The Trouble with Transporters

Live long and prosper?

Special thanks:

[IbeatHaloonLegendary]

4:51 Imagine being that one version of you that was created when you woke up from your alarm clock and then immediately killed when you pressed snooze

[austinbeattie]

According to the inventor of the transport in Star Trek: Enterprise

"I had to spend years convincing people that it actually was you that came out the other side and not some weird clone."

[rosysaturniidae]

it weird seeing a cgp grey with a full body as opposed to just the stick figure

[therealCamoron]

This is the same problem with any sort of "uploading your consciousness to a computer" thing.

[AndrewAce.]

So it's like copying a save file while deleting the old one.

[graymanplays]

2016: The Trouble with Transporters
2020: The Trouble with Tumbleweeds

[carsonbarlow]

And I told myself. "Okay, last video before bed."... dammit!

[novathedancingsong]

"still here? you cant stay awake for ever" played just as i closed my eyes about to pass out

[xisumavoid]

Sleep well tonight... nice ending :-D Cheers! lol

[bobbell]

I will take the "IGNORANCE IS BLISS" on this one.

[zgramzhnisk]

You know what makes the last part even more scary? People who had near-death experiences describe the feeling of dying as very similar to falling asleep

[AAvfx]

Sounds just right! Yesterday I went to sleep and I woke up transported!

[acorn]

Don't be afraid of falling asleep. Instead, rejoice that you will be awake for the rest of your life.

[inanjarif]

Instructions unclear: Achieved immortality and lost the ability to sleep

[NoobixCube]

Rule number 1 of Star Trek: The transporter is the safest form of travel, until someone mentions it's the safest form of travel. Then, you have a transporter accident episode.

[Ivytheherbert]

There's an episode of Next Generation that makes the transporter question much, much more complicated. In one episode Lt Barclay admits to never having used a transporter and being terrified of doing so, largely because of the concerns raised here, and is promptly peer-pressured into doing so by Counsellor Troy. The way this episode muddies the water it that when Barclay uses the transporter, the camera-angle 'follows' him through. We see him remain fully conscious throughout the entire experience. Later in the episode he even interacts with other entities during transportation and manages to pull something out of the beam upon rematerialising. Bizarrely, the question of death raised here doesn't work, because transporters are canonically not a break in consciousness on any level.

[ohahmenuts]

Well thanks Grey i totally needed an existential crisis this early in the morning....

[RainbirdReads]

Hello! I have the rather rare honour of being one of Cutty Sark's three shipkeepers (basically meaning we stop it from falling to bits). Appropriately enough, before the fire, she was undergoing a major conservation project - this involved the ship being disassembled, almost all of her wooden structure taken off site, so that the iron framework within could have remedial work done to it. When the infamous fire broke out, almost all the wooden bits of ship were safely stuffed away in Chatham, and were then returned to the somewhat-melty iron skeleton months later. So interestingly enough, she was disassembled, her component bits moved to another location, then the same original bits reassembled in their prior location. Somewhat different to disassembly at a molecular level, but still philosophically interesting. One day we'll add warp engines. If I have my way.

[bradenkemmerer]

I see CGP Grey got a bigger budget and upgraded from stickfigures. Congratulations on the upgrade!

[nickfury]

Star Trek transporters have always had some seemingly problematic aspects to them. For example, if transporters work the way supposed by this video, why not just make lots and lots of clones all day? A real device like this might be more accurately considered "the duplication machine", but in-universe, there's a clear difference between transporters and replicators which isn't fully understood.