Could Data be replicated over and over?

[KottenFutz]

Hi smarties, I was looking here in the Tech forum and found two threads: a topic about Data's blinkies and a separate replicator discussion... and it got me thinkin'.

Couldn't Data be cloned using the replicator? Perhaps not as a whole, but piece by piece? Data could conceivably recreate spare parts thru the replicator most likely one might think. But if that's the case, you could replicate entire Data "kits" and build more Data's...

If replicators can create food, then they can recreate very complex things at the cellular and molecular level. Would positronics be much different? If replicators need resources to create objects, couldn't the raw materials that Data is made of be available to replicate an army of Data's? Would Data's "data" still be intact? Or would Data have to copy himself onto each replicated Data model? He transferred his "essence" into B4, so it stands to reason that it could be done.

Whatever, just sayin'.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I don't see why they don't build a replicator a mile long and replicate entire starships. Crew them with copy+paste ECH holograms and spam the enemy to death in minutes.

I don't know about Data. Bits of his body for spare parts? Probably, but his mind is as complex as a humans. They probably could create a holographic replica of his brain if not a physical one - in fact, that's what they did (to an extent) in the novel The Needs of the Many, to upgrade B-4's brain to Data's specs and activate the "copy" he downloaded in Nemesis.

 

[Wingsley]

One fatal stumbling block would be in "The Naked Now": "If you prick me, do I not bleed?" This suggests that Data is not just circuits and hydraulic mechanisms. The mystery lies in whether his non-electronic components contain some organic element in them, or whether those components contain some other synthetic elements that might be equally difficult to replicate.

It's also unclear what Data's circuits are made of. Do they contain rare exotic materials such as dilithium that would also be difficult to replicate? We don't know.

As for the business about replicating starships, I never understood why fleets of prefabbed ships couldn't be replicated. That only thing I could figure is that starships have to pass certain safety tests to make sure they are both spaceworthy and safe to be inhabited long-term by their crews. You don't want to send out a brand-new starship and have it break down because a minute replication malfunction caused a slight, unnoticed defect that would be causing a major breakdown or ship-wide life support failure or something. I would think that replication would be useful to mass-produce space vehicle components for quality testing and assembly. When you think about it, you wouldn't want to expend the energy to replicate an entire space vessel only to discover a minute defect that might require the whole ship be torn apart to affect repairs.

That's my angle on it, anyway...

 

[Unicron]

I think the main issue with replicating things on the scale of ships is that it's a huge energy cost, and the replicators are said to rely on some measure of raw material. It's not as if they can just produce stuff out of thin air. It's also been suggested at certain points (TNG's "The Wounded" being one, and Sisko's cooking on DS9 being another) that despite the convenience offered by replicators, not everyone likes them or uses them for everything. Certainly you could use replicators to manufacture specific parts or segments for ship construction, but you couldn't simply churn out dozens of finished ships in a narrow span of time.

I think in regards to Data, replicating his physical parts wouldn't be particularly difficult but it's more debatable how easily one can duplicate his positronic brain. Data failed in that capacity with Lal, who ultimately became unstable and shut down. Whether or not it would be ethical or moral to duplicate Data that way was brought up in "A Measure of a Man" and was exactly what Maddox wanted. Since he considered Data to be property, he felt that Data would make a useful resource as a mass production unit.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Couldn't Data be cloned using the replicator? Perhaps not as a whole, but piece by piece? Data could conceivably recreate spare parts thru the replicator most likely one might think. But if that's the case, you could replicate entire Data "kits" and build more Data's...

This is, more or less, exactly what Data did with Lal: he replicated her parts based on analysis of his own anatomy and his positronic brain.

As with many things involving replicators, the problem isn't the parts so much as their proper assembly. Replicators can make certain simple machines like violins and teddy bears and they're programmed to synthesize elaborate combinations of synthetic proteins shaped and colored like food items. But replicating an entire working device is out of the question, not just because of the low margin for error (which generally exceeds a replicator's capabilities) but because the complexity of the structure itself probably involves too many variables and too many different components that a replicator won't know how to make and won't have access to.

A passable violin, for example. could be replicated using combinations of a dozen pre-fabricated compounds, a set of candles could be made simply be making structures out of wax and reformed carbon. But electronic components will use conductors, semi-conductors, super-conductors, compounds, alloys, rare-Earth elements, exotic elements, quasi-elements, and probably some rare and precious materials that otherwise have be mined out of asteroids and processed by hand. If you have all of these things in hand along WITH a working design for how the object you're constructing really works, you could probably get a replicator to crank out a few dozen of them and then you could dispose of the eleven that don't work because of a myriad of transcription errors, but at the end of the day it's much more feasible to simply make it by hand.

In Data's case, you cannot replicate a positronic brain unless you know for sure how it works and why it works that way. And as Data proved, even if you do it BY HAND, relatively minor imperfections can doom the entire project.

 

[Timo]

The mystery lies in whether his non-electronic components contain some organic element in them, or whether those components contain some other synthetic elements that might be equally difficult to replicate.

Why would organics be more difficult to replicate than inorganics? Replicators handle food fantastically well, despite flavor molecules generally being extremely complex, and tiny errors there manifesting as horribly inappropriate flavors.

Data is probably a fantastically complex machine, yes. Quite possibly more so than a human, because he wouldn't be fine-tuned to be as laissez-faire as the results of biological evolution tend to be: he'd have to be high-strung, overengineered, to achieve through sheer number-crunching power what we humans achieve through cheats evolved over millions of years.

I guess this would not stop replicators from doing a perfect imitation of Data, down to the last positronic juncture and thought process quantum (provided that Starfleet wanted to commit the no doubt considerable extra resources in energy, computing, processing time and so forth). But why would Starfleet want to do that? Commander Maddox was interested in tearing Data apart because he didn't understand how Data was put together. A second Data would pose the exact same problem as the first one - he would still have to be torn apart. And whatever legal and ethical problems existed with the first Data, the second one could file in duplicate...

Really, as soon as replicator technology was perfected, or its perfection was within sight, the issue would arise that (with enough effort) people could be replicated - yet probably shouldn't. By the time of "Measure of a Man", Federation courts would have plenty of precedent in handling requests to copy a person. And, from the looks of it, UFP law would be against such copying, both in general, and in the specific case of using a replicator for the offense.

In Data's case, you cannot replicate a positronic brain unless you know for sure how it works and why it works that way.

This I cannot agree with. The replicator is blind and deaf in this respect: just commit enough resolution to the copying process, and a "suitably" good copy will emerge of anything, quite regardless of whether the replicator operator knows how it works. We saw the very thing happen in DS9 "Rivals", where alien machinery of completely unknown operating principles was successfully duplicated, and even scaled up.

(I wonder if the replicator could create a three-centimeter-wide hydrogen atom with enough effort...? We know that the laws of nature in Trek allow for objects to be scaled without taking away or adding atoms, such as in "Terratin Incident" or "One Little Ship", so probably atoms and forces of nature can be scaled in that universe.)

Yes, you will probably have to fumble around a bit before you find the resolution that is necessary and sufficient for getting a functional positronic brain. And finding it will be easier if you know how a positronic brain is supposed to work. But you can also blindly experiment, as long as you don't mind sights like the one from the ST:TMP transporter accident... Eventually, you'll still get it right, with no harm done to the original brain.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The replicator is blind and deaf in this respect: just commit enough resolution to the copying process, and a "suitably" good copy will emerge of anything, quite regardless of whether the replicator operator knows how it works. We saw the very thing happen in DS9 "Rivals", where alien machinery of completely unknown operating principles was successfully duplicated, and even scaled up.

That's part of my point. The scaled-up machines didn't work the way they were expected to, nor the way they were supposed to. You could probably replicate a microwave too, but BECAUSE the replicator is blind, you can't always be sure that the replicator will assemble the thing in the proper configuration; if it's using a scan protocol or a data compression technique that misses something fundamental to the microwave's operation, you might wind up with a device that bombards your food with S-band radio waves instead of microwaves.

That for a simple device that you could probably assemble by hand inside of fifteen minutes. Even single-bit errors in the replication of a brain could (and did) result in catastrophic failure in a new android.

Because it can't be overlooked, it needs to be restated here: "scan and replicate" is simple to say, but not simple to do. We can't even do this reliably with digital data; DVDs, CDs, programs of all types use protocols and algorithms to represent and encode that data in a way that it can be copied and transmitted with a minimum of error and in a shorter amount of time. Replicator's scan resolution is bound to be less important than the software that makes it work, and if that software isn't optimized for the thing it's copying, the thing it produces is likely to turn out rather disastrous. This is likely one of the key differences between an industrial replicator and a food slot: working with resequenced protein and hydrocarbons is bound to require different algorithms than working with crystals metals and semiconductors.

Yes, you will probably have to fumble around a bit before you find the resolution that is necessary and sufficient for getting a functional positronic brain. And finding it will be easier if you know how a positronic brain is supposed to work. But you can also blindly experiment, as long as you don't mind sights like the one from the ST:TMP transporter accident...

That's like saying you can figure out how to build a computer by copying the design of a circuit board and then soldering transistors into the board in the exact same pattern OF the board. Sure, if you do it enough times you'll eventually figure out the right specs of the resisters transistors and capacitors to make your computer work more or less like the one you've copied. But not only is that not good engineering, it's not something you could show anyone with any confidence "this will definitely work." You've pretty much just counterfeited something you have no idea how to build, so not only can you not guarantee its stability, you can't fix it if anything goes wrong, nor can you improve upon the design.

That's the whole point of Commander Maddox and Data's combined experiments. If the question of whether or not somebody persistent enough might be able to replicate a passable Data knockoff... well, yes, absolutely. If the question is replication in terms of feasible mass production, the answer is simply no: the replicator can only make what it knows how to make, and if you don't know how to make it, you can't teach the replicator how to make it.

 

[Timo]

I cannot see how anything new would have been brought to the argument. The replicator can make perfect copies of molecules; it could no doubt make perfect copies of Data if given the necessary resources. And a perfect copy of Data is exactly as functional as the original Data - not inferior, not superior, not subject to some sort of random interference, but exactly as functional as the original.

If Data functions by virtue of a fluke, and is essentially unstable, then we must congratulate Soong for getting him right on the fifth try - and for getting Lore more or less right as well. Any perfect copy of either of the two would have good odds of being just as perfectly functional, then, even if we assume the inherent instability. Which I don't see any reason to assume.

If you want something that definitely works, replicate it. If you only know how to build it, and then build it, you will end up with a bell curve of good and bad specimens; if you replicate perfection, perfection is absolutely guaranteed for each and every individual product.

Of course, if you don't know how Data works, you can't repair Data. But if you replicated him in his heyday, you have an infinite supply of functional Datas to replace the malfunctioning individual with. And if you somehow overcome the legal and moral complications of tampering with a Data, you can pick one and do all the tampering you want to in order to learn more, after which you may have the skill to keep all your Datas going indefinitely, to improve upon them, or at least to predict their expiration date.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Meredith]

Why do you need a positronic brain? Just load an EMH program into a computer core small enough to put into an android's body and model the body itself after Data's body while making some improvements in power cells, etc...

It would be interesting if you could load "Data's Programming" into a holomatrix type program. Who is to say that Lewis Zimmerman's EMH project wasn't based upon a "virtualization" of Data's Positronic net.... Maybe it would be easier to make a "Positronic Net Virtual Machine" that you can then load a program into much like when you use Virtual PC and load Linux running inside of a Windows 7 machine.

This could get around some of the physical, ie. Material deficiencies that can arise when trying to build an physical positronic net. Since you define the parameters of physics used in the positronic net you can "modify the physics" of the VM to make the Positronic Net in software immune to any flaws that would crop up in a real life net, all of this would be running on equipment built upon proven existing computing technology.

In a way it would be like building the ENIAC computer in software and not having to worry about replacing any vacuum tubes because it simply won't blow tubes.


Oh and I can copy data: COPY C:\DATA C:\DATA2

 

[Timo]

Why do you need a positronic brain? Just load an EMH program into a computer core small enough to put into an android's body and model the body itself after Data's body while making some improvements in power cells, etc...

Perhaps that's the thing that makes positronics appealing: that they can be packed in a smaller space than the comparable optronic computing capacity?

This would explain why Dr. Soong decided to demonstrate his skill with positronics by building smart androids (and not, say, by building a positronic desktop computer). Anybody could do a smart AI, but only a positronics master could pack it into an android body.

And we do see that smart AIs are a mature technology in TNG, and that holodecks are a semi-mature way of giving them physical form. Never mind the EMH, which nobody ever treated as a cutting edge technology... By the time the EMH gets distributed to the Fleet, a friend of Bashir's already does holographic AIs as a form of entertainment!

It's a bit difficult to think that this widespread development would have been derivative of Soong's (secret!) work on positronics. Rather, Soong might have concentrated on building the positronic hardware for Data, then downloaded Data's thought patterns off the shelf of a commercial AI distributor that generally served the holographic market...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I cannot see how anything new would have been brought to the argument. The replicator can make perfect copies of molecules; it could no doubt make perfect copies of Data if given the necessary resources.

Data is not a molecule, so that one's out. Besides, we already know from "Data's Day" that replicators CAN'T make perfect copies of molecules. They can make "good enough" copies for most conventional purposes, but flawed enough that anyone who examines them closely will know what they really are.

Really, a replicator is like a 3D xerox machine. It's good enough for simple documents and items that are intended for reproduction, but even the highest resolution scanners would be hard pressed to capture, say, a 3D holographic postcard.

In that sense, it may well be as simple as the fact that transporters are equipped with heisenberg compensators and replicators are not. The reason for this is apparently that the uncertainty principle still applies even in transporter technology, and the only way around it is to run the process in a way that you don't need know everything about a particle (as in a transporter pattern) or you don't need to CARE, because your system can fake it and fill in the blanks with arbitrary values. This was the point I made earlier: undoutedly ALOT of thought goes into the pre-fabricated replicator patterns stored on Enterprise' menu, not just "let's scan a chicken dinner and replicate it all month." The reproduction is as perfect as it is because the LIMITS of the replicator were taken into account when it was programmed; this is a testament to the patience and skill of the programmers, not the replicator itself.

In simpler language: you can beam but cannot replicate Data for precisely the same reason you can beam but cannot replicate anyone else. The most sophisticated replicator we've ever seen on Trek was able to make a perfect duplicate of Travis Mayweather's corpse, but it couldn't duplicate a living Travis.

 

[Timo]

Data is not a molecule, so that one's out.

He's made of those, though, so the theoretical rationale that the replicator wouldn't be able to create his constituent parts is out. And it's really difficult to argue that anything would ever be more than the sum of its parts. If this seems to be the case, one simply isn't counting the parts correctly!

Data might or might not be a tougher nut to crack than a tasty turkey meal. We know that sentience can be replicated with 24th century UFP hardware, though: the Exocomps did that, and the lifeform of "Emergence" apparently did that as well. So 24th century UFP science should be able to tackle certain elements of the theory of replicating Data component by component.

Yet the point is that it shouldn't need to. Replicators can create copies without needing to know anything about what they replicate. They don't need to study the Koran or the history of salt extraction in the Mediterranean region or the story of Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf in order to make tasty salted ham. It would be equally absurd to teach them positronic computing merely in order to get a perfect copy of a positronic brain. And if the copy is perfect, then it also functions just as well as the original.

Besides, we already know from "Data's Day" that replicators CAN'T make perfect copies of molecules.

Or can't be bothered to. The molecules in "Data's Day" served their purpose: they allowed the Romulan spy to escape. Why attempt anything beyond that?

In simpler language: you can beam but cannot replicate Data for precisely the same reason you can beam but cannot replicate anyone else.

Because there'd be moral outrage?

We don't know why people aren't being replicated. We haven't been told. We have been told that working components of people can be replicated, though. All categorical theoretical objections to replicating people are thus invalid: we can only formulate theories on practical limitations.

The most sophisticated replicator we've ever seen on Trek was able to make a perfect duplicate of Travis Mayweather's corpse, but it couldn't duplicate a living Travis.

The haunted dockyard was designed to repair starships. It appeared to make do with what it had available, in circumstances that had diverged from its original design parameters (i.e. it was left to its own devices and did things a dockyard shouldn't do). We don't know if the replicators there were "the most sophisticated we've ever seen" - we only know they impressed the heck out of our ENT primitives. Could be standard dockyard hardware for the 24th century, significantly inferior to standard medical hardware for the 24th century.

(Besides, we don't have a clear motivation for the dockyard to try and create a living copy of Mayweather. We only know the dock craved brains, and preferred to take those as payment rather than creating them itself. Perhaps the dock was motivated by purely commercial terms: it saw fit to take a life for X amount of work on duranium and optronics, and perhaps would have taken 2.5 lives for 2.5X amount of work. Or perhaps it wanted to repel repeat calls from the customers?)

The intriguing fact remains that no character has ever suggested that life (biological or positronic) could not be replicated. There are no verbal references to limits in the abilities of replicators in general, or even to those of specific types of replicator. There are no known substances or structures that would defy replication. All we know is that most things are not commonly replicated, or shown replicated, and that includes easy stuff such as breathing air...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Now I'm wondering if Data replicated Spot

It might account for the weird changes in breed and gender - they might not have it perfected quite yet!

 

[KottenFutz]

Now I'm wondering if Data replicated Spot

It might account for the weird changes in breed and gender - they might not have it perfected quite yet!

Wouldn't it be funny if Spot turned out to be an android that Data built? So he built a few, which is why they seem different... I know it would take a little of the soul out of machine man Data taking care of a flesh and blood animal, and even loving it. But what a great twist it would be if Spot was positronic !!

 

[Santaman]

Riker has been replicated, can't remember the ep but it technobabbled about the beam being split by whatsamacallit so you had two 100% identical Rikers, one that was left behind on a planet and one that served on the Ent-D

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Data is not a molecule, so that one's out.

He's made of those, though, so the theoretical rationale that the replicator wouldn't be able to create his constituent parts is out.

It can create the PARTS just fine. What it can't do is reliably put them together in working order.

Yet the point is that it shouldn't need to. Replicators can create copies without needing to know anything about what they replicate.

You keep saying this, but there's nothing in trek history that suggests this is in any way the case; OTOH, there are multiple indications that replication of items is an entire engineering task in and of itself and requires not just figuring out the nature of the thing you're replicating, but the nature of the facsimile as well.

Besides, we already know from "Data's Day" that replicators CAN'T make perfect copies of molecules.

Or can't be bothered to.

No, CAN'T. If it were possible to do the Romulans would have replicated a LIVING T'pel and sent the duplicate back to the Enterprise to continue spying while the original was debriefed. As it stands, the entire plot logic of the episode turns on this fundamental limitation of replicators: they cannot make genuine organic tissue that functions like organic tissue.

In simpler language: you can beam but cannot replicate Data for precisely the same reason you can beam but cannot replicate anyone else.

Because there'd be moral outrage?

Why the hell would the Tal'Shiar care about moral outrage? These are the same guys who tried to clone Jean Luc Picard and then ditched the clone in a dilithium mine because they realized what a stupid idea it was. You can rest totally assured that IF it were possible to replicate living beings, the galaxy is teeming with people who would do it without a second thought.

There really is no amount of handwaving you can do to get around this, Timo. Too much of Trek's internal logic DEPENDS possessing that fundamental limitation. And it IS a technical limitation, not a social one.

We don't know why people aren't being replicated.

Yes we do: because it isn't technologically possible.

The most sophisticated replicator we've ever seen on Trek was able to make a perfect duplicate of Travis Mayweather's corpse, but it couldn't duplicate a living Travis.

The haunted dockyard was designed to repair starships. It appeared to make do with what it had available, in circumstances that had diverged from its original design parameters (i.e. it was left to its own devices and did things a dockyard shouldn't do). We don't know if the replicators there were "the most sophisticated we've ever seen"

Actually we know this unequivocally, since the repair station's replicator equipment was able to fabricate large components using small football-sized devices at the end of manipulator arms. This places them at a level of technology comparable if not superior to the CFI replicators used by Starfleet 200 years later.

More to the point, the repair station evidently needed sentient life forms as part of its system core. The only reason to abduct those life forms is if it lacks the ability to replicate them by itself. If it HAD that ability, it could have captured Travis and replicated him without anyone being the wiser, or even duplicated him a dozen times to get the maximum benefit of its acquisition. The act of faking his death with a replicated corpse is therefore a matter of necessity, not a matter of choice: the station CANNOT duplicate Travis because replication of living beings is fundamentally possible.

The intriguing fact remains that no character has ever suggested that life (biological or positronic) could not be replicated.

Nobody's ever suggested that the Enterprise has a bathroom either, but we know it must have one. You can either handwave a "Everyone on the ship has an internal matter processor surgically installed in their intestines to beam the waste to the recycling center because of some moral objection to taking a shit in the 24th century" or you can say "Yes, there are bathrooms that have not been described to us." With replicators, it's even less ambiguous: even at times where the duplication of living beings is the intended goal, antagonists invariably chose SOME OTHER method of achieving this.

And as I've already pointed out in reference to "Ethics" replication of genuine tissue is difficult enough that only a Klingon with double redundant everything has a chance at surviving the procedure.

 

[Timo]

It can create the PARTS just fine. What it can't do is reliably put them together in working order.

Why would it have to? It's not an assembly machine, as far as we can tell. It's a machine that materializes entities on one stroke.

You keep saying this, but there's nothing in trek history that suggests this is in any way the case; OTOH, there are multiple indications that replication of items is an entire engineering task in and of itself and requires not just figuring out the nature of the thing you're replicating, but the nature of the facsimile as well.

"Rivals" alone should debunk the idea that replication requires expertise, or indeed any sort of cognitive capabilities beyond the ability to move one's finger to the "replicate" button.

Small, complex, unknown and unfathomable functional objects can be replicated with trivial ease, using a device otherwise employed as a food replicator. Where our heroes and villains hit explicit limitations is size, numbers and speed. Where implicit limitations appear is on issues of acquisition means A and B, where A is replication yet B is preferred anyway - but these hardly negate the already demonstrated ability to do perfect replication. They merely establish that perfect replication, while possible, is usually impractical.

No doubt making a thousand Datas is impractical for a thousand reasons, some of them having to do with replication technology. But nothing suggests it would be impossible with 24th century UFP replicators, or Cardassian (Ferengi-supplied?) ones for that matter.

Why the hell would the Tal'Shiar care about moral outrage?

When did they have the opportunity to replicate Data? Or Picard? No doubt they could make excellent replicas of those hair follicles of Picard's they found, but a hair follicle isn't an ideal secret agent.

You can rest totally assured that IF it were possible to replicate living beings, the galaxy is teeming with people who would do it without a second thought.

Exactly. Which is why it would be criminalized, and thus about as common as murder. Except it would also require special resources (something beyond food replicators), so it wouldn't be as common as murder by kitchen appliance, it would be as common as murder by sniper rifle.

So our heroes never do it, while people like the Dominion, while apparently still klutzes with replicators, are famed for their photocopying of biologicals...

Actually we know this unequivocally, since the repair station's replicator equipment was able to fabricate large components using small football-sized devices at the end of manipulator arms. This places them at a level of technology comparable if not superior to the CFI replicators used by Starfleet 200 years later.

Bullshit - we never saw any of the Class Fours, so we can tell zip about them. And if they have limitations, then there are Classes Three through One to do better...

The dockyard might be quite similar to a Starfleet facility from 2375, considering we never saw one of the latter in action, either.

And as I've already pointed out in reference to "Ethics" replication of genuine tissue is difficult enough that only a Klingon with double redundant everything has a chance at surviving the procedure.

Or then a lithe Vhnori female who even happens to be dead to begin with!

Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. We have seen it demonstrated that all the elements of the process exist: extreme resolution, ability to handle man-sized objects, retention of functionality, complete irrelevance of knowledge on function as far as perfect duplication of structure is achieved. So we can argue that it's way too difficult to do in practice - which would explain why it's not done - but we cannot argue that it could not be done with the existing technology if somebody really cared about it.

No different from flying to the Moon. The technological basis (not theoretical, but practical) existed as of 1950, but getting there by 1970 required extreme motivation. Without such motivation, we might still not be there. Which we aren't, lo and behold, now that the motivation has evaporated.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cepstrum]

I'm late (and new) to this discussion, but I have three questions/comments:

1. I *thought* replicators converted matter and/or energy to the appropriate matter and used a lookup table/recipe/template in a database to assemble an object. I did not think they were like 3-D, molecular copy machines. Therefore, wouldn't they require detailed instructions of how to replicate Data? Sometimes a character will say a replicator has been programmed to, say, produce Cardassian food. That made me believe Cardassian food had been analyzed and its molecular structure/composition made into a template.

I thought it was *transporters* that worked with actual things, scans them, disassembles them to the atomic level, sends the atoms somewhere else, and using the results of the scan, reassembles the original thing. Whereas *replicators* just create objects from pre-programmed templates/instructions.)

Even though food etc *is* complex, I'd imagine it'd be more likely to be analyzed by scientists and programmed by engineers for a replicator: the more common the object, the more likely it has replication instructions.

2. If it *were* possible to replicate Data, it would many stories about him moot. Even someone like Quark would churn out Data-like androids to sell as essential ready-made friends/servants/slaves. But we keep hearing that Data (and Lore) are the only (known) such androids. Data is very useful. I can't imagine Starfleet or anyone else not wanting thousands of Data-like androids.

3. Trek seems slightly inconsistent with its artificial life. One the one hand, we have Data, who is Starfleet's unique (and only) sentient android. OTOH, life-like holography and even quasi or arguably sentient holograms abound. All Quark needed to do to create a holographic Major Kira was to either scan her in a holosuite or just take some images if her. Of course, two significant difference are that, whereas an android is a 3-D being capable of existing anywhere, holograms don't require anything more than the image projection of visible parts and software to run them and are limited to areas equipped with holographic emitters. They seem far simpler than something physical like Data (though IRL I'd think they be equally complex; the principal *real* differences are that Data requires a bunch of miniature motors to move and must have all his software contained within his own body instead of an external, probably larger, computer.)


Am I close or way off-base here? My understanding here is, as demonstrated above, not very good. That's why I'm asking you and throwing those questions/comments out for you to tear apart.


Btw, I've seen in some of my engineering journals examples of 3-D scanners that are able to make templates of custom-built parts, which another device uses for quick fabrication. It's kind of like Star Trek, but don't expect to be asking a replicator for a meal anytime soon!


Edit: I'm really only considering Starfleet replicators. I see, Timo, that you have some good points, especially about the Dominion's ability to essentially mass-produce creatures. I don't know how they — or other entities — do such things, though I thought the Dominion used genetic engineering. I do know that different factions' transporters tend to be unique, and we have seen examples of better or different holograms *and* robots, namely in the Delta Quadrant.


Again, I could merely be revealing my ignorance with this posting! The only thing I know for sure is that Data is unique/special in his area of the galaxy. Otherwise, why would Maddox be so interested in him, the criminal collector steal him (in "Most Toys"), Data try — but fail — to "procreate" (though his resources were limited to what he had access to on the Enterprise-D), or B'Elanna mention to the Praylor/Cravic robot (can't recall which faction she was helping in "Prototype") mention him as the only comparable android/robot where she comes from?

 

[Ronald Held]

Even with the ambiguities. I thought that inanimate objects were replicatable(with few exception such as Latium, etc) given the known pattern. Sentient self-aware Biomatter was a different matter(no pun intended). The transporter seems to do its normal job, but cannot hold the pattern indefinitely, or long enough to use a "heap" of matter with the correct composition to be reformed into the person.

 

[Cepstrum]

Even with the ambiguities. I thought that inanimate objects were replicatable(with few exception such as Latium, etc) given the known pattern. Sentient self-aware Biomatter was a different matter(no pun intended). The transporter seems to do its normal job, but cannot hold the pattern indefinitely, or long enough to use a "heap" of matter with the correct composition to be reformed into the person.

If replicators could create out ready-made people, I'd think maybe not Starfleet but certainly others would take advantage of it for entertainment, servants, or unlimited soldiers. The fact that they didn't tends to make me think you're right: it isn't possible.


But, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.