Ways to best use replicators.

[Randel]

Okay, after looking at this site (http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome) I started really thinking about what a replicator like machine could really do.

Now like any technology there would be problems that come with it. If the replicator could in fact create an exact copy of itself then how would anyone be able to control the spread of them or regulate them? (what if its revealed that sombody created buggy replicators that leak radiaton/spy on people/or poison their created products and all the replicators made by that one share its defect?) How would one handle the risk of people using them to make weapons or drugs? (what would this do to society? Or drug dealers?) And then there are questions on where the materials and power used by replicators would come from.

And then there might be limitations on the replicators... maybe they can't make microchips or other complex things (which then must be manufactured conventionally.) or the things they make tend to be brittle due to whatever process put them together (putting a samurai sword together bit by bit would likely make it much weaker than if it was tempered and hammered by an expert blacksmith unless the replicator can work on the atomic level)


So anyway, if you found out that replicators might wind up on store shelves in a month or two, what would you do? Or if you were part of a team trying to design one then what features would you try working into them?

[FoE]

Quite obviously the best use of Replicators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Stargate)) would be to take over the galaxy. Provided no one invented anti-Replicator guns or found the superweapon on Dakara, it should be relatively simple.

[Moonshadow]

Quite obviously the best use of Replicators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Stargate)) would be to take over the galaxy. Provided no one invented anti-Replicator guns or found the superweapon on Dakara, it should be relatively simple.

I cam in here expecting Star Gate, and I wasn't disappointed :smallbiggrin:

As long as they don't gain sentience, we should be fine though.

[Athaniar]

Myself, I'd rather have Star Trek replicators than Stargate replicators.

[Yulian]

Okay, after looking at this site (http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome) I started really thinking about what a replicator like machine could really do.

Now like any technology there would be problems that come with it. If the replicator could in fact create an exact copy of itself then how would anyone be able to control the spread of them or regulate them?

Then you have what is called a "post-scarcity society" and people have to come up with new ways to indicate they are "better" than someone else than by simply measuring financial worth or possessions.

Post Scarcity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity)

- Yulian

[factotum]

There was a 2000AD story along these lines--a pilot rescues a man from a crashed ship who turns out to have a device that can create anything. He demands this device in return for the rescue, so the man acquiesces, so long as he gets to use it once more. Of course, he creates an exact duplicate of the device and gives the original to the pilot.

The pilot decides that he can't flood the universe with gold or paintings or what-have-you because the other guy could do the same; as I recall, he ends up using it to make cups of coffee, because it does the job a lot better than the food replicators on his ship!

[kamikasei]

Then you have what is called a "post-scarcity society" and people have to come up with new ways to indicate they are "better" than someone else than by simply measuring financial worth or possessions.

It's not post-scarcity until you have so-cheap-it's-free access to more resources than there are any reason to fight over. People will still need the raw materials to feed into these machines (raw materials which require considerable processing before the machine can use them) and all the support infrastructure they require (power, transport etc.).

The machine in the OP is not a Von Neumann machine. It is a 3d fabricator, 3d printer, or rapid prototyper (not sure what the currently in-vogue term is - seems to shift around a lot as the area evolves) which can be used to produce most of the parts required for its own construction. It's not capable of being planted somewhere, gathering its own raw materials from the environment, and processing them to produce duplicates of itself. What it can do is a) make a lot of things very quickly and cheaply with a minimum of input - power, information, and the stuff to make it out of; and b) catalyze its own production so that one or a handful of them, brought to an area where the materials needed to operate it and the off-the-shelf components it can't make itself are available, can be rapidly bootstrapped up to a fabricator on every desk. (At least, it will be able to do this when it's properly finished).

It's extremely awesome and exciting, but it's not a Von Neumann machine, grey goo, replicators either Star Trek or Stargate, or anything of the sort. There are serious limits on what it can make (it can't make drugs. It can't make swords. It could make knives or guns, depending on the materials it can use). Like anything open and cheap, it would indeed by very hard to control or regulate. One would basically have to trust in the "many eyes" approach; use open designs that can be publically reviewed so that bugs are spotted and skullduggery caught out.

[LurkerInPlayground]

Wait? Are we talking about Star Trek replicators or Stargate replicators?

[Closet_Skeleton]

It would waste a lot of energy, that's what.

[Canadian]

I'd invest in stocks related to power generation. After all you need power to make all these replicators work. Plus the replicator will probably require the raw materials to make the things it replicates. So commodity stocks would do well too.

[Randel]

Wait? Are we talking about Star Trek replicators or Stargate replicators?

Star Trek replicators, pretty much. If you had the technology to invent either:

A) an appliance that with sufficiet time, energy, and raw materials could produce practically anything you would ever need.

B) a hoard of metal lego-block spiders whose sole purpose is to eat you and everything you know and love and turn them into more lego-block spiders.

which would you invent?

Though to be fair, you could probably make a 'build anything you want' replicator and then have somebody use it to make 'world-eating lego-spider' replicators. In which case how would you go about keeping that from happening?

I suppose if replicators were out there then even if the average citezen could make almost anything then big businesses and the military would have more advanced stuff and more access to the energy and raw material to replicate things.

If somebody decides to create lego-spiders with replicators then the military could just bomb the heck out of the biggest nest of them, then try designing plans for anti-lego-spiders and release those to people in case another outbreak occurs. The Utopian society where all needs are met could turn into a world of battling robots... and if people could replicate stuff like steroids and bombs and stuff then any criminals out there could be nasty... even though average civilians could probably whip up the same stuff if they wanted to.

I guess in such a place, then people could build and wire up solar panels to power their homes and maybe sell energy back into the grid (big companies might pay the electric company for power which that company buys from civilian homes) and they could replicate all sort of security for there house to defend against super-crimminals and lego-spiders.

[LurkerInPlayground]

I'm not sure what you're really driving at then. Your proposed hypothetical has zero meaning to me. You're tossing out a magical situation where humans can achieve a nearly utopian capacity for generating resources.

So I guess I'm supposed to say that it would be pretty cool?

I mean, I we could also discover the Philosopher's Stone and discover how to make unlimited gold and an elixer for immortality. It'd be nice to have, but so what?

If you want to convert energy to matter, I'd only reasonable expect you to synthesize one or more pure elements or a few very limited compounds. And somebody would still have to prove how this is possible.

I say this because only certain elements are unstable enough to even convert to energy in the first place. So I'd reasonably speculate that the reverse process is likewise limited, if not outright impossible.

If you want to make something out of those limited elements industrially, you'd have to demonstrate that this process is cheaper than merely mining or synthesizing it more conventionally. If splitting a whole lot of atoms is enough to level a city, how much energy would you need to make your own atoms?

And if you want to make specific things out of it, you'd have to add a bunch more steps with specialized machinery.

If you can somehow make a Star Trek replicator, you sir, are a Witch-Scientist, and I'd applaud your genius.

[Krrth]

I'd just like to point out the even the Star Trek replicators have problems. They can't replicate energy sources, they have real problems with biologicals, and some elements (latnium) can't be replicated at all.

[The Glyphstone]

Don't forget that they are horrendously prone to botching up food orders whenever the plot requires an injection of cheap humor.

[LurkerInPlayground]

I'd just like to point out the even the Star Trek replicators have problems. They can't replicate energy sources, they have real problems with biologicals, and some elements (latnium) can't be replicated at all.
I assume you mean creating "living" systems.

Most everything that you'd want to eat or drink out of the Star Trek replicator is going probably be organic anyway.

[Killersquid]

I want one. The problem is I don't know a thing about circuit boards or electronics to make one. Can someone make one, replicate itself, and give me it?

Also, that thing is awesome. I would use it to make a bunch of chairs, and sit in a different chain each day.

[Krrth]

I assume you mean creating "living" systems.

Most everything that you'd want to eat or drink out of the Star Trek replicator is going probably be organic anyway.

Correct, I meant living matter. They've shown a problem with advanced organics (like medicine) as well.

[fireinthedust]

How would one handle the risk of people using them to make weapons or drugs? (what would this do to society? Or drug dealers?) And then there are questions on where the materials and power used by replicators would come from.

And then there might be limitations on the replicators... maybe they can't make microchips or other complex things (which then must be manufactured conventionally.) or the things they make tend to be brittle due to whatever process put them together (putting a samurai sword together bit by bit would likely make it much weaker than if it was tempered and hammered by an expert blacksmith unless the replicator can work on the atomic level)



1) Drugs are ridiculously easy to manufacture, as are weapons and explosives. Remeber Oklahoma city bombing? That was with fertilizer. There are ways to make horrible things out of cleaning products. Having replicators make bomb materials wouldn't be the problem. Crippling the economy and manufacturing industry *would*, however, be much worse. Um, now I have no job.



2) Comparing the complexity of the leaf of lettuce or some of the chemical compositions Guinan came up with (or Quark, or whoever) to the relative simplicity of relatively large hunks of metal arranged together? I don't think microchips or other tech would be too hard.
Keep in mind those drones that copied themselves (the repair ones that could think, so Data "saved" them; don't remember the episode name at all) were machines.
Also: the technology is based upon transporters. Really they take the transporter patterns and make *another* copy of the object. They don't do living creatures for some reason, though they've managed to replicate Gach (spelling is off, I know) and other organic materials...
Even though, really, they could do it with a transporter taking apart the particles of a person on a planet and re-making them on the transporter pad. Unless they make a mini-wormhole or shift a person through dimensions, that means taking them apart and rebuilding them. Since they're just re-making a pattern, why can't they just keep doing what they're doing? Well, plot device reason, obviously.

So YES they work on the atomic level. NO they arn't used to re-make the dead or living creatures. NO they arn't used to clone organs (like Worf's spine when it was broken, right?)

[KnightDisciple]

It's also been noted occasionally that replicated food isn't quite as good as the "real thing". Well, taste-wise, anyways.

[factotum]

Correct, I meant living matter. They've shown a problem with advanced organics (like medicine) as well.

Which really doesn't make much sense--there's not much difference in elemental content between a cooked leg of lamb and the original creature, so why would the replicators be capable of creating one and not the other? Especially since transporters are supposed to work on the same principles, and THEY don't have a problem with living beings! (Well, not unless the plot demands it, anyway :smallwink:).

[Tirian]

Most everything that you'd want to eat or drink out of the Star Trek replicator is going probably be organic anyway.

Lots of non-organic material came out of the replicators too. Dishes and clothes, for instance. Also, it seems to be assumed that if your quantum widget broke while you were away from a starbase, you would replicate its replacement and the tools to effect the repair.

And it's not quite accurate to say that it works on the atomic level. It *can*, and it can even work on the subatomic level if you need a designer medicine and don't have sufficient feedstock for it, but the bulk needs of food and clothes apparently are knit together at the molecular level. Which only makes sense -- it takes an obscene enough amount of energy to knit together a cup of coffee from vats of glucose and essential amino acids on demand without having to build those compounds from carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen every time someone wants something to drink.

So, yeah, totally not the Philosopher's Stone. and so much less so in real life. I have a certain geeky fascination with RepRap, but once I get over the initial squee, there are a lot of unanswered questions. You can make a coat hanger, great, but how much am I spending for the energy to do it, and how does that compare with the efficiency of a specific machine that makes a million of them a month and delivering one of those to me? The thought of creating feedstock like Doc Brown refueling the DeLorean by going through Marty's garbage at the end of Back to the Future is a nifty fantasy, but how will it work between now and the future?

[Killersquid]

Which really doesn't make much sense--there's not much difference in elemental content between a cooked leg of lamb and the original creature, so why would the replicators be capable of creating one and not the other? Especially since transporters are supposed to work on the same principles, and THEY don't have a problem with living beings! (Well, not unless the plot demands it, anyway :smallwink:).

:smallconfused: Actually there is. Cooked meat is burned or seared, and that's a chemical change compared to raw flesh.

[kamikasei]

:smallconfused: Actually there is. Cooked meat is burned or seared, and that's a chemical change compared to raw flesh.

Chemical changes are pretty much by definition not changes in the elemental composition. You could argue that cooked foods are easier to make from the molecular feedstock than raw... but then why can it produce fresh fruits or vegetables, or (as I'm sure it can) raw meat, but not living flesh? And the answer is simply: the writers were both a) infected with vitalism and b) not bothered to grapple with the consequences of being able to produce living beings to spec.

[Krrth]

Which really doesn't make much sense--there's not much difference in elemental content between a cooked leg of lamb and the original creature, so why would the replicators be capable of creating one and not the other? Especially since transporters are supposed to work on the same principles, and THEY don't have a problem with living beings! (Well, not unless the plot demands it, anyway :smallwink:).

I'd assume because there is a fundamental difference between a cooked leg of lamb and a living lamb. The cooked leg of lamb has a fixed molecular pattern, while the living lamb does not.

They've mentioned in several episodes that the pattern for a living creature is too complex to hold in memory for any real length of time. A transporter doesn't keep the pattern in memory: It simply transports and then clears the "buffer". A replicator doesn't: It keeps all the patterns in memory.

[Closet_Skeleton]

If I had a replicator and the energy source to power it, the best use for the replicator would be...

USE THE POWER SOURCE FOR SOMETHING ELSE!!!

[Canadian]

I'd use the replicator to make a whole lot of synth ale!

I'd get drunk on synth-ale and then play too much parisi squares and then bring a phaser to class.

[Miklus]

Also, that thing is awesome. I would use it to make a bunch of chairs, and sit in a different chair each day.

LOL!

I guess counterfeiting would be the obvious choise. Or replicate a peice of art, so more than one person could have it. Mona Lisas for everybody!

[Roupe]

Well I think the intellectual property right debate will encompass the replicated stuff too.

Furniture is a obvious application, no need to purchase from Ikea or perhaps make a copy of a Gucci bag.

If its a real replicator, delicious drink & food.

Its no stretch to think the greedy corporations will crack down on design/brand "thieves", just like the current music industry. And corporations will also buy & sell claim rights (property rights) on everything that the replicators could do.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Well I think the intellectual property right debate will encompass the replicated stuff too.

Furniture is a obvious application, no need to purchase from Ikea or perhaps make a copy of a Gucci bag.

If its a real replicator, delicious drink & food.

Its no stretch to think the greedy corporations will crack down on design/brand "thieves", just like the current music industry. And corporations will also buy & sell claim rights (property rights) on everything that the replicators could do.

So? You can use you replicator to make enough money to buy the rights to whatever you're replicating.

[Fredthefighter]

I'd just replicate my PS2 until the total worth of my PS2s equals the worth of a PS3 and 5 really good games for it.

[amuletts]

Hmmm, could you replicate a planet?

Actually, if I had one I'd probably just order what Picard does: "Tea, Earl Grey, hot." Now, there, my friends, is the wisest man in the gallaxy *nods sagely*

[KnightDisciple]

So? You can use you replicator to make enough money to buy the rights to whatever you're replicating.

...And then the Secret Service/Treasury department track you down for flooding the market with money.
Or to put it a different way: Economies do not work that way!

[estradling]

...And then the Secret Service/Treasury department track you down for flooding the market with money.
Or to put it a different way: Economies do not work that way!

Or in otherwords... if you have Replicators, the only things of value would be the things that Replicators could not make. Gold, gem jewerly all become paperweights if replicators could make thing.

If you need feedstock for the Replicators then that is very valuable, energy to run the replicators might be depending on the situation