The Santa Claus Machine

A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical
projects of enormous scale, such as a Dyson sphere. These types of
future constructions would be too large for many civilizations to
build directly, so they would need a series of machines to
intelligently build the machine with little or no direct control.

It’s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material –
rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids – process them inside and
produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or
automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather
sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call
whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how
to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think
the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.

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

In alt.philosophy Immortalist wrote:
A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical
....

I've worked in an area that has some application in this area --
although I've not heard of the term "Santa Clause Machine" before.
I've referred to it as "Aladdin's Lamp".

In quantum information & compuring it's been posited that running
a quantum computer "backwards" is a kind of "magic machine".
If you write the right kind of program for a QC you can essentially
construct any wavefunction you want -- and it's suggested (e.g. by
R Feynman) that building an appropriate wavefunction is "equivalent"
to making a physical system with the same properties.

Another way to look at "reverse quantum computation" is as a probability
amplifier -- where you try to enhance the probability of a system producing
certain kinds of final states and reducing the probability of other,
"unwanted" states.

One such mechanism has been found -- it's the Grover "database search"
algorithm. It takes a fairly general wavefunction and "amplifies"
that part of the wavefunction that is "wanted" and de-emphasises the
unwanted part. Having to obey some physical restructions means the
"amplification" is not perfect -- but that is pretty much in keeping
with things like filter theory that argue you can't perfectly
filter out unwanted frequences in a mixed waveform, but have to put up
with a curve of some kind that leaves some fraction of the unwanted stuff
in there.

A couple years back I worked on algorithms to perform various kinds of
probability amplification directly, a little bit more general than
the Grover algorithm. They enable you more easily create QC progranms
that do things like play tic-tac-toe or chess perfectly.
(I've written the TTT program, but the chess player requires too much
memory on a conventional computer to properly simulate).

Insofaras small quantum computers have actually been constructed and
performed other intersting things -- like Shor factoring of smallnumbers
(it was up to 5 bits last time I checked a few years back) -- it seems
possible that the "Aladdins Lamp" machine may be possible.

Of course, this seems a great distance from a machine that will build
a Dyson sphere. But a QC may be able to build "magical" materials,
or maybe other "magical" machines like "magic wands".

--
Ever seen film of the Polar bear bashing through the ice to get seal
cubs? Less ice more food for the Polar Bear
-- george , 27 Oct 2010 15:55:37 -0700

On May 2, 7:44*pm, Immortalist wrote:
A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical
projects of enormous scale, such as a Dyson sphere. These types of
future constructions would be too large for many civilizations to
build directly, so they would need a series of machines to
intelligently build the machine with little or no direct control.

"Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.' Please tell me the
truth, is there a Santa Claus Machine somewhere?"

Francis Pharcellus Church: "...Nobody can conceive or imagine all the
wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world."

Yes, O'Hanlon, before he became our newsman he did found a magazine
called "Galaxy".

On May 3, 1:44*am, Immortalist wrote:
A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical
projects of enormous scale, such as a Dyson sphere. These types of
future constructions would be too large for many civilizations to
build directly, so they would need a series of machines to
intelligently build the machine with little or no direct control.

It’s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material –
rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids – process them inside and
produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or
automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather
sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call
whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how
to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think
the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.

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

I think usually the speculation is in terms of nanotechnology and tiny
machines that operate by kind of pushing individual atoms around, a /
lot/. They may be called something like "assemblers" or
"replicators". And one big real-physics objection that you have to
fix - or in sci-fi, handwave away - is the energy input and heat
output, whichiare kind of the same thing. That is to say, it's
theoretically difficult to perform arbitrary rearrangement of atoms by
whatever possible means, other than by vapourising your matter. Which
probably is more arbitrary than you intended.

Or so I'm told.

Immortalist wrote:

Once such a machine exists it could gather
sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call
whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how
to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think
the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.

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

The guy who first proposed such machines called them "assemblers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembler_(nanotechnology)

If you believe that software can be other than perfect, then there's
the gray goo problem.
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27

In article ,
wrote:
In alt.philosophy Immortalist wrote:
A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical
...

I've worked in an area that has some application in this area --
although I've not heard of the term "Santa Clause Machine" before.
I've referred to it as "Aladdin's Lamp".

In Terry Pratchett's early novel _Strata_, they are called "dumbwaiters"
for some reason. A group of Norse barbarians (it's a weird novel) gave
it the more appropriate name "Valhalla Oven".

--
Please reply to: | "The anti-regulation business ethos is based on
pciszek at panix dot com | the charmingly naive notion that people will not
Autoreply is disabled | do unspeakable things for money." -Dana Carpender

On Tue, 3 May 2011 19:01:36 +0000 (UTC), Paul Ciszek
wrote in
in
alt.philosophy,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.histo ry,sci.physics,sci.environment:

In article ,
wrote:

In alt.philosophy Immortalist wrote:

A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical

I've worked in an area that has some application in this area --
although I've not heard of the term "Santa Clause Machine" before.
I've referred to it as "Aladdin's Lamp".

In Terry Pratchett's early novel _Strata_, they are called
"dumbwaiters" for some reason. A group of Norse
barbarians (it's a weird novel)

But fun, though not as much fun as _The Dark Side of the
Sun_, which is by far my favorite Pratchett novel.

gave it the more appropriate name "Valhalla Oven".

Brian

In rec.arts.sf.written Immortalist wrote:
It?s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material ?
rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids ? process them inside and
produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or
automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather
sunlight and materials that it?s sitting on, and produce on call
whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how
to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think
the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.

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

Much better names for a machine like that are Fabber, Maker, and
Cornucopia machine.

When I think 'Santa Claus Machine', I think of a robot in a red suit.

.... ...
Remus Shepherd
New Webcomic: Genocide Man http://www.genocideman.com/
Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass slaughter can be hilarious.

On 5/2/11 7:44 PM, Immortalist wrote:
A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical
projects of enormous scale, such as a Dyson sphere. These types of
future constructions would be too large for many civilizations to
build directly, so they would need a series of machines to
intelligently build the machine with little or no direct control.

It’s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material –
rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids – process them inside and
produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or
automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather
sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call
whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how
to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think
the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.

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

The radiation would be deadly.

On 5/3/11 4:10 PM, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 5/2/11 7:44 PM, Immortalist wrote:
A Santa Claus Machine, named after the folkloric Santa Claus, is a
hypothetical machine that is capable of creating any required object
or structure out of any given material. It is most often referenced by
futurists and science fiction writers when discussing hypothetical
projects of enormous scale, such as a Dyson sphere. These types of
future constructions would be too large for many civilizations to
build directly, so they would need a series of machines to
intelligently build the machine with little or no direct control.

It’s possible to imagine a machine that could scoop up material –
rocks from the Moon or rocks from asteroids – process them inside and
produce just about any product: washing machines or teacups or
automobiles or starships. Once such a machine exists it could gather
sunlight and materials that it’s sitting on, and produce on call
whatever product anybody wants to name, as long as somebody knows how
to make it and those instructions can be given to the machine. I think
the name Santa Claus Machine for such a device is appropriate.

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

The radiation would be deadly.

Er... why? Unless you're making the assumption that it's not using the
elements it has available but transmuting one element into another,
which isn't the case.

--
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