A Look at Holograms and Ethics

[Riedquat]

Agree very much with that.

The only way I can see that holograms could be different (and I feel it's stretching things, and there's nothing to suggest in-universe) is if the forcefields and light in them were part of the simulation itself.

Let's say you made a holographic waterwheel and connected it to a physical machine. The machine would get powered, and the computer generating the hologram wouldn't be calculating the physics of the water on the wheel, the projected forcefields just get moved around by the water (if that's how they even work, the computer might have to calculate them for all I know and move the fields itself). So it could be that the computational processes in a hologram are working in a similar way. But I feel like I'm fishing for excuses to cover up a lack of thought there.

[TGLS]

They'd have us believe it downloads everything that makes up the Doctor into it and somehow erases it from the computer in the process. Why would that be? It's a copy.

They probably could have fixed all that if they had Starling (90s Tech Tycoon Villain) say he copied the Doctor, deleted backups from Voyager, and modified him so he could only run on the Mobile Emitter (maybe not deliberately; maybe the super advanced emitter has a super processor or something). Then you could justify things like the backup doctor that ended up in a museum with rare technology that can't be duplicated. Pathfinder would probably be harder; maybe Jupiter Station had a super processor too (except naturally, it's the size of the Empire State Building.)

Of course, this would make the whole "The EMHs are being oppressed!" thing a bit more complicated.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The doctor isn't the same general computer system though. It's specific hardware in the medical bay that is designed to be sensitive to all stimuli as accurately as a human would. Of course it can talk directly with the computers, though it is more an extension of programming from the main computer.

I think the concept is akin to what the borg wanted with Picard, or the queen herself.

I think the whole problem is avoidable since by that point the doctor embraced autonomy and they weren't likely to just make a copy of himself. Besides, the mobile emitter is not the most secure place to live eternally especially when everyone you know is bound to the ship for the time being anyway.

[Nealithi]

I lean towards some level of it. It's not a black and white, all or nothing thing. But I would certainly prefer to take my chances in a world where we're less nannied. That certainly doesn't mean I want to go back to Victorian working conditions. And there are still areas that could certainly do with being safer than they are. But we're also turning in to a society that seems to live in fear of the remote chance, can't cope without the safety line comfort blanket for many simple, ordinary tasks, and yet refuses to have much self-responsibility. The balance isn't right (and going overboard in places has also had a rather clear "boy who cried wolf" effect, leaving some thing not being regarded with the seriousness that they deserve).

All the stuff that's got to be in new cars now I really feel has gone past the level of reasonable precautions into the territory of the absurd. It also hits my intense hatred of treating everyone like unruly children, and my equally strong dislike of piling more technology in to things that worked fine without it. It puts me off buying a new car by a country mile. Which is a pity, because an electric car would be ideal for my usage.

The future of humanity is looking more and more like the humans in Wall-E.

oh - that's a perspective from the UK, it'll differ from place to place obviously.

We may be getting into the weeds on the holograms and ethics front. And like most things I find myself not entirely disagreeing with you. Some things are way over done.
Yet I wish there was a good inexpensive self driving car available. My main reason being personal. My mother, bless her, is losing all her eyesight. As in can't see me three feet away and puts her face an inch from the screen to read anything level blind. She still insists on driving when I am at work and thus can't take her on errands. Then she wonders why my blood pressure is so high. . .
Then I turn around and ask. How many others are in a situation like this? How many seniors don't have children to take them to most places and can't get around at all?
Why do I lump that with safety gear? Because obnoxious features like self parallel parking and collision avoidance are part of a package to eventually get a self driving car for the less fortunate. So I don't need them, and really do not want them. But they will (I fervently hope) lead to better things.

[Nealithi]

On the doctor I believe there is something built into the hologram itself. The closest analogy is something I have heard of but not seen. But I think may be possible. Someone using the logic gates system in Mine Craft got a version of Pokemon to work inside the game. So the computer is running a simulation running a program. The computer itself is not 'thinking' nor is it running the second game in an instance. So basically the doctor and other EMH like programs are not functional unless they are unpacked and running.
I still can't do the leap in logic for the copy/move thing though.

[TGLS]

I still can't do the leap in logic for the copy/move thing though.

The best I've got: the EMH has a bunch of important data stored in qubits, which can't be copied, but can be transferred. So even if you copied the data stored on classical bits, you wouldn't have anything useful. How they made the backup that made it to the museum, I dunno.

[Riedquat]

On the doctor I believe there is something built into the hologram itself. The closest analogy is something I have heard of but not seen. But I think may be possible. Someone using the logic gates system in Mine Craft got a version of Pokemon to work inside the game. So the computer is running a simulation running a program. The computer itself is not 'thinking' nor is it running the second game in an instance. So basically the doctor and other EMH like programs are not functional unless they are unpacked and running.
I still can't do the leap in logic for the copy/move thing though.

That would still mke the computer running the software be the important part and the hologram merely the interface, unless you mean actually running using the simulated internals that are part of the projection (like my waterwheel example).

[Riedquat]

I still can't do the leap in logic for the copy/move thing though.

The best I've got: the EMH has a bunch of important data stored in qubits, which can't be copied, but can be transferred. So even if you copied the data stored on classical bits, you wouldn't have anything useful. How they made the backup that made it to the museum, I dunno.

I like that one. They could well have that technology by then (was even the possibility of it an idea when Voyager aired?)

[TGLS]

I still can't do the leap in logic for the copy/move thing though.

The best I've got: the EMH has a bunch of important data stored in qubits, which can't be copied, but can be transferred. So even if you copied the data stored on classical bits, you wouldn't have anything useful. How they made the backup that made it to the museum, I dunno.

I like that one. They could well have that technology by then (was even the possibility of it an idea when Voyager aired?)

Well, "Qubit" was coined around 1995 (according to wikipedia), the idea of Quantum Computers have been around since the early 80s, and TNG-era Trek writers love the word Quantum, so it would appear to work. Unfortunately, all we to work with is the vague gesturing at calling stored data Quads, which seems to work like regular data.

[Nealithi]

On the doctor I believe there is something built into the hologram itself. The closest analogy is something I have heard of but not seen. But I think may be possible. Someone using the logic gates system in Mine Craft got a version of Pokemon to work inside the game. So the computer is running a simulation running a program. The computer itself is not 'thinking' nor is it running the second game in an instance. So basically the doctor and other EMH like programs are not functional unless they are unpacked and running.
I still can't do the leap in logic for the copy/move thing though.

That would still mke the computer running the software be the important part and the hologram merely the interface, unless you mean actually running using the simulated internals that are part of the projection (like my waterwheel example).

I was thinking similar to the water wheel example. Where his being unpacked and running has the hologram itself doing the 'thinking' and the holo emitters are basically just movie projectors.