Zju wrote: ↑Sun Nov 21, 2021 5:04 pm
zompist wrote: ↑Wed Nov 10, 2021 5:29 pm
I granted the slices idea in the original post— I said you could use 1 cm
3 samples instead. I think if people are thinking "all I need are ten molecules", they're fooling themselves— most dishes have more than ten ingredients, and none of them are homogenous in a cooked dish.
...
I see I might've not explained my idea completely. The basic premise of a replicator is that it can precisely piece together atoms precisely to form a steak. Stitching together vertical steak bars to form a steak is an easier task than that. A vertical bar of a cooked steak is already unhomogenous, so it's storing that information.
I don't know where you got that "all I need are ten molecules" from. Most dishes also have repeating ingredients (especially salads), of which you can store only a few pieces, and again, save up a lot of space.
This is kind of why I lost interest in the discussion: I kept getting responses that were already addressed in what I've said. Look at the quote above, which is from my original blog post: "you could use 1 cm
3 samples instead". That's not interestingly different from your slices or repeating ingredients or whatever. This is imaginary tech, so it hardly matters if you think we could use 0.5 cm
3 instead.
The other thing is, the question is not if you can make food in the replicator, or even whether you can make convincing, tasty food. For the purposes of the discussion, I grant that. It's whether people can tell replicator food from non-replicator food.
And it seems obvious to me that people can detect overly homogenous food. This comes up in two ways.
One, between dishes. You replicate a pad thai, and it's great. You do it tomorrow, and it's exactly the same. Next day, same thing. Humans are omnivores, we really don't like the same thing every day-- we get sick of it.
Two, within a dish. Does every bit of your steak taste exactly the same? No-- the temperature varies vertically, but also horizontally. The outside is seared more, also probably cooler. There's more fat in some bites than in others. This is not at all mysterious! It's why hamburger (which is homogenized) costs way less than a steak. In your salad, the "same" items vary too. Some got more dressing. Some leaves are a little more wilted. French fries are pretty uniform, but some are crispier, some are starchier, some got more ketchup or salt than others. Maybe you don't care much-- that's not the question. The question is only,
could someone tell?
And again, I have no problem if, to save data and complexity, Federation starships make every French fry identical. Maybe half the crew doesn't notice, and half the rest don't care. The rest sigh and say the fries are OK but not as good as back home.
(Also, obviously, homogeneity is a virtue, until it isn't. Fast food franchises are built on the idea that every meal will taste about the same. That's why some people love fast food, and some people like it sometimes. But some of us don't want it for every meal.)
