Why would anyone make a replicant?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Is there anything better than nerds rejecting explicit content of fiction because they don't like it y/n? Protip - replicants were used for traditional underclass jobs. Its obviously economical because Tyrell is fabulously wealthy. There are obvious conclusions to draw about the nature of the space colonies and the wars and resources involved.

Or you could reject 80% of the information for no reason.

I am just missing the point over here. Please spell it out for me.

Are you saying that the rich created replicants to populate their worlds, like gods creating people? Or are the replicants designed to be indistinguishable from people so that the rich can use the replicants to hide atrocities they commit on 'real' people?

[Stark]

I'm clearly (and literally, in your quote) saying that the movie shows the creation of replicants to be a part of a) colonisation and b) a huge industrial concern. The roles they were used for (hired killer, dangerous labourer, elite soldier, cum dumpster) are the kinds of jobs that are obviously under-represented in the colonies. You can thus, using a thing I call 'your imagination', construct an image of the implicit colonial efforts and how/why replicants fit in to it.

Instead of y'know saying they're there and are stupid because because because of the wonderful preconceptions we bring to fiction.

PS what if FTL travel was very expensive, the colonies existed to acquire hazardous or radioactive minerals, and they were reasonably autonomous and indulged in raiding, warfare and assassination? It's almost like a whole setting in a single sentence. :V

[Algebraist]

One way to view Sci Fi is to imagine a level of technological advancement and then create a world around that imagining the consequences of that technology. Depending on the author they will have put diferent degrees of thought and levels of detail into this - however they will have usually worked out a logical framework in which to build their story and which they remain generally true to even if they push the boundaries!

You dont want too many areas where you have to suspend belief although to be honest if the story is good enough I would be willing to ignore a lot. However, if I'm reading SciFi (particularly a series of books based on an imagined world) its great to have amazing technologies (even if we're very doubtful of them ever existing) but want them reasonably self consistent (eg a civilization with nuclear reactors but still fighting with wooden clubs wouldnt go down well) and to have a political/ecominic/civilisation framework that makes reasonable sense given the technology. However this again is all within the authors framework and to enjoy the work you must appreciate the way they have imagined the world.

So what about replicants.
Fit for purpose is a good argument.Well for one it would be good to have some "economic" consistency - eg if it cost a lot to produce a replicant why is it used for cheap or dangerous slave labour where a robot built for purpose would be so much better. You could though explain that if replicants become self replicating and plentiful and thus you have a surplus.

Otherwise you would think that the purpose of a treplicant would be down to the human desire to react with other humans but where "other humans" could be reluctant to perform that duty or there were insufficient humans of the desired characteristics to do so!! This generally boils down to the "service" industy or companionship.

If a replicant is very accurate you could have a very attractive partner who has all your desired characteristics who may potentially never die (eg via back up). More simply to act as your own "sex toy".

Or to take on the role of "service" jobs such as replicants acting as nannies, maids, to serve in shops (in order or potential reducing sophistication) etc. Also any agent of your will where a human appearance is desirable but the acts committed very suspect! An obvious one being the assassin.
Blade runner is obviously a pretty good example of the use of replicants but in the case of populating dangerous worlds you would ideally not be looking at a direct replicant, rather one that has been enhanced to survive and operate better in the world where they are needed!

[Algebraist]

Sorry edit to my last paragraph it didn't read as I meant it - obviously Blade runner, a brilliant film, is more than an example of replicants as rather it created the term (although not the idea). However in terms of this thread we were considering the use of replicants that were in effect virtually identical to humans rather than enhanced ones but with their own flaws. I think the latter point is vital since if you could create an identical replicant but then give it enhanced abilities above humans without significant flaws then you could make humans in a sense redundant (as we would be a sub species to the replicants)!

[The Yosemite Bear]

well as a member of the disposable workworce there is the cost of keeping them alive, Replicants are the true disposable workforce, need someone to mine that uranium, erm a real person has family that will sue you, got it send a replicant. Someone on your government is a sadistic monster, ok we let him play with a replicnat for all those ted bundy urges....

[Algebraist]

I guess that wasnt a direct answer to my post but to develop the argument: there is no obvious point in having a replicant work in a dangerous Uranium mine. It isn't the ideal environment for a human and we're not designed for mining thus why replicate a human and put it to work there. If you have that sort of technological capability then you'd make mining bots or at least better adapted androids. Its possible to come up with an explanation why they are working in a mine (eg surplus of replicants) but no explanation as to why you would decided to make a human replicant to put it to that sort of work

[Algebraist]

..on the other hand a play thing for a sadistic monster. Yes another possiblity!

[Simon_Jester]

Flexibility may be a factor. It's one thing if a given colony is specialized to the point where the owners buy replicants fully expecting to 'use them up' in their current role. But if the same replicant might conceivably be needed to switch jobs, or if there are hundreds of different jobs and a limited supply of replicants, it might not be cost-effective to create a whole new tailored version specifically for mining.

Another real possibility is that the replicants are being bought to operate mining equipment, a task for which humans are well suited because the equipment was designed for our use in the first place. Realistic hard-rock mining does not involve shifts of slaves with pickaxes busting the material out of the rock, not with modern methods. Even with the equipment mining is still dirty and dangerous, but it's less obvious that you'd want a genetically engineered miningform to do the work. A humanoid can do the job adequately- but you'd ideally want a humanoid who never complains or sleeps and can keep working through a splitting headache from OSHA-noncompliant noise levels.

And that's just the laborer-replicants. Stark's point about what else replicants might be for is relevant too; they serve a lot of roles other than "dangerous hard work." So, I'd like to think, is something else Stark said, which I replied to back on Page 1:

"It's interesting to imagine a future where we're so desperate to find physically fit and intellectually competent people to do Important Jobs. But we've got so many lazy, unhealthy, ignorant schlubs kicking around that it's more economical to grow such people in vats than to hire them..." to which I'd add "at the costs we're willing to pay to ship them out to the colonies."

[ray245]

Flexibility may be a factor. It's one thing if a given colony is specialized to the point where the owners buy replicants fully expecting to 'use them up' in their current role. But if the same replicant might conceivably be needed to switch jobs, or if there are hundreds of different jobs and a limited supply of replicants, it might not be cost-effective to create a whole new tailored version specifically for mining.

Another real possibility is that the replicants are being bought to operate mining equipment, a task for which humans are well suited because the equipment was designed for our use in the first place. Realistic hard-rock mining does not involve shifts of slaves with pickaxes busting the material out of the rock, not with modern methods. Even with the equipment mining is still dirty and dangerous, but it's less obvious that you'd want a genetically engineered miningform to do the work. A humanoid can do the job adequately- but you'd ideally want a humanoid who never complains or sleeps and can keep working through a splitting headache from OSHA-noncompliant noise levels.

And that's just the laborer-replicants. Stark's point about what else replicants might be for is relevant too; they serve a lot of roles other than "dangerous hard work." So, I'd like to think, is something else Stark said, which I replied to back on Page 1:

"It's interesting to imagine a future where we're so desperate to find physically fit and intellectually competent people to do Important Jobs. But we've got so many lazy, unhealthy, ignorant schlubs kicking around that it's more economical to grow such people in vats than to hire them..." to which I'd add "at the costs we're willing to pay to ship them out to the colonies."

Even if that is the case, why do we need human replicants for? A humanoid robot can do those job.

[jollyreaper]

What about the ads aimed at the proles for seeking a new life in the offworld colonies? If they're staffed with replicant labor, why recruit? That would all depend on what the business case for the colonies are. Resource exploitation? Actually creating viable long-term settlements? What sort of resource is worth going offworld to obtain and ship back? Who are the wars against? Rival corporations on different worlds? How does that compare with the politics back home? And oh wait all of this is getting far afield of the story they were trying to tell in the first place.

This is going into fanfic territory but I more like the idea of replicants being a black market technology. Can pass as human, are 100% conditioned and loyal. The perfect street enforcers for organized crime, perfect couriers and assassins and sex workers. And they die before they can develop much independence. The cops, meanwhile, are tasked with hunting them down in the first place because they can never tell who is and isn't real. Add in cloning and it's possible to create a pod person replicant to replace a real person or ghost them into a constructed past as the ultimate infiltrator.

Why do they pass so well for human? Because they were designed that way. Where does the tech come from? Foreign major power fallen on hard times, selling advanced tech on the black market for hard currency. Why do criminals use them? Because they are damned useful. When do the blade runner units really earn their pay? When a replicant breaks conditioning and goes rogue. They're usually flying below the radar otherwise. And this could still preserve the irony Stark talked about, that there could be mass unemployment but those people are such poor recruits that it's worth the cost of developing synthetic workers. But any legal corporation using such workers could give them an identifying tattoo or something. It's the criminals I think who would place the higher premium on making passing replicants.

The economics of space colonization is a giant can of worms that's hard to deal with. If you don't bring it up, you never have to deal with it. I admit this is a personal preference.

[Stark]

The idea that scifi is the impact of a technology is a glib, easily repeatable sound byte that it don't think is as universal as people believe. In this case, Blade Runner is certainly not about how replicant technology 'impacts society'. The scifi trappings are simply window dressing for much older and simpler story in which those elements are so narratively irrelevant people didn't even notice they're there. Just because Isaac Asimov wrote logic problems thinly disguised as stories doesn't mean all of group 'scifi' has some property.

And seriously dude, they could be recruiting because using replicants is less efficient than using humans, but not e nought people can or will emigrate. You can take the scifi approach and say that mankind has become torpid and the fire and drive to achieve has been passed to their creations and everyone would rather hang around Rainy 80s Street Markets, or you could decide that those that emigrated simply aren't enough, due to the frequent war, dangerous nature of the work, etc. Why would those street kids decide to put down their BMX and go to be exploded by ships on fire off Orion, or push and shove radioactive rocks? They could even be half heatedly recruiting people because of law, even though they don't want recruits or know none of them can afford it/have the skills/whatever.

The economics of space colonisation is emphatically not difficult to deal with, if you don't bring your pre-conceptions with you. I'd never thought about these things until you asked your question, and I can sit here and make up movie-consistent backstory literally in realtime.

But holy shit STOLEN POWER FROM LOST FOREIGN POWER USED BY CRIMINALS. Maybe - slow me down here - maybe those who are concerned by the replicants human like appearance (for bizarre scifi reasons that the attitudes in the movie suggest to me are not shared) can simply assume that all replicants are not so successfully human looking. The guys in the film are top of the line, possibly prototypes put into use as part of a testing program (like Tyrell does with his secretary). Why does this mean all replicants must be human like? Obviously, only the human like ones require blade runners, but being sad about something you don't like in a setting that might not even be true is a bit sad.

[Connor MacLeod]

Flexibility may be a factor. It's one thing if a given colony is specialized to the point where the owners buy replicants fully expecting to 'use them up' in their current role. But if the same replicant might conceivably be needed to switch jobs, or if there are hundreds of different jobs and a limited supply of replicants, it might not be cost-effective to create a whole new tailored version specifically for mining.

Another real possibility is that the replicants are being bought to operate mining equipment, a task for which humans are well suited because the equipment was designed for our use in the first place. Realistic hard-rock mining does not involve shifts of slaves with pickaxes busting the material out of the rock, not with modern methods. Even with the equipment mining is still dirty and dangerous, but it's less obvious that you'd want a genetically engineered miningform to do the work. A humanoid can do the job adequately- but you'd ideally want a humanoid who never complains or sleeps and can keep working through a splitting headache from OSHA-noncompliant noise levels.

I used to be of the big opinion that droid armies were inherently superior in ALL respects and anyone (EG the republic) using non-organic troops would be an idiot. Mike shot down this notion by saying that living beings might have certain advnatages depending o makeup (see here and the previous page here. BAsically in Star Wars a droid army still obviously requires maintenance and parts and its quite likely those parts wear out sooner (and require more logisitcal support) than an organic army. Its not difficult to conceive of situations where an 'organic' force might be desirable in similar cases (in any context.) depending on the circumstances. Mike also suggested once that clone armies might be preferabble to droids because in SW droids and machines can be hacked, whereas (at least as far as we are aware of) SW humans rarely are so. depending on the tech base, similar considerations may apply.

The broad idea is that it can come down to situational factors and tradeoffs.. whether one option or another is inherently better or more desirable can depend on the factors, and those factors will not be the same all the time (even within a setting.) I think a good parallel to this sort of logic is John Scalzi's Old Man's War setting, where the main infantry force are bunches of old people whose conciousnesses are planted into new bodies. It sounds inefficient and overcomplicated (and many of these rationales are dealt with in the book) but there are actually very good (and many story based) reasons for the way the human faction in that book does the things it does.

And that's just the laborer-replicants. Stark's point about what else replicants might be for is relevant too; they serve a lot of roles other than "dangerous hard work." So, I'd like to think, is something else Stark said, which I replied to back on Page 1:

"It's interesting to imagine a future where we're so desperate to find physically fit and intellectually competent people to do Important Jobs. But we've got so many lazy, unhealthy, ignorant schlubs kicking around that it's more economical to grow such people in vats than to hire them..." to which I'd add "at the costs we're willing to pay to ship them out to the colonies."

It can also depend on the cultural and political factors involved too. Imagine a future where the laws governing 'human' workers are so rigorous or strict in enforcement that its actually cheaper to make your own 'expendable' labour? If replicants aren't covered under those laws, they're much easier to exploit for economic purposes. What's more, you can indoctrinate/brainwash them all you like as well, they're likely to be something you can make more compliant, obedient, cooperative, and generally 'fit in' with the company culture/structure better than someone you pull in from the outside. People who have this capacity for thinking or having individuality can actually be considered a drawback in a corporate or company culture that desires conformity and obedience. I find myself thinking along the lines of the exploitation of 'illegal aliens' or 'immigrants' in these sorts of cases, as you might draw certain parallels.

[Connor MacLeod]

I dont think the idea of recruiting and replicants are mutually exclusive: an 'existing' human is obviously the cost of a whole nother replicant potentially, but if they don't have enough applicants to fill the required positions (for whatever reason) they still have to get the work done, and replicants seemingly are still cheaper than having no work at all.

Its been ages since I watched blade runner so I don't recall: do we also know how long it takes to make a replicant?

[Stark]

I'm not sure if they ever discuss it in the film, but you can extend that idea to say that maybe replicants are prohibited on earth for union labour reasons rather than space paranoia or whatever. Maybe they're the result of the sort of technology or social attitudes not welcome on earth, rather than them being killed because of their personal attributes. This makes Roy's quest and Deckard's duty even more tragic, as the replicants are locked out of the silver city by their very nature. Especially if you imagine the colonies are strongly held by corporate interests and run as petty kingdoms where they'd be happy to develop illegal technology, the results of that technology would be prohibited nowhere except earth. The placid people of earth return to us again with their lack of desire to change, while the galaxy teems with industry and new life.

I don't think so; I think Tyrell talks about steps of the process but not the whole thing. That said, the nexus 6 might not be run of the mill and might have been more involved due to their efforts to create true empathy.

[Connor MacLeod]

We might infer from the 4 year 'lifespan' that in order to be 'cost effective' they take less time to make (the lifespan limit was IIRC largely arbitrary anyhow.) I was just wondering because it occurs to me that talking about 'cost effective' only works because you might have a potential pool of humans who exist (And won't stop existing) to go on. Someone else basically paid the costs implicit in raising, feeding, caring, and educating that person, the company doesn't have to worry about that. But it doesn't mean those costs DON'T exist, and depending on the circumstances, it could be possible to argue a replicant (or similar entity) is actually cheaper than a living being.

You can draw certain parallels to the Clone army in this respect actually. They're only 'cost effective' in the sense that noone in the SW galaxy wants to (or thinks) that a regular conscripted army would work. Thus having an army of 'raised from birth' warriors who are brainwashed into their roles is more 'effective' in that respect.

Overall when we talk about things like 'cost' its not a very clear cut case because there's lot sof factors (some that can be 'hidden') that can go into any real 'cost benefit' analysis, and that includes the idea that 'value' is very relative (a fact that is vital to many facets of real life economies, I might add.)

[Stark]

I got the impression the short life was fundamental; Tyrell says they tried to extend it but failed. I'm not sure if he meant change the design or prevent a living individual dying in that way; maybe the latter.

[Simon_Jester]

What about the ads aimed at the proles for seeking a new life in the offworld colonies? If they're staffed with replicant labor, why recruit?

I just had a disturbing thought.

It's been ages since I read the novel, so there's probably at least six lines of evidence refuting this idea, but... what if the replicants are normal human colonists, physically and mentally altered by some process instead of being made totally 100% from scratch?

[Stark]

Since nobody even reacts to the advertising it's obviously even less effective in that city than the Mars ads in Total Recall.

But hey lets ignore the fundamental premise of the movie some more. :v The idea nobody wants to go is just that hard to accept I guess. Radioactive battle mines so attractive!

Rather than ripping off bad Doctor Who stories maybe the want people of world because of the same legal system that allows replicants of world, and EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.

[Connor MacLeod]

I think Simon's idea encompassed more than just brainwashing I got the impression of 'soylent workers' - basically recycled from people, just into some new and disturbing way. Sort of economic cannibalism, I gather. If you re-use some human components (only improved) you could shorten the 'construction' process so to speak. That can really depend on how they actually make them, of course.


I think he was talking about the book rather than the movie. The two, from what I've looked up to jog my memory, are two completely different things (replicants is for the movie, the book uses a different term.) It might be better, Simon, if you stick to the movie rather than introducing the book on that basis.

[jollyreaper]

What about the ads aimed at the proles for seeking a new life in the offworld colonies? If they're staffed with replicant labor, why recruit?

I just had a disturbing thought.

It's been ages since I read the novel, so there's probably at least six lines of evidence refuting this idea, but... what if the replicants are normal human colonists, physically and mentally altered by some process instead of being made totally 100% from scratch?

Completely refuted from the source material but it's a great idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicant

It's like the Galactica bio-cylon problem. Is it simpler to a) design a human being from scratch and call it a cylon or b) alter the human DNA to put the cylon bits in and call it a cylon or c) hack a full-grown human and put those extra bits in? "Advanced robot evolution" sounds like a good way of explaining the cyborgs from the Aliens series or a Terminator but not as great a comparison when the prior lineage was mechanical in the first place.

Using live human stock as the basis for creating useful, docile labor is an old scifi idea but it's still a good one. Warhammer servitors are suitably unsettling and they share a crowded space with faerie tale enchantments, voodoo zombies, robot-headed human bodies in Lexx, the Borg, etc.

It would also be a real mindjob if there are no offworld colonies. Anyone going offworld is actually going into the replicant processing plant and getting put to work back on Earth. No replicants are supposed to be here, naturally, so when any replicants do break conditioning and escape into the general population, they "escaped from the colonies." Though I fear I'm skirting dangerously close to M. Night territory here. "What a twist!"

By the way, as for replicant lifespan, Tyrell directly said it wasn't a termination switch but a limitation in the design that could not be circumvented. But now that Ridley Scott is lucasing the story and saying Deckard was a replicant, who the hell knows?

In a related comment, when Scott was asked about the possibility of a Blade Runner sequel in October 2012, he said, "It's not a rumor—it's happening. With Harrison Ford? I don't know yet. Is he too old? Well, he was a Nexus-6 so we don't know how long he can live. And that's all I'm going to say at this stage."[6]

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm just going to point this out: Maybe it would help, JR, if you stop thinking of it as being a 'problem', and more in terms of 'an idea that merits discussion and exploration?' I mean its obvious that what you're after is to create a dialogue on the subject, and an exchange of ideas, but what is hampering it continually is the mindset with which you're approaching it. Exchanges of ideas do not occur when there are 'problems', because a problem implies something is wrong and needs fixing, not everything that involves an exchange of ideas is a problem however.

[Stark]

Plugging in shit plots from Doctor Who is like the opposite of looking and a work and seeing what flows from it. Maybe tropes destroyed fiction because most people just can't think outside cookie cutters. What motivates this? Fear of being wrong? Fear of expressing a new idea nobody likes? Fear of new ideas themselves? Who knows.

It's particularly sad that people can be so enamored of their trope pile they're willing to destroy the emotional climax of the film (Roy's death and the uniqueness thus lost) by saying none of it even happened and it was all false memory.

Fucking SIGH.

[Connor MacLeod]

Some of us do come to understand, it just takes some time and effort. I took a long time to overcome my own preconceptions after all

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I'm just going to point this out: Maybe it would help, JR, if you stop thinking of it as being a 'problem', and more in terms of 'an idea that merits discussion and exploration?' I mean its obvious that what you're after is to create a dialogue on the subject, and an exchange of ideas, but what is hampering it continually is the mindset with which you're approaching it. Exchanges of ideas do not occur when there are 'problems', because a problem implies something is wrong and needs fixing, not everything that involves an exchange of ideas is a problem however.

I don't want to take away from this post, because I feel it's a really good one for reaper and people like him, but I do want to say it reminded me of another habit people can have that can really hurt discussion of fiction and turn it into arguments instead of discussion. A lot of people seem prone to severe overuse of the term "plot hole", not only applying it to events in the story or character actions they just don't understand but even events in an ongoing work that haven't been concluded yet. This seems a two-fold issue, since not only is it jumping on to putting any issues as the work being flawed, which can lead to things like your post, but if all criticism is seen as a form of plot holes, it also pushes everything into plot, which probably can lead to a lot of the criticism seen on places like this forum. If a character doing something a viewer can't relate to personally becomes wrong becomes a plot hole, now the work is bad because a character did something "dumb" or whatnot.

[Connor MacLeod]

(Note: This is probably an aside )I dont feel its taking away from the discussion, but it adds to it. That, I feel is part of the point. An exchange of ideas NEEDS alot of opinions of all kinds, even ones that cause dissent and argument. Heck, I'm not perfect and I'm more than capable of being flawed, especially when I get into that 'trying to tell people something I feel is important.' That should reinforce WHY having more voices in these discussions is important, because we learn by those exchange of ideas, even if they aren't ideas we're comfortable with or think make sense.

In fact what you bring up is very very good because it brings home the idea there are no nice, neat, absolute answers to things, and it can be dangerous to get into the habit of thinking there are. Sometimes there are, and sometimes there aren't, and we have to be careful we don't jump to one conclusion or another. Keeping an open mind is the most important thing WRT fiction, but it is also the hardest thing. Especially when it comes to our ideas being wrong.

To take a page from ym 40K stuff, I never would have reached where I was if I ignored alternative interpretations of stuff (EG how energy weapons work, even though those ways lead to SMALLER numbers than I was generating.) and if I hadn't exposed myself to some critics (including the obsessive ones.) It was uncomfortable, upsetting, and sometimes frustrating, but in the end its also lead to me becoming less fixated on certain things and more accepting of alternate viewpoints, simply because I HAVE had to learn to cope. Heck, simply having to learn to admit some of my ideas are wrong, or that my critics might have a point, is a learning experience, because pride (something I did have in my work, understandably) can also be detrimental.

Especially on this board, I think. We have to remember that for a long time this board has been very conflict oriented, and that engenders certain mindsets that can be hard to break, or make it hard to understand when someone is trying to approach a topic in a way foreign to that mindset (which I think is happening here.)

...

I think that all made sense and is relevant. It should just go to show even I dont have all the answers or neccesarily 'understand' people automatically.. this sort of learning is an organic process and you have to treat it as such, and 'absolutes' are not organic.