MovieChat Forums > Westworld (2016) Discussion > That's more like it...

That's more like it...


The quest for immortality, copying humans and building replicas of park guests. All of this is a lot more interesting than a bunch of angry robots pretending to be sentient.

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Yep, the best of the season so far didnt feature Maeve or Dolores, the eye candy was absent but the story was much better!

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ah, well I'll start watching again then.

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Next episode looks crap though! LOL

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Looks like Ford is in this episode though, so it may be another surprisingly good one

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...and it was.

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we're moving into shark jumping territory here, from where i sit.

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I'm afraid you might be right. It's starting to wear a little thin.

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I don't know why you think none of the hosts are sentient. Dolores, Maeve, and Bernard certainly are. The fact that Bernard was hacked by Ford and his free will overridden doesn't mean his free will is an illusion. If we had the technology to implant a chip in your brain and connect it the right way I could do the same thing to you. Make you go somewhere, say what I wanted you to say, even kill someone, then forget you did it.

Other hosts like Teddy and Hector are most of the way toward sentience but not quite there yet. Still others remain stuck in Ford's narrative but show glimmers of an eventual change. The hosts should ignore modern devices or anything else that doesn't fit with the storyline - but they're not doing that anymore. I agree that the introduction of the consciousness download angle has made the plot even more compelling. For one thing, is that the original Elsie or did Bernard actually kill her and run off that brain module in order to transfer her mind and bring her back?

Another interesting tidbit: I recall from the official Westworld site that six weeks is the longest visit a guest is permitted at one time. A little longer than James Delos lasted before going unstable. Could the entire park be one big experiment, looping their wealthy (and equally dead) guests through over and over while gathering data to perfect the process so they can eventually leave? There's a reason why they've gone to great lengths to avoid showing us the outside world in the present time frame. This would be one explanation.

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Agreed to a point, it does make the perspective of the sentient hosts much easier to side with, if they are indeed former humans having their consciousness and sentience transferred into host form.

That said, I don't think consciousness and sentience can be moved, let alone COPIED, from a human being into a host. We don't use binary in our heads (we don't even use the more advanced trinary, quadrinary, or quantum computing in our heads, we are not computers), so how do you transfer that incompatibility into a computer? Delos apparently figured it out, but that's all part of the magic of storytelling and science fiction where they don't have to explain their process.

Don't get me wrong though, it certainly makes an entertaining story, it's just not possible in real life at all.

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/Agreed to a point, it does make the perspective of the sentient hosts much easier to side with, if they are indeed former humans having their consciousness and sentience transferred into host form./

Indeed. this would be much more interesting than a "robot uprising".

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Doesn’t have to be binary

Bernard himself noted that the new brain-balls’ contents didn’t look like code.

Analog brain scans, maybe, but not code

They’re making it clear in other words that Jim Delos had different programming from standard hosts

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You either build an artificial neural network in the form of a chipset or solid three-dimensional construct, or you create an emulation of it. The important thing is the topology of the network. The layout of neurons and connections between them. Physical configuration (or the specifics of the emulating code) are irrelevant so long as they reproduce the network and all of its functions in every detail. We absolutely could transfer a human mind into a synthetic body. Well alright, not yet, but eventually. The only difference between an organic human and an artificial replica is chemical composition - which fundamentally doesn't matter. Whether your neurons are made of soft tissue, or hard semiconductors, or are virtual constructs in a simulation, is of no consequence if the system works the same way.

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Yep. We know that's coming, don't we? Still, I hope all of us will get surprised by the door that William find in the end of Robert's game.

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And now they just came back with more boring garbage.

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It's not all boring. Just not very well written. It feels like the authors have a very vague idea about AIs or even human sentience. I know what they want us to think. I just don't buy it.

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