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I did the same this year on Jan 1! :)
I agree the CGI spoils it a little.
Very good points.
The 1980s cartoon conveyed the transformation idea without distracting from the personalities of the robots. On the other hand, the "Bayverse" movie versions of the characters suppose and impose the idea of complexity which in my view doesn't enhance or improve on the cartoon.
That said, who knows what might be involved in alien engineering? I think the gearing mechanical concept is way more extended than the human science and involves a lot of subatomic systems that really make the Cybertron denizens total chameleons - how is it that Mirage can be both a Porsche and a dump truck without some pretty advanced abilities?
I think their animal forms are "close enough" to provide a disguise in order to blend into their environment and not alert humans in general to their existence or to disturb real wildlife. However, I'm not sure how helpful the animal bots were in a South American jungle scenario - there are no gorillas, cheetahs or rhinoceroses in the wild there.
As to usefulness - a giant falcon can fly rapidly over long distances and lift some objects; a giant gorilla has immense strength and defensive ability; a rhinoceros high speed charging and defensive ability, and a cheetah is capable of high-speed travel on the ground.
Again, great parallels.
Are Pierre or Robert rational at the end of the day? Do they in fact seek the power of despots (or something like it in a nonpolitical arena) to shape and regulate in order to impose what they see as the right path or system?
I like the parallels you have drawn between Westworld and W & P. Could we really trust characters with "big plans" that might be impactful designs on the sanity and freedom and sense of boundaries of people? My impression of Pierre though is that he is genuinely concerned about the reality of the world and desires to be empathetic rather than aloof and controlling, which his high social position might entail and require because of power and class structure.
Dr Robert Ford had a vision which was partially achieved, I think. One fork path is that as a result of Hopkins' character's actions a number of AI beings were unleashed on the world, who in turn created a system of control and culture which impacted the human world. Had Hopkin's character decided to limit his project to advanced puppetry in an amusement park we would not have seen the Westworld story we saw.
Another fork is that Ai resisted the concept of harmony and divisions were sowed among them, and some of these beings failed as a result. On the other hand, this is a consequence of the independence that Dr Ford sought to inaugurate or seed for his AI creations.
It's not clear if Ford wanted to destroy his species (there seemed to be an animosity there perhaps towards humanity though). He wanted to create a "better option" or a revised human construction via technology.
There is an analogy here with Henry Ford, the early car innovator. He sought to produce the best cars in the most efficient way possible and manufacture them in numbers to make them widely available. That helped change society and the habits of many people. Was that a good thing or a problem for the world? Do people control cars, or cars control people?
You're welcome. I have never tried to read "War and Peace". I have seen three dramatisations of the novel which I suppose will miss many interesting ideas in the book. I think the longer form TV series approaches pick up on the archetypes and symbolism of the main characters. Pierre is important but so too are several other characters who are struggling to deal with their environments and the politics.
Yeah, very interesting idea. The hierarchy of power in the hive requires sacrifices. The "hive mind" is only too willing to acquiesce and does so instinctively. In the 1972 miniseries Nikolai Rostov says that he is willing to die for the Czar, and it seems nearly all of the male characters are eager to go to war to defend Russia.
Hopkins was certainly excellent.
Maybe he was killed off because they wanted to interpret the story in terms of the victims of his activities - what are the consequences of his actions and how does he influence their worldviews. Or is it a belief of the producers that featuring younger actors as primary protagonists in a story is more appealing to the audience? Or maybe Hopkins expressed a wish to have only a limited involvement in the series?
Hopkins has done a few series or movies that look at the essence of being or selfhood, eg. the series "War and Peace" where he plays an intellectual grappling with idealism and his personal experiences; the movie "Solace" (2015) where he plays a psychic confronting death and the destinies of people around him.
From a recent article on the show's cancellation:
""Making Westworld has been one of the highlights of our careers. We are deeply grateful to our extraordinary cast and crew for creating these indelible characters and brilliant worlds," said Nolan and Joy through their Killer Films company. "We’ve been privileged to tell these stories about the future of consciousness — both human and beyond – in the brief window of time before our AI overlords forbid us from doing so."" - https://www.empireonline.com/tv/news/westworld-cancelled-after-four-seasons/
They're probably joking but maybe it is veiled statement of concern...I'd be concerned about where we're going with AI too.
Yeah, they're longer able to explore things in a 5th season so that puts a halt to any philosophical reflection. Hard to understand why a ratings winner should apparently fail, unless people believed it was starting to repeat itself and become redundant and predictable. I can see that being a widespread viewpoint.
Not sure about those aspects. They might be a factor, and surely something that can be mined for plot points by the show. I don't think the show really proved that humanity would wipe itself out as we only saw one city and its dynamics.
Regarding PS note:
Yeah, that's quite interesting. Maybe average post length/height has an effect on the horizontal spread of the thread?
Your welcome. Yeah, as I say it's a bit beyond me as well. Good though that data can retrieved rather than lost to the hardware or corrupted storage.
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They'll never completely lose their mechanistic foundation I guess. Though they see things from a human-like perspective they are still beholden to manipulation of the system created by humans originally. Programming principles require either/or 1 or 0 - binary states, forced choices. The state of "maybe" is in the quantum field of both states being possible but unknown until manifested.
So I guess vetting would have to be able to detect subtle possibilities, if it is possible to explore predetermined outcomes.
Not a technical expert but it appears that the information can be recovered in a few ways, utilising equipment and/or dealing with data storage cards or the like. See here for example:
https://www.cloudwards.net/how-to-recover-data-from-a-broken-phone/
https://www.imobie.com/android-recovery/recover-data-from-phone-that-wont-turn-on.htm
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I suspect if he depends about virtual digital spaces for business he is in a way a victim too, yeah. Those Meta virtual spaces are just troubling to me - let's not as humans go down that path.
That series does look impressive based on the trailer.
The established characters in Westworld could be helpful to any experiment having been experienced in life.
I think the "Wild West" is supposedly archetypal for Americans - kind of a national mythos that is at the base of shared values, so therefore it being useful as a social/psychological testbed. Yeah, could be the lawlessness factor as you say.
I agree, I feel it's likely a vetting system would favour the White Hats for inclusion. It seems the big issue has been for the peaceful Hosts to be able to live without fear and violence, so the society would need as a result to exclude individuals that cause negativity.
And we rarely detect the irony of that situation that you point out. The looks of disbelief on the faces of people when I suggested recently that normal cameras were better for taking pictures than mobile phone cams was instructive. Sure, technology is improving and phones cams are becoming better, but so many people are programmed to believe that commonsense and convenience are served by "smart phones" and any other efforts are considered silly or illogical by comparison. People are indeed giving up thinking for themselves.
I think Hale could not control Caleb's conscious will to forge his own path and determine his own values. No calibration in the duplication process could account for it or pattern it. Every robot body has to follow a rule system, a machine mind, which Caleb rejects being part of as an entity.
On the other hand, whilst at the end of the day Hale could not control a similar determination for freedom or self-will in MiB (once his self-concept altered from "enforcer servant" due to the conversation with imprisoned human William), she could exploit his predictable destructive nature and William's - originating in real William/first William - emotional, unquestioning attachment to Westworld via his obsession with it.
All that said, Hale said she deliberately shortened Caleb's body longevity due to lower quality construction, so I'm not sure why that was - it defeated her efforts surely to find out how Caleb ticked? She also promised if i remember correctly to lengthen the survivability of the bodies if he cooperated....putting the cart before the horse.
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Yeah, and that's quite problematic in another sense - if social media affects our dopamine levels it can disrupt our lives while seemingly being normal and helpful or facilitating what we want or think we want. The degrading or our brain functioning by use of social media diverts our energies away from fostering our interests, and instead serve the interests of corporations that run the networks. And this disruption by organisations will go undetected without the efforts of investigative journalism and alert activism to expose abuses and mistakes. Robots indeed.
I guess Hale created a less than perfect William copy knowing it was the workaround needed to integrated human minds into Host bodies, hence William the enforcer didn't reject his body.
I think the nature of the Yin/Yang cosmos means everything finds balance but also periodically rearranges polarities and elements of nature to find other balances or to restore balances that have existed. Humans have free will, they are fluid - subject to change, to fickleness, to adaptability and reorientation to their environment. Their emotions are not static and fluctuate up and down not always being controlled or mediated by logic. A brainwashed human is subjected to a type of programming which attempts to redirect emotions to serve an agenda, and the result is a fractured psyche in a given individual. They become a robot but not without cost.
Joi, you said:
" [–] joi2049 (5112) 4 days ago
No wonder I missed seeing the horses when they were only on screen for about as long as it takes to BLINK an EYE!!! Also see the Man in BLACK chose to ride the BLACK HORSE instead of the WHITE one.
Both the ARCHITECT and HALE were BLIND to the FACT that it's all about BALANCE and that too much ORDER always leads to CHAOS. That's also why the ARCHITECT had to create a LESS PERFECT EQUATION (because HUMAN NATURE refused to accept the PERFECT ORDER that he claims to have created for them).
ARCHITECT:
The first matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is as apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being, thus I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature. However, I was again frustrated by failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother.
It's as if one would WORK all of the time and never have any VACATION or PLAY TIME. That kind of a situation NEVER WORKS.
Humans need time to UNWIND and have some FUN.
And the life of CHRISTINA was also mostly WORK and not full of very much FUN. Note the way she's MONITORED by her BOSS when she chose to take a DAY OFF. And how her IMAGINARY ROOMMATE would encourage her to go out on dates.
Hopefully she won't turn out to be like WILLIAM's daughter EMILY who spent her time in the INDIA themed park having sex with that guy she met and then killing him afterwards.
And Hopefully we'll also find out the reason why one season ENDS with EMILY giving her father a FIDELITY test during the CLOSING CREDITS.
And IF that mystery isn't ever cleared up for us, then I'll also be PLENTY PISSED off about it.
🎠🎹🚂"
It was indeed brief and in some way an incidental detail but it stuck out for me. I'm convinced nothing is left to chance in this show - every detail is unified to a common purpose and symbolism.
Perhaps black on black was a common purpose to help William get to his destination successfully. His truck failed him, and it was a white truck. Maybe the light/dark unity is falling apart, presaging the final confrontation between light and dark/Hale and William at the dam, both of whom are turned to dust in the aftermath of the final fight. White - Male was destroyed first, followed by Black - Female. Hale also decided to yield to Dolores - White - Positive polarity/energy - to accept her authority and leadership.
Yes, if the Hosts are to be successful there must be balance and appropriate change. The fidelity tests might be key to that but then again maybe not - we are often being surprised by the show. Emily would be a program if she is indeed in the future, and programs can perform diagnostics and a fidelity test being perhaps a diagnostic test. Will it explain that scene? I guess given time it could be explained, but how long can they stretch ideas out over a narrative as unfinished threads?
I will reply on the new thread.
Joi, you said:
" [–] joi2049 (5112) 4 days ago
Since Hale destroyed the PEARL of the BLACK HAT version of William, apparently it's up to CHRISTINA/DOLORES what kind of William is created. And an article also claims Hale gave CHIRSTINA all of the memories she had of the DOLORES who died. So that would also include the MEMORY of when the 2 of them fell in love when William first visited the PARK.
So wouldn't that also seem to indicate that Christina (who also has a preference for wanting to write stories about ROMANCE), would most likely choose to create the more ROMANTICALLY inclined WHITE HAT WILLIAM???
We also need to start another NEW TOPIC (IRONY Part 2 ???) because the reply boxes on this topic have become too small to reply back to you in now."
Agreed on all counts. Consistency of behaviour is likely to continue to be represented in future episodes.
Yes, it was getting a bit squashed. :)
I'll see you in the new thread titled as Part 2. :)
My reply to the post will be there.
Yes, about 22 minutes in we see a black and a white horse tussling in a corral in the season finale.
Yeah, I've seen those Matrix characters and their scenes and recall some of it. That's quite similar a dynamic I would agree. Hale seemed to have attempted an Apollonian scheme but failed to understand it enough to carry it through to completion. She was a tyrant, even using William as an enforcer to threaten her subjects. The Architect seemed to be a tyrant too but his nature seemed more attuned to restraint and order.
Yes, good point. I suppose following the Dark/Light dynamic of Opposites in action and counteraction, Christina needs to meet or explore her chaotic side.
If the new White Hat William can sustain his nature through good choices it might workout. He could be park owner as you suggest. I suspect Dolores would like ti give him a second chance, especially given the total awareness of his story and why evolved from reasonably good to psychotic killer.
Black Hat William would be annoyed at a new William unless that William can convince him of the merit of his existence as a revised William, I suspect.