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Every person in the world now owns a matter replicator, but due to the limitations of the technology, there is a 24-hour cool-down in between each use. How would people use this technology?

Its a space of 1meter×1meterx1meter, basically a cubic meter where the matter replicator works on. (So, no replicating cars, since its too big)

How do you min-max this?

152 comments

  • The main thing is positioning in order to reduce wasted space as much as possible. As someone with a 3D printer, I have a teensy bit of an idea on how to position "ready-made" to maximize space. I certainly cannot print/replicate a fully mounted car frame in a single cubic meter, but I can print parts of the frame in such a way that I can mount them like legos, if each rod is 5x5x99cm, I can fit roughly 361 (19x19, with a bit of space between them so they don't come fused) in the cubic meter. Is that enough to make the whole frame? No idea.

    Also, think about it, 1 cubic meter of sandwiches, tacos, pizza and other junk food tasting great AND being perfectly healthy. Damn, now I'm hungry.

  • Make something that'll EMP everyone's replicators before people start replicating nukes.

    Yes the Max is the current status quo, but given the Min is almost certainly the destruction of the world, so status quo is probably the best we can hope for.

    And maybe I'd make a sandwich if there's room for it along with the EMP.

  • Even if you didn't want to use it for money, you'd have to use it for money somehow just to keep up with the inflation.

    • In Stephenson's "Diamond Age" novel, even the super poor had basic access to in-home replicators. They were limited to pretty basic items, but they were available.

      With everyone having access to basic goods, the rich people would go to villages of artisans that would hand make items to get unique, one of a kind things, as most crafts were now basically lost skills to most of society.

      Throughout the story, the tech is explored and eventually hacked to upend society by removing limits on what can be generated by the replicator.

  • The vast majority of people would make as much money as they could. Quickly, the economy implodes. People soon realize they can exchange their matter replicator for eggs. A new billionaire class arises, using their millions of matter replicators to make basic necessities for the worker class. The modern assembly line is now just row upon row upon row of matter replicators. One man per warehouse, just moving from matter replicator to matter replicator.

    A few smarter people used their matter replicators to make more matter replicators. Lobbyists quickly pass "safety regulations", and these "black market" replicators are outlawed. Soon local police start advertising "amnesty", where you can bring in your illegal matter replicator and exchange it, no questions asked, for a gun.

    A few unlucky people used their matter replicators to make drugs. The purity of replicated drugs quickly renders these people unable to continue using their replicators. These replicators are collected by next-of-kin, stolen by the people that exchanged their own replicator for eggs, or accidentally destroyed.

  • I'd probably replicate a 1x1x1m cube of tungsten, then realize I have no way of removing it from the replicator.

  • Beyond the easy answers of replicating the machine itself or covering basic needs, I think it would be interesting to make a super computer with a small form factor capable of mind uploading. Then you print a replacement body in a position that fits within a cubic meter and presumably you can extend your life for a bit. A simpler alternative would be to replicate medicines that have been shown to extend healthspans in the short term and just take them in the recommended dosage when you need to.

    • Uploading your consciousness to a machine wouldn't really extend your lifespan. Think of it like moving a file from one device to another; the file isn't actually moved, you just get a copy on the second device. You and your digital clone will also begin to diverge immediately as the lived experience of being a new digital entity would be different from continuing life as a meat person.

      The closest you can get is to Ship of Theseus it; get a machine implant which gradually takes over brain functions as cells die or parts of the brain fail. Single stream of consciousness in a single body, now fully digitised. Incidentally this is also closer to biological processes to replace cells, though the brain cells renew much less frequently then other cell types. I think some areas don't naturally get replaced over a lifetime too but I'm not certain on that, either way you'd want to go faster than natural cell replacement.

      Alternatively you could make the transfer process dissolve your meat brain. Personally I'd say you are dead and your clone lives on but its the same argument as Star Trek style transporters; the clone still feels like it's you so if they got to where you want to go does it really matter?

      • Uploading your consciousness to a machine wouldn’t really extend your lifespan. Think of it like moving a file from one device to another; the file isn’t actually moved, you just get a copy on the second device. You and your digital clone will also begin to diverge immediately as the lived experience of being a new digital entity would be different from continuing life as a meat person.

        But your mind already operates this way. Human consciousness is naturally discontinuous. Your consciousness is essentially a program that runs on the hardware of your mind. And your consciousness is not a continuous thing. If you've ever been sedated for a surgery, you'll know that when you're sedated, you are just gone. You don't dream. You don't drift. You just don't exist for however long you are under. The experience of sedation is the experience of death.

        And beyond that, your consciousness ceases every time you go to sleep. Yes, there are some periods of the sleep cycle, such as REM sleep, where your consciousness is active in an odd state. But there are others where again, no one is home. There are periods of every night where your conscious mind ceases to exist entirely.

        "You," a conscious mind experiencing the universe, exist for less than a day. Tomorrow a new version of you will be spun up to experience the world, including all of your memories. But the you of your current conscious self will cease to exist this very night.

        If I go to sleep, and instead of a new copy of my consciousness springing up tomorrow in my body, a copy activates on a computer, is that still me? Really, I don't see why not. Both would have my full memories. Both would have my personality. Neither would be a direct continuation of my conscious experience. Ultimately, they're both copies of my current conscious self.

        I will not live past today. I, you, and every other human consciousness exist but for a single day (in normal sleep conditions.) We exist in a chain of such iotas of life, the self of each day passing the torch to the self of the next. Each self is united only by shared memory. That is how every human consciousness experiences life.

        Everyone wonders if uploading your mind to a machine will extend your lifespan. What they should be wondering is if waking up each morning does the same.

        Try to make the most of each day. Remember, you only get one.

      • Yup, mind uploading is making a copy. If the copying process is destruct, that doesn’t make it less of a copy. Your copy would remember your decision, so it will know it’s a copy as long as it knew how the process works.

      • I believe you are right. I should've been clearer in my original post, but I was envisioning getting the memories/upload state into the brain of the new body, not staying as a digital copy. My thought was that if you included memories up until the moment of death for your original self that it could be a semblance of "seamless continuation" because the clone would indeed think it is the original. However, at best, like you pointed out, it isn't so much extension of life as replacement.

        In the scheme of things, my preferences for life extension tech methods in order of "preserving the original" would be: organ replacement -> nanobots/gene tweaks -> cyborgization -> cryonics -> mind uploading to a new body

        I suppose a matter replicator could advance tech in each area to make them more likely to occur though given that research would no longer have material constraints.

  • A few people could easily coordinate to have one person ceeate food, another clothing and essentials, and another could create charged batteries or other energy producing objects. Hell, with a little planning you wouldn't even need to coordinate really.

    At that point the world is basically post scarcity and anyone can do anything, kinda like star trek.

    Assuming no limitations on what it can make we will also be at the stage of mutually assured destruction since everyone can make a mini nuke each day they don't need something else. This will either discourage violence or wipe out large areas of the planet depending on how fast the technology is distributed, as everyone getting it overnightbwill absolutely lead to a lot of damage in areas where conflict is happening. Not to mention oppressive governments trying to control the populations replicators.

  • Well, that gives you infinite energy, since you can produce energy-containing stuff.

    Hmm.

    On one hand, a lot of competition for resources go away.

    On the other hand, that's also pretty disruptive.

    I think that that world is going to have a lot of sudden challenges. You don't have scarcity of any material or existing item that you can break down to less than a 1m cube unless you need it in great bulk, but you also have no ability to control production of things like firearms, explosives, drugs, physical proofs of identity, missiles, weaponized drones, etc.

    I can imagine countries or organizations trying to seize the supply of replicators.

    • You might like the novel Singularity Sky. It's about a planet, artificially maintained at a 19th-century tech level by its authoritarian government, which is suddenly visited by a post-scarcity civilization. Cellphones begin to rain from the sky all over the planet and whoever picks one up is given an offer: Tell us a story and we'll give you anything you desire. One person asks for a self-replicating replicator with a fully stocked blueprint library and it ends up being extremely disruptive in many of the ways you're imagining.

152 comments