this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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not crediting xkcd: it's a crime!
Worse, they didn't include the title text.
The problem:
Standard too high, will see a comic I want to share and won’t get around to it because there’s work involved…. yeah I should figure out how to code
Thanking you for legitimising the joke
Alr-text:
Did you base the saucer shape on pop culture depictions of aliens, or was that stuff based on your ships? Does the rotational symmetry help with ... hey, where are you going?
I once went down the rabbit hole of thinking about how the targeting works on the TNG kind of transporter. Like they need to know to the molecule where your body ends and the rest of the universe begins. And you want it to identify clothing, because you don't want to end up nude on the other side. Plus it needs to identify what creepy crawlies are a part of you and which were just randomly wandering by. We don't want any of those pesky Fly problems now do we? This might sound easy, but is actually extremely hard. The human body is very complex and like a ship of Theseus what is part of the body is a bit nebulous and can change. All of the microbiome in our gut is essential for us to stay alive. And more importantly we don't want to leave behind a puddle of crap every time we transport. Plus what happens if we come out the other end, do our intestines just implode? Or does the transporter fill them with air, leaving you to fart uncontrollably until you die?
And how does it know what clothes are? If I'm wearing shoes, does it know where the shoes end and the floor starts? What if I'm wearing skies? What if I'm barefoot on a carpet? What if it's a leather carpet? What if I'm wearing shoes made by folding carpet around my feet?
The only thing that makes sense is a super powerful AI system that can real-time scan every molecule and figure out what's what. And it doesn't only need to be smart, it also needs a lot of real world knowledge. It needs to know what is "logical" to include in every situation. This means it has to be an AGI, has to be superintelligent (at a minimum speed wise) and would most likely be sentient. Them being used for this one and only purpose is really cruel.
This leads me to the conclusion TNG style transporters are basically slavery and put a whole different spin on the morality of the people in that universe. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
this is true for the star trek transporters specifically since they're used for all kinds of absolute nonsense, but the easy solution to this is simply having a designated volume that is transported and making VERY certain that nothing important crosses the line.
This might sound easy, but is actually extremely hard
I don't think this impossible contraption sounds simple.
The AI part is a good answer. It used to take someone quite a long time to remove the background from a photograph pixel-by-pixel, but now it takes an AI a few seconds. Give it 400 years and AI will be mind-blowing.
I mean that's a fun speech and all but they actually address it. Look into the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Then do a quick search for the Heisenberg compensator.
A computer that can manage the TNG holodeck will have no problem handling all the complexities of a transporter.
Plus it needs to identify what creepy crawlies are a part of you and which were just randomly wandering by.
It does do that. It's canon that transporters take care of removing any foreign organisms.
And how does it know what clothes are? If I'm wearing shoes, does it know where the shoes end and the floor starts? What if I'm wearing skies? What if I'm barefoot on a carpet? What if it's a leather carpet? What if I'm wearing shoes made by folding carpet around my feet?
It understands all those scenarios and relays them to the operator, who decides what to lock on.
Some of this is the reason why your teleporter has an operator and isn't automated. The teleporter knows you're wearing shoes or skis because the operator has specified your parameters. The computer might not know where shoes end and floor begins but O'Brien does.
It doesn't have to be AGI, though it'd certainly help. It could be a Machine Learning algorithm (the stuff we call AI in marketing today). It just needs a lot of data to train on to recognize what we want to bring and what we don't. It's actually a particularly good application for ML.
With that said, they do have the computer, which seems to be pretty complex and potentially an AGI. There's also Data in TNG that is certainly an AGI. I don't think it's an issue.
Alien: ... yeah get the tranquilizer gun ..... and the anal probe ... no, no, not that one ... no, no, bigger ... no, bigger and wider ... yeah, that's the one
Me: desperately trying to climb up tractor beam “owo”
The light is just so they can see you better and they actually just lasso you like cattle with an invisible rope. Physicists be damned.
Imagine hearing about this fabled thing all your life and then immediately after grabbing onto you it ghosts you.
The picture’s alt text:
Did you base the saucer shape on pop culture depictions of aliens, or was that stuff based on your ships? Does the rotational symmetry help with ... hey, where are you going?
Honestly, I'd probably think I was dissociating first