another strange story

[Cap-Z-ro]

Does this mean Scotty couldn't have been reconstituted after all those years trapped in the transporter data base ?

Regards...

[TinselKoala]

Does this mean Scotty couldn't have been reconstituted after all those years trapped in the transporter data base ?

Regards...

Depends. I think in the old GP Model A, like in the original Enterprise, the energy from the total conversion of the original matter, in the scan process, was utilized to reconstitute the matter in the distant location. I think the information was "streamed" to use modern parlance, and those old transporters only stored the basic outline, not the entire Process. So if Scotty could somehow be reconstituted from that database, one would need to provide the energy, and also the product wouldn't be "alive" or "conscious" in the normal sense. It certainly wouldn't be Scotty.
But if he was scanned and stored in the improved GP ScanTransB, like in "Next Generation", only legalities would prevent his complete reconstitution. Of course, the Non-Inclusion principle of Paw Li forbids the simultaneous existence of more than a single quantum-complete Scotty at any given time, so the machine can't be used, for example, as a simple copier. Thank goodness for that--could you imagine the Spam???
Regardless, I think the database storage is incapable of simulating the Process (the Doctor notwithstanding) so any reconstituted Scotty would have no memories at all of time passing or of the storage itself.

[Yucca]

Nope, a person is "just" a body (including both substance and process). The genome specifies a "start point" if you will; from the instant of the first division of the fertilized egg onward, environmental variables (some random, some systematically varying, some constant) influence the product of the process started by information from the genome. The only way to duplicate -- or even encode -- the result is to duplicate the process. So the genome is not nearly enough, even to encode a "body" instead of a "person" as you say.

Consider the Star Trek transporter. It scans you down to the quantum level over a short time window and stores and transmits the information to a distant point where energies beyond our imagining reconstitute the matter, in exact duplication of the matter that was initially scanned, and due to the exactness of the information the Process (life, personality) is also reconstituted. The original, of course, back in the transporter room, is destroyed by the scanning process.
(You probably didn't realize that. They don't stress it at the General Products Corporation Transporter Division; it's bad for business. Fortunately their systems have very high reliability.)
Now, clearly there must be petabytes of information to be transmitted in such a process, and even a GP broadband subspace tranceiver would take a few femtoseconds to make the transfer, hence the need for fast and deep compression/decompression.

Would you take the trip, if the compression algorithm was the one Sloot used?

Or, would you take the trip at all? The first time is the scariest and most interesting from a philosophical point of view--especially if one is a materialist, as opposed to a dualist.

OK, I stand corrected, again Extraneous information enters the system the moment mitosis commences. So a genome can only describe a zygote at best. But then at what level of mitosis is a being considered to have a body?

I would take the trip provided my non sloot compressed pattern were stored safely for reconstitution should the transport fail. It´s an extreme test though, I´d probably transport a fly or something first. One thing I never understood about star trek transport. If a person could be scanned at the quantum level, every nuance of state recorded. Then surely as well as transmitting the data it could also be buffered in a large memory. So if anyone perished on an away mission they could just recall the last stored pattern. But they never do? Even though they speak of pattern buffers, they never recall from them. Whats up with that?

edit: Above already answered by TK. With that in mind, I wouldn´t transport unless I had no other choice, especially if it was a pioneering test to validate Sloot.

[TinselKoala]

I'm told that it's a lot easier the second time.


But I don't think I'd want to go the first time, either, unless the alternative death was a messy and painful one.
Of course, it could be terribly painful to be scanned, and the reconstitution could just leave that experience out, I suppose...but that would require the software to be able to instantly codec the traveller's internal coding, which is highly idiosyncratic to the point of uniqueness...(ever try to explain something to your teenage daughter, for example?)

Maybe that's where Sloot went when he discorporated--he was drafted by GP R&D.

[Cap-Z-ro]

It wood seem the original Scotty would have to be in the unit in order to be reconstituted.

Otherwise Yar wooden still be stuck inside the black goo.

Regards...