14 KiB
Rational "The Prestige"
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Author: u/psychothumbs *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3brmp0/rational_the_prestige/
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Score: 22
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Created: 2015-07-01T16:20:15
Post:
In the Prestige Nikola Tesla invents a matter replicator in a slightly botched attempt to build a teleporter for a rich English stage magician. The magician proceeds to use the matter replicator as part of his act, (in a particularly gruesome way involving killing the original version of himself every show) and it is eventually boxed up and forgotten about.
So what if either Tesla or Angiers (the magician) had showed a lick of sense, and realized that the matter replicator was vastly more important than whatever else they were so busy with. It needs a bit of electric power, but nothing that a magician can't generate for himself in a theater, and the version we see can at the very least replicate a full grown man, and likely more. What would be their best bet to save the world with matter replication? And what would the world of 1900 look like after the sudden introduction and proliferation of matter replicators?
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+14] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
In terms of structuring a story for plot ...
I think the logical place to start is around when Angier clones himself for the first time. You have to sort of understand Angier's motivations if you want to write him. He comes from money, so the idea of material wealth is ... not foreign, but making money was never what his life was about. It was never something he had to concern himself with. He's also not a man with particularly much empathy for others, especially after the death of Julia.
So I think the story is about empathy. You start just before Angier shoots himself (so that the point of divergence is that he realizes that he's violating the Golden Rule, and that this reaction is a disordered one). I think you'd probably split them; both recognizing their ego in some way, one Angier goes back to stagecraft, while the other Angier goes to work on the machine. There will come a time when reconciliation is required, but for a moment both can pretend that the other doesn't exist, and that they'll find their own successes independent of each other. It's only later on that they come into conflict.
u/areiamus [+5] (21 hours later)
Deleted on 1 July 2023 after Reddit's API changes. -- mass edited with redact.dev
u/IomKg [+1] (4 days later)
And then they go on to trade on the stock exchange, make tons of money and build a much bigger version on some exotic island?
u/alexanderwales [+20] Time flies like an arrow (19 minutes later)
It's something that I've given a lot of thought. Not with The Prestige generally, but with matter replication that also works on people. If you're changing the characters around, then the biggest constant that you're bringing over from The Prestige is the setting, which limits us somewhat in terms of technology but I don't think substantially changes the outcomes of the technology.
Matter replication is by itself incredibly useful. Depending on energy considerations (which as you say, can't be too high given how we see it used) it now makes more sense to replicate most things instead of making a second copy of them. Mass production and replaceable parts are both made obsolete. Scarcity of goods is mostly eliminated; you only need a single chicken to feed a thousand people, you only need a single suit to clothe an entire city, etc. Production focus is then on producing the highest quality of a single good, then replicating it. Aside from these artisans (the men and women who make the initial item for copying, or the ones who adapt existing templates into something more bespoke) the economy switches to a service/information economy. (This partly assumes a good sort of world where a single company doesn't have a complete monopoly on the matter replicator.)
People replication by itself is incredibly useful. Angier was the sort of person who would kill himself, but that comes down to fear or ego (or both). The governments of the world could use the people replicator to crew a ship with only their most skilled sailors. They could replicate scientists, engineers, and scholars. Generally speaking, the most useful people will be the ones replicated, and I would expect revolutions to follow (though it should also be said that the people most comfortable with replication also have an advantage here). Social standards need to change in order to allow for this, there are questions of what it means for marriage, what it means to have a contract, etc. but I don't think these concerns are insurmountable.
u/Gurkenglas [+7] (39 minutes later)
When any omnicidal maniac can overflow the world and beyond with copies of a unit consisting of himself, a replicator, a generator and some fuel at an hour's notice, the free market isn't going to work so well for this.
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
I assume you're refering to this:
(This partly assumes a good sort of world where a single company doesn't have a complete monopoly on the matter replicator.)
I don't mean that access to the replicators should be uncontrolled; just that if it were in the hands of a singular profit-motivated organization, the incentives might be skewed towards doing nothing to actually improve quality of life. Because this single company would have a monopoly, there would be no reason for them to do much more than act conservative and undercut their competitors.
The free market is already dead, at least for a few years. Metals can be replicated, and pretty much all of the countries of the time have a currency that's backed by gold or silver. Further, the advent of the replicator eliminates 90% of all jobs. So you have a period of mass unemployment with an inability for anyone to actually pay for things. In the capitalist version of the story, eventually the world settles back into the service/information economy of the modern day first world. In the socialist version, someone like Stalin distributes goods to the masses.
u/IomKg [+1] (4 days later)
I think his claim is more general as a weakness of that universe. If you could replicate anything then you take a replicator, some tools\weapons, a generator and fuel, and start replicating everything(yourself, generators, fuel, weapons\tools), in theory within a day or a week or a month you could have an infinite army, assuming you are the kind of person that would be willing to fight and die for yourself\your idea.
You could try to control the replicators, but in a world where all you need to replicate anything is a replicator all it would take is one(or two?) unauthorized replication of a replicator, and immediately -everyone- will have replicators.. So unless something is implemented the world could easily devolve into an infinite war..
u/narfanator [+4] (4 hours later)
It's going to be important to remember that Tesla tried to make wireless broadcast power, in part (or despite) it then being free for all... So he's definitely got a major altruistic streak that would greatly effect what he does with the technology. However, the timeline (end of the nineteenth century) occurs a bit before all that...
You should also consider that in this universe, Tesla himself is the first person of serious note to have access to this technology... and the idea of what an army of Teslas could accomplish boggles the mind. Aside from anything predictable (robots and drones, a century early, wireless broadcast power) based on the real world, you'd also want to consider technologies (such as the originally intended teleportation) derived from the machine and it's operation, and potentially any of the crazier ideas from later in his life (pulling power via solar resonance, particle beam cannons), as in this universe physics is both more permissible and/or Tesla is even more of a genius.
TL;DR - A universe in which Tesla invents a cloning machine has it socks rocked off in way more ways than just a "now there's a matter replicator".
u/ben_sphynx [+2] (2 days later)
Production focus is then on producing the highest quality of a single good, then replicating it
For an example of this in the real world (kinda), look at the software industry. All the costs are upfront, and once you have your software product, the actual production costs to make a copy are negligible. And if someone else has made a slightly better version of what you were both making, they get a vast proportion of the market and you go broke, unless you can out advertise them.
So, there will also be first to market, brand development and advertising. But a lot of manufacturing businesses would be out of business.
u/Sparkwitch [+6] (3 hours later)
I enjoyed the plot in the book because it explored the science fiction edge a little more completely, but for the movie I thought the better ending would have been for Angiers' Nicola Tesla story to be yet another manipulative lie. We only have his diary's word for it, which he knew that Borden would read.
u/UnlikelyToBeEaten [+3] (4 hours later)
I actually feel that this is one of those rare movies that's better than the book. The book feels a bit dry (like much sci-fi) just an exploration of a certain interesting concept, with a basic plot thrown on top. Like "Robinson Crusoe" or "Memoirs of an Invisible Man", or even much of Asimov. (Not that I that I don't enjoy that style, mind you). I felt the movie took the core idea and made a much more interesting and engaging tale with it from a narrative/dramatic point of view.
That said, I really like your alternative ending.
u/MugaSofer [+5] (19 hours later)
Damnit, just got my comment ate by Reddit.
You could write a story about the insane technological shift this device would create. It might even be a fun story. But it wouldn't be rational!The Prestige; it would be a clever, hard sci-fi tale about the social impact of physics-breaking matter-duplicators.
(Dear God, you can duplicate a battery using less energy than it supplies with this thing. It has literally nothing limiting it.)
But ... who says Angiers has to be a good guy? Who says he has to be altruistic, or even care about money very much? Why can't he just want crazy selfish things?
I'd suggest a tale about a madman duplicating himself, working in shifts with his copies, all to outcompete a mere human and quietly live in infinite luxury on Mars. Maybe from the perspective of Edison, investigating Tesla's impossible murder.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
There's been a number of variants of this in SF, depending on how you deal with "the soul problem" and whether you can record a template. One of them let you stop the replication part way, giving you a partially finished mass that could be either replicated or brought to completion. Society broke down to strongholds manned by armies of soldiers copied at the peak of their physical ability...
Rationally, a lot of people are going to be irrational about this, treating replicated people as zombies or something and demanding a mechanism to tell replicas from reality.
I don't think it's going to be controllable unless there's something stopping you from replicating the key components of a replicator. Replicated pirate replicators are going to get out and once that happens it's game over for any kind of control of the technology.
u/DCarrier [+2] (3 hours later)
The story isn't about the replicator. It's about the feud between two magicians that consumes them. They aren't being stupid for the sake of the plot. Them going crazy is the plot. And it's who they are. You would be writing a story about different characters with a different plot.
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)
Characters are large; they contain multitudes. Given any one specific scenario, there are a number of ways for a character to act which are "in character".
So if you want to maintain the characters but you want the plot to be "implications of a duplication device at the end of the 19th century", you have to ask yourself what sort of bridge can possibly be made between the existing events and characterization, and what you want the outcome to be.
In this case, I don't think it's impossible that such a bridge exists, and that a clever enough author could make it work while not having to change the characters beyond what growth they experience over the course of the new story. You don't start with Angier deciding to use the duplicator to revolutionize the world, you start with a moment of hesitation before he shoots that first clone.
(Which isn't to say that there's anything wrong with a story where Angier just decides to do something wildly out of character, I just agree with you that if an author is abandoning both plot and characterization, you're usually better off just writing something original.)
u/DCarrier [+4] (4 hours later)
a clever enough author could make it work
A clever enough author could make anything work. Like having Professor Quirrell save Harry from a horde of yaoi fangirls. That doesn't make everything a good idea for a story.