this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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Okaaaay, just because you've brought it up.....
Transporters in Star Trek are shown to definitely not be duplication machines. "Our Man Bashir" (DS9) is probably the most definitive proof of that.
Personally, I think transporter technology explains the staunch atheist (but still open-minded and sometimes spiritualist) Federation mindset: they know that their entire being can be reduced to a matter/energy stream. The transporter makes a devastating philosophical challenge to the idea of a "soul." Which is, ironically, why so many Federation officers refuse to accept anything that challenges that assumption (VOY "Sacred Ground").
Adding to your examples in the cannon of Star Trek the teleporter is not a murder machine, except for all those transporter accidents. In "Daedalus" (ENT) the creator of the teleporter somehow proved it, even if not every officer believes that yet.
Real life though, I'd never set foot in a transporter. A real life, Star Trek like transporter would definitely be a murder machine though.
The real life version wouldn't even make a copy somewhere else, it would just be that phone booth from Futurama.