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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Not quite. You're describing our brains as a ship of Theseus, which is fairly accurate. But our consciousness is always on while alive. Even asleep and in near-death or temporarily dead our brains don't fully stop or die. Though our brains don't actually replace neurons quite like they replace all other cells. When neurons are damaged, those pathways are lost. Our brain is redundant enough that rarely manifests as a total loss of ability. And when it does, our brains can eventually route new pathways. If enough of these are damaged at once, it can totally change a person's personality.
But transporters turn matter into energy, those patterns are transmitted elsewhere, and energy (or different energy if stored in a pattern buffer) is reassembled very much like replicators. In this case the entire brain and body is stopped, destroyed and re-created. This is, for all intents and purposes, death and cloning. People have trouble with this because to anyone NOT transported, it looks identical. But the person absolutely stopped being alive and a new one was borne that thinks it has always existed.
And Star Trek backs it up. The classic transporter accident that makes a clone of someone? If the transported person is still the same consciousness, what is the clone? Clearly that person isn't controlling 2 bodies with 1 consciousness. Which is the "real" McCoy? The answer is whichever wasn't disintegrated, or neither if they both were as part of the transporter process.
But we aren't our neurons. We are the pathways which get dutifully recreated by the transporter. Even if the electron bounce that thinks it's you briefly pauses pulsing, if that same pattern starts up again that's still you
Both "clones" are equally valid iterations of the same person with equal claim on the identity, although they would functionally from that point be like twins as they would begin developing distinct memories as soon as they each open their eyes.
Not all the time. Sleeping is the obvious exception. You may quibble about whether REM sleep counts as "consciousness", but there are a couple of deeper types of sleep you cycle through that go way down into inactivity.
There's also total anaesthesia, which (depending on the particular type) can shut your brain right down deeper than sleep does.
Then there's people who have clinically died and then recovered, including some record-holders with Lazarus syndrome and who drowned in cold water - the record there is a 2-year-old who was submerged for 66 minutes and had a core body temperature of 19 degrees C when she was pulled out.
Within Star Trek itself there's also Cryogenics (Khan and company were frozen while traveling in the Botany Bay) and Cryonics (the frozen people who were revived in TNG's "The Neutral Zone"). Were those people still the same people as they were when they were frozen?
Is there a clear cut distinction between consciousness and self awareness? I think based on common usage, most folks wouldn't say you were conscious when sleeping, as usually it's said when sleeping you are unconscious. Sure your brain is still doing stuff and it's not just "keep the heart beating" stuff, but you're not aware of it.
We don't really understand consciousness well. Current theory is that it's the weird self-awareness that comes from a human brain. Even sleeping our brains don't really stop. It just stops conscious thought. Which is a confusion of terms, really. So we don't really know.
Here's a more terrifying question: every time you lose and regain consciousness, is it you coming back? Or is it a new version of you with the same memories? What if every time you went to sleep, you effectively died but you'd never know it because the only version of you that you can actually be certain exists is the one right now?
To put the lie to the transporter-consciousness debate: a clone in the transporter either works one of two ways: 1. it creates a new consciousness with the exact same memories and there is no way to tell the 2 apart from the outside but they are clearly different consciousnesses i.e. different people, or 2. transporters kill and remake people constantly birthing new consciousnesses every time and a clone is not that remarkable as it's just creating 2 instead of 1 this time.