Today at lunch: duplicators and instantiators

I work at a pretty innovative place and the discussions that we have at
lunch time are pretty mind bending. The last time I can recall having so
many interesting discussions over lunch and breaks was way back when I was
in my first undergraduate degree, but the topics of conversation that tend
to come up at my current place of employment are really worth trying to
record.

Today we started off having a couple of split conversation, Euan describing
chatting to Martha at Sci-Foo and Euan and I talking about Euler, as you do.
Then the conversation quite naturally turned to replicators. We were
discussing the pro's and con's of owning a replicator. It's clear from the
conversation that two calsses of replicator exist. One would break the laws
of physics and replicate anything out of nothing (possibly dragging the
extra matter out of an alterantive universe, vis a vis the lazy gun in
against a dark background) and the other type the just melds matter into the
shape of whatever might be copies.

Brenda wanted one that would not copy living things, but as someone pointed
out, if you could copy living things, and you had one kitten, then you could
have kittens!

Getting a transfer of ownership form when you copied a beamer might be a
problem, and if you copied the earth then you would be in right trouble.

At the end Gavin wanted one that you could just pass science fiction books
to, and it would make stuff from the book not really a replicator then, but
an instantiator.

tags: lunch, replicator