Why hate replicator????

[SoM]

Deks wrote:

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It wasn't until Ds9 it was dumb-ed down and modified to the extent of being 'hated' where everyone went to Quarks for a meal.

Uh.... as has been pointed out, almost ALL of Quark's food was replicated (the exceptions tended to be condiments - and ga'gh, which is unreplicatable for obvious reasons).

In addition, people went to the self-service Replimat for a meal more of the time (the clue is in the name) if they didn't eat in their quarters. They tended to go to Quark's for a drink.

[Cyke101]

Deks wrote:

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One of the reasons I couldn't stand DS9 much was because of it's religious undertones.

Replicated food being hated?
Hardly ... it's just that the writers apparently wanted to insinuate that to some people, replicated food tastes differently from home-cooked one ... nothing more, nothing less.
And it was explicitly stated that the food tastes the same all the time ... it's the 'picky' ones who complain simply because it wasn't 'home-cooked' and don't want to potentially 'insult' their parents cooking? - as stupid as it may be.

It wasn't until Ds9 it was dumb-ed down and modified to the extent of being 'hated' where everyone went to Quarks for a meal.

When you are on a star-ship ... it's easier to replicate a meal instead of going to the airponics bay and take something from a limited supply.

There is no reason that people would stop making home-cooked meals because of the replicator or that people in turn would hate replicated food because for some of them it tastes 'differently'.

A 'soullessness' society? Give me a break.

Does replicated food allow for nuance and creativity that comes with flair and artistry? I think that's a valid question to ask, and I think someone like Riker would raise the point. Then again, a replicator could probably make a decent batch of Owon eggs, unlike Riker

Since I see things in ways of analogy these days, I'd have to say this is like:

Replicator = TV
Cooking = Books

Wherein people once debated the importance of books after televisions came out. Some argue that overreliance on TV makes us soulless. Some wonder what the fuss is about books when we have TV. And still others ask, "Is there a problem?"

Some prefer books over TV. But I suppose that's not a good point to raise on a message board about a TV franchise.

Back to the point: I'd have to say that our current fast-food society is pretty soulless as it is. When Ronald McDonald displaces Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny as our kids' favorite icon, there's a problem.

[Apogeal Alpha01]

brian wrote:

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Which never made sense to me. If a replicator just uses transporter technology to materialize a pattern stored in memory and it doesn't taste like the real thing, what does that say about the efficacy of transporter travel?

If they can't transport a steak that tastes right, why would you step into the chamber yourself?

That's a brilliant observation!

[Hermiod]

In Voyager the issue was the opposite, people preferred the replicated food over the real thing, largely because of Neelix's cooking.

I question the idea that replicators just take a pre-existing pattern and recreate it. The user is able to customise his or her order too much. They might ask for a pizza with extra pepperoni or a curry without any onions. I imagine that it uses basic building blocks and "constructs" the food from those.

[The Borg Queen]

It's because basically they're snobs.

[Timo]

...and ga'gh, which is unreplicatable for obvious reasons

Why obvious? Surely a machine that can create the intricate molecules needed for a good-tasting steak could also create the intricate molecules needed for a worm that has enough life in it to wriggle as desired.

There's no known theoretical limitation on the replication of living things, which aren't fundamentally all that different from dead things anyway. It's mostly a matter of computing resources, probably. And dedicating enough resources for creating a live worm (a very generic and simplified one, no doubt) might well be worth it for somebody like Quark.

Timo Saloniemi

[AdmiralGarak]

Why sit around in the boring Replimat when you could got to Quark's, anyway?

At any rate, a replicator pattern is only as good as the person who programmed it. For example, O'Brien progams the Replimat to make shrimp gumbo, while Sisko cooks some up according to his family's ages old recipe. Both offer you a bowl. Which would you take? And good luck getting any master chefs to program their cherished recipes into some soulless machine.

[Jono]

^ I agree that the atmosphere of Quark's would be a big reason why people go there. It could also be that Quark's offers a different menu then what is available at the Replimat.

[The Borg Queen]

AdmiralGarak wrote:

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Why sit around in the boring Replimat when you could got to Quark's, anyway?

At any rate, a replicator pattern is only as good as the person who programmed it. For example, O'Brien progams the Replimat to make shrimp gumbo, while Sisko cooks some up according to his family's ages old recipe. Both offer you a bowl. Which would you take? And good luck getting any master chefs to program their cherished recipes into some soulless machine.

Why couldn't you just put a bowl of Sisko's shrimp gumbo into the replicator terminal and tell the computer to scan/record/store the pattern for future replication?

[pimp]

Renvar wrote:

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You mean we're not already?

Who said Quark serves "real food"? Quark has a replicator behind his bar, and used it to create food and drink regularly. In fact, in "Babel" Quark nearly went out of business because his replicators were down.

As for the whole "Replicators make crappy food" debate, I wouldn't be surprised if it was all psychological. Or maybe there is something to the replication process, like how transporters can run at different resolutions. Replicated food might be created with less precision than is necessary by transporters because it's not necessary to use that much energy to get the same nutrition from artificial food. My guess is, the engineers of replicators considered power consumption a higher priority than exacting taste. They also probably burned their taste buds on too many cups of bad coffee.

lol you are right we are all fatties

But going back to Quark serving food, i always thought it was real food because then why would people pay for it if it's replicated???? so i assumed they are paying for it because it's real food. Quark always ordered Kanar and other weird drinks/foods to sell, isn't that real food???

[pimp]

Acetylhexene wrote:

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Why couldn't you just put a bowl of Sisko's shrimp gumbo into the replicator terminal and tell the computer to scan/record/store the pattern for future replication?

good point there

[Hermiod]

pimp wrote:

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But going back to Quark serving food, i always thought it was real food because then why would people pay for it if it's replicated???? so i assumed they are paying for it because it's real food. Quark always ordered Kanar and other weird drinks/foods to sell, isn't that real food???

I don't think anybody paid for the food at Quarks. They paid for drinks, service and so on. Although Quark did refer to having crates of Yamok sauce sitting around unused.

The drinks served at Quarks were mostly real, although how he managed this given that his customers were from all over the galaxy. Can you imagine a bar offering to serve every different beer on Earth ?

[Timo]

Sure, if there's a replicator there that can produce the pint, any pint, at the push of a button!

Timo Saloniemi

[Eric Cheung]

[quote=Cyke101;1998118]

Deks wrote:

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Back to the point: I'd have to say that our current fast-food society is pretty soulless as it is. When Ronald McDonald displaces Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny as our kids' favorite icon, there's a problem.

Mickey Mouse is corporate enough for me not to worry about that particular icon getting displaced. There's really little difference between Disney and McDonald's.

But otherwise I agree.

[Lindley]

Deks wrote:

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One of the reasons I couldn't stand DS9 much was because of it's religious undertones.

Undertones? The Prophets exist, and are capable of communicating with arbitrary individuals at will (although they don't do so often). It's entirely reasonable---scientifically speaking---for the Bajorans to have structured a belief system around them.

The question on DS9 wasn't whether religion is "real"....it clearly was. The question was whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for a society, and even perhaps a bit of both.