Hey yall! I’m stoned af and watching star trek on a weekend, naturally. I lost my place since last weekend in TNG season 3, but I knew that I wasn’t far in so I just watched all the intros until I found where I left off. Episode 8 “the price”, Troi gets frustrated with the replicator for wanting a “real” chocolate sundae. This raised a question for me, wouldn’t food replicators be intelligent enough to simulate the process of “the standard” ingredients being processed into the recipe? Like I thought that was the point of being able to say “Earl grey tea, hot”. Like wouldn’t she just have to say “betazoid chocolate sundae” or whatever?
EDIT: SECOND QUESTION: Say you have a family recipe cookbook or whatever and the comfort food is in that cookbook, couldn’t you just say “simulate the process of making the recipe from this cookbook”?
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I just want to say I think you should post more discussion prompts while stoned bc I love threads like these
I’ve always assumed that it replicates some original recipe perfectly, and that if you have it all the time it gets old. I read an essay once talking about how the Federation DOES have an economy, it’s just that the main currency is novelty. The “rich” people in this future are the ones capable of chasing more novelty. Creators, explorers, scientists, etc. The “normies” have to make due with what this novelty-producing class “exports” to them via news feeds, replicators, vacation planets, holodecks, scientific advancement, etc. Oh to be a “poor” in the star trek universe.
The Technical Manual explanation is that replicators save storage space by using statistical averaging techniques in the molecular patterns, resulting in single-bit “errors” that some people swear they can taste.
The averaging is the difference between a replicator and the absolute precision of a transporter.
The transporter has the level of precision and memory capacity to perfectly replicate real food.
The replicator is just a close approximation. It’s controlled for food safety and nutrition but the sense of smell and taste may be able to distinguish the food from a precise duplication.
Transporters also have different modes based on the precision used, the lesser one being used for cargo that doesn’t have to be reassembled as perfectly and takes less energy and time to do so. I hope they have safety measures to ensure a newbie transporter isn’t moving people in the wrong mode.
There are industrial/cargo transporter platforms as well as industrial fabricator/replicators.
Perhaps only the ones in humanoid transport pads are set with the highest level defaults?
I would imagine that the replicators do make the exact same thing every time. The same texture, ripeness, distribution of toppings, etc. each and every time. So wanting the ‘real’ thing may be part placebo, and part wanting to experience the random imperfections of a natural product.
Could someone with enough time and effort make the replicator able to create slight variations on the food that wouldn’t unintentionally poison people? Sure. However it seems like the replicator is used as a future MRE and that natural food is genuinely preferred by most people in that universe.
This has always been my head cannon as well. Even if there is some randomness to it, it will still be so much the same every time that eventually you will get bored with it. Compare that to the wild variation you would get with real ingredients and a messy human throwing various things in with the wrong amounts maybe leaving things out or adding in something else that normally wouldn’t be there, a wildly different take on the dish.
Yeah I’ve always been frustrated with this trope. Somehow, we’re expected to believe that a technology capable to creating and assembling all the atoms in a chocolate sundae is incapable of modifying the recipe.
In my head cannon I’ve always understood this to mean that the replicated food is “too perfect” and lacks the human imperfection/variation you get with real cooking.
Yea, that’s what I always thought too. BUT then that raises another question. Say you have a family recipe cookbook or whatever and the comfort food is in that cookbook, couldn’t you just say “simulate the process of making the recipe from this cookbook”?
Replicators don’t simulate cooking though, they rearrange atoms. It’s an entirely different process and I have to imagine that translating between them is more of an art than a science.
Yea, they rearrange atoms but like that’s part of my point. It’s a highly sophisticated computer made to recreate food. A recipe has exact measurements like “500g of flour, mix with 1.5g yeast, 3.7g salt, 340g water”, I would think they would be able to replicate that process
I know we’re debating a fictional tool (I’m here for it) but I’m saying I don’t think it replicates “the process” it replicates the end result.
Yeah, food is like music, it’s just not enough to hit the right notes and there is infinite variations even with the same notes in the same order. Food also uses TWO senses so it’s even more complicated.
It’s probably difficult to program something to arrange atoms just the way your grandma used to.
TNG episodes have touched on that very point. Data had played his music by duplicating famous musicians exactly, but, following Picard’s advice, he began using variations of two or more combined, which Picard suggested was more like human creativity.
Somehow, we’re expected to believe that a technology capable to creating and assembling all the atoms in a chocolate sundae is incapable of modifying the recipe.
Having been in close proximity to a number of engineering types, I can 100% believe this.
The value in cooking isn’t in measurements or simulations. Cooking is subtle and varied: ingredients differ, animals and plants are never quite the same. No two dishes are the same. And nor would we want them to be, that’s boring.
Replicators are the same as AI is today: fucking slop
The replicator kind of gives the answer when Troi asks: it has been programmed to have all food items provide appropriate nutritional content. It’s why there’s still a tradition of people cooking real food even though they have replicators. A few examples would be Pike, Sisko and his dad, and O’Brien’s mom. Also most or all of the Maquis.
But they can add a range in every component and make it random in that range.
