Why would anyone make a replicant?

[jollyreaper]

From a storytelling perspective, they exist because the whole question is about what makes someone human. Layers and layers of questions and all that.

But in terms of in-universe justification, why would anyone make a replicant? And how could they be better at a job than a human without being easily discernible from a human upon basic medical examination?

They're supposed to be very advanced androids, fully biological. If there's metal parts, run 'em through an airport xray machine, here's your replicant. But if they've got super advanced squishy bits, then it might take a blood test but that should also clear things up pretty quickly. They're presented as stronger, faster, more durable than humans. If they were physically indistinguishable even down to the microscopic level then they should be absolutely no better or different from a human being. All the cops should require at this point is a blood test machine and all the ambiguity goes out the window. But that would ruin the story.

As near as I can figure, the best justification I can think of for a replicant that appears completely human down to the genetic level and whose replicant status can only be ascertained by a psychological examination would be a bit of legal tomfoolery like the IBM compatible clones from the 80's where the instruction set was reverse-engineered. Hey, they're like humans, but the material didn't come from humans, therefore they have no legal rights, you can do whatever you want with them.

But what would be the need? Cheap labor? We already have that all over the world. Slaves? Again, we pretty much have that already. Just read the papers and about the scandals involving domestic servants basically treated as slaves. It gets even worse overseas like in the Middle East.

So, can anyone think of a rationale for replicants that would:
1) Justify why they were created
2) are physically indistinguishable from us
3) can only be detected with a psych test?

Honestly, the only thing I can come up with is that there's a big twist: there are no replicants, it's just a witchhunt used to scare the bejesus out of the populace. Anyone can be a replicant, you won't even know you are, therefore paranoid police powers and bladerunners mucking about. And they are just as much in the dark as everyone else.

We found a replicant! Retire her!
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[Zwinmar]

Because they can.

[Ted C]

1) Justify why they were created
2) are physically indistinguishable from us
3) can only be detected with a psych test?

1) Presumably it would be illegal to treat a natural human they way an artificial "replicant" is treated. Because replicants are artificial, their creators and buyers feel that they can ethically justify treating them as property.

2) That would entirely depend on what you want the replicant to do. Pris was a "pleasure model", after all.

3) There's definitely no justification there. Their strength, endurance, and tolerance for temperature extremes all indicate that a simple tissue test should be able to easily identify a replicant.

[Stark]

Because creating intelligent life makes you god. Blade Runner made this as explicit as it gets.

And asking why the economics of a space colonial expansion work they way they do and then saying its stupid isn't a great way to understand anything.

[bilateralrope]

1) Presumably it would be illegal to treat a natural human they way an artificial "replicant" is treated. Because replicants are artificial, their creators and buyers feel that they can ethically justify treating them as property.

But you wouldn't want people to ever think you are mistreating a natural human. So wouldn't you make sure your replicants can be distinguished from humans by the naked eye to prevent any confusion ?

[Stark]

Aside from those who illegally escape to Earth, this clearly isn't a problem. Maybe you can draw the obvious conclusion here.

[jollyreaper]

1) Justify why they were created
2) are physically indistinguishable from us
3) can only be detected with a psych test?

1) Presumably it would be illegal to treat a natural human they way an artificial "replicant" is treated. Because replicants are artificial, their creators and buyers feel that they can ethically justify treating them as property.

Right, but what would you use them for that you can't get bog-standard humans for? The only thing I can think of is torture/sex/kill, like Hostel. But wouldn't it be cheaper to just get poor people?

2) That would entirely depend on what you want the replicant to do. Pris was a "pleasure model", after all.

And wouldn't hookers be cheaper? That's what I keep getting stuck on. What makes them different and better?

3) There's definitely no justification there. Their strength, endurance, and tolerance for temperature extremes all indicate that a simple tissue test should be able to easily identify a replicant.

Yup. So, all we have left is the sex angle.

[Stark]

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.

[Terralthra]

Hookers (and poor people) can say no, and if you force the issue, you go to jail (or should). There's a difference between legally-people, where you have to subvert the justice system all the time to do what you want (and can get caught, outbribed, etc.), and legally-not-people, whose existence subverts the justice system by definition.

[Stark]

Maybe we should ask how their advertising for people to move to colonies may reflect demographic pressures?

[bilateralrope]

Aside from those who illegally escape to Earth, this clearly isn't a problem. Maybe you can draw the obvious conclusion here.

Marking the replicants makes identifying escaped replicants easier, along with making it harder for them to escape as every human that sees one will know they are a replicant.

I'm only talking about marking them cheaply, say a scar or tattoo.

[Simon_Jester]

So, can anyone think of a rationale for replicants that would:
1) Justify why they were created
2) are physically indistinguishable from us
3) can only be detected with a psych test?

There might be details of biochemistry that are different (their muscles do not produce high levels of certain chemicals when worked hard, so they don't get tired). Or details of physiology (nerves or joints that connect differently and give them greater leverage and strength). Or details of neural organization- they think more rapidly, or clearly, or multitask more effectively.

How hard it would be to detect these? It depends. Maybe a simple blood test or X-ray would suffice, or maybe it would take something more subtle and expensive like a CT scan. And we couldn't realistically CT-scan the entire human population in a short period of time, if we needed that to detect alien infiltrators.

Honestly, the only thing I can come up with is that there's a big twist: there are no replicants, it's just a witchhunt used to scare the bejesus out of the populace. Anyone can be a replicant, you won't even know you are, therefore paranoid police powers and bladerunners mucking about. And they are just as much in the dark as everyone else.

We found a replicant! Retire her!

And yet this is a verrry credible answer.
_____________

If replicants are being used for underclass jobs on space colonies, to me that suggests that it costs more than it's worth to ship a human being out there, compared to the cost of having a cloning vat on the colony to grow human beings from scratch. Slightly enhancing those artificial humans to make them better at some part of their job is strictly optional.

[Stark]

Or that people - even poor people - are insufficient. I know we're in fanfic ignore the movie territory, but why assume there are enough willing and super fit soldiers or labourers available?

[Ahriman238]

Am I the only one who remembers Roy, the guy who drove the plot of the film, was a military model? I presume either because he is more physically capable of combat, more psychologically capable of handling the stress of combat than 6 weeks in basic can really prepare you for, or most likely and horrifying, Roy and the other combat replicants are considered disposable as human soldiers are not. Perhaps society values human life to such a degree there are no soldiers but manufactured ones lacking in human rights, where have I heard this setup before? Or perhaps there are 'real' human soldiers and replicants are used for the more dangerous or degrading jobs.

Why do replicants exist? Because Tyrell wanted to make them.

Why make them indistinguishable from humans? Hubris. A technical challenge.

Why can they only be found out by a pscyh test? Plot reasons, Tyrell's people going the extra mile in making them indistinguishable.

[Stark]

It's almost like if you ask why things are the way they are in a work instead of saying HAHA SO STUPID WHY ARE THEY SO DUMB the answers present themselves. :v

It's compelling to think that creating replicants is more efficient than recruting and training humans in colonies - we're shown a city full of people basically asleep with no drive and perhaps this is why the conked need to rely on artificial people.

[Ahriman238]

Or alternatively they have no drive because the replicants provide a buffer between them and actual poverty, hardship and physical danger. If it seems unlikely that you'll reach the top, but the bottom isn't that bad, why try and excel?

[gigabytelord]

Or alternatively they have no drive because the replicants provide a buffer between them and actual poverty, hardship and physical danger. If it seems unlikely that you'll reach the top, but the bottom isn't that bad, why try and excel?

Am I the only one who finds this to be the most frightening idea of all?

An entire populous trapped at the bottom, not because they can't climb higher, but because they simply don't see the need to.

I find that depressing and frightening.

[Simon_Jester]

Or that people - even poor people - are insufficient. I know we're in fanfic ignore the movie territory, but why assume there are enough willing and super fit soldiers or labourers available?

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.

Or alternatively they have no drive because the replicants provide a buffer between them and actual poverty, hardship and physical danger. If it seems unlikely that you'll reach the top, but the bottom isn't that bad, why try and excel?

This could also be a factor.

Compare and contrast to the role of very low-wage Third World labor in preserving the First World underclass in an unhealthy and ignorant state, where 'employable at a responsible job' is not an important quality that people actually need... and yet even these random idiots are supplied with copious 'bread and circuses' in the form of cheap consumer goods.

[Stark]

If people are in a situation where their creations have more drive than them - even stronger desires for freedom and independence - then pioneering colonial and military operations may be beyond them. Roy is clearly superior to all the humans we see.

[Starglider]

I don't get where this 'replicants are biochemically undetectable' stuff is coming from. In the original book it was explicitly stated that bone marrow testing conclusively proves human vs replicant, also there is a less accurate test based on nerve propagation time. The Voight-Kampff test in isolation is also quite plausible, because whatever tricks are used to grow replicant brains to adult size rapidly and create a useful servant instead of a drooling coma patient, could very easily be unable to create human-like empathy.

The artistic license taken in both the book and the movie is that genetic testing is too slow/expensive/invasive to be used for routine screening. It was almost certainly artistic license rather than author oversight, because even writing in the 1960s, cheap and accurate genetic testing is an obvious implication. Specifically given genetic/biochemical engineering advanced enough to design, rapid-grow and mass produce artificial adult humans the way we currently design & mass-produce cars, making the equivalent of a engine trouble code reader is relatively trivial. I don't have a problem with this, it makes for a better story and a gripping scene; it's just one of those times where a strict literalist interpretation doesn't make sense.

[Connor MacLeod]

If we infer from the 'playing god' angle stark mentioned, you might argue that a reason for replicants could be a status symbol - wealth, power or both. I mean you might as well ask why anyone with lots of disposable income spends in on things that are, fundamentally speaking, impractical. Humans aren't 100% ruled by practicality and efficiency.

In a similar vein replicants might represent a 'loophole' in laws in various ways. Sort of like the Grand Army of the REpublic in Star wars was a 'loophole' around military creation. Noone 'human' was dead in the military, just a bunch of stinking clones.


edit: for some people in this thread you might ask 'why is it stupid/unreasonable' simply because you can't think of a plausible reason? 'plausible' is purely a value judgement, depending on what an individual (or group) decides fits their views and/or preconceptions. Its not like people are computers, and yet sometimes questions that get asked like that seem to have that underlying assumption that humans SHOULD be robots and having irrational, emotional reasons is horrible.

[Stark]

People totally buy mega expensive fake animals, so the market exists.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well the reasons for replicants could exist for any number of reasons depending on the setting. Political, legal, cultural, economic, technologicla, or any combination thereof. Its hard to say without having more information, but I never got as deep into the Blade Runner stuff to even begin to speculate at what may or may not be a factor.

This is why one has to be careful about speculating 'why' something is, of course. Its very easy to impose your preconceptions of what 'fits' and what 'works' and come to inaccurate conclusions. Heck, I've done that before plenty of times

I mean you might as well ask why any setting that has power armor doesn't have any sort of robot or remote controlled combat vehicle (most universe with power armor fo some form also have some fairly sophisticated robotics, drones, etc.) After all, thats more 'realistic' sorts of combat, is it not? But you don't often hear 'power armor' being questioned (I blame Starship troopers and DARPA myself. LOL)

[jollyreaper]

It's almost like if you ask why things are the way they are in a work instead of saying HAHA SO STUPID WHY ARE THEY SO DUMB the answers present themselves. :v

It's compelling to think that creating replicants is more efficient than recruting and training humans in colonies - we're shown a city full of people basically asleep with no drive and perhaps this is why the conked need to rely on artificial people.

I'm asking how they can make sense within the context of the story, what the rationale would be. Within the context of a story like, say, Frankenstein, it is merely sufficient that one man has the motive and the resources to accomplish it. If the mad doctor's plan required Manhattan Project levels of resources, then even if his personal goal is playing God, he has to sell it to the military as a viable project. Or, as was darkly misattributed to von Braun, "I aim at the stars, but sometimes I hit London."

To put it another way, a silly question would be "Why are there zombies in this movie?" Because it wouldn't be a zombie movie otherwise. But if the government is trying to make zombies, an in-universe explanation would be useful. Replicants are the way they are because the relevant themes couldn't be explored otherwise -- but is there any sort of rational in-universe explanation for making them?

So, replicants. Developed on Earth. For what? Banned on Earth now, only used in the offworld colonies. What are those colonies like? Prestige projects, economically useful? Do we know anything about what the offworld situation is like vs. back home on Earth? The movie tells us they're useful and we run with it. You watch Apocalypse Now, there's a war going on. The movie isn't concerned about why the war started, the geopolitical context, whether it made any sense or not. The original novel wasn't even set in the time period. The particulars of the war are not important, just what the situation will do to men pushed beyond civilization. Yet at the same time, you can still ask how Kurtz came to be the crazy man up the river. If he wasn't, you wouldn't have a movie. But can you make sense of how he got there? Yes, you can. There's not much suspension of disbelief required.

[Stark]

You're ALMOST THERE. You're one step away from engaging with fiction instead of 'analyzing' it.