Do Star Trek's Replicators Break the Universe?

Star Trek is fantasy not science fiction. It stretches physics beyond breaking. Ya can't get something from nothing. You can't create elements from thin air

I always thought, even as a kid, that the replicators, the transporters, and the holodecks all introduced so many plot holes. There were so many times watching TNG that I thought, they could just beam out/to, or replicate something, etc. And the holodeck episodes were hilarious because it seemed like every time it was used, it malfunctioned and caused so much trouble for the Enterprise.

Sorry for being two years late, but the Almighty Algorithm only just popped this into my feed despite the fact my metadata should show how regularly I consume Trek content.

Honestly I don't even know if you're still checking comments on this video, but I have thoughts.

I thought you were going to talk about how matter-energy-matter conversion violates the second law of thermodynamics. Ultimately, the only thing Replicators break in the fictional setting is the capitalist programming of storytellers who grew up in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Behr and Moore decry the reduced ability to tell stories, but they're really talking about the diminished ability to base stories around resource conflict. This is supposed to be a post-scarcity future, and that's simply the necessary suspension of disbelief required to watch or write the show.

Every discussion about the "loss of value" is rooted in capitalist ideology. It's a simple question really: does AI art remove the value of Dali's Persistence of Memory? Do Hallmark birthday cards remove the value of a child making a handmade card for their mother? It removes nothing more than the monetary value. And if money is a fiat currency that cannot on its own provide you food or shelter, then we must redefine "value" in more essential terms.

As an artist, I will create art even if no one sees or reads it beyond myself. And losing it to a fire is one of the most damaging things that could happen to me. It means nothing to those who never saw it. I gain satisfaction to having some of my art on deviantart for others to view utterly for free. That satisfaction has no dollar amount. Nor does the appreciation shown by people who still comment on those pieces years later. But it's still value experienced by the creator and the audience.

Ron Moore in particular wanted a grittier Trek. This drove his desire to do Battlestar Galactica. It was a great show, but it shows a certain prejudice in his storytelling desires and philosophy. And given how wonderful DS9 was despite the "limitations" of the Replicators, it really wasn't a significant obstacle at the end of the day to storytelling the future.

We just have to suspend our disbelief, no differently than accepting Spider-Man can gain spider powers after being bitten by some vaguely radioactive arachnid.

Anyways, great video!

My first and my last video of this channel.

Greed will always prevent any innovations like "replication" from becoming mainstream. A single "cure all" or "Unlimited free energy" are the worst things to the 1%. But I do think if we are going to advance beyond are star system, these things do need to become more of a reality and the 1% needs to go.

100% of the things that are possible, are happening. Until they aren't and then they don't.

My question is if this is just the transfer of energy from one place to another, and just the alteration of energy from one form to another, then what's to stop a teleporter from essentially fixing any medical condition you have, from replacing organs, removing illnesses down to the atomic level to de-aging you, and making a perfect copy of you memories included.

I do believe that something like the UFP is possible. I also believe that it's possible for mankind to make the attitude changes that would be required.

I don't believe it'll just happen, magically.

That type of trust and cooperation goes against thousands of years of human history.

If I was to retool Star Trek's replicators to help with realism and the storytelling, I'd probably not allow it to transmute chemical elements, so that anything replicated would require that the element be present in storage. That means food would be trivial, but making a part might be impossible, because a certain element has run out, or that something else which contains that element has to be sacrificed and de-replicated and put into storage. This would also explain why latinum and dilithium can't be replicated, because you'd need latinum to replicate latinum

Here's my own head cannon to how people can tell if food is replicated, and this ties into some scenes that seem to suggest this. Two reasons you might be able to tell if food is replicated. 1. You get too familiar with the recipes, and the specific versions of the recipes that are included. Basically the recipes can be too consistent. Second, the plate, the configuration of the food, aspects of the texture, things like that, start becoming too familiar. Basically, the plate of food becomes familiar, with the same exact meat, same exact vegetables, everything tastes the same, and is in the same place. Or if the replicator uses procedural replication, so the plates aren't exactly the same, you still see patterns, like the same three or four peas in the same pattern, the same odly shaped carrot slice. Basically it's like an uncanny valley of familiarity with the food.

Yes it's possible, anything you think of is possible because you've thought of it. Our ideas stem from the building blocks of our reality. All we have to do is figure it out. Most of time, we already know the solution, but we also need the inception and invention of the tools and resources needed to bring the idea to fruition.

Does 💩 get recycled? What about dead bodies??? For long missions, they’d have to… right?

Yep replicators and teleportation is rly shit for story telling. 🤨Why to have doctors and medicine if u can use transporter to do all shit ? 😂 Replicators was useful just to dont need ressuplay ships. But in truth star trek univers isnt living univers only bunch of storys more or less connected.🤨

There is only tiny differences among the replicator, the transporter and the holodeck. they all deal in the manipulation of energy, its assembly and deconstruction. Imagine if they made all of those rolled into one! you can blueprint something with the holodeck feature, then turn around and create the thing you blueprinted, then transport off the vessel and onto the planet/ship what have you without leaving the room. which would need the most airtight of protocols, security or otherwise leading to the craziest of episodes. they could make trauma rooms, in the middle of a battle someone could "Magical Girl" up in some kind of armor, mech, what have you, then turn around and anything else that script calls for.

When I was young I enjoyed Trek and didnt think much about thrt technology. When I played the original Homeworld game it became clear how over powered a phased matter assembler/disassembler is.
Designated enemies and dust clouds become bags of resource units. Manufacturing ramps up until capital ships can be pushed out every twenty minites if resources are available. Replicators are one facet of a huge step in progress and source of plot holes if we're not careful

I really admire Gene and what his vison is all about, However our current system isn't giving the masses of people hope for a future free from struggle. advances in Space travel isn't happening fast enough for people to survive the Nihilistic younger generations who have no real goals. Technology is useless in the spiritual war going on in our culture right now. If our reality was a real Star Trek movie it would be titled Star Trek The Search for Purpose.

The Transporters Break the universe -- as they basically mean ... no death, no need for doctors , and multiple copies of all decent starfleet officers...... Along with all the gene splicing, replacement by evil mirror copies normal stuff. And the New star treck films with long distance onmes makes starships kinda redundant.

Writer's don't like being limited in imagination. Problem is most Writer's these days have no imagination. Like having the replictior system unusable at a point we're they need a critical part replicated. Requiring a writer with talent and vision coming up with a story requiring a 3 episode quest. If you don't like replicator it's not the replicator it's your own inability to see past them.

Communism never works. That's what makes ST funny. People wouldn't put their lives at risk, and live such nightmare lives for zero reward.

Now that we
know that replicators recycle used items now we know where all the sewage goes

I can't think of a single episode that could have been solved by replicating an item, I do remember several episodes where the needed item could not be replicated and several times the item could not be replicated because of programming restrictions on 'military' replicators.
The Ferengi money cannot be replicated because of programming restrictions

Sorry I don’t see the merit of any of these concerns over 3d printing. It’s not magical. You’re constrained by the process

Source: Been doing 3d printing and design for over 6 years from hobby to industrial use (thank you University)

most war and theft would cease, since everyone could just create what they want at any time and there would be no point in robbing or warring over resources. it would be the biggest game changer of all time.

No replicators do not break the rules of physics.

Early TNG famously had no money. Makes some sense, but such a civilization could not exist. There is no reason to get up every day and go to work. Why? So the infrastructure needs maintenance but how would you pay the workers to repair if there is no money? How about raw materials how will you pay the miners? Replicators are coming and to an extent are here already but the society breaks down at some point.

I always thought that Number One's surprise when Data threw the rock against the wall was stupid. Why wouldn't a commander know about tech such as the holodeck? He should have been completely familiar with the entire ship before they took it out. I never was an NG fan anyway.

One thing we never see that I would love to would be a replicator that has run out of something:
Starfleet Person: "I would like one something doodad."
Replicator: "I do not have enough lithium or beryllium in storage to complete your request."

I assume they're just scooping up useful atoms as they cruise around space, but it could be interesting to see them try to use their go-to solution, only to find it's low on toner and unusable at the moment until they refill it.

I think they can be problematic in some ways, but I will say that I never truly took "post-scarcity" to mean that literally "nothing" is scarce. There would still be scarce things in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons—it just meant that no one would starve; no one would be without clothes; no one would be without some form of housing, etc. It meant all the "basics" would be universally available for all and any scarcity would be beyond "basic needs" and more in the form of art, fine (real) wine, etc.

We experience this already from grocery stores. Try a berry from a factory farm? How does it taste? ok, and it taste almost the same almost all the time. They look almost the same.

Try a berry, grown from a home garden or grown in wild. It's random in flavor. I found a wild blueberry in a forest that was sweeter than candy.

Even in this universe there still will be scarcity but the limiting factors are energy and computing power. So they would become the defacto currencies.

The replicators can't be producing matter entirely from energy, because that would be the opposite of the e=mc2 equation which would require immense quantities of energy, like the matter/antimatter propulsion systems use. So much energy that "tea, Earl Grey, hot" would destroy the ship.

Tesla said it was possible. One time someone told him "Your electricity can't produce an apple out of thin air" and he said "Actually it can"

There is no point to IP rights if all your needs are met other than vanity.

technically the replicators can make anything! The device are designed to consume anything for recycling purposes like food. And in all respect, food replicators and teleportations are basically the same. So, what 'I'm saying is in star trek they cannot replicate Latinum and dilithium due to it's complexity but in reality they should be able to by allowing the replicator to consume those materials and have it saved in it's memory bank to reproduce anytime and as many times as they want. but what is the fun in that. Also, replicator can't make gold but can make diamond because diamond is saved in the system file.

If human beings had unlimited access to good food, material goods, and a holodeck, we wouldn't be out in space. We'd all be at home playing out our most depraved fantasies forever.

They’re just fancy 3D printers.

I got to thinking that in quantum physics that Adams etc exist in this location because of their probability field. It could be thought of as being high here and very low elsewhere in the universe.

If we had sufficient control over the probability field at a macroscopic scale, we could change the probability of that object's atoms appearing somewhere else.

I expect the first few experiments in this endeavour to be rather discouraging as coherence might be an issue.

I can't help but wonder how many people got CJD from wrongly resequenced proteins.

they aint gonna happen because using e=mc^2 you would need a weak nuclear bomb to make a glass of water

Ummm with the replicator affecting the intellectual rights is that no one has to really work, if they did not want to, but they would still design an item to have their name go down as the person that made the item,.because they are working as a collective to benefit each other

Clearly the modern day writers never understood that the replicators were key to the non-capitalist society that the federation had built. Roddenberry specifically introduced the Ferengi specifically to show how the federation had evolved because he could see that the later writers didn’t understand what he had built. Truthfully if we are ever going to get good star trek material again, we need to fire the current writers and let the diehard fans that grew up with the show with the stories in the future.

I strongly beleive that within 50 years we'll have some real usable technology similar to the replicators. OF COURSE not the real deal but for example, you can already buy 3d printers which can use multiple textures, colors, materials at the same time. Also, you can buy printers which use a gel to print into so it is more precise and structually you can print things which you couldn't normally. So yeah, in like 50 years, we'll be able to print or "replicate" a lot of common things at home.

It's always odd hearing writers complain about a constraint that they have to work around.

Great video 👏🏻

Replicators are not world destroying. In Star Trek, replicators are the world, so tell interesting stories about them

Your chuckling about "comptetent government" has aged like fresh milk in the sun... 😀

As soon as this technology becomes viable, really viable, then I am going to equip a ship with it and a cadre of drones and I am headed to the asteroid belt. With true matter replication I could use the raw material from asteroids to build anything I want

It's disruptive to the Star Trek universe, because it wants to stay stuck in one era of technology, and the world doesn't work like that. Like only having wooden ships in the modern age, Star Trek wants to aways use starships. But the inevitable result of their technology would lead to teleporting directly between planets, creating weapons arrays where they needed them, and destroying their enemies directly: They'd become like the Q.

replcators cannot replicate latinium...