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”?
Replicators don’t simulate cooking though, they rearrange atoms. It’s an entirely different process and I have to imagine that translating between them is more of an art than a science.
Yea, they rearrange atoms but like that’s part of my point. It’s a highly sophisticated computer made to recreate food. A recipe has exact measurements like “500g of flour, mix with 1.5g yeast, 3.7g salt, 340g water”, I would think they would be able to replicate that process
I know we’re debating a fictional tool (I’m here for it) but I’m saying I don’t think it replicates “the process” it replicates the end result.