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When Badger is telling Skinny Pete about the theory that when you use the teletransporter in Star Trek, you are actually dying and having a carbon copy made on the other side, it's more than just babbling. It is actually a long-argued and deeply philosophical question that has relations to philosophers like Derek Parfit and John Locke, and moreover, it's a conversation directly addressing the central point of Breaking Bad as a show:
How much can someone change before he is something else entirely?
I'm not a philosophy major so I apologize if I don't explain all this adequately. I studied and read about this theory back in college and was reminded when the show addressed it. Anyway, let's start with the theory itself.
The theory that Badger is discussing is Derek Parfit's teletransporter theory. It has to do with the following thought experiment:
"Suppose that you enter a cubicle in which, when you press a button, a scanner records the states of all the cells in your brain and body, destroying both while doing so. This information is then transmitted at the speed of light to some other planet, where a replicator produces a perfect organic copy of you. Since the brain of your Replica is exactly like yours, it will seem to remember living your life up to the moment when you pressed the button, its character will be just like yours, and it will be in every other way psychologically continuous with you. Are you sure the person on the other side is you?"
Essentially, the question poses the idea that "you" aren't being transported at all, and instead, you're just dying. A copy of you is made on the other side, but it's not you.
Going back to the episode itself, we can now see that Badger's mindless babble actually holds deeply significant meaning to the show. As you are transported to your new destination, are you simply going there, or is something more morbid happening?
I think this is also a commentary on Walter White. So many people have said that this show is about his descent into becoming the truly vile Heisenberg, and how bit by bit, whoever Walter White was at the beginning of the show has ceased to exist. As Walter White has transported to his new destination as Heisenberg, has he simply gone there? Is he Walter White AS Heisenberg? Or has something more morbid happened? Is Walter White dead?
If you mean like Kuwait orchestrated their invasion by having a fuckload of oil or in the way Rodney King orchestrated getting the shit kicked out of him for being black, then yes.Quote: