Mary Chapin Carpenter - Shut Up and Kiss Me
I recently listened to a podcast about Derek Parfit, a highly-respected but generally very wrong philosopher. This cut section from Losing My Religions discusses one of those errors:
This one is obvious if you think about it. If not, Star Trek Next Generation’s “Second Chances” (S2:E24) spells it out clearly. In that episode, the crew finds someone had previously been left behind after his transporter signal (unknowingly) bifurcated, with one beam making it back to the ship and one reflected back to the planet’s surface. Which Commander Riker is the “real” Riker? Neither! And: Both!
To everyone else and to themselves, each Riker is Riker. But to the original Riker who was expecting to be beamed out — his consciousness just dissolved and ended. Poof. Ded.
By the way, the transporter was only created for the original series because the special effects team didn’t have the budget to make it look like the Starship Enterprise was landing on planets.
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| Die, Barclay, die! |
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