Oglaf

eh still better than the current way to transition.

I was thinking it was about the same.

Guess Zeus was busy.

x4 It's pretty much what happens with insects, though they have no supernatural involvement.

I do feel it runs into the transporter problem, though. Since the individual is so thoroughly destroyed in the process, can you really still consider the one that came out to be the same individual?

The big clincher in the transporter problem to me has always been that more than once we've seen it "malfunction" its way into a cloning rig. Someone whose name I can't remember wrote a short story, mentioned in I Am a Strange Loop (pretty sure the short story is real, unlike some of his other illustrative short stories), where a malfunction falls in between, failing to destroy the original instantly, but instead giving him a fatal injury, and that makes the real problem crystal-clear. The fact that this is done with the same matter, even if there's a point in between where the matter is effectively "dead," makes it more akin to total anesthetic in my mind.

Edited by TwinBird on May 1st 2023 at 12:58:36 PM

Insects have been shown to retain memories from before pupation, despite their brief experience as a blob of unorganised cells. In practical terms, at some level the transporter problem has to deal with the fact that everything is constantly changing in different ways anyway - metamorphosis is just a Ship of Theseus where we didn't ever build a second ship or even replace any of the beams, we just rearranged them into a cabin.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on May 1st 2023 at 11:15:10 AM

It's highly dependent on the setting, but I have read some interesting meditations on that in terms of a) in more realistic settings, the cost of creating that much energy, even if you assume 100% efficiency, is humongous, so any transporter at work can really afford to have maybe 1 or 2 extra bodies in the entire network, entirely for correcting for area or b) has actually cracked for that code, what is suppressing the idea that it is at all possible simply because they know how many terrible things could happen in terms of people trying to reprogram their bodies, clone an army, etc.

Metamorphosis, though, I could easily see a situation where the brain itself remains the same, just hooked into the new body as it develops. That would create continuity of self, although without magic, it's debatable how sane you'd be at the other end.

The main character of Life With Althaar is a human who lost custody of his identity in a teleporter accident. He and his girlfriend decided to save themselves the travel time by beaming themselves to their vacation. He's the iteration of himself who was supposed to get destroyed at the origin. The guy who arrived at the destination was able to get a restraining order keeping him several light years away from the life on Earth he no longer had claim to.

I've never understood the idea that for transformation/duplication to respect conservation of mass, the excess has to become/come from energy. Aren't we surrounded by gas and particulates most of the time? Why not use/add to that? Sure, there'd have to be fission and fusion, but if you're at that level of hardness you probably shouldn't be including this sort of thing at all. Regardless, I'd always assumed transporters and replicators had some sort of "chemistry set."

Edited by TwinBird on May 2nd 2023 at 7:08:23 AM

Average human weight is... rather vague, but lets go with 70kg. In order to transmute a human like that you'd need to vaccuum up ~55 cubic meters of air.

For transporters I assume the general idea of "you're turned into energy, moved, then turned back" is trying to stay away from the "you get cloned and then die" interpretation, trying to preserve some continuity of self.

Edited by Adannor on May 3rd 2023 at 10:07:40 PM

I think once again of history's most elaborate shit joke, where teleportation is accomplished through trillions of minuscule wormholes, which don't disrupt the matter in question because space itself is torn, and it's the same matter (bar a few grams at random - except for the time one character's porn is obliterated, but I don't think that's strictly canon) on either end.

Yeah, SM had an interesting exploration of transporter tech. Running throughout most of the comic, even, some late game plot points included new advancements to the technology.

Actually I think the whole "uses some random atoms here and there to power itself" thing was scrapped in-universe once the tech got out of the beta-testing phase. Given the general lack of handheld teraports throughout most of the comic, I think they switched to using proper annie plants for power.

Edited by Adannor on May 3rd 2023 at 12:48:16 PM

Even for a handheld device, they could probably squeeze an annie-plant in there if they wanted - their power-armor bodysuits already use them. Easy enough to switch from "use random atoms for power" to "use some of this specific subset of atoms for power".

IIRC, there was also a brief mention that one of the consequences of Kevyn open-sourcing it was that people got the efficiency up to the point that the teraport could be powered by a moderate-size ship annie-plant (still not to the level that it's human-carriable or able to be powered by the suits).

FWIW, Planet Mercenary indicates that a civilian teraport requires the entire output of a civilian annie-plant (or half a military grade annie-plant) while a military teraport requires the entire output of a military grade annie-plant. Yes, it's a game (and in-universe one!) with fully admitted abstraction, but it does indicate that the power requirements are still fairly high, albeit usually handwaved due to the ships in question having either enough resources, or not doing anything else for the brief moment they're transporting.

Well... it worked, at least!

Closed Casket

I like that the salesperson is themselves an undead. That's the voice of experience talking.

Is it just me, or do all the skeletons have female pelves? The warlock calls the spokesperson "her," so that one's a gimme, but I'm pretty sure all the skeletons have female pelves.

Edited by TwinBird on May 13th 2023 at 9:35:20 AM

Well, either the artist only looked up a single picture of a skeleton for reference thinking that'd be enough for a gag comic, or it's a sex thing for the necromancer.

Considering what kind of comic this is, my money is on the latter.

Edited by Kayeka on May 13th 2023 at 3:59:32 PM

Yep. Dollars, pounds, euros, yen, Swiss francs, renminbi, and shekels.

Edited by TwinBird on May 13th 2023 at 10:50:53 AM

A SFW comic, for once! Hey, your child won that throne fair and square, so mean

Honestly, I'm a little baffled - most of the SFW strips are violent.

Stabbing gladiators through the helmet eye-holes and murdering kings isn't violent?

Stabbing or just punching? I don't see a knife in the little usurper's hand.