From: haaser@quince.ssc.gov (Bobby Haaser)
Subject: Re: Mutiny on the Holodeck
Organization: SuperConducting Supercollider
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 19:17:02 GMT

Hello most Excellent Trekofantalists,
GREETINGS AND FELICITATIONS

It seems that my last posting reguarding the Holodeck 
Question was not properly end-lined, so I shall repost 
it for those of you who could not read it or who just did not:

 ||
 \/

niche@ssd.intel.com (Dominic Allori) writes:
|> >> From rkpeck@mosaic.uncc.edu Fri Aug 14 11:43:16 1992
|> >> Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 11:38:59 EDT
|> >> From: rkpeck@mosaic.uncc.edu (Jr Peck)
|> >> Message-Id: <9208141538.AA04742@mosaic.uncc.edu>
|> >> To: asher@cis.ohio-state.edu
|> >> 
|> >> Subject: Re: The Price...
|> >> Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
|> >> In-Reply-To: <9208101957.AA03588@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu>
|> >> References: <7811@lee.SEAS.UCLA.EDU>
|> >> Organization: University of NC at Charlotte
|> >> Cc: 
|> >> Bcc: 
|> >> And how about the other GROSS inconsistency?  In the episodeabout
|> >> the holodeck malfunction when Data is Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty
|> >> takes control of the ship.  When he (moriarty) draws a picture of the
|> >> Enterprise on the piece of paper and Data carries the paper out of
|> >> the holodeck!  The paper was a holographic creation and should not have
|> >> been capable of existing outside of the holodeck!  Oh well - guess we need
|> >> to bear the relatively few errors they make.....*sigh*
|>      
|>    REPLY
|>    The holodeck is capable of creating holographic images as well as real
|>    objects, with the use of the replicaters.  So wouldn't you think that
|>    the holodeck is capable of creating a real piece of paper.  The computer
|>    was malfunctioning, so technically the writer may have had that in mind.
|>    I don't think you can call that an error.
|> 
|>                  Niche        
|>                              

 There is a twofold explanation for this indecision.
 As I will explain in part 1, there is sufficient evidence that the 
 material is real because it has left the holodeck, but the second 
 part reveals an inherent malfunction in the holodeck because we 
 know part 1.
 
 Part 3) is the resolved paradox.

1) In the STTNG TECH. MANUAL it explains this as stated by myself
   already and many others in r.a.s.tech.

  The Holodeck replicates simple matter which feels like what the 
observer thinks he is feeling.  Since replicator technology in 
STTNG is not the greatest, as Data mentioned in quite a few 
episodes: "our replicators are incapable of replicating that 
particular substance".
Picard: "well then maybe they can and all they need is the other 
part".

  In another episode, a Klingon(probably Worf's brother) comments 
on the lack of taste in the turkey:<paraphrased> 'That bird has 
been dead for a long time' to which Picard replies:
<paraphrased>"It may not be as tasty because our replicators are 
not as good as the real thing but it serves our nutritional needs'.

  In the First episode with DIXON HILL (Picard's fantasy on Holodeck),
he comes back and has a senior officers' meeting and enters with 
lipstick all over the side of his mouth because a woman on the 
holodeck kissed him in his office: Bev. Crusher responds by taking 
her sleeve and wiping it from his mouth.
In the same episode, the holodeck malfunctions and an officer is
shot with a real bullet and is wounded.

  I find it highly unlikely that something has changed in technology
from the beginning of the show to the end or for the rest of the 
episodes.  At the end there was a malfunction, but that only 
involved the EXITS and PRECAUTIONARY measures.

  Of course, as the gangsters attempt to escape from the holodeck
at the end, they disintegrate because like a good DIVID COPPERFIELD
trick they were never there to begin with, but through manipulations
of light, simple objects, that feel like gangsters if you touch them,
and computer memory> the gangsters did seem to be real and there.


2) THE MANUAL also states that when something move away from the 
observers to the edge of the room, the matter is usually reenergized
and images are created that would occupy the 3-D location of the 
object if they were not in a finite space.

  The Computer has foreign complex objects tagged so as not to
reenergize them, but create a relative motion with the ground and 
surroundings, attempting to keep the foreign object as close to 
the center of the room as possible and adjusting the surroundings 
and the images appropiately.
  

3) When one says "Computer, Freeze program" or "Computer, Exit", 
this process of imaging-to-solid, solid-to-imaging is frozen.  
At this point, the solid things that the holodeck has made can 
be taken out without being disintegrated because the program is 
frozen and such processes are NULL.

 Thus, one can take things out of the holodeck, but they will 
appear as they actually are without the holographic imaging. Such 
imaging makes the connection between an imaginary person who seems 
real and the solid objects that one feels  >that makes him feel that 
a person is there.  There never was a person there, there never was 
Moriarty there although, he was alive.

 The computer only made it seem as if he were really there.  If 
removed from the holodeck,  he would have no doubt fallen into 
whatever the computer needed to convince you that he was real.  
It is convenient to make actual paper to feel like paper, but it 
is impossible for STTNG technology to create a GENETIC life form.  
Moriarty was definitely alive, but without the holodeck, he is but 
energy(holograph), a complex pattern of mnemonic circuits in the 
holodeck computer, and sometimes even a piece of material that 
feels like skin.  He is, by their standards, doomed to live out 
his life in a hologram.  

If Data could reproduce a positronic brain in a way that would 
interface with the holodeck computer, they might be able to transfer 
his consciousness, but it would not be the same Moriarty, for, he 
would not feel human.

I hope this has been enlightening.
Live Long and Prosper!

  -the Bobinater

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also haaser@phys.udallas.edu