That DS9 episode always reminds me of how inconsistent Star Trek is with medical technology. From Beverly's "people don't have headaches anymore" to Julian basically describing the brain as magic.
DonCDXX considder if you asked two doctors their professional opinion on something, it would be 2 different answers, if you asked two very experienced doctors, you might get even more different answers.
Be accurate: Crusher says people don't have headaches because medicine has understood the nature of pain (advanced neuroscience and such) and headaches - to them - are consequences of a cause. Stating the the brain is magic (still vastly unknown) does not undermine the 1st statement at all.
It makes sense in context. We don't *actually* understand what it is about our brains that grants us our sapience. In fact, everything we know about how the human brain functions indicates that we *should not* be sapient, at least not in the way that we are. It is entirely plausible that whatever yet-to-be-discovered combination of neurochemicals and electrical impulses that makes us what we are could not be readily duplicated -- and if it were, it's wholly plausible that the way the individual experiences life would be radically altered.
it's also strange that he regarded Data as a real living person , but for some reason thought that replacing someone's brain with an artificial one that performs the same exact functions is somehow killing them , and why refuse to try that if the patient is going to die anyway
@@MajorGrin Well, one could reason that the new, 100% positronic-brain Bareil would indeed be a real living person, just not the *same* living person as the original Bareil.
This must have been during the UPN years as I do not recall this one. Anyway, it must be remembered that Data's "mother" may have been an android replicant, but even she was not aware of this and the secret kept so it is reasonable that no one else knew that human level depth of feeling was at least theoretically possible given that Data's emotion chip was largely untested and required decades more research after the base brain was developed by the singular genius that developed the P. brain in the first place. Out of universe it is likely that the writers simply did not know or ignored for story reasons that it is possible within their fictional universe to copy the experiences into a P. brain and even have emotions replicated enough that there would be little tangible difference. As for the reality of what consciousness is and if there is or is not something beyond the sum of the parts of the brain going on that may or may not be able to be properly duplicated through artificial means is still mostly a matter of conjecture.
@@travissmith2848 ``Yes, an electronic brain,'' said Frankie, ``a simple one would suffice.'' ``A simple one!'' wailed Arthur. ``Yeah,'' said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, ``you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? --- who'd know the difference?'' ``What?'' cried Arthur, backing away still further. ``See what I mean?'' said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment. ``I'd notice the difference,'' said Arthur. ``No you wouldn't,'' said Frankie mouse, ``you'd be programmed not to.''
Anyone with a vague notion on philosophical discussion as to what actually constitutes consciousness and the difference between natural consciousness and artificial intelligence would know things are deeper than just "oh bashir didn't replace the rest of his brain with robotic components!!! What an idiot his consciousness would totally have remained!!!". People ought to take a look at the Chinese Room Argument, Chalmer's Zombie Argument and Churchland's arguments on qualia before talking shit about what Bashir is tryin to say.
Instead of being a mistake, this could just be Starfleet supressing a possibly dangerous technology by saying it doesn't exist and isn't currently possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason starfleet took a darker turn is because Section 31 took over the entire Federation.
I always read it in light of the genetic enhancements issues as him *playing* the fool,.. I mean look at one of his hobbies: ACTING. Which is basically what many do on the holodeck/in the holosuite.
It's because it was written by different people, without a vision to guide them. Gene's vision was about humanity. It included AI, but he didn't really have much vision for AI beyond that and never really addressed transhumanism. Unlike Ghost in the Shell.
When Bashir whines about refusing to replace the last bits of brain with positron implants because of losing a "spark" or something, there needs to be a hard cut to Terminator Genesis with John Connor Terminator saying "WTF does it even matter" or Hermes on Futurama after he had all his meatbag parts replaced with robot parts.
What he was saying was to remove that part of his brain will KILL the Bariel in that brain. Whoever inhabits the positronic matrix wouldn't be Bariel anymore, but essentially a copy.
@@thischannelwillselfdestruc4977 - And it's kind of ironic considering he lives in a galaxy where he and almost everybody uses transporters daily without a second thought. In other words, every time somebody uses a transporter it's the previous person dying and being replaced by a copy. (See CGP Grey's TH-cam video on "Trouble with Transporters" if you don't know WTF I'm talking about). It'd also be real funny if Bashir was whining to O'Brien about it, given O'Brien used to be a transporter chief who killed....I mean "transported" countless lives. Perhaps Bashir has moral qualms about people being replaced by virtual copies, but others don't seem to care. Take Harry Kim for example, who the real Kim was sucked out into space early on but was replaced by a parallel timeline/dimension/whatever Harry Kim with a baby Naomi Wildman , and none of the crew ever mentions anything about again, nor treats them any different than the originals.
Bashir just needs one electron of his own brain, and he could clone twin synthetic lifeforms! Pretty sure it works vice versa the same way. Just use an electron instead of a positron.
@Paul so did they ever establiush in tng that every cell of datas positronic network coantains a complete copy of all of his memories? because i'm certain i dont remember that ever being a thing.
It kinda seems like a lot of system overengineering if you could reliably store the entire contents of his brain on a single neuron, though... Oh! Also, fun fact of the day: "Measure of a Man" established, in Data's own words, that his brain had a storage capacity of "eight hundred quadrillion bits." This converts to 100,000 Terabytes, or more conveniently, 100 Petabytes. TH-cam adds, according to various sources, about 90 Petabytes of video data every year. Ergo, the amount of storage space required to contain the form and structure, as well the life experiences and sum knowledge of a "soul" is far, far eclipsed by that needed to archive funny cat videos at 720p.
Indeed not. I did find the statement a little concerning given what they were hinting at. But it seems more along the lines of they can recover the large-scale operation and structural design of how Data's Neural net was constructed from a single neuron. That's akin to reconstructing how a human brain works (in broad terms) from a single neuron - which is technically possible if you know how to predict the outcome of the DNA it contains. The result will NOT be an exact copy of Data, any more than a clone made from your DNA will be a copy of you. (a clone will look like you and share whatever characteristics are innate to your DNA, but it won't have your memories or experiences.) Still, we don't know where they're going with this, or how stupid it may or may not get. Data's 'daughters' being copied from his Neural net is a vastly different implication to bringing Data himself back to life that way...
I feel the same way about transporters, whatever steps off the pad would be a perfect replica of you but it wouldn't be you. "You" just got vaporized to get the data to make the replica.
Complex machines with emergent properties. "Life" is such a vague word that it's almost meaningless to discuss. We need better words with less religious and spiritual connotation.
It's kind of disappointing that a lot of star trek episodes had this hippy arguments over what makes you human. Why should you be less human if part of your brain has been replaced by artifical networks which are exactly the same? This is the same old christian argument about the soul framed in a different context, disappointing for a science fiction show.
The 'exactly the same' part is the trick though. And unfortunately, it's difficult to write plausible fiction about a topic where the number of things we don't know about how the brain works vastly exceeds what we do know. If it was an EXACT copy, then indeed why would it matter? But brains are highly individualised. That means you'd need to have copied that structure before it became defective, or replacing it won't work out. Replacing part of your brain with an artificial structure that exactly replicates what it replaced shouldn't have any negative effects... Unfortunately, replacing a damaged part of the brain with a generic approximation of that structure will almost certainly have a negative effect, because brains are not generalised organs. I mean, the result will be a functional brain, sure. But it almost certainly won't behave quite the same way as it did before...
Sorry to break it to you. "Soul" is used all through star trek, and many other scifi shows. it could be about known interactions that cant be replicated or reproduced with the technology, or just not understood yet. His explanation is esoteric but the reason is actual, can only infer that it is an unknown, rather than "magic." I wonder what you think about the actual physics defying feats of star trek Or the 4th/5th/nth dimensional beings. You're reaching as far as you claim Bashir is
Exactly, Vulcans can even save their soul when their body dies, meaning there is part of the soul that is not merely biological, that's the whole plot of Star Trek 3. Star Trek shows a future where science prevails over myth, but they also are careful enough to clearly show that there are mysteries about life that go beyond the realm of scientific knowledge.
@@GeneralPedrowsky these are very specific Christian mysteries which are tackled in the same boring way and are also inconsitent while doing it. Beaming should destroy your 'soul' every time and nobody says a thing about it, no explanation. I with they had more creative answers to this problem instead of the same old magic which is not even consitent
"I think Berial would want a lobotomy, twice" - First Officer Major Kira Nerys of Deep Space Nine
she probably just wanted to keep his body around
@@MajorGrin Bowchikabowow.
@@MajorGrin Or she didn't have the opportunity to understand the science behind the procedure and was desperate to keep him alive somehow.
@@MajorGrin she loved 'springball' with him ;)
Absolutely. He would totally want you to kill him and turn his corpse into a cybernetic zombie.
Bashir: I won't remove whatever shred of humanity Bareil has left."
Kira: Humanity? He's Bajoran.
Yeah, but wouldn't you expect this type of comment from someone that's been genetically engineered?
Presumably the universal translator would have told her the appropriate phrase for their language 😅
The" voganity " after data reads more poetry..
Bajority
Lols. Bajornity.
Well Picard doesn't have that spark of humanity anymore.
That DS9 episode always reminds me of how inconsistent Star Trek is with medical technology. From Beverly's "people don't have headaches anymore" to Julian basically describing the brain as magic.
I didn't interpret his comment that way.
DonCDXX considder if you asked two doctors their professional opinion on something, it would be 2 different answers, if you asked two very experienced doctors, you might get even more different answers.
I get Bashir's point. The posatronic brain would not think the same, thus, changing him forever. Not sure I would want to survive that way either.
Be accurate: Crusher says people don't have headaches because medicine has understood the nature of pain (advanced neuroscience and such) and headaches - to them - are consequences of a cause. Stating the the brain is magic (still vastly unknown) does not undermine the 1st statement at all.
It makes sense in context. We don't *actually* understand what it is about our brains that grants us our sapience. In fact, everything we know about how the human brain functions indicates that we *should not* be sapient, at least not in the way that we are. It is entirely plausible that whatever yet-to-be-discovered combination of neurochemicals and electrical impulses that makes us what we are could not be readily duplicated -- and if it were, it's wholly plausible that the way the individual experiences life would be radically altered.
Great Topic,
i always thought it would make more sense if the religious bajorians would talk about "sparks of life" and not the secular federation...
it's also strange that he regarded Data as a real living person , but for some reason thought that replacing someone's brain with an artificial one that performs the same exact functions is somehow killing them , and why refuse to try that if the patient is going to die anyway
@@MajorGrin
Well, one could reason that the new, 100% positronic-brain Bareil would indeed be a real living person, just not the *same* living person as the original Bareil.
@@Koshiro2k3 Bingo, it's the Thomas Riker issue, only one step removed in that the base materials aren't even the same.
This must have been during the UPN years as I do not recall this one. Anyway, it must be remembered that Data's "mother" may have been an android replicant, but even she was not aware of this and the secret kept so it is reasonable that no one else knew that human level depth of feeling was at least theoretically possible given that Data's emotion chip was largely untested and required decades more research after the base brain was developed by the singular genius that developed the P. brain in the first place.
Out of universe it is likely that the writers simply did not know or ignored for story reasons that it is possible within their fictional universe to copy the experiences into a P. brain and even have emotions replicated enough that there would be little tangible difference.
As for the reality of what consciousness is and if there is or is not something beyond the sum of the parts of the brain going on that may or may not be able to be properly duplicated through artificial means is still mostly a matter of conjecture.
@@travissmith2848 ``Yes, an electronic brain,'' said Frankie, ``a simple one would suffice.''
``A simple one!'' wailed Arthur.
``Yeah,'' said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, ``you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? --- who'd know the difference?''
``What?'' cried Arthur, backing away still further.
``See what I mean?'' said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.
``I'd notice the difference,'' said Arthur.
``No you wouldn't,'' said Frankie mouse, ``you'd be programmed not to.''
If Boreil was turned into an Android, his personality would not change at all.
Christus Regnet Underrated comment, this had me laughing out loud 😂
That phrase got me off guard
Anyone with a vague notion on philosophical discussion as to what actually constitutes consciousness and the difference between natural consciousness and artificial intelligence would know things are deeper than just "oh bashir didn't replace the rest of his brain with robotic components!!! What an idiot his consciousness would totally have remained!!!". People ought to take a look at the Chinese Room Argument, Chalmer's Zombie Argument and Churchland's arguments on qualia before talking shit about what Bashir is tryin to say.
Or the ship of theseus thought experiment.
People don't need to study philosophy to understand what's going on, its not that deep.
@@facelessdrone The discussion of what consciousness is, is a philosophical debate; it has been going on for centuries now.
don't they all die anyway every time they are beamed away?
@@flippos Yeah that's another classic issue with their tech and approach.
Positive emotions of awe, wonder and character attachment whilst watching a Star Trek episode featuring positronic brains? I'd almost forgotten.
Id think trekkies would understand "humanity" is a colloquial term, like how "humane" means treating a life with respect, but whatevs
"I won't remove whatever last shred of humanity Berial has left"
He's bajoran Julian!
Humans, they think they're the god damn centre for the universe.
Humanity is extended to include all races of bipedal human like aliens
According to the Star Trek Online Star Charts We are the Center
Right, next they'll tell another race to meet at 0900 time.
Yeah that would have sounded good on screen: "I won't remove whatever Barjorananity he has left". That's not clever, that's a meme.
Instead of being a mistake, this could just be Starfleet supressing a possibly dangerous technology by saying it doesn't exist and isn't currently possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason starfleet took a darker turn is because Section 31 took over the entire Federation.
Ah yes, Bashir during his most *annoying* years... I always find the episode with him going grey hilarious.
I always read it in light of the genetic enhancements issues as him *playing* the fool,.. I mean look at one of his hobbies: ACTING. Which is basically what many do on the holodeck/in the holosuite.
@@AlMcpherson79 That fits pretty well. And I remember Obrien asking him if he was letting him win during darts, cheeky bugger :)
@@HuntSmacker Which he was... and as a result Obrien made him throw from twice the distance :P
Huh, what'd he do wrong?
I find it sad that a keen and polite guy who only wants to be friends is considered annoying. Says a lot about who we are in today's world.
Nice catches.
You're really pulled in all directions by the philosophy behind AI in Star Trek.
It's because it was written by different people, without a vision to guide them. Gene's vision was about humanity. It included AI, but he didn't really have much vision for AI beyond that and never really addressed transhumanism. Unlike Ghost in the Shell.
When Bashir whines about refusing to replace the last bits of brain with positron implants because of losing a "spark" or something, there needs to be a hard cut to Terminator Genesis with John Connor Terminator saying "WTF does it even matter" or Hermes on Futurama after he had all his meatbag parts replaced with robot parts.
What he was saying was to remove that part of his brain will KILL the Bariel in that brain. Whoever inhabits the positronic matrix wouldn't be Bariel anymore, but essentially a copy.
@@thischannelwillselfdestruc4977 - And it's kind of ironic considering he lives in a galaxy where he and almost everybody uses transporters daily without a second thought. In other words, every time somebody uses a transporter it's the previous person dying and being replaced by a copy. (See CGP Grey's TH-cam video on "Trouble with Transporters" if you don't know WTF I'm talking about).
It'd also be real funny if Bashir was whining to O'Brien about it, given O'Brien used to be a transporter chief who killed....I mean "transported" countless lives.
Perhaps Bashir has moral qualms about people being replaced by virtual copies, but others don't seem to care. Take Harry Kim for example, who the real Kim was sucked out into space early on but was replaced by a parallel timeline/dimension/whatever Harry Kim with a baby Naomi Wildman , and none of the crew ever mentions anything about again, nor treats them any different than the originals.
@@garrettdark5668 yup, I'd rather learn to teleport like Nighcrawler, at least I'd still be *ME* and not some digitized and reconstituted *copy.*
Or Robocop, or General Greivous.
The scene where Bashir just continues to stare awkwardly - is this edited or something or is this the actual clip lol
It is edited. He does not stare that long at Data.
Bashir could also have done this to Kurn, which was better than what was done to him.
Most 👏🏼 Amazing 👏🏼 Blank 👏🏼 Stare 👏🏼 EVER 😂💀
Bashir just needs one electron of his own brain, and he could clone twin synthetic lifeforms!
Pretty sure it works vice versa the same way. Just use an electron instead of a positron.
they actually said one neuron and not one positron . one android neuron could theoretically contain a lot of information if its coded on atomic level
@Paul so did they ever establiush in tng that every cell of datas positronic network coantains a complete copy of all of his memories?
because i'm certain i dont remember that ever being a thing.
It kinda seems like a lot of system overengineering if you could reliably store the entire contents of his brain on a single neuron, though...
Oh! Also, fun fact of the day: "Measure of a Man" established, in Data's own words, that his brain had a storage capacity of "eight hundred quadrillion bits." This converts to 100,000 Terabytes, or more conveniently, 100 Petabytes.
TH-cam adds, according to various sources, about 90 Petabytes of video data every year.
Ergo, the amount of storage space required to contain the form and structure, as well the life experiences and sum knowledge of a "soul" is far, far eclipsed by that needed to archive funny cat videos at 720p.
@Paul they never said that all his memories would be restored . that's why I don't share this criticism as of yet .
Indeed not. I did find the statement a little concerning given what they were hinting at.
But it seems more along the lines of they can recover the large-scale operation and structural design of how Data's Neural net was constructed from a single neuron.
That's akin to reconstructing how a human brain works (in broad terms) from a single neuron - which is technically possible if you know how to predict the outcome of the DNA it contains.
The result will NOT be an exact copy of Data, any more than a clone made from your DNA will be a copy of you.
(a clone will look like you and share whatever characteristics are innate to your DNA, but it won't have your memories or experiences.)
Still, we don't know where they're going with this, or how stupid it may or may not get.
Data's 'daughters' being copied from his Neural net is a vastly different implication to bringing Data himself back to life that way...
I feel the same way about transporters, whatever steps off the pad would be a perfect replica of you but it wouldn't be you.
"You" just got vaporized to get the data to make the replica.
He was right. Some implants can help, but if you remove the whole brain...the person is gone.
i would do anything to have my own Mr. Data ;-;
Poor ol' Picard. Poor ol' dead ol' Picard.
Bashir was a monster. From murdering Bareil and wiping the memory of Worf's brother without his permission.
Don't forget invading a man's mind
Hes an agent
"Spark of life? What is your degree in, poetry?! you sorry bunch of hippies!"
Dr Ball !
Bashir was a 100% right.
Star Trek: Picard is doomed. No one learned anything from Discovery at CBS.
They said that in the seventies about the Animated Series. They always say that about new series
@@stevencorrea6946 yep, but fans of each overlook those faults as "but they tried to learn", despite them never learning.
KEEP IT UP! love em
Complex machines with emergent properties. "Life" is such a vague word that it's almost meaningless to discuss. We need better words with less religious and spiritual connotation.
All are Borg.... Resistance is futile..... jack crusher.. the voice we all await you in star trek legacy... if directors and funding allow :)
DEscover The Story....De SToRy...🌅🌠
[This comment has been edited for being severly offensive to the youtube community]
I don't agree while in this meat mech
Posotronic ions... According to the picard series suggests a repair mechanism. It s self replicating entire brains from a few ions. Remarkable idea.
Do it anyway Bashir.
There was never something quite right about Bashir
Bashir is really annoying. As is the "original" Bashir.
Lololololololol
It's kind of disappointing that a lot of star trek episodes had this hippy arguments over what makes you human.
Why should you be less human if part of your brain has been replaced by artifical networks which are exactly the same?
This is the same old christian argument about the soul framed in a different context, disappointing for a science fiction show.
The 'exactly the same' part is the trick though.
And unfortunately, it's difficult to write plausible fiction about a topic where the number of things we don't know about how the brain works vastly exceeds what we do know.
If it was an EXACT copy, then indeed why would it matter?
But brains are highly individualised. That means you'd need to have copied that structure before it became defective, or replacing it won't work out.
Replacing part of your brain with an artificial structure that exactly replicates what it replaced shouldn't have any negative effects...
Unfortunately, replacing a damaged part of the brain with a generic approximation of that structure will almost certainly have a negative effect, because brains are not generalised organs.
I mean, the result will be a functional brain, sure.
But it almost certainly won't behave quite the same way as it did before...
@@KuraIthys that's obvius and it was implied that it's an exact copy, why would it not be
Sorry to break it to you. "Soul" is used all through star trek, and many other scifi shows.
it could be about known interactions that cant be replicated or reproduced with the technology, or just not understood yet.
His explanation is esoteric but the reason is actual, can only infer that it is an unknown, rather than "magic."
I wonder what you think about the actual physics defying feats of star trek
Or the 4th/5th/nth dimensional beings.
You're reaching as far as you claim Bashir is
Exactly, Vulcans can even save their soul when their body dies, meaning there is part of the soul that is not merely biological, that's the whole plot of Star Trek 3. Star Trek shows a future where science prevails over myth, but they also are careful enough to clearly show that there are mysteries about life that go beyond the realm of scientific knowledge.
@@GeneralPedrowsky these are very specific Christian mysteries which are tackled in the same boring way and are also inconsitent while doing it.
Beaming should destroy your 'soul' every time and nobody says a thing about it, no explanation.
I with they had more creative answers to this problem instead of the same old magic which is not even consitent