It's called a 3D printer.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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I'd use it to make more replicators. Essentially have exponential replicators
I was busy thinking about that. Why not make a replicator without limits if possible? No downsides because then you'd be able to create what you want when you want. Anyone dumb enough not to think of that would be stuck using it once a day while you are able to create all you want.
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You say it can create an object of a single M3.
I create a second one by replicating the parts.
May take a while but when the second one comes online the third one will be even faster.
I feel the astounding energy needed to create matter would be the reason for the cooldown, so having more than one would make little difference.
It can't be the energy. It has to be a matter rearranger, not something that makes matter from raw energy. Consider a cubic meter of water. It will have a mass of 1000 kg. By E=mc^2, that water has a mass energy of 9e19 Joules. New homes in the US are built with 200 amp panels, delivering power at 120V. The typical new home can draw up to 24,000 Watts from the grid.
At this max output, it would take a house 120 million years to draw enough electricity to create a cubic meter of water from nothing but pure electrical energy.
So this thing must actually work as a matter rearranger. You provide it a supply of pure elements and it synthesizes from there. Or, if it's fancy, it creates elements by rearranging nuclei. But it can't be something that truly creates matter ex nihilo.
My reading of the question implies that the replicator has the cool down. so having a second one will have an independent cool down.
This sounds like owning a 3d printer.
3d printer won't make the electrical box, the steppers etc.
Yes.
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?
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.
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Any warzone is about to go absolutely nutty.
It only takes one person to make 1 cubic meter of black hole to destroy the biosphere by ripping Earth into an acretion disc.
So you would have to replicate a percent of the mass of the sun. Seems feasible. The electricity bill would be nuts, but the world is ending anyway.
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It's a matter replicator, I don't think a black hole is matter?
A black hole is nothing other than extremely condensed matter.
Ah, i thought it was a hole in space or something like that, so the absence of anything, and even space was something, but not matter specifically.
It is worthwhile to note that the above is highly reductive. A "black hole" is the sort of "hole" in spacetime you're thinking of. It is caused, however, by gravitational dilation of spacetime by an incredibly high energy density. If you stuff enough matter and energy into a tiny enough space, the gravitational force will be strong enough that no other force in the universe can keep it from getting closer, and closer. Even the forces which keep neutrons and protons from combining with each other will be surmounted, as the energy density increases asymptotically toward infinity. This tiny point of effectively infinite density is the black hole's "singularity". Surrounding this singularity is a region where anything (matter, light, space itself) that gets within that range cannot escape. This is because objects have escape velocities based on their masses. If you're going fast enough, you'll fly away from the earth never to return. If you're not going that fast, eventually you'll fall back down. The further you are from the earth, the easier it is to escape it. The "black" part of the black hole, called the "event horizon", is the distance from the singularity at which the black hole's escape velocity is equal to the speed of light, meaning that, closer than that, nothing can escape it. Hence why it's "black", because no light is escaping from it. Technically, a black hole is not perfectly black due to hawking radiation, ~~and a black hole with a 0.5 meter schwarzchild radius would probably be small enough to visibly glow (just a bit).~~ (probably not, see below)
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Day 1: create 264 gallons of water (probably enough for a month)
Day 2: create a cubic meter of food (also probably enough for a month)
Day 3 to next rationing: spend thinking of all the awesome things I could create but end up getting overwhelmed and doing nothing instead
Day 2: create a cubic meter of food (also probably enough for a month)
Now I'm just imagining a cubic meter of spam.
Additional day 3: be overjoyed that you can just replicate your basic needs, so you now can work less (or not at all). All that free time! Think of all the projects xou could do!
Start by replicating junk food and beer and sloth around until the evening of Day 29, panic, make plans for some way to big Project for Day 30. Day 30 replicate stuff you need for the project. Before properly starting, realize you forgot to ~~buy~~ replicate some crucial stuff but ~~home depot is now closed~~ you've already used the replicas quota, be discouraged, overwhelmed, give up, promise "next month is going to be different!".
overwhelmed and doing nothing instead
I'm in this comment and I don't like it
I'd use it to make food
Is the 24 hour thing the only limitation? Can it replicate stuff that doesn't exist yet?
This is a matter replicator, not a matter plicator
😉
Can I adjust dimensions? Like, can I replicated a car, but a tiny one that will fit in a 1x1x1m cube?
If so, I'd replicate 1/8th of the replicator, but double sized. Repeat for all other parts, assemble, and now I have a 2m³ replicator. Repeat until I have one big enough to replicate a house.
Then, the whole point of the exercise: replicate a house-sized Funyun.
Mmmmm, onion-y.
Given how greedy people are, probably gold or diamonds.
Well, with replicators scarcity becomes worthless. Diamonds, money, etc. so they'd probably replicate stuff they'd find pretty or beautiful to wear on them
Look at those nerd wearing condensed coal.
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.
Nah, economy would suffer and adapt, but not technology or science. Engineers still would get together and work on new designs, but not for money.
Seriously, we don't give a shit, if we have enough to eat and buy some fun toys we're thrilled to keep up our mad experiments.
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a smaller replicator that just fits into the space and continue till the space could only do like a gumdrop.
