(no subject)

[proximoception]

1.4:



1. What does Ford want with the man in black?

Ford seems to be pretty dismissive of guests who are there to exercise their love of power at a couple points, but likes the idea of guests wanting to be more than they are. I wonder if that can go both ways? Redemption through sin/violence? Seems against the grain of the show, but Ford and the show aren't necessarily on the same page. And the church he actually makes is black. Though on the other hand the little girl's line, surely scripted by Ford, is that the maze quest "isn't meant for" Harris. Since a path for someone willing to scalp, murder, threaten children etc. has nevertheless been provided, that's not quite true, but maybe the girl's grim and almost bored tone reflects Ford's. Maybe Ford will give Harris the closure he wants in some ironic way, like having him be the test case of whether Dolores et al. can kill a human who serves it - or will spare one for other than programming reasons or something. Wyatt represents a race that doesn't exist yet, for whom the park is meant, we're more or less told by Teddy, so that's probably a model for the awakened robots. Harris likes the sound of Wyatt's scheme, it seems (as well as Hector's philosophy, as though Hector were a step along that same path toward nihilism, just as freeing him (and killing to do so) seems to be a necessary step on the blackhat maze quest). But of course we've just learned that Harris runs a foundation that seeks to cure the sick, so maybe discovering a conscious robot will disturb him. He's let himself spiral down a bad virtual path, but whether that's changed - or even revealed - who he was before is unclear. Probably it has, which means the unreal can change the real, and also that Ford can program actual people to be whatever he wishes, meaning Bernard and the liason may indeed be human. Ford may just assume there's little difference, and maybe accurately. No idea yet if that means he has a lesson to teach Harris, or means to destroy him, or that he's just a cog in the present project, or that he's utterly indifferent to him. Harris wants to figure out the final "level" of the park - either "what it's all for" in the sense of what its provided endpoint is, or the secret objective of its creator(s) - and then, apparently, to die there. Both of those motives can be of use to Ford, hypothetically, since they mean he can be led anywhere and, if need be, sacrificed, without putting up a fuss. His hiring must be playing off his Truman Show and Snowpiercer roles, eh? Whereas Hopkins is here for possessing the ultimate poker face, I imagine. (Wright has made a career of ethically troubled middleman roles, Marsden I can't remember what he's even been in other than the unintentionally hilarious The Box, and Wood seems to be an HBO standby. Thandie Newton I assume you just take whenever she's available.)

2. Why does Bernard know about the maze quest and wish for Dolores to go on it?

We now get why he wants her to stay fully conscious, or at least on the road to consciousness, but why this? Suggests either the maze quest is long-standing, thus conceivably distinct from the black church one, or that Bernard has been working on it, thus that it has an overtt function other than the covert one of testing the robots. Maybe some sort of ultimate self-discovery quest for visitors that Bernard thinks might also help Dolores figure out who she is? Or a quest with an actual prize she could somehow use or trade to get her freedom? Ford has been careful to let Bernard think all of this is his own idea, though based on that of "Arnold," so he can't think Ford had intended it for robots. Arnold has been scrubbed from all records, according to Ford. Maybe Bernard dug around and discovered a disused quest with Arnold's name or m.o. somehow on it. And since it's strongly hinted, though a possible misdirect, that Ford has retro-invented Arnold entirely to make Bernard assume a paternal role toward the awakening hosts, this means Ford would have predicted Bernard would send Dolores on it. Setting her on a collision course with Harris, apparently, though we're not yet certain Ford knows this. The restaurant scene with the board liaison suggests there's little he doesn't know, though.

3. Why are there just three stars on the figure of Orion's belt?

Because the woodcutter had achieved the human-like ability to perceive and remember erroneously, I assume? Or is it that he saw it, or an image of it, when it was partly obscured? Or is this an error Ford has introduced into his environment, suggesting the sky, too, is fake?

4. Could the liaison still be a robot?

Knowing about her childhood memory could just mean he's good at spying on people within the confines of the park, but of course he could have instead created that memory. There's a potential double meaning to his "there have been a lot of you" talk - could mean he's had to reboot her a bunch, or that other robots have filled her role. Things get weird, here, if so: does this mean a) that he's planted robots in the human population that he knew the corporation would hire so that he could always minimize their meddling? or b) could it mean there essentially is no corporation oversight - whitehat and his employer confirm that there's one owning it, but Ford could run it or have long since wrested full control of the park from it - and he just wants everyone to think there is? She doesn't know about the representative being sent, who could be a real one or could be a plausible-looking replacement ... or could be sent there to distract her, or get her hiding things to save her job, thus involuntarily protecting Ford. That last possibility works well if she's human, but seems odd if she isn't. Anyway, short answer to the question is "yes." But of course at no point can we dismiss the possibility that any or every single person, including Ford, is one. Still, it's interesting when this possibility seems to be either deliberately highlighted and/or obscured, as it's been with her, Bernard, and the security guard ("yet they give you a gun," "maybe it's part of my backstory" etc.). We're supposed to think about how hard it is to tell, among other thoughts. Witnessing how thoroughly people can be manipulated or role-determined minimizes our sense of our specialness, makes the gap between conscious and not seem bridgeable or blurred or nonexistent.

5. Could whitehat, too, be part of Ford's plan?

He does seem to be helpful to getting Dolores where Ford wants her to go, as park security don't question why a visitor would run off with a woman. The whitehat seems to have been pressured into coming as a work thing by his wealthy fiancee (or was it wife?) and her brother, who are apparently stakeholders and considering investing even more, so Ford may have manipulated them to make that happen, much like Gatsby may have done with Nick. Almost seems like he's brewing up a Good, the Bad and the AI confrontation, perhaps so Dolores can see that not all humans are bad before she makes her choice of joining Wyatt or repudiating him (his followers wear the skin and flesh of the people they kill, ignore pain and don't fear death etc., so model the feared human-replacing robo-apocalypse). The jackassy brother tells whitehat that the park knows who he is and is playing off that ... and a large percentage of the dialogue here has an ironic second level of meaning, so there's also that.

More soon, doubtless.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

How many times do you think the Man in Black has had to play to unlock all the game's clues?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I was wondering that too, given his having never met Hector, who's such an "event" character, whereas most of the 2000 appear to be pretty much extras. But Hector could be fairly new, or Harris could have decided large tracts of the park are just for casual tourists long ago.

He said it was his vacation. How much can one vacation in 30 years? Even as the boss? Even at George W. Bush rates?

[andalus.livejournal.com]

My assumption was that the Man in Black was using exploits (finding places, people, scalps he shouldn't have had access to) to glitch his way into a quest that should have been blocked off for him. Either he he thinks it's not meant for him but wants in anyway, or he thinks that the designers intentionally made a quest that one had to hack (lit/fig) their way into. And when Bernard told Dolores to find The Maze it struck me that this meant The Maze was meant for her, for awakening AI. That one of the other levels to the enterprise was to develop/encourage conscious AI. Perhaps there is a level unknown to the Westworld-level developers that is full of emerging-conscious AI already, and Bernard is inviting Dolores to find and join them.

The fact that MiB doesn't know snake tattoo/Hector also implies that Hector is Bad Artist's baby (I don't remember his name), developed during Ford's period of non-involvement. Which suggests Hector's nihilism is an Anti-Ford sentiment, but one which, now that it's introduced, Ford is turning toward his ends. Maybe Ford sent MiB to Hector to see how they would bounce off each other. Chaotic Neutral meets Lawful Evil (MiB's ethics is one of ends-justifying-means, a Dark Gnostic turned zealot).

Of course the real reason Ford turned MiB to Hector is so he will meet up with Dolores, whom the Maze was meant for. Why, though? You'd think the presence of a Guest would mess things up? Or is the MiB/Black Hat/White hat convergence going to (as you suggest) teach Dolores what it really means to be human? (Good/Bad/Ugly, Black Hat being ugly, since he's not so much evil as... gross. And like the Eli Wallach character, opportunistic.)

Maybe Wyatt's emergence is also the emergence of conscious AI, immune to bullets because they are not technically part of the westworld. Speculation.

The show is setting up Arnold as a Prometheus to Ford's Zeus. (Was Arnold AI? That would be too obvious, and wouldn't explain why he was trying to figure out artificial consciousness.) Matthew Arnold's "Love let us be true to one another" in the face of unrelenting misery --- an ethics of no matter the circumstances, treat others as conscious beings. Whereas Ford (ironically?) treats the hosts as products.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Maybe you need a human/host pair to take on some Turing test in the maze. They do seem to be pairing up.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Hadn't considered that at all - fits, is definitely intriguing - and might account for Lawrence? And whitehat's future in-law has adopted that outlaw (no wordplay intended) so maybe we'll have three Maze quest pairs.

Definitely helps to have a model of what you're imitating in front of you. With both parties imitating the other will they meet in the middle? I wonder how foreign language conversation partnerships usually end. Probably not with two fluent bilinguals.

It's an especially fascinating possibility because the overt quest, a human's discovery of her own nature with the help of a robot guide (maybe revealing our inherent mechanism-ism?), could perfectly provide cover for the true quest, an awakened AI's coming to realize it's (at least) as conscious as a human.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Ford mentions Arnold to the Quality Assurance woman, but it's not clear from her reaction if she's heard of him. He may be trying to find out if Bernard's told her, or may be using Arnold as a misdirect with her too in some way I haven't picked up on.

Harris seems to attribute the Maze, perhaps the whole park, to Arnold, maybe suggesting that Ford is an AI helper or a vessel Arnold took over. It's not clear if he knew him thirty years before, was told about him at the same time he learned of the Maze (from Dolores? she's old enough to have been instructed directly by a human Arnold) or what. We also don't yet know why the maze would permit player-killing, though conscious robots can apparently override their programming, so that might be a way to test that.

Bernard presumably had no clue granting robots consciousness had ever been considered, so his recommendation of the Maze for Dolores would have to be either a repurposing of a human-directed but relevant quest or the result of research he's done offcamera since Ford's revelation (thus something Ford could have planted - it might be a supposedly old quest that's actually new, another sudden backstory).

I think the main reason to think Ford is using Harris as part of his plan is that that's a more interesting development than the timing being a coincidence. But Harris' version of the quest is clearly blackhat-directed (scalping, bandit-aiding, possibly rape seem to be how he gets clues, not glitches) ... though it could be a glitch that made him realize it existed, since key elements are only now being introduced to the park (e.g. no one apparently having heard of Wyatt till now).

(The bullets must be part of the park or they'd kill people too, I'd imagine?)

Arnold's most famous prose contribution is his notion of "Sweetness and Light" right? Acculturated goodness somehow reprogramming our Hobbesian basic beasts, but with merely partial or misdirected acculturation creating "philistines," who are even worse than beasts. But Arnold's also a common enough name.

He's also associated with agnosticism, though Huxley I believe coined the term.

Wyatt et al. are robots programmed to suggest a conscious AI revolt, but not necessarily actually conscious, since if they were they might ... stop doing that.

Immunity to bullets etc. may be explained by what we saw with the woodcutter: it seems like the robots are programmed to turn themselves off when damaged in ways that would kill a human, like someone sawing one's neck wide open. But the updated robots may now be able to override programmed orders, including "die."

I think you're right about Hector - Ford must have given depth to mayhem-motivations provided by the hack. The Indian religion based on appearances of Bernard and other suited handlers must be another sudden backstory, since QA and security would never have let Ford get away with it. Unless, like giving the robots the sense that they have dreams, this were another failsafe. But it seems too long-term; the dream thing's supposed to chill them out till they're wiped a few hours or days later. Whereas chasing down Indian lore and idols would tend to nudge one out of one's loop. I think Ford is providing an interim mythology for robots caught partly between the park's reality and the true one. Redirecting questions and confusion and disturbance, as religion does, rather than precisely abolishing them, which might require robolobotomy.

[andalus.livejournal.com]

The bullets are the most confusing part of the whole enterprise. They can't be blanks that the Host simply overreact to, because Maeve has a bullet in her belly. Are they guns that alternately fire real bullets or air pellets based on who the holder is aiming at? This was my first guess (the guns are part of the opening montage, suggesting they're "smart" in somesense). But that seems like it would invite collateral damage, ricochets, etc. The technology seems like maybe it's good enough to give each Guest some sci-fi force field that only repels bullets.

This isn't to argue with your idea that robots probably turn themselves off when damaged.

When MiB encounters Teddy for the first time he puts the gun right on his forehead; close enough that even a blank would do considerable damage. Here he must be banking on the fact that a Host isn't allowed to pull the trigger when the gun could actually hurt. Meaning the guns have both physical and programming failsafes.

The corporation has control over whether bombs go off. That was a strange moment, which immediately made me think the whole place was a simulation. I'm not sure if I buy this, since it seems to cheapen the stakes.

Is the fourth star in Orion a satellite? A destination marker?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I remember being angry with The Game when it came out because there's a scene where machine gun fire hits right by Douglas, and there seemed no freaking way that that could really be faked. But the future's a different story. I'll accept whatever, if vaguely self-consistent.

I don't think it's VR - they'd just let people get shot if it were. And wouldn't really need to (eg) perform surgery on robots - they could just erase the damage with a keystroke.

Yeah, wonder if they're up to anything with Orion beyond his sense that it at least was real, and the sentience = mistakes bit.