What's Earth like in the 24th Century?

[voss749]

I'm not buying that replicated/3D printed is not as good as natural. I don't even understand the logic of that. Even two natural apples, steaks or cheeses is not identical on a sub atomic level, but they can taste equally yummy.

And with replicated it's safer to eat, no animal needed to be raised for slaughter, and you can design it to be exactly what you want.

For most people American slices/replicated food is fine.

A connoisseur could probably tell the difference. Non-replicated food would certainly probably cost more.

You see how people freak out over GMO foods, tell them their fruit was synethized from recycled particles...

In a Star Trek world everyone has everyone has everything they need to live very comfortably by 21st century standards but the questions is not what they need but what do they want?

 

[voss749]

And replicating those would make them lose that value: by making two of a gold rush coin, you'd probably drop the value of each to way less than half the original.

OTOH, most coins are made of cheap, even worthless materials. Their value is purely abstract, and scarcity is artificially created and would keep on being so generated even if somebody dumped a trillion replicated coins to the market.

Timo Saloniemi

You cannot replicate elements Gold, Ferengi currency uses latinum which supposedly cannot be replicated. Im guessing with 24th century gold can be easily extracted from seawater which makes its value no longer precious.

 

[Arpy]

You see how people freak out over GMO foods, tell them their fruit was synethized from recycled particles...

Let there be nutty folks. The overwhelming majority will be healthier and happier with replicated food, and when the generational studies come in (or when they die out early) there will be even fewer nutty folks.

In a Star Trek world everyone has everyone has everything they need to live very comfortably by 21st century standards but the questions is not what they need but what do they want?

This is significant. If you put a caveman in today's society, he'd waste away in the plenty we take for granted. Similarly, some of us would waste away in the Federation. But a Federation citizen wouldn't.

We're going to have to figure out more of what we want soon enough. AI's and greater automation will see huge swaths of jobs disappear sometime this century, and resources (and life*) will begin to become scarcer still as population increases. What happens on a planet of 11.2 billion when only x billion are needed to keep up the old system?

 

[dswynne1]

And replicating those would make them lose that value: by making two of a gold rush coin, you'd probably drop the value of each to way less than half the original.

OTOH, most coins are made of cheap, even worthless materials. Their value is purely abstract, and scarcity is artificially created and would keep on being so generated even if somebody dumped a trillion replicated coins to the market.

Timo Saloniemi

I think that value of "gold-pressed latinum" has to do with how much energy is spent manufacturing latinum. It may be that latinum has a complex molecular structure that makes it expensive to make out of your proverbial garage. It may be that latinum, like dilithium crystals, is also mined and refined. Then there is the difference between food replicators and industrial-level replicators. In other words, in order to use gold-pressed latinum as a standard currency, it wouldn't be easily replicated on any level. In fact, why not just replicate dilithium while we're at it? Basically, we don't know enough about gold-pressed latinum in order to assume how easy it is to replicate it, since latinum has been depicted as being a thick, mucous gel that needs to be encased with gold (which is useless precisely because gold is easy to replicate).

 

[dswynne1]

And replicating those would make them lose that value: by making two of a gold rush coin, you'd probably drop the value of each to way less than half the original.

OTOH, most coins are made of cheap, even worthless materials. Their value is purely abstract, and scarcity is artificially created and would keep on being so generated even if somebody dumped a trillion replicated coins to the market.

Timo Saloniemi

You cannot replicate elements Gold, Ferengi currency uses latinum which supposedly cannot be replicated. Im guessing with 24th century gold can be easily extracted from seawater which makes its value no longer precious.

But gold is still in use, since they use it to make com-badges. Plus, isn't gold makes a good conductive material?

 

[Arpy]

Lots of things are not replicatable, but they're not used as currency. Gold-pressed latinum's non-replicatability is what makes it a suitable as a currency, but it's only worth whatever the government backing it says it's worth, or however useful it is in practice. Offer latinum to a Federation citizen and they'll accept for if ever they're out of the UFP...over 150 memberworlds to explore, spanning countless planets, moons, ships, and stations, each with possibly hundreds or thousands of intelligent species...most of us never get to see all of Earth we'd like to.

Put it this way. If you were offered the throne of the mole people, would you take it? You'd live the rest of your days as the absolute life & death monarch of all mole people, with all the food and gold and mole women/men you'd like, but you'd have to live forever underground in pitch-blackness with mean, nasty, probably ugly mole people, and no chance of release but in death. Maybe that's kind of the challenge of the future. You can live a good life with good people or you can leave and have more of some things we today talk a lot about (wealth, leisure, power), but that get tiresome if not connected to other things we forget about (camaraderie, peace, balance). Though with the Federation, you can always return...unless if in studying evil you are not too-long studied by evil!

I don't think it's much of an issue. In the real world we talk so much about wealth and power because we often don't have it and others have too much. The wealthy charge 500% more for life-saving medications others can no longer afford, and celebrities get away with literal murder. But in a better world, we wouldn't care as much about wealth and power because we'd all have it and be free to pursue things we'd otherwise be distracted from. It's the difference between a life of lust and one of love.

 

[Timo]

You cannot replicate elements

Sure you can replicate elements. Nobody ever said in the show that elements couldn't be replicated. Quite to the contrary, Data in "Night Terrors" said their ship had temporarily lost the ability to "reproduce complex elements in the replicator".

I think that value of "gold-pressed latinum" has to do with how much energy is spent manufacturing latinum

"Energy" here meaning "effort" in general - it might include sheer jouleage, or then time and patience, or computing power, or a dozen other things combined. The bottom line would be written in red ink, it being more profitable to obtain GPL through trade than through replicator forgery. Just as with ten-dollar bills.

Gold-pressed latinum's non-replicatability

But no such thing is mentioned in the episodes or movies. As you and others say, there are many ways through which something could become a useful medium of exchange, and GPL may or may not exploit replication difficulties there.

Agreed that the Feds wouldn't care much about forgery or wealth. But intriguingly, the Ferengi also have replicators, yet heavily depend on GPL and do worry about forgery (Quark biting his slips etc.).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Arpy]

Headline "Price of Lab-Grown Burger Falls from $325K to $11.36" ...maybe it won't be the replicator that ends the "enslavement of animals." I'll be curious to conduct a taste test when the time comes.

It's weird some of the thoughts that come to mind thinking about it though...part of me feels revulsion, like I'll be biting into synthesized human flesh...or somewhere in my mind's eye I see the meat being grown on wire mesh, beating like a heart, as it's surrounded by dry ice smoke and liquid tubes feeding it nutrients... Happy Halloween, folks!
http://www.trekbbs.com/Price of Lab-Grown Burger Falls from $325K to $11.36

 

[T'Girl]

No concern about time spent in shipping, packing, refrigeration.

But growing, raising, harvesting, slaughtering, transporting, refrigerating, and so forth could collectively consume far less energy than replicating the final product.

^^ The replicators also have virus filters built in.

If you stipulate the existence of technology that can easily determine if food is dangerous of not, then again how would replicator food be safer than non-replicator food?

Whenever a trek crew was in danger of being eaten, they didn't take it too well.

The Trek crew were composed of sapient beings.

What in the slightest is wrong with raising animals to be slaughtered? That question answers itself. That's exactly what Riker was talking about.

Was it? This next isn't an attempt at disparagement, I've noticed that viewpoints like the one you're advocating tend to come from people who haven't spent considerable time around livestock. These animals are not somehow junior Human beings or pets. They've been domesticated and breed over the course of centuries/millennium to exist as a source of food (and other materials). And while (again) replicators make abundant sense aboard a ship or station, on the surface of a planet there would be other options, on 24th century Earth crops would be grown, animals raised and eaten.

First, it could make anything a person wanted.

With early mass produced cars, they used to say you could have any color car you wanted, as long as you wanted black.

The replicator can make anything you want, as long as you want what it can make.

The nature of WWIII has never been described in great detail, but we know from "A Matter of Time" that nukes and even a nuclear winter were involved.

Ahh, that's how we get rid of "global warming."

Gold-pressed latinum's non-replicatability

But no such thing is mentioned in the episodes or movies.

Neither is there ever mention of GPL being replicated, it is implied that it can't be replicated, or reproduced by just anyone.

Somewhere there is a restricting barrier.

.

 

[MacLeod]

For what it's worth Memory Alpha says Latinum can't be replicated.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Latinum

 

[Timo]

But growing, raising, harvesting, slaughtering, transporting, refrigerating, and so forth could collectively consume far less energy than replicating the final product.

But people don't care about energy in the 24th century of Star Trek. At least not at the consumer level. It's not a factor in the decision-making process - and it's difficult to think of any other factor that would adversely compete with "natural" food production in that environment.

If you stipulate the existence of technology that can easily determine if food is dangerous of not, then again how would replicator food be safer than non-replicator food?

Replicate a dish, and it's safe to eat. Proceed to eating, and stay healthy.

Procure a dish by some other means, check it, and find out that it's inedible. Curse the amount of resources (mainly time and patience) spent on this futile quest. Eat the damn stuff anyway, and get sick. Or spend more resources to get another dish that once again may or may not meet the standards.

on 24th century Earth crops would be grown, animals raised and eaten.

We have decidedly seen crops grown. Or at least wine gets produced the old-fashioned way by some luddites whom Picard has to acknowledge as relatives whether he wants to or not. (Perhaps their house was burned down by the Tilling is Torture movement?)

However, we haven't seen any animals being raised for food. We have seen animals hunted (fish being pulled out of water and thus tortured although not necessarily killed), but whether for food or entertainment, we don't know exactly. We have seen horses forced to carry people, and puppies imprisoned to frolic, and cats enslaved to eat, yawn, scratch, sleep and cast disapproving looks at their masters, but that's all for entertainment rather than alternate nourishment. Unless there's something about the metabolism of Soongian androids we haven't been told?

That's in the 24th century, and it extends to colonial luddites as well: the Maquis were never shown raising cattle. Things were different in the 23rd century (Sandoval's expedition was said to raise cattle, even though budgets didn't extend to showing more than the related infrastructure) let alone the 22nd (we actually saw some of the cattle in "Up the Long Ladder", but the disapproval of our heroes could stem from many reasons).

The replicator can make anything you want, as long as you want what it can make.

No authorized user ever ran into a limitation on the mods he or she could perform on an order. Although it does take a bit of training or acclimatizing to work the machine, or else you don't even get to adjust the temperature of your water!

For what it's worth Memory Alpha says Latinum can't be replicated.

It's too bad it doesn't quote any sources. And no, "Who Mourns for Morn" doesn't qualify.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

I'm curious. What happens when you ask the replicator to produce a FULLY FUNCTIONAL 1/20 scale replica of a thermonuclear bomb?

 

[eyeresist]

^ You find yourself instantly beamed to a re-education planet.

 

[Timo]

In DS9 "Field of Fire", the heroes deduce that the villain replicated a gun. They further deduce he or she must be Starfleet, because "only Starfleet officers have access to those files", meaning the gun's "replication patterns". However, it doesn't follow that our heroes could search for a replication event of this sort, and certainly there's no red flag attached to the replication of this gun that would have alerted our heroes (or the villain's superiors at his last assignment, assuming the replication took place there; or the authorities at replication location X; etc.) before the first shooting took place.

If a non-Starfleeter obtained those files and attempted replication, would there be a flag raised? We don't know. We never hear of anybody getting caught for replicating something he or she should not have.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Arpy]

I'm curious. What happens when you ask the replicator to produce a FULLY FUNCTIONAL 1/20 scale replica of a thermonuclear bomb?

Depends on what the episode is about that week. If it's about a micro-nuke going off in the habitat ring, then the replicator produces what's instructed (e.g. Geordi's telling the holodeck to "create a villain capable of defeating Data" resulting in just that in TNG's "Elementary, Dear Data"). If the story's about something else, you'd get a more realistic throwaway line about "replicator safeguards" being in place.

 

[Timo]

Safeguards would make sense, and we can rather easily rationalize their total lack of mention so far by saying that every suspected misuse was the work of a skilled and authorized operator who can circumvent them, legally or not.

In general, though, it seems Starfleet personnel have fewer liberties than random civilians. A civilian doesn't need to mind the Prime Directive, or follow the same healthy diet Deanna Troi is apparently forced to endure... We haven't heard of a limitation on weapons ownership, either, so there being one on weapons manufacture might not fit the picture.

In any case, certain civilians already do possess fully functional city-killer bombs, aka personal warp-capable spacecraft.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

I've changed my mind. I'll think I should replicate some bar-b-que sauce.
I'm having bar-b-que chicken tonight. You guys made me hungry.

 

[Arpy]

Timo, I don't think so. Trek has never used warp as a WMD. The closest they got I think was when Riker was about to ram the Cube before Locutus suggested sleep. Trek's portrayed shuttles as flying cars and only slightly more dangerous. Maybe warp fields collapse in contact with planetary gravity wells?

Come to think of it, even impulse speed is what, 1/4 c? That'd leave a mark... Kudos to Babylon 5 for using illegal "mass drivers" as WMD in the Centauri invasion of Narn. That may have been a touch of harder sci-fi than most shows/movies ever utilize.

Though, one could imagine the reason mass bombs aren't used in Trek is ground-based phasers that could vaporize them before they landed.