I'm With Bones

Ever watch the original Star Trek TV series?

In it, there’s some incredible fuel for a young imagination. There are alien life forms, many of whom were used to represent real-life human issues of race and nationality. Like all great science fiction, the show used allegories to talk about real-life human issues frequently.

The show also introduced utterly iconic characters to us. There was the impulsive but charismatic Captain Kirk, whose willingness to take risks at the right time turned out to be his great strength. Spock was the yin to Kirk’s yang, invoking logic and reason at every turn and inviting everyone to be more careful in their thinking.

Scotty, Uhura, and Sulu were excellent supporting characters, but there was one more semi-main character called Dr. McCoy I want us to focus on for today. McCoy was very old-school by the standards of the 23rd century, even down to DeForest Kelly’s strong Atlanta accent. His nickname, Bones, hearkens back to when doctors were morbidly playfully called sawbones.

In summary, everything about the guy is old-school.

Let’s put a placeholder on Bones for a moment. In addition to the characters and storytelling, Star Trek also introduced a lot of 23rd century technology. There was warp drive, which technically didn’t get around the laws of physics because it warped spactime itself, powered by antimatter. There were phasers, which were targeted energy weapons that were kind of like lasers, but way more versatile.

Among all this cool tech was one of the Star Trek universe’s most iconic inventions: the transporter. This device instantly takes you from the transporter room of the ship, and deposits you down there on the planet below, or into the transporter room of another ship.

Bones famously rejects using transporters himself. The rest of the crew kind of roll their eyes and treat him the same way a millennial might treat their parents if they still pay for their dinner with a check. This seems so silly, since everyone does it, and it allows the crew to go to places in an instant, saving vast amounts of time and convenience.

Folks, I’m with Bones here.

What happens when you step into the transporter, and how does your body get down to the surface of the planet?

Step one: you die. That’s right! In the Star Trek universe, this quaint phase is called dematerialization. A scanner comes in and analyzes your body (down to the subatomic level), then enters this data into a computer. Your matter is then converted into energy, which is then shot down to the surface of the planet.

Not to worry, though: at the other end, another transporter then recreates you, subatomic particle by subatomic particle, until you’re you again.

But… are you?

This scenario reminds me of a device that has become a relic during my lifetime: the fax machine. At one end, the original piece of paper goes in, and then it gets scanned in, transforming the visual element of the paper into ones and zeros.

Then, the signal is sent to another machine, which then turns those ones and zeros into carefully placed printer ink. Something that looks remarkably like the original piece of paper comes out at the other side, miles away, but does anyone really think that piece of paper is the same one that went in at the other side?

Another way to frame this debate is to imagine that you’re going to be transported somewhere else, so you step into the transporter. They run the scans and prepare the data, make the copy and store it in the computer, and then send that signal down below, to the other transporter.

This human fax machine then creates a second version of you, identical in every way to the you you are. Then, Scotty asks if you’re ready to be murdered yet.

If this seems like a silly point to make, is it really any different than the proposal to do all of these things at once? If you simultaneously die while the other version of you is created, does that person somehow become you, or do you somehow become them?

No, I’m with Bones here.

This conversation and debate is lively in the Star Trek community, where fans often take one side or the other and discuss whether consciousness is really transferred, and whether or not they themselves would jump into that transporter.

The debate echoes a much older conversation between John Locke and David Hume, two titans of Enlightenment thinking. Locke’s main idea was that a person's identity persists over time as long as they have a continuous stream of consciousness and memory. Hume, on the other hand, argued that there’s no such thing as a permanent you: you are a collection of moments, and memory is malleable.

I can see Hume’s point of view here. There’s no way to really prove that you’re the same person you were when you woke up this morning, and if that sounds silly to you, I want to ask you to spend some time thinking about this today. If a bicycle has all its parts replaced over time, is it still the same bicycle?

I’m still not getting into that transporter, though.

If you’re hankering to read more about Star Trek, you might enjoy this piece about how the phrase “to boldy go” came about:

Alternatively, read about the Star Trek computer game I played growing up: