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?
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
One cubic meter of it.
Classic prank at the Academy - never play it on a Nausicaan.
The AI summons an extremely attractive and buff version of Charles Grey. He is holding a cup of tea and wearing absolutely nothing.
Damn these AIs are getting good at understanding exactly what I want.
Get together with your neighbor, replicate the parts of each other’s replicator. Repeat this daily for a bit. Exponential growth. Give it a month or so, then just go ham and make everything you want, maybe after renting a warehouse to keep them all in.
If you can disassemble them, this is probably a good way to eliminate bounds on throughput, but honestly, even a little coordination permits for pretty enormous throughput from the get-go. You’ve got a lot of people out there.
I feel the upper limit of this is probably depends on how many simultaneously unrelated things you can put on the print bed at once. Like, can I have it print me a pair of shoes, 6 sandwiches, an SD card and a bag of cat kibble all at once? Or is it going to make 6 SD kibble card sandwiches on shoe-bread? 1m³ will hold my entire groceries list for the week, but if I have to print each item individually I’ll starve.
Well… 1m^3 of rice, then the next day 1m^3 of beans, then the next day 1m^3 of potatoes, etc. - you might not like what you’re eating for the first few days, but I think you could pretty quickly accumulate enough ingredients in massive quantities to make some pretty nice meals, even if that limitation does exist.
Or get together with a few neighbors, each person makes one of the basic necessities on the first day, you all split it evenly, and now you can make decent-well balanced food from day 1.
Now make enough food to give you time for a project. A complete car engine can fit within 1 m3. So can 4 wheels. Power is going to be a problem, but you could probably make 20 solar panels at once. Now your power problems are solved. And if you have solar power, you might as well make some batteries. How much power can 1 m3 of sodium batteries hold? Not enough? Well, then make another.
So now you have food and power, and you can make a car if you really want. Or you can make an electric scooter in one day. A recumbent electric bike might take 2, and an enclosure for it might take a couple more.
You’re now 2 weeks in, have a month’s supply of food or more left, all your power needs met, transportation. What’s next? Well, the bad news is your TV will have to be slightly smaller than 60" if you print it from corner to corner in the replicator, but that isn’t a bad size. If multiple things can be printed at once, you can also print a high-end computer and VR kit. If not, this might take a couple days extra. Print a small fridge or two, or, better yet, a stackable fridge freezer set. What, those don’t exist? Make them, or get the designs from someone else. Make a nice stove if you don’t have one. Now your food creation and storage options are completely covered, as well as home entertainment. Might as well make yourself some nice furniture, comfort is key, and don’t forget the bed. Make some nice clothes, too.
So you’re about a month in and food is running out. So make some more food before you run out. After that, start adding real luxuries. Spices, seasonings, cookware and other home incidentals. At this point, you probably only need to replace consumables. You should have been doing this earlier, but talk to your neighbors and friends. Visit their places, try new foods, get new ideas for how to make your life better, keeping in mind that doesn’t just include stuff.
Now I’m imagining the prank potential here. Sneak into your Buddy’s house and order a cubic meter of baked beans!
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 obvious answer: Use your replicator to replicate more replicators.
The correct answer: The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.
The clever dick corollary: 1m3 is actually quite a large volume, and ain’t no rule says you can only replicate one object at a time. If whatever luxury item or commodity you want is small in volume, which it probably is, don’t forget you can replicate a whole bunch of it within a meter cube.
One cubic meter fits a literal ton of whatever you want.
A metric ton, anyway, and provided whatever you want is water.
Nah, it can also do a ton of anything denser than water, or anything that can be compressed to be denser than water.
One cubic meter of neutronium, please.
Day 1, I replicate a replicator kit and put it together. I also contact a realtor and let them know I’m interested in buying some land. Off grid, far from cities, doesn’t matter.
Day 2, I replicate two replicator kits and put them together.
Day 3, I replicate four replicator kits. I’ve now got eight of them. I’m not sure I’ll need sixteen, at least not right away, and my basement is starting to get a bit crowded. So I’ll leave it at that for the moment, but the moment I think I need more replicator capacity I can have it.
Thanks for the input von Neumann.
Plot twist: every replicated replicator degrades slightly in subtle ways, like making glass less smooth, or making food taste a little bit stale. After the fourth cycle, bananas taste a bit like warm mayo.
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.
My first thought was to start work on a de-replicator. Lot of people about to have a lot of junk in their house and it’ll pile up quickly.
Not sure how long it’ll take until the earth becomes a black hole.
I might also try and put a few new squares on the periodic table.
I’d probably replicate a 1x1x1m cube of tungsten, then realize I have no way of removing it from the replicator.
Can… Can I replicate myself?
You can replicate yourself when you were a kid…
…wait a minute, what are you trying to do? I think its illegal. 🤨 📸👮♂️🚓
I’m an average woman, at 168 cm height I can easily fit in a cubic metre if I crouch or lay in fetal position.
I often feel like I could accomplish so much more if I had a clone. Just one, more than one clone would become an expense
Anyway if that’s not an option then I’d replicate a variety of:
dollar bills.
Jewellery, gold and precious gems.
Computers, and phones, especially if I can sell some of its parts such as the graphics card
Other luxury items such as parfum, spirits, etc
Eggs
I don’t know, I feel most of these things would lose their value pretty quickly if everyone had a replicator. Kind of like what AI is doing to the creative arts. Only this time it would be the rich getting affected, not struggling artists
- Alien: Why do you want to replicate things for money?
- Mothra: So I can buy the things I want!
- Alien: Can’t you replicate the things you want instead?
- Mothra: This thing can replicate admiration?!
If you’re short, yea.
Dwarf army!
I’m average. I know I can fit inside a cubic metre
Cruxifux gang bang!
- Make a nuclear bomb. You don’t need a whole ICBM, a single MIRV warhead can fit in the available space.
- Threaten to set it off if everyone in the area doesn’t give me their fabricator.
- Expand operations/nuke delivery range.
- Have a monopoly on the means of production again.
This is how people brainwashed by capitalism would use it to deprive us all of the post-scarcity future. We can only hope some more reasonable people also think of making nukes first so we can at least have some mutually assured destruction to preserve the fully automated luxury gay space communism.
This is how people brainwashed by capitalism would use it to deprive us all of the post-scarcity future.
That doesn’t work out. Unfortunately.
Reason:
When it was politicians who fought the Cold War, they were few who had actually a say, and these few got some minimum brain, at least.
But in your scenario, it is random jerks who execute that scheme everywhere. There will be some who pull the trigger just for … all kinds of stupid shit that has triggered them. So you’d have nukes going off somewhere, at least every few days, and then nobody can really rule the world anymore with them. The power of the threat will be gone.
Politicians didn’t fight the Cold War. It wasn’t pasty fat men in their 60s training the Mujahideen in Afghanistan or on the front lines of Korea or any of a dozen other proxy wars. Politicians, as a rule, tend to avoid things that pose a serious risk to their health (which makes it kind of ironic that they tend to spend their careers putting other people in proximity to those things instead, doesn’t it?)
Eh… maybe one or two. But most people (like the politicians above, funnily enough) tend to have a pretty strong survival instinct. I agree it would absolutely be chaos, but most people wouldn’t think of making a nuke, much less know what kind of nuke they should make, or even how to make one in a 1m3 box, they would just get regular guns and chemical weapons and shit. Still lots of chaos. Just less radiation.
Mujahideen in Afghanistan or on the front lines of Korea or any of a dozen other proxy wars.
I do not count these as the Cold War.
Proxy wars have their special funding and maybe false motives, but they are hot wars. Real wars.
The Cold War consisted of threats. Piling up weapons, bombs, nukes, and counting and comparing who’s got more of them. These threats were made mainly by politicians. Maybe I was wrong in saying they “fought” it.
…okay. Historians do, though, so I hope you understand if I go with them on this one. Also those were just examples, if you don’t like them there are plenty of other proxy wars you can pick from to see my point illustrated pretty much everywhere.
That’s fair though, it was more than just one thing, and like most things in life it’s far more complex than it seems on the surface. I just take particular exception to any suggestion that politicians in any way risked their neck for literally anything ever.
Why do you go for a MIRV if your warhead doesn’t even leave the atmosphere?
The moment you try to min max the economy will fall apart. Replicate new PC parts? Cool, but now intel/AMD/Nvidia will go bankrupt, no more development. So I guess you could min-max the economical revolution. Capitalism doesn’t appear to make sense in a world with near endless access to anything.
Personally I’d get heaps of food and water
I hate that by now, I have found a way for capitalist to bill you anyways.
Wait… So getting ample food and water to common people is a downside to capitalism?
Yea you are right, if people are fed and satisfied. They wont be needing any unnecessary stuff that feeds the capitalist.
What’s the power source?
Powered by Love and Kindness 🤗
… Can the replicator produce a cubic meter of this?
“Ugh. Why is this machine always sticky?!”
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
In that case none of them work
I bet I can find some buddhists willing to help.
I tell you right now, it’s gonna be all Lego for me.
“Ugh. I’m tired. Work sucked. Computer, make dinner.”
My real answer in anything because you could split a car up over multiple days just like the 3D printed Lamborghini.
Give me a Star Trek-style replicator and I’m never cooking dinner again.
TIL about the 3d printed lambo. this is COOL AS FUCK!
i kind of want to 3d print myself a lambo. gonna dust off my old prusa.
I’ve gotten to see it in person and it’s a real accomplishment. A large part of the frame was made from scratch and a few components were donated by Lamborghini themselves. The dude’s really chill.
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.
