:32:16,490 --> 00:32:20,910
Speaker 3: of the American Philosophical Association in the year 1987. And

576
00:32:21,350 --> 00:32:24,230
Speaker 3: in the paper, he sets up the swamp man thought

577
00:32:24,270 --> 00:32:30,090
Speaker 3: experiment like this. Quote, suppose lightning strikes a dead tree

578
00:32:30,210 --> 00:32:34,020
Speaker 3: in a swamp. I am standing nearby. My body is

579
00:32:34,100 --> 00:32:38,300
Speaker 3: reduced to its elements. While entirely by coincidence and out

580
00:32:38,340 --> 00:32:43,100
Speaker 3: of different molecules, the tree is turned into my physical replica.

581
00:32:43,740 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 3: My replica, the swamp man, moves exactly as I did.

582
00:32:47,940 --> 00:32:51,540
Speaker 3: According to its nature, it departs the swamp. encounters and

583
00:32:51,580 --> 00:32:54,740
Speaker 3: seems to recognize my friends and appears to return their

584
00:32:54,780 --> 00:32:57,850
Speaker 3: greetings in English. It moves into my house and seems

585
00:32:57,910 --> 00:33:01,610
Speaker 3: to write articles on radical interpretation. That's what Davidson did.

586
00:33:02,070 --> 00:33:04,670
Speaker 3: He writes his kind of articles. No one can tell

587
00:33:04,710 --> 00:33:10,300
Speaker 3: the difference. But the interesting thing here is that the

588
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 3: point of Davidson's thought experiment is that there actually is

589
00:33:14,420 --> 00:33:19,640
Speaker 3: a difference. And in his view, that difference illustrates weird facts,

590
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:24,830
Speaker 3: not about it Parfit's point was about identity. Davidson is

591
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:27,810
Speaker 3: not making a point about identity. He's trying to make

592
00:33:27,850 --> 00:33:33,730
Speaker 3: a point about knowledge, thought, and meaning. So Davidson writes, quote,

593
00:33:34,270 --> 00:33:40,810
Speaker 3: My replica can't recognize my friends. It can't recognize anything,

594
00:33:40,990 --> 00:33:45,230
Speaker 3: since it never cognized anything in the first place. It

595
00:33:45,310 --> 00:33:48,630
Speaker 3: can't know my friends' names, though of course it seems to.

596
00:33:49,220 --> 00:33:53,850
Speaker 3: It can't remember my house. It can't mean what I

597
00:33:53,890 --> 00:33:57,370
Speaker 3: do by the word house, for example, since the sound

598
00:33:57,530 --> 00:34:00,950
Speaker 3: house it makes was not learned in a context that

599
00:34:00,990 --> 00:34:04,600
Speaker 3: would give it the right meaning, or any meaning at all. Indeed,

600
00:34:04,820 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 3: I don't see how my replica can be said to

601
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:11,500
Speaker 3: mean anything by the sounds it makes, nor to have

602
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:15,950
Speaker 3: any thoughts. And so I think in the end, I

603
00:34:16,070 --> 00:34:18,910
Speaker 3: might disagree with Davidson here, but I think he is

604
00:34:18,969 --> 00:34:22,930
Speaker 3: making a very interesting point. He's arguing that even if

605
00:34:23,050 --> 00:34:25,700
Speaker 3: the Swamp Man, you know, the perfect copy of him

606
00:34:25,780 --> 00:34:28,660
Speaker 3: created out of this tree by Strike of a Lightning,

607
00:34:29,980 --> 00:34:33,140
Speaker 3: even if it is a perfect copy of him that

608
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:38,299
Speaker 3: behaves exactly as he would in every scenario, it nevertheless

609
00:34:38,510 --> 00:34:43,030
Speaker 3: is not capable of having actual thoughts. and that whatever

610
00:34:43,130 --> 00:34:47,310
Speaker 3: statements it makes have no meaning because the swamp man

611
00:34:47,630 --> 00:34:52,590
Speaker 3: never learned the actual connection between objects and phenomena in

612
00:34:52,610 --> 00:34:55,950
Speaker 3: the real world and the words and concepts that point

613
00:34:55,989 --> 00:34:59,250
Speaker 3: to them. Davidson's trying to make a point that meaning

614
00:34:59,330 --> 00:35:04,070
Speaker 3: is created not just by internal mental states in the brain,

615
00:35:04,690 --> 00:35:09,570
Speaker 3: but by instead a relationship between those internal mental states

616
00:35:09,590 --> 00:35:13,490
Speaker 3: and and a history of interactions with the external world

617
00:35:13,570 --> 00:35:17,770
Speaker 3: that caused those mental states to arise. And it is

618
00:35:17,870 --> 00:35:22,420
Speaker 3: the fact that you learned to associate the word dog

619
00:35:22,900 --> 00:35:27,220
Speaker 3: with this actual material fluffy quadruped in the real world

620
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:31,379
Speaker 3: that makes the word dog mean something when you say

621
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:34,670
Speaker 3: it or think it. A swamp man that has never

622
00:35:34,810 --> 00:35:38,540
Speaker 3: seen or met or even learned any, has never encountered

623
00:35:38,700 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 3: any kind of sensory evidence of a dog, but can

624
00:35:42,680 --> 00:35:45,859
Speaker 3: use the word dog correctly in a sentence, does not

625
00:35:46,140 --> 00:35:49,580
Speaker 3: actually know what dog means. And thus, when it uses

626
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:53,260
Speaker 3: the word dog, it is not actually talking about a dog.

627
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:57,700
Speaker 3: In fact, it is not talking about anything. This is

628
00:35:57,739 --> 00:36:01,090
Speaker 3: another way of phrasing the point he's getting at. According

629
00:36:01,130 --> 00:36:06,330
Speaker 3: to Davidson- aboutness comes from this history of relations between

630
00:36:06,510 --> 00:36:10,009
Speaker 3: internal signals and external phenomena. So if we take this

631
00:36:10,070 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 3: to the analogy of the Star Trek transporter, to be clear,

632
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:16,620
Speaker 3: Davidson never used this example himself, but it's similar enough

633
00:36:16,660 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 3: to the Swamp Man. I think he would probably argue

634
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:24,930
Speaker 3: that after being teleported, the copy of Mr. Spock that

635
00:36:24,950 --> 00:36:28,810
Speaker 3: arrives down on the planet is does not actually have thoughts,

636
00:36:28,930 --> 00:36:31,089
Speaker 3: at least not initially. You know, it could go on

637
00:36:31,170 --> 00:36:35,090
Speaker 3: and live a life and maybe have experiences and learn

638
00:36:35,140 --> 00:36:39,660
Speaker 3: associations and have thoughts later. But initially, the newly teleported

639
00:36:39,739 --> 00:36:43,319
Speaker 3: Spock does not have thoughts. And when it speaks, the

640
00:36:43,380 --> 00:36:46,680
Speaker 3: words it speaks do not mean anything because this new

641
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:51,250
Speaker 3: Spock has no causal history to connect those words to experiences.

642
00:36:52,140 --> 00:36:56,780
Speaker 3: This view is sometimes called externalism. Davidson's is one version

643
00:36:56,820 --> 00:37:00,820
Speaker 3: of the idea that thoughts or mental content cannot refer

644
00:37:01,020 --> 00:37:05,810
Speaker 3: only to internal structures or states in the brain. They

645
00:37:05,910 --> 00:37:10,130
Speaker 3: have to involve the external world. And specifically, Davidson actually

646
00:37:10,170 --> 00:37:12,790
Speaker 3: argues you need like three different things in order for

647
00:37:12,830 --> 00:37:15,230
Speaker 3: thoughts to have meaning. You've got to have, of course,

648
00:37:15,290 --> 00:37:18,280
Speaker 3: the self, the thinker. You have to have the external

649
00:37:18,340 --> 00:37:20,900
Speaker 3: world as the things you were thinking or talking about.

650
00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 3: And then Usually, you also need at least one other

651
00:37:24,140 --> 00:37:28,450
Speaker 3: person or mind to communicate with. With these three things together,

652
00:37:28,550 --> 00:37:31,290
Speaker 3: meaning can actually be created because the self is able

653
00:37:31,330 --> 00:37:34,290
Speaker 3: to have the thoughts. The external world is something for

654
00:37:34,330 --> 00:37:36,950
Speaker 3: those thoughts to be about. And then with another mind,

655
00:37:36,989 --> 00:37:40,990
Speaker 3: you can compare thoughts about the external world to triangulate

656
00:37:41,050 --> 00:37:44,819
Speaker 3: and check for validity. Essentially, you can talk. And these

657
00:37:44,860 --> 00:37:49,670
Speaker 3: three things together generate the aboutness of mental activity. This

658
00:37:49,770 --> 00:37:55,129
Speaker 3: triangle is how meaning arises. So Davidson here tries to

659
00:37:55,430 --> 00:37:59,340
Speaker 3: leverage this swamp man argument to make the further case

660
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:04,940
Speaker 3: that there are limits to self-knowledge through introspection. And the

661
00:38:04,980 --> 00:38:08,120
Speaker 3: background here is, you know, he's arguing against an existing

662
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:10,820
Speaker 3: point of view because some philosophers in the tradition of

663
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 3: Descartes would argue that knowledge about your own thoughts is

664
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:21,180
Speaker 3: basically infallible i think therefore i am and it's impossible

665
00:38:21,219 --> 00:38:23,399
Speaker 3: for me to be wrong about that in the same

666
00:38:23,460 --> 00:38:26,620
Speaker 3: way it's impossible for me to be wrong about what

667
00:38:26,739 --> 00:38:29,450
Speaker 3: i think i mean when i think of a dog

668
00:38:29,469 --> 00:38:33,710
Speaker 3: yeah but davidson says no actually it is not impossible

669
00:38:33,750 --> 00:38:36,489
Speaker 3: for you to be wrong swamp man could look at

670
00:38:36,530 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 3: an animal and say i think that's a dog But

671
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:43,260
Speaker 3: Swamp Man has actually never met or seen or learned

672
00:38:43,300 --> 00:38:47,210
Speaker 3: about dogs before. So Swamp Man is incorrect about what

673
00:38:47,270 --> 00:38:51,629
Speaker 3: his own thoughts mean. And for a Star Trek analogy here,

674
00:38:52,469 --> 00:38:55,430
Speaker 3: Spock could beam down to a planet. He could see

675
00:38:55,469 --> 00:38:58,320
Speaker 3: a creature with the gray elf face with the fangs

676
00:38:58,489 --> 00:39:02,000
Speaker 3: and long white hair and suction cup fingers. And Spock

677
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:05,040
Speaker 3: could say, that is a salt vampire. I've dealt with

678
00:39:05,100 --> 00:39:08,339
Speaker 3: one of these before. But the newly created Spock that

679
00:39:08,380 --> 00:39:13,110
Speaker 3: was reassembled by the teleporter has actually never seen assault vampires,

680
00:39:13,180 --> 00:39:16,270
Speaker 3: never met one. So while he can say the words

681
00:39:16,390 --> 00:39:20,990
Speaker 3: and behave as if he has met assault vampire, the

682
00:39:21,010 --> 00:39:24,110
Speaker 3: words don't actually have meaning. And he is thus wrong

683
00:39:24,170 --> 00:39:26,890
Speaker 3: about what his own thoughts mean. Our knowledge of our

684
00:39:27,030 --> 00:39:40,839
Speaker 3: own thoughts is not infallible, according to Davidson. Now, plenty

685
00:39:40,860 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 3: of philosophers reject Davidson's argument here. One response that we've

686
00:39:44,420 --> 00:39:47,420
Speaker 3: talked about on the show before is the late philosopher

687
00:39:47,460 --> 00:39:51,610
Speaker 3: Daniel Dennett's response. Dennett said, you know, Swamp Man is

688
00:39:51,930 --> 00:39:55,370
Speaker 3: interesting to play around with. Clearly, I think he liked

689
00:39:55,489 --> 00:39:57,950
Speaker 3: talking about this thought experiment, so he was not like

690
00:39:57,969 --> 00:40:00,989
Speaker 3: hostile to it. But he argued a couple of things

691
00:40:01,050 --> 00:40:03,180
Speaker 3: about it. For one thing, he said it's actually a

692
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 3: good illustration of why thought experiments tend to become less

693
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:13,320
Speaker 3: useful or less valid the more they depart from plausible reality.

694
00:40:14,190 --> 00:40:18,710
Speaker 3: This scenario could never actually happen. That's never going to

695
00:40:18,750 --> 00:40:21,109
Speaker 3: just happen, like lightning strikes a tree and it makes

696
00:40:21,150 --> 00:40:24,990
Speaker 3: a perfect copy of somebody. And because it could never

697
00:40:25,190 --> 00:40:30,470
Speaker 3: actually happen, our intuitions are not very useful in manipulating

698
00:40:30,530 --> 00:40:34,569
Speaker 3: and drawing conclusions from it. For Dennett, thought experiments are

699
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:39,100
Speaker 3: more illuminating when the scenarios they describe are somewhat realistic,

700
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:43,260
Speaker 3: because then our intuitions are better tuned to react sensibly

701
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:46,940
Speaker 3: to them. But beyond that, in actually addressing Davidson's argument,

702
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:53,200
Speaker 3: Dennett wrote that with that plausibility caveat, the conclusion actually

703
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 3: didn't pass the basic intuition test. For Dennett, it's like

704
00:40:57,900 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 3: if it walks like a duck and it quacks like

705
00:40:59,920 --> 00:41:02,910
Speaker 3: a duck, most people actually would assume it's a duck.

706
00:41:03,350 --> 00:41:07,049
Speaker 3: And similarly, if the Swamp Man were actually created and

707
00:41:07,090 --> 00:41:11,290
Speaker 3: it behaves exactly like you, Most people would just assume

708
00:41:11,489 --> 00:41:13,870
Speaker 3: that it is you, and it actually is able to

709
00:41:13,910 --> 00:41:16,650
Speaker 3: think about a dog, even if it is never in

710
00:41:16,730 --> 00:41:19,890
Speaker 3: its own form as these atoms physically met a dog.

711
00:41:20,860 --> 00:41:24,580
Speaker 3: If Swamp Man's behavior is functional, why should we say

712
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:28,940
Speaker 3: it is not meaningful? So for Dennett, though a history

713
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:33,260
Speaker 3: of interactions with the outside world and other minds that

714
00:41:33,380 --> 00:41:36,880
Speaker 3: does in fact explain how our mental representations come to

715
00:41:36,940 --> 00:41:41,690
Speaker 3: have meaning, that history is just how it usually happens.

716
00:41:41,770 --> 00:41:45,149
Speaker 3: It's not a necessary part of the definition of what

717
00:41:45,290 --> 00:41:50,570
Speaker 3: thought and meaning are. So Dennett's position is sometimes called functionalism.

718
00:41:50,590 --> 00:41:54,210
Speaker 3: His would be a version of functionalism. If it behaves

719
00:41:54,330 --> 00:41:57,810
Speaker 3: exactly the same as a thinking being, and you can

720
00:41:57,870 --> 00:42:01,690
Speaker 3: make accurate predictions by imagining it as a thinking being,

721
00:42:01,710 --> 00:42:03,969
Speaker 3: then we have no reason to say it's not a

722
00:42:03,989 --> 00:42:09,370
Speaker 3: thinking And if those thoughts are behaviorally indistinguishable from thoughts

723
00:42:09,430 --> 00:42:11,890
Speaker 3: that have meaning, we have no valid reason to say

724
00:42:11,930 --> 00:42:15,390
Speaker 3: that they don't have meaning. One thing I was thinking about,

725
00:42:15,430 --> 00:42:17,649
Speaker 3: neither of the philosophers I was just talking about make

726
00:42:17,670 --> 00:42:21,170
Speaker 3: this comparison. Uh, but I was thinking about the idea

727
00:42:21,210 --> 00:42:24,969
Speaker 3: of like, okay, so if you imagine the swamp man

728
00:42:25,219 --> 00:42:27,439
Speaker 3: or the, the traveler who just went through the star

729
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:32,180
Speaker 3: Trek transporter as kind of having meaning, uh, like a,

730
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:36,700
Speaker 3: like a, uh, System operating software that comes pre-installed on

731
00:42:36,739 --> 00:42:40,380
Speaker 3: your computer when you arrive at an analogy to nature

732
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,400
Speaker 3: in some ways, I think, could be the way that

733
00:42:43,739 --> 00:42:48,460
Speaker 3: animal brains in nature can have associations that are not

734
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:53,090
Speaker 3: learned through experience, but delivered genetically through innate instinct. Like

735
00:42:53,570 --> 00:42:57,549
Speaker 3: some prey animals know with no prior experience to be

736
00:42:57,590 --> 00:43:00,350
Speaker 3: afraid of certain shapes of predators, like the silhouette of

737
00:43:00,390 --> 00:43:03,050
Speaker 3: a hawk or something, maybe the shape of a snake.

738
00:43:03,489 --> 00:43:04,930
Speaker 3: And if you think about it like this, you can

739
00:43:04,969 --> 00:43:08,590
Speaker 3: think that like, well, okay, so learning and prior interaction

740
00:43:08,610 --> 00:43:12,029
Speaker 3: with the world is usually necessary in order for internal

741
00:43:12,090 --> 00:43:15,700
Speaker 3: states like thoughts to have meaning. But that prior interaction

742
00:43:16,510 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 3: doesn't have to have happened to the same mass of

743
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 3: atoms that make up your current body. That prior interaction

744
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,939
Speaker 3: could have happened in the case of the transporter to

745
00:43:27,540 --> 00:43:30,820
Speaker 3: the body of which a copy is made. Or in

746
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 3: the case of the real world in biology, it could

747
00:43:33,180 --> 00:43:37,009
Speaker 3: have happened to other organisms that were subsequently shaped by

748
00:43:37,090 --> 00:43:42,350
Speaker 3: evolution to have instinctual knowledge coming pre-installed by the time

749
00:43:42,390 --> 00:43:43,050
Speaker 3: that you're born.

750
00:43:43,950 --> 00:43:45,070
Speaker 1: That's a great point, yeah.

751
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:49,900
Speaker 3: So anyway, this raises the question, like, you imagine McCoy

752
00:43:50,020 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 3: is beamed down to the planet. McCoy hates it. He says,

753
00:43:52,260 --> 00:43:55,359
Speaker 3: I didn't join Starfleet to have my atoms scattered back

754
00:43:55,420 --> 00:43:58,460
Speaker 3: and forth across the galaxy, but sorry, you did. That's

755
00:43:58,480 --> 00:43:59,620
Speaker 3: what you got to do. So you're going to get

756
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:01,610
Speaker 3: beamed down to the planet. No, you don't like it.

757
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:07,090
Speaker 3: So McCoy arrives on the planet. What does this now

758
00:44:07,219 --> 00:44:11,069
Speaker 3: arrived McCoy actually know or mean when he thinks about

759
00:44:11,090 --> 00:44:14,330
Speaker 3: a friend or a familiar concept, especially if you take

760
00:44:14,370 --> 00:44:17,790
Speaker 3: the view that the original McCoy was destroyed and this

761
00:44:17,850 --> 00:44:20,690
Speaker 3: is a reassembled a new body out of new atoms

762
00:44:20,750 --> 00:44:21,509
Speaker 3: and molecules?

763
00:44:21,930 --> 00:44:25,890
Speaker 1: Yeah, like this numerically, this McCoy does not know anything.

764
00:44:26,730 --> 00:44:28,850
Speaker 1: quote unquote, know anyone on the ship that he just

765
00:44:29,050 --> 00:44:34,029
Speaker 1: beamed down from and is carrying out a mission that

766
00:44:34,550 --> 00:44:35,810
Speaker 1: is just pre-installed. Yeah.

767
00:44:36,450 --> 00:44:38,480
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly where I come down here. I

768
00:44:39,180 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 3: think I would tend to lean more toward the functionalist

769
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:45,800
Speaker 3: view that says, you know, if this McCoy is behaving

770
00:44:45,860 --> 00:44:49,040
Speaker 3: as if he knows, you know, Nancy Crater here on

771
00:44:49,060 --> 00:44:52,210
Speaker 3: the planet, he does know her. And the words he's saying,

772
00:44:52,350 --> 00:44:54,779
Speaker 3: he's behaving as if the words have meaning. We have

773
00:44:54,820 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 3: no reason to say that the words do not have meaning,

774
00:44:57,120 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 3: even though he may never have used these words before.

775
00:45:01,170 --> 00:45:06,069
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's a scenario that is so removed from reality.

776
00:45:06,090 --> 00:45:08,509
Speaker 3: I agree with Dennett's point that it is kind of

777
00:45:08,690 --> 00:45:11,430
Speaker 3: hard to apply our intuitions to it. We may just

778
00:45:11,469 --> 00:45:11,989
Speaker 3: be kind of.

779
00:45:14,140 --> 00:45:17,420
Speaker 3: Being led astray by weird little kind of red herrings,

780
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 3: little actually not important features of the scenario because this

781
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:26,450
Speaker 3: is a scenario we would never actually deal with. So

782
00:45:26,469 --> 00:45:28,690
Speaker 3: we don't have to know how to react to it.

783
00:45:29,230 --> 00:45:33,089
Speaker 1: Right, right. The more pressing real-world versions of this would be, say,

784
00:45:33,130 --> 00:45:37,050
Speaker 1: some sort of a machine or an advanced language model

785
00:45:37,070 --> 00:45:40,620
Speaker 1: that's presenting itself as McCoy or some individual.

786
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:43,690
Speaker 3: And you know what? They're... When you think about it

787
00:45:43,730 --> 00:45:48,210
Speaker 3: that way, I have intuitions. I'm not sure they're correct.

788
00:45:48,270 --> 00:45:51,549
Speaker 3: They might just be kind of an emotivism, like emotional expressions.

789
00:45:51,610 --> 00:45:54,910
Speaker 3: But if you start asking me, do I think that

790
00:45:54,969 --> 00:45:59,730
Speaker 3: the things said by a large language model AI are meaningful?

791
00:45:59,870 --> 00:46:03,529
Speaker 3: Is it actually having thoughts? Part of me there seems

792
00:46:03,590 --> 00:46:06,350
Speaker 3: to think no, actually. I feel more like this is

793
00:46:06,390 --> 00:46:13,540
Speaker 3: a kind of uncomprehending but sophisticated manipulation of symbols. But

794
00:46:14,420 --> 00:46:17,890
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe that's just a kind of emotional

795
00:46:17,930 --> 00:46:18,910
Speaker 3: bias on my part.

796
00:46:19,340 --> 00:46:22,529
Speaker 1: Yeah, this, of course, is a huge area of consideration. And,

797
00:46:22,590 --> 00:46:25,210
Speaker 1: you know, by some estimates, maybe there is a line

798
00:46:25,950 --> 00:46:29,109
Speaker 1: there and it's not necessarily visible to us. And once

799
00:46:29,150 --> 00:46:32,290
Speaker 1: we cross that threshold, we are getting into an area

800
00:46:32,330 --> 00:46:34,730
Speaker 1: where there is something like consciousness on the other end.

801
00:46:35,489 --> 00:46:41,580
Speaker 1: And otherwise, maybe not. But again, a more. practical and

802
00:46:41,660 --> 00:46:45,890
Speaker 1: near-future consideration compared to the complete, you know, down to

803
00:46:45,930 --> 00:46:48,549
Speaker 1: the molecule, down to the atom, down to the very

804
00:46:48,630 --> 00:46:53,219
Speaker 1: synapse in the brain copy that is created by some

805
00:46:53,260 --> 00:46:57,240
Speaker 1: sort of teleportation device. But still, the Swamp Man discussion

806
00:46:57,280 --> 00:46:57,939
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun.

807
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:00,839
Speaker 3: I mean, do you have intuitions on this? Like, what

808
00:47:00,860 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 3: do you think? Like, Does it make sense to you

809
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 3: that a being could have meaning when it refers to

810
00:47:07,700 --> 00:47:11,100
Speaker 3: something that it has actually never experienced in any way?

811
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:15,640
Speaker 1: I mean, people talk about things they have little experience

812
00:47:15,660 --> 00:47:19,319
Speaker 1: with all the time. It doesn't mean I necessarily... Is

813
00:47:19,340 --> 00:47:22,700
Speaker 1: it meaningful? Yeah, I mean, sometimes. I mean, I guess

814
00:47:22,719 --> 00:47:26,649
Speaker 1: it's a sliding scale. Yeah. I guess I tend to...

815
00:47:28,200 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: Dealing with this particular scenario, I tend to believe that, yes,

816
00:47:31,320 --> 00:47:36,980
Speaker 1: if you've made a complete 100% copy of McCoy and

817
00:47:37,739 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 1: he has preloaded opinions about things that, yes, numerically, this

818
00:47:42,700 --> 00:47:47,089
Speaker 1: individual has never actually encountered, it doesn't take away from

819
00:47:47,450 --> 00:47:51,790
Speaker 1: the meaning behind it. When you beam him down and

820
00:47:51,830 --> 00:47:55,570
Speaker 1: he's going to start giving you a medical checkup, I

821
00:47:55,610 --> 00:47:59,580
Speaker 1: totally trust him. to apply medical care to me. I'm

822
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: not going to say, oh, but you actually don't have

823
00:48:02,260 --> 00:48:05,810
Speaker 1: personal experience treating anyone. That was the other copy. No,

824
00:48:05,850 --> 00:48:10,390
Speaker 1: like this is good enough. So I guess I tend

825
00:48:10,430 --> 00:48:12,770
Speaker 1: to buy into good enough-isms when it comes to this

826
00:48:12,810 --> 00:48:13,230
Speaker 1: sort of thing.

827
00:48:13,469 --> 00:48:15,570
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess the functionalist view again, yeah.

828
00:48:15,660 --> 00:48:18,180
Speaker 1: Yeah. By the way, I think I've mentioned this on

829
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:20,219
Speaker 1: the show before, but I researched this a little bit

830
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:25,479
Speaker 1: at one point. Obviously, Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing

831
00:48:26,110 --> 00:48:30,739
Speaker 1: has close parallels to Davidson's Swamp Man scenario. Prior to

832
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:34,160
Speaker 1: Alan Moore writing on the Swamp Thing title for DC Comics,

833
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:36,980
Speaker 1: Swamp Thing was like a man who became a monster

834
00:48:37,020 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 1: in the more typical sense, but Alan Moore recasts the

835
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:45,190
Speaker 1: character in a very Swamp Man way, being completely destroyed

836
00:48:45,230 --> 00:48:50,529
Speaker 1: and recreated in the likeness of the previous individual. And

837
00:48:50,770 --> 00:48:53,500
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, No one is entirely

838
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:56,440
Speaker 1: certain on how and to what extent these two were

839
00:48:56,480 --> 00:49:00,140
Speaker 1: actually connected. And of the two, only Alan Moore is

840
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:04,430
Speaker 1: still alive. But it basically seems to be a case

841
00:49:04,510 --> 00:49:11,690
Speaker 1: where Alan Moore was creating entertainment based on philosophy. And

842
00:49:11,730 --> 00:49:16,230
Speaker 1: then Davidson was creating philosophy based on pop culture entertainment.

843
00:49:16,270 --> 00:49:19,970
Speaker 1: So maybe it's entirely possible that the two were completely unaware.

844
00:49:20,050 --> 00:49:21,450
Speaker 1: of each other. That's funny.

845
00:49:21,630 --> 00:49:23,719
Speaker 3: By the way, I have thought multiple times that I

846
00:49:23,739 --> 00:49:25,660
Speaker 3: want to come back and check out one of the

847
00:49:25,989 --> 00:49:27,540
Speaker 3: Swamp Thing movies for Weird Alice.

848
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:31,060
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. The Swamp Thing movies, they also came about

849
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:35,920
Speaker 1: after Alan Moore's tremendous run on the series. But the

850
00:49:36,820 --> 00:49:40,180
Speaker 1: bear none of its complexity, but they're still pretty fun.

851
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:41,300
Speaker 1: Still pretty fun movies.

852
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:42,859
Speaker 3: Did Wes Craven do one of them?

853
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:46,430
Speaker 1: He did. He did the first one. And Louis Jourdan

854
00:49:47,110 --> 00:49:48,810
Speaker 1: playing the villain in that one.

855
00:49:49,170 --> 00:49:49,290
Speaker 2: Yeah.

856
00:49:49,810 --> 00:49:52,089
Speaker 3: Haven't seen him, but I gotta make it there one day.

857
00:50:02,900 --> 00:50:07,210
Speaker 1: Now, coming a bit back to science fiction itself. Teleportation

858
00:50:07,250 --> 00:50:12,489
Speaker 1: science fiction naturally predates Star Trek itself. And this gets

859
00:50:12,510 --> 00:50:16,279
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating when you start tearing into it. There was

860
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:19,900
Speaker 1: an 1877 short story titled The Man Without a Body

861
00:50:20,020 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: by Edward Page Mitchell that by some estimates might be

862
00:50:23,620 --> 00:50:28,730
Speaker 1: the earliest example of teleportation science fiction detailing a method

863
00:50:29,190 --> 00:50:33,270
Speaker 1: by which matter is telepumped. from one point to another

864
00:50:33,510 --> 00:50:37,850
Speaker 1: over a telephone wire. I believe a cat is telephoned

865
00:50:37,890 --> 00:50:40,660
Speaker 1: in this story. And then when it comes to the

866
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:46,540
Speaker 1: term teleportation, it's my understanding that this largely originates with

867
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:51,420
Speaker 1: Charles Forte. When you hear the word Fortean, this is

868
00:50:52,140 --> 00:50:55,759
Speaker 1: the Charles Forte in question here. He wrote a lot

869
00:50:55,780 --> 00:50:57,700
Speaker 1: about anomalous phenomena.

870
00:50:58,060 --> 00:51:00,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, the namesake of the Fortean times.

871
00:51:00,820 --> 00:51:05,120
Speaker 1: Exactly, yes. He coined this term teleportation in his then

872
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:11,260
Speaker 1: consideration of mysterious disappearances and appearances as far back as 1931.

873
00:51:11,260 --> 00:51:13,719
Speaker 1: So things like someone vanishes or fish fall out of

874
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:16,680
Speaker 1: the sky, that sort of thing. Okay. Now, prior to

875
00:51:16,719 --> 00:51:19,300
Speaker 1: Star Trek, one of the really big ones is Alfred

876
00:51:19,380 --> 00:51:23,740
Speaker 1: Bester's The Star is My Destination, which employed the idea

877
00:51:23,780 --> 00:51:28,620
Speaker 1: of teleportation, calling it jaunting, which of course also influenced

878
00:51:28,660 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 1: Stephen King, apparently, because this is... Because he has the excellent,

879
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:38,020
Speaker 1: terrifying 1981 sci-fi horror tale, The Jaunt, which was published

880
00:51:38,060 --> 00:51:42,500
Speaker 1: in Twilight Zone magazine. Now, whether King's jaunt is truly

881
00:51:42,540 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: teleportation is another matter, I imagine.

882
00:51:44,940 --> 00:51:47,799
Speaker 3: It's been a while since I read that, but it

883
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:52,220
Speaker 3: has a very mentally grisly twist. Folks, if you want

884
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:54,760
Speaker 3: to experience the story unspoiled and want to keep listening,

885
00:51:54,820 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 3: I don't know, skip 20 seconds ahead. basically the idea

886
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:00,480
Speaker 3: is that when you go through teleportation, you have to

887
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:02,919
Speaker 3: take a sedative to be asleep when it happens because

888
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:06,200
Speaker 3: if you are conscious at the moment of teleportation, you

889
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 3: get mentally imprisoned for like billions of years inside of

890
00:52:11,380 --> 00:52:15,340
Speaker 3: a consciousness jail where you're just stuck there with nothing

891
00:52:15,390 --> 00:52:17,390
Speaker 3: to experience and you go insane.

892
00:52:17,650 --> 00:52:20,170
Speaker 1: Yeah, you come out of the end completely insane and

893
00:52:20,190 --> 00:52:22,529
Speaker 1: then Oompa Loompas sing a song about how you shouldn't

894
00:52:22,550 --> 00:52:22,989
Speaker 1: have done that.

895
00:52:23,430 --> 00:52:23,609
Speaker 2: Yeah.

896
00:52:24,110 --> 00:52:28,450
Speaker 1: Now another key predecessor, and we've we've referenced this already

897
00:52:28,469 --> 00:52:31,910
Speaker 1: a little bit in this episode, is George Langolin's 1957

898
00:52:31,910 --> 00:52:35,270
Speaker 1: sci-fi horror tale, The Fly, which was made into a

899
00:52:35,330 --> 00:52:38,890
Speaker 1: film the following year. It was originally published in the

900
00:52:38,930 --> 00:52:42,509
Speaker 1: June 1957 edition of Playboy magazine. And it, of course,

901
00:52:42,550 --> 00:52:46,549
Speaker 1: introduces the most famous teleporter accident in science fiction. What

902
00:52:46,590 --> 00:52:50,150
Speaker 1: happens if I enter a telepod with a house fly

903
00:52:50,770 --> 00:52:53,990
Speaker 1: and then you mix the idea, you do a mashup

904
00:52:54,110 --> 00:52:56,830
Speaker 1: of these two concepts and And that's what emerges on

905
00:52:56,870 --> 00:52:57,850
Speaker 1: the other end. Yeah.

906
00:52:58,450 --> 00:53:00,090
Speaker 3: Did Brundle absorb fly?

907
00:53:00,330 --> 00:53:04,130
Speaker 1: No. Fusion. We did a whole episode of Stuff to

908
00:53:04,170 --> 00:53:06,489
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, not Weird House Cinema, Stuff to Blow

909
00:53:06,530 --> 00:53:10,330
Speaker 1: Your Mind about the fly many years back where we

910
00:53:10,410 --> 00:53:14,190
Speaker 1: got into some of the additional teleportation considerations when you're

911
00:53:14,230 --> 00:53:21,109
Speaker 1: talking about sending one human through the teleporter. And maybe

912
00:53:21,130 --> 00:53:22,739
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry just about the fly, but

913
00:53:22,780 --> 00:53:24,529
Speaker 1: how about all the other things that live inside us?

914
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:27,219
Speaker 1: that are genetically different from us.

915
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:30,220
Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, when you get fused

916
00:53:30,260 --> 00:53:32,399
Speaker 3: with all of your gut microbiota and all that.

917
00:53:32,700 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, in Star Trek, the Federation seems to have

918
00:53:36,080 --> 00:53:38,540
Speaker 1: various safeguards in place to keep this sort of thing

919
00:53:38,580 --> 00:53:41,920
Speaker 1: from happening. But if you've watched Star Trek enough, you

920
00:53:41,940 --> 00:53:46,940
Speaker 1: know that transporter mishaps do occur. Sometimes, as with the fly,

921
00:53:47,060 --> 00:53:50,000
Speaker 1: they seem to happen for sheer horror's sake. The main

922
00:53:50,060 --> 00:53:54,540
Speaker 1: example of this is from 1979's Star Trek, The Motion Picture. Joe,

923
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:56,180
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember this moment or not.

924
00:53:56,260 --> 00:53:58,970
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how you could forget it in which

925
00:53:59,090 --> 00:54:03,089
Speaker 1: two individuals are fatally distorted via the transporter. They're like

926
00:54:03,170 --> 00:54:06,030
Speaker 1: not able to get in all the way. And then

927
00:54:06,270 --> 00:54:08,310
Speaker 1: they're gone and we're just told what we got back

928
00:54:08,370 --> 00:54:13,270
Speaker 1: didn't live long, fortunately. Yeah. So it's like straight up,

929
00:54:13,469 --> 00:54:16,110
Speaker 1: you know, horror moment here in that in that film,

930
00:54:16,530 --> 00:54:19,670
Speaker 1: more in line with the fly or or even the jaunt.

931
00:54:20,210 --> 00:54:23,040
Speaker 3: Why did that happen in the story? Was it just

932
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:25,900
Speaker 3: random or was there a sabotage of some kind?

933
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:28,020
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, it's been so long since

934
00:54:28,060 --> 00:54:30,180
Speaker 1: I've seen Star Trek, the motion picture. I don't even

935
00:54:30,200 --> 00:54:33,049
Speaker 1: remember how important it was. It was more about setting

936
00:54:33,090 --> 00:54:36,290
Speaker 1: the tone that, like, this is Star Trek, the motion picture,

937
00:54:36,330 --> 00:54:40,509
Speaker 1: and the stakes are pretty high. Because prior to this,

938
00:54:40,570 --> 00:54:43,049
Speaker 1: you know, we did have teleporter mishaps on Star Trek,

939
00:54:43,070 --> 00:54:46,770
Speaker 1: the original series. For instance, in the episode, The Enemy Within,

940
00:54:47,350 --> 00:54:52,900
Speaker 1: the transporter messes up and generates two Captain Kirk's. One

941
00:54:52,940 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 1: that embodies all the goodness of Captain Kirk and the

942
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: other one that's all the evil. So the best and

943
00:54:57,580 --> 00:55:00,990
Speaker 1: the worst of an individual split into two beings who then,

944
00:55:01,030 --> 00:55:01,830
Speaker 1: you know, duke it out.

945
00:55:02,130 --> 00:55:04,710
Speaker 3: Now, I imagine they have to deal with the bad Kirk,

946
00:55:04,770 --> 00:55:06,790
Speaker 3: but at the end of the episode, are you just

947
00:55:06,890 --> 00:55:10,030
Speaker 3: left with the good Kirk or do they re-merge back together?

948
00:55:10,050 --> 00:55:13,810
Speaker 1: I believe we re-merge because the good, because that's the,

949
00:55:13,890 --> 00:55:15,450
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of the meat of what they're

950
00:55:15,469 --> 00:55:17,920
Speaker 1: getting into here is the, if you take all the

951
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:20,220
Speaker 1: good out of the person, like that's still not the person.

952
00:55:20,700 --> 00:55:23,830
Speaker 1: You've created good. Two versions of the individual that aren't

953
00:55:23,870 --> 00:55:27,390
Speaker 1: the original. So you've got to reconsolidate. It's an episode

954
00:55:27,410 --> 00:55:29,290
Speaker 1: that I haven't gotten to yet. So there may be

955
00:55:29,350 --> 00:55:31,989
Speaker 1: some nuts and bolts of that episode that I'm not

956
00:55:32,030 --> 00:55:36,980
Speaker 1: aware of. Now, I'm more familiar with the Next Generation

957
00:55:37,040 --> 00:55:40,700
Speaker 1: teleporter mishaps, and there are some doozies in there. There's

958
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:44,279
Speaker 1: an episode called Rascals in which four crew members... are

959
00:55:44,320 --> 00:55:49,770
Speaker 1: reverted to their 12-year-old selves. And I have not seen

960
00:55:49,790 --> 00:55:52,650
Speaker 1: this one since I was a young person, but I

961
00:55:52,690 --> 00:55:55,270
Speaker 1: remember it being a lot of fun because, you know, oh, suddenly,

962
00:55:56,310 --> 00:55:59,690
Speaker 1: you know, they're these characters that are basically my age

963
00:55:59,730 --> 00:56:01,459
Speaker 1: and they're running around the Starship Enterprise.

964
00:56:01,780 --> 00:56:02,800
Speaker 3: Is one of them Riker?

965
00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:05,040
Speaker 1: Well, I had to look it up to remind myself.

966
00:56:05,100 --> 00:56:10,219
Speaker 1: It's actually, yeah, it's Whoopi Goldberg's character. It's Picard. It's

967
00:56:10,320 --> 00:56:12,820
Speaker 1: Ensign Roe. and then a character by the name of

968
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:16,890
Speaker 1: O'Brien that I don't clearly remember all that well. But yeah,

969
00:56:16,910 --> 00:56:20,790
Speaker 1: they're all reduced to 12-year-old versions of themselves. How is

970
00:56:20,830 --> 00:56:25,130
Speaker 1: that possible? You know, for plot reasons, it's possible.

971
00:56:25,410 --> 00:56:28,970
Speaker 3: Do they retain all of their adult knowledge and minds,

972
00:56:29,130 --> 00:56:32,469
Speaker 3: or do they, like, revert to what they knew and

973
00:56:32,530 --> 00:56:33,390
Speaker 3: were when they were 12?

974
00:56:33,390 --> 00:56:35,739
Speaker 1: Like, are they Muppet babies, kind of?

975
00:56:35,780 --> 00:56:35,930
Speaker 2: Yeah.

976
00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:39,080
Speaker 1: I don't remember how this one plays out. I think

977
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:42,859
Speaker 1: clearly maybe one of the sillier examples. But then there's

978
00:56:42,930 --> 00:56:44,890
Speaker 1: another episode, and I remember this one too, and this

979
00:56:44,969 --> 00:56:46,810
Speaker 1: one I remember being quite good. And I think this

980
00:56:46,870 --> 00:56:50,690
Speaker 1: one also involves Ensign Rowe, as well as Geordi LaForge.

981
00:56:51,230 --> 00:56:55,469
Speaker 1: A mishap with the teleporter makes them invisible and intangible,

982
00:56:55,510 --> 00:57:01,190
Speaker 1: so they become like ghosts aboard the Enterprise. So that

983
00:57:01,430 --> 00:57:04,730
Speaker 1: one I remember being pretty good. One of the more

984
00:57:05,010 --> 00:57:08,870
Speaker 1: famous examples from Star Trek The Next Generation is the

985
00:57:09,210 --> 00:57:12,830
Speaker 1: episode Second Chances. in which we get two Lieutenant Rikers.

986
00:57:13,650 --> 00:57:17,250
Speaker 1: So essentially the way this happens is they're trying to beam,

987
00:57:17,830 --> 00:57:19,010
Speaker 1: at one point in the past, they were trying to

988
00:57:19,050 --> 00:57:22,270
Speaker 1: beam him back up and there were challenging environmental conditions

989
00:57:22,330 --> 00:57:24,390
Speaker 1: in place. They're like, okay, we'll use two channels to

990
00:57:24,430 --> 00:57:26,770
Speaker 1: do it, to pull him up from the surface. And

991
00:57:26,790 --> 00:57:29,410
Speaker 1: then we're going to consolidate all of that into one Riker.

992
00:57:29,450 --> 00:57:31,650
Speaker 1: But I guess this way, it's like you get incomplete

993
00:57:31,730 --> 00:57:34,210
Speaker 1: information on one side, incomplete on the other, but between

994
00:57:34,230 --> 00:57:38,230
Speaker 1: the two streams, we'll have one complete Riker. Okay. Sounds good.

995
00:57:38,740 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 1: But only one beam makes it back up. And it

996
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:45,000
Speaker 1: delivers a full Riker. The other beam bounces back down

997
00:57:45,020 --> 00:57:48,580
Speaker 1: to the surface and creates another Riker who's identical. So

998
00:57:48,620 --> 00:57:51,330
Speaker 1: now you have two Rikers, but one gets to go home.

999
00:57:51,430 --> 00:57:53,690
Speaker 1: And if memory serves, the other one is like left

1000
00:57:53,790 --> 00:57:56,850
Speaker 1: Robinson Crusoe on the planet's surface. So we end up

1001
00:57:56,910 --> 00:58:00,310
Speaker 1: with years later, we have two different Rikers. We have

1002
00:58:00,700 --> 00:58:03,900
Speaker 1: William Riker and then we have Thomas Riker. So identical

1003
00:58:03,940 --> 00:58:06,080
Speaker 1: at the point of creation, but each has gone a

1004
00:58:06,100 --> 00:58:06,920
Speaker 1: different way since then.

1005
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:10,920
Speaker 3: What is the Crusoe Riker like? Is he, like, bitter

1006
00:58:10,960 --> 00:58:11,330
Speaker 3: about it?

1007
00:58:11,860 --> 00:58:16,390
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. As I recall, he's bitter. Yeah. These two,

1008
00:58:16,990 --> 00:58:17,630
Speaker 1: they don't get along.

1009
00:58:17,810 --> 00:58:17,990
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1010
00:58:18,690 --> 00:58:21,410
Speaker 3: That's an interesting plot device because, yeah, it's easy to

1011
00:58:21,470 --> 00:58:25,030
Speaker 3: imagine all the different ways that you could not like

1012
00:58:25,070 --> 00:58:28,800
Speaker 3: yourself or not like people who you otherwise like if

1013
00:58:28,860 --> 00:58:31,620
Speaker 3: you just get to see them react to different circumstances

1014
00:58:31,680 --> 00:58:32,040
Speaker 3: than you.

1015
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:35,300
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Or if you met the you that had

1016
00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:39,330
Speaker 1: slightly different circumstances, right? Yeah. The you you could have been. Now,

1017
00:58:39,370 --> 00:58:42,670
Speaker 1: there's an episode of Voyager, and I watched, I think,

1018
00:58:42,790 --> 00:58:45,930
Speaker 1: none of Voyager. I think it basically came out when

1019
00:58:45,950 --> 00:58:47,770
Speaker 1: I was kind of getting out of watching Star Trek.

1020
00:58:47,810 --> 00:58:50,490
Speaker 1: But I understand it has some great episodes. But you

1021
00:58:50,530 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 1: have two characters that get merged into a third character,

1022
00:58:54,220 --> 00:58:58,140
Speaker 1: a character named Tuvix. But not in the fly way,

1023
00:58:58,220 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 1: not in a monstrous way. But it's like two individuals

1024
00:59:00,700 --> 00:59:04,020
Speaker 1: become a new third individual that is like a perfect

1025
00:59:04,080 --> 00:59:07,940
Speaker 1: blending of the previous two. And so that one, I

1026
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:10,350
Speaker 1: think gets into questions of like, okay, we have an

1027
00:59:10,390 --> 00:59:13,190
Speaker 1: entirely new person. Do they have the right to exist?

1028
00:59:13,450 --> 00:59:15,610
Speaker 1: Or are you going to separate them into the two

1029
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:19,260
Speaker 1: people that were merged to make them? Again, kind of

1030
00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:22,400
Speaker 1: an impossible situation. I'm not sure to what extent this

1031
00:59:22,460 --> 00:59:26,600
Speaker 1: one has any like real life ramifications, but still an

1032
00:59:26,660 --> 00:59:30,970
Speaker 1: inventive development. All right. These next two are ones that, um, that,

1033
00:59:31,030 --> 00:59:33,220
Speaker 1: that I, that I have definitely seen. One of them

1034
00:59:33,400 --> 00:59:36,480
Speaker 1: I think was probably the Star Trek next generation episode

1035
00:59:36,500 --> 00:59:38,280
Speaker 1: that blew my mind the most of the time. I

1036
00:59:38,280 --> 00:59:40,140
Speaker 1: don't know. There were several like that. They really presented

1037
00:59:40,180 --> 00:59:44,060
Speaker 1: me with sci-fi concepts that I'd never encountered before. There

1038
00:59:44,080 --> 00:59:47,590
Speaker 1: was a, there's an episode titled relics and it was

1039
00:59:47,730 --> 00:59:50,130
Speaker 1: always a favorite of mine because it features a Dyson sphere.

1040
00:59:50,610 --> 00:59:53,610
Speaker 1: Like the, the ship encounters a Dyson sphere. They go

1041
00:59:53,670 --> 00:59:56,130
Speaker 1: inside of it and you see like the interior surface

1042
00:59:56,230 --> 00:59:59,470
Speaker 1: of it that is, uh, you know, like a planetary surface,

1043
00:59:59,650 --> 01:00:02,490
Speaker 1: like a hollow Earth and with the sun captured in

1044
01:00:02,530 --> 01:00:06,580
Speaker 1: the middle. I had not been exposed to this concept

1045
01:00:06,640 --> 01:00:11,180
Speaker 1: in science fiction or, you know, or cosmology before. So

1046
01:00:11,260 --> 01:00:14,160
Speaker 1: this was entirely new, just completely blew my mind.

1047
01:00:14,880 --> 01:00:17,800
Speaker 3: I still remember how bizarre and exciting it was when

1048
01:00:17,840 --> 01:00:20,200
Speaker 3: I first found out about this concept. I'd never seen

1049
01:00:20,240 --> 01:00:22,580
Speaker 3: it in fiction. I think I just read about it

1050
01:00:22,760 --> 01:00:24,020
Speaker 3: and still it was so weird.

1051
01:00:24,420 --> 01:00:26,540
Speaker 1: Yeah. So for me, that's the most memorable thing about

1052
01:00:26,580 --> 01:00:30,730
Speaker 1: this episode. But It was also pretty neat because they

1053
01:00:30,770 --> 01:00:36,290
Speaker 1: happened to beam in Montgomery Scott, played by James Doohan

1054
01:00:36,370 --> 01:00:39,230
Speaker 1: from the original Star Trek series, with the idea here

1055
01:00:39,330 --> 01:00:43,330
Speaker 1: being that he was, this former version of himself was

1056
01:00:43,370 --> 01:00:49,360
Speaker 1: preserved in a transporter buffer. So the information from the transporter,

1057
01:00:49,420 --> 01:00:52,980
Speaker 1: like between point A and point B, got just stuck with,

1058
01:00:53,120 --> 01:00:57,000
Speaker 1: you know, due to some sort of significant energy overflow,

1059
01:00:57,040 --> 01:00:59,280
Speaker 1: I think from the Dyson sphere here. And so they

1060
01:00:59,300 --> 01:01:02,690
Speaker 1: were able to just beam him into being. It's a

1061
01:01:02,730 --> 01:01:07,570
Speaker 1: cached page. Yeah, a cached page. But once it's reproduced, well,

1062
01:01:07,590 --> 01:01:10,650
Speaker 1: there you go. Here he is again. In a similar way,

1063
01:01:10,770 --> 01:01:14,430
Speaker 1: the current series, Star Trek Strange New Worlds, that I've

1064
01:01:14,470 --> 01:01:17,780
Speaker 1: really been enjoying, the chief medical officer on that is

1065
01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:23,460
Speaker 1: this character, Joseph Mbinga, played by Babs Oluson Mokon. he

1066
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:26,860
Speaker 1: was in Dune. He played Jamis, a really good actor.

1067
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:31,080
Speaker 1: But this character keeps his terminally sick daughter, we find out,

1068
01:01:31,240 --> 01:01:34,540
Speaker 1: in a transporter buffer. So she has some sort of ailment.

1069
01:01:34,560 --> 01:01:37,090
Speaker 1: I forget the details of it. But basically, she has

1070
01:01:37,140 --> 01:01:41,470
Speaker 1: very little time to live in reality. So what he

1071
01:01:41,510 --> 01:01:43,850
Speaker 1: can do is he can keep her in a transporter

1072
01:01:43,890 --> 01:01:47,770
Speaker 1: buffer and bring her out of that transporter buffer periodically

1073
01:01:47,890 --> 01:01:50,050
Speaker 1: to spend time with her, but then puts her back in.

1074
01:01:50,070 --> 01:01:53,700
Speaker 1: It's almost like keeping her frozen until such a time

1075
01:01:53,800 --> 01:01:57,700
Speaker 1: as her ailments can be properly treated. So these are

1076
01:01:57,740 --> 01:02:00,550
Speaker 1: just some of the ones that came to my mind

1077
01:02:00,590 --> 01:02:03,010
Speaker 1: or that I was aware of or popped up on

1078
01:02:03,030 --> 01:02:05,230
Speaker 1: a few lists here and there. There are probably some

1079
01:02:05,270 --> 01:02:09,410
Speaker 1: other great examples of teleporter mishaps that have created some

1080
01:02:09,450 --> 01:02:13,090
Speaker 1: great drama and some fascinating ideas on Star Trek. And

1081
01:02:13,110 --> 01:02:14,730
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're going to keep coming up with new ones.

1082
01:02:15,370 --> 01:02:18,230
Speaker 1: But even the ones we've discussed here, they raise so

1083
01:02:18,250 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 1: many questions about like the The power of teleportation as

1084
01:02:23,140 --> 01:02:25,460
Speaker 1: revealed in Star Trek, like what are all the things

1085
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 1: that you could conceivably do that don't necessarily fit into

1086
01:02:28,900 --> 01:02:31,740
Speaker 1: the world and of the show and the plot of

1087
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:36,510
Speaker 1: individual episodes? Like if you can filter out biocontaminants from

1088
01:02:36,570 --> 01:02:40,210
Speaker 1: someone's information when it's being back to the ship, what

1089
01:02:40,270 --> 01:02:42,550
Speaker 1: else can you filter out? What else can you change?

1090
01:02:43,310 --> 01:02:47,630
Speaker 1: Could you improve on the original individual each time? You know, naturally,

1091
01:02:47,650 --> 01:02:50,350
Speaker 1: that would take things into the forbidden zone of augments

1092
01:02:50,830 --> 01:02:53,110
Speaker 1: in the Trek universe. But it's easy to imagine how

1093
01:02:53,190 --> 01:02:57,430
Speaker 1: society could be completely changed by access to such technology. Oh, yeah.

1094
01:02:57,450 --> 01:02:59,490
Speaker 3: It makes you wonder, like, why would you even need

1095
01:02:59,970 --> 01:03:04,830
Speaker 3: physical medical interventions? Couldn't all of your medical interventions be database?

1096
01:03:05,190 --> 01:03:05,450
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1097
01:03:05,490 --> 01:03:09,410
Speaker 3: You know, it's like if instead of doing physical things

1098
01:03:09,450 --> 01:03:11,860
Speaker 3: to your body when you've got when you've got an

1099
01:03:11,900 --> 01:03:15,440
Speaker 3: infection or something like that, they could just. put you

1100
01:03:15,500 --> 01:03:18,740
Speaker 3: into the teleporter and then pop up, make some digital

1101
01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:21,580
Speaker 3: edits and then pop out an information based version of

1102
01:03:21,600 --> 01:03:22,860
Speaker 3: you without the infection.

1103
01:03:22,880 --> 01:03:25,260
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Basically be like, I'm just going to do

1104
01:03:25,280 --> 01:03:29,120
Speaker 1: an Amazon return on my current state of physical or

1105
01:03:29,180 --> 01:03:30,060
Speaker 1: mental wellbeing.

1106
01:03:30,220 --> 01:03:30,419
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1107
01:03:30,460 --> 01:03:32,790
Speaker 1: Just to run this one through again. And some of

1108
01:03:32,830 --> 01:03:34,690
Speaker 1: this too, you can, I don't know. It also brings

1109
01:03:34,730 --> 01:03:37,110
Speaker 1: me once again, back to the fly, more specifically David

1110
01:03:37,150 --> 01:03:40,550
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's treatment of it. I'm sure you remember early on

1111
01:03:40,730 --> 01:03:45,800
Speaker 1: in the film, Dr. Brundle believes that that teleportation through

1112
01:03:45,820 --> 01:03:49,820
Speaker 1: the pods has purified and improved him. He doesn't know

1113
01:03:49,880 --> 01:03:52,240
Speaker 1: yet that he's been fused at a genetic level with

1114
01:03:52,300 --> 01:03:54,800
Speaker 1: a house fly. So for a while, he's just like

1115
01:03:54,890 --> 01:03:58,790
Speaker 1: the process itself is purifying. The process itself has made

1116
01:03:58,810 --> 01:04:02,050
Speaker 1: me like a better and I don't know, more intense person.

1117
01:04:03,650 --> 01:04:06,570
Speaker 1: So you can imagine like the various possibilities, like actual

1118
01:04:06,630 --> 01:04:10,450
Speaker 1: possibilities with this kind of technology where people would just

1119
01:04:10,530 --> 01:04:15,760
Speaker 1: continually redo it and redo themselves. changing themselves and also

1120
01:04:15,820 --> 01:04:18,980
Speaker 1: engaging in the idea that each it's like waking up

1121
01:04:19,020 --> 01:04:22,140
Speaker 1: in the morning, fully refreshed. Instead of taking a shower

1122
01:04:22,180 --> 01:04:25,050
Speaker 1: in the morning, you get up, you climb onto the

1123
01:04:25,130 --> 01:04:28,030
Speaker 1: end of the telepod and you just teleport yourself point

1124
01:04:28,150 --> 01:04:30,510
Speaker 1: A to point A and then go about your day.

1125
01:04:30,670 --> 01:04:32,270
Speaker 1: And you don't even have to have a cup of coffee. Yeah.

1126
01:04:32,390 --> 01:04:33,270
Speaker 3: Edit out the dirt.

1127
01:04:33,630 --> 01:04:35,810
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. All right.

1128
01:04:35,830 --> 01:04:36,670
Speaker 3: Does that do it for you?

1129
01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:40,120
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the limit. Obviously, I could keep

1130
01:04:40,540 --> 01:04:46,740
Speaker 1: rambling on about sci-fi teleportation. Endlessly fascinating topic. But again,

1131
01:04:46,780 --> 01:04:50,280
Speaker 1: we have no firm answers on consciousness or teleportation here today.

1132
01:04:50,840 --> 01:04:52,800
Speaker 1: But maybe we gave everyone some food for thought, food

1133
01:04:52,820 --> 01:04:57,760
Speaker 1: for discussion as well. Obviously, write in with any thoughts, observations,

1134
01:04:57,990 --> 01:05:02,250
Speaker 1: corrections that you have about the use of transporters in

1135
01:05:02,310 --> 01:05:05,640
Speaker 1: Star Trek media today. If you have anything from extended

1136
01:05:06,260 --> 01:05:08,020
Speaker 1: Star Trek media you want to write in about or

1137
01:05:08,060 --> 01:05:11,500
Speaker 1: just other examples of teleportation and science fiction that you

1138
01:05:11,580 --> 01:05:15,320
Speaker 1: think tie into the discussion here, write in. We would

1139
01:05:15,380 --> 01:05:18,480
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff

1140
01:05:18,500 --> 01:05:20,560
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture

1141
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:23,380
Speaker 1: podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays each week

1142
01:05:23,420 --> 01:05:26,220
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. Within

1143
01:05:26,260 --> 01:05:28,820
Speaker 1: that feed, we also have a short episode on Wednesdays.

1144
01:05:29,590 --> 01:05:32,510
Speaker 1: And then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns

1145
01:05:32,550 --> 01:05:35,020
Speaker 1: to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.

1146
01:05:35,480 --> 01:05:37,920
Speaker 1: And indeed, tomorrow, we will be discussing one of the

1147
01:05:37,940 --> 01:05:38,660
Speaker 1: Star Trek films.

1148
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:42,800
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J. Posway.

1149
01:05:43,240 --> 01:05:44,600
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1150
01:05:44,640 --> 01:05:47,200
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1151
01:05:47,240 --> 01:05:49,460
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1152
01:05:49,880 --> 01:05:53,420
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

1153
01:06:02,270 --> 01:06:04,690
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

1154
01:06:05,070 --> 01:06:08,410
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple

1155
01:06:08,430 --> 01:06:10,800
Speaker 2: Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.