Hey yall! I’m stoned af and watching star trek on a weekend, naturally. I lost my place since last weekend in TNG season 3, but I knew that I wasn’t far in so I just watched all the intros until I found where I left off. Episode 8 “the price”, Troi gets frustrated with the replicator for wanting a “real” chocolate sundae. This raised a question for me, wouldn’t food replicators be intelligent enough to simulate the process of “the standard” ingredients being processed into the recipe? Like I thought that was the point of being able to say “Earl grey tea, hot”. Like wouldn’t she just have to say “betazoid chocolate sundae” or whatever?

EDIT: SECOND QUESTION: Say you have a family recipe cookbook or whatever and the comfort food is in that cookbook, couldn’t you just say “simulate the process of making the recipe from this cookbook”?

  • _stranger_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    I’ve always assumed that it replicates some original recipe perfectly, and that if you have it all the time it gets old. I read an essay once talking about how the Federation DOES have an economy, it’s just that the main currency is novelty. The “rich” people in this future are the ones capable of chasing more novelty. Creators, explorers, scientists, etc. The “normies” have to make due with what this novelty-producing class “exports” to them via news feeds, replicators, vacation planets, holodecks, scientific advancement, etc. Oh to be a “poor” in the star trek universe.