Soong type Androids technology

[Timo]

Oh, sorry about that, it wasn't specifically about you. The quote was from TribbleFeeder, after all, and his/her objection seemed the insupportable and unfathomable to me.

In the objective sense, since Data is a purpose-built machine and as such an outlet for Noonien Soong's mental idiosyncrasies, Data's role as a dildo might be worth discussing. I can't see sexuality having played a major part in the creation process in the end, though. But if it were, odds would probably be that Data would be cast in an unflattering role, one he himself as a thinking creature would not appreciate. So many things could go wrong for him there - foremost of these him being embarrassing overcompensation for Soong's own physical or mental shortcomings, either by having been built "better" than his father, or by having been built "worse", whichever made dad happier.

Somewhere down the line might hide a hidden dildo mode, something that would kick in at an embarrassing moment just to satisfy Soong's perverse interests. We can't easily get around the fact that Data is physically built to be a clown of sorts - by inference from "Datalore" to defeat the Frankenstein fears of the colonists, but perhaps in reality for different reasons altogether. Every child is the victim of his or her parents' ambitions and fears, but Data is in the unfortunate position of being much more malleable than the average child, and much less likely to be able to break out of his mold later on. And, on the other hand, a "mere" machine, an experiment among many, out of a long line of experiments none of which met with Soong's final approval. His father may simply not have thought of him much more than he would of a dildo. (His mother clearly had a more refined relationship with even the discarded experiments, or at least the android copy of her believed so.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SpyOne]

If he has their memories that is pretty creepy - we all have things that are just for us and us alone - does he have a memory of one colonist secretly lusting after another... or the prize pig ?

What if one was secretly a murderer?

How would you get everyone to agree to such a procedure?

Apparently being convinced your extermination is imminent helps.

 

[TribbleFeeder]

I considered working up a rebuttal but then realised that after spending decades fighting real cases of racism and discrimination, rather than tilting at windmills and defending the honour of a fictional character, than I just don't care enough to do so.

This kind of seems like you’re insinuating that I’m comparing this to REAL racism? When that’s definitely not the case. You are on a Star Trek forum, where we’re talking about Star Trek and fictional characters specifically.

Which is the real problem - people acting as if talking about genitals or breasts were somehow wrong.

Yeah, I’d be really upset if someone were to talk about my genitals or breasts. Especially someone’s genitals in such details as to whether the skin on their penis is cold, which is the case here. Especially to compare their genitals to a dildo.

 

[JoeZhang]

This kind of seems like you’re insinuating that I’m comparing this to REAL racism?

Given I never quoted you, why do you assume that I was responding specifically to you?

 

[Timo]

Apparently being convinced your extermination is imminent helps.

It's rather interesting that so much of Trek's AI research involves plugging live people into the computers and sucking out something big, such as personalities or life memories. Today, that would be the absolute hardest way to achieve AI, as we lack the interfaces and the understanding of the human mind. But perhaps tomorrow, science will have discovered the interface (perhaps lying around in an alien cave?), making all other AI research irrelevant.

Who gets to upload memories? Not everybody, apparently, as the practice is very seldom referenced. But wacky communities of offbeat scientists, or lone mad researchers, seem to readily go for this tech. It may be commonly available but so poorly understood that only the truly mad and the truly desperate think they can make proper use of it. And most of the Frankensteins we see in Trek would be both: mad and desperate because their research is going nowhere without the shortcuts and cheats. But in Data's case, the roles would be split: the desperate people (many of them no doubt mad geniuses in their own fields of work) would have access to the mad genius specializing in AIs.

Now, the interesting part in all this is, did Soong follow tradition when creating Data? Did he, too, upload living people's "memory engrams" into the positronic noggin until sapience emerged? This method of creation is never indicated but never contradicted, either. And "memory engram transfer" by other technowords is seen whenever Data creates or fixes further androids of his kind...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Phoenix219]

It's rather interesting that so much of Trek's AI research involves plugging live people into the computers and sucking out something big, such as personalities or life memories. Today, that would be the absolute hardest way to achieve AI, as we lack the interfaces and the understanding of the human mind. But perhaps tomorrow, science will have discovered the interface (perhaps lying around in an alien cave?), making all other AI research irrelevant.

Who gets to upload memories? Not everybody, apparently, as the practice is very seldom referenced. But wacky communities of offbeat scientists, or lone mad researchers, seem to readily go for this tech. It may be commonly available but so poorly understood that only the truly mad and the truly desperate think they can make proper use of it. And most of the Frankensteins we see in Trek would be both: mad and desperate because their research is going nowhere without the shortcuts and cheats. But in Data's case, the roles would be split: the desperate people (many of them no doubt mad geniuses in their own fields of work) would have access to the mad genius specializing in AIs.

Now, the interesting part in all this is, did Soong follow tradition when creating Data? Did he, too, upload living people's "memory engrams" into the positronic noggin until sapience emerged? This method of creation is never indicated but never contradicted, either. And "memory engram transfer" by other technowords is seen whenever Data creates or fixes further androids of his kind...

Timo Saloniemi

With living memories as the "root" that needs to grow and be the basis for each new android to get the spark of life.... it adds a level of... creepiness... yet logic....

This really could be the result of decades of messing around with the Corby androids, after all....! Copying memories from real people was tantamount to their creation.

 

[JoeZhang]

It's also interesting that nobody seems surprised by this method - which suggests it is techincally trivial.

 

[Timo]

We might derive a timeline of sorts, in that personality transfer in "Turnabout Intruder" is still unheard of, while Daystrom's research is groundbreaking. But the research is still groundbreaking when Ira Graves dabbles in it. Presumably the tech is both "trivial" and full of complications that reduce its practical worth.

That is, nobody gets to live forever even when uploading one's memories into a databank is doable in colonial trappings. But it is weird that the latter doesn't get referenced more often. Why do people like Jack Crusher or Tasha Yar leave mere inflexible holo-messages to their next of kin, rather than something more interactive that is based on their stored memories?

There is some ambiguity there as regards storing the colonists' memories. Was it trivial only because Data's positronic brain is uniquely capable of serving as a template? Graves seemed to prefer Data to his own constructs, despite having worked with the latter for his whole life and only having recently met Data, built by his ridiculed rival. But why would our heroes have such faith in Data's capabilities when they know next to nothing about the android? Is it just because Data has told the story of his life so many times even before "Datalore", including the bit about him possessing the memories of the colonists?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JoeZhang]

You do wonder how they verified Data's account of events - I cannot remember if they (Starfleet) know about Lore's existance at this point?

Awfully handy to have an evil identical twin...

 

[Timo]

When we first hear about Data having the memories, it's when the heroes land on Omicron Theta for the first time. They have no idea about Lore, but they have heard about the memories thing before.

But Data has no "account of events" yet. The memories contain no clues as to what happened to the colony (even though Data has the impression the memories were dumped on him in haste, suggesting they were dumped because the Crystalline Entity had arrived). They also contain no mention of Soong or Lore, for some reason, as Data knows of neither "relative" before the events if this episode.

We might deduce then that the memory transfer is actually a very complicated procedure that doesn't facilitate last-minute updates. Perhaps it took months to collect the memories of each colonist, selectively at that, in a program that did not relate to the CE threat and possibly did not relate to the Data project, either (or at least Soong did not admit to it doing so)? Data later has some more informative "memory remnants" conveniently "awaken", with vague information about the motivations for the uploading. Perhaps this is an add-on readme file distinct from the "actual" memories?

Or perhaps the memories are just vague emotions of this sort all? But Data describes them as "the knowledge they accumulated", suggesting it's the emotion that is missing but the hard, easy-to-read data remaining. Which is a poor basis for Data to later argue that Dr. Marr's late son would have disapproved of mom's successful revenge. But Data is the master manipulator, and need not have based his statement on fact there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[TribbleFeeder]

So I was trying to think if the show (or other media) had ever talked about this but I'm drawing a blank...Does Data have an inner voice? Like a stream of consciousness type of thought process?

 

[Mojochi]

So I was trying to think if the show (or other media) had ever talked about this but I'm drawing a blank...Does Data have an inner voice? Like a stream of consciousness type of thought process?

So it's pretty clearly indicated during Data's Day that he is notating his letter to Maddox while sitting at his station, especially the scene where he talks about everyone being nervous about going into the Neutral Zone. It's certain he keeps his logs that way (Have we ever even heard personal logs of his? I suddenly can't remember) I imagine he does process thoughts that way too. He certainly doesn't say everything he thinks, which would suggest he must have some kind of inner dialog.

I remember him watching a pot, waiting to see if a watched pot boils. When his chronometer is off, it catches him off guard & he looks at it curiously. You just know there was an internal puzzled remark he thought right then but didn't utter

 

[TribbleFeeder]

@Mojochi you’re right, he does seem to have some sort of running thought process. I was hoping someone would know if there ever was a stream of consciousness moment or something of that nature.

Spoiler: If you haven’t watched West World

an integral part of being sentient in West World seems to be the inner dialog. I was wondering if it would be similar with Soong type androids.

I guess we could never really know what it’s like to be inside his head unless there happens to be an episode in the future from his perspective.

 

[Mojochi]

@Mojochi you’re right, he does seem to have some sort of running thought process. I was hoping someone would know if there ever was a stream of consciousness moment or something of that nature.

Spoiler: If you haven’t watched West World

an integral part of being sentient in West World seems to be the inner dialog. I was wondering if it would be similar with Soong type androids.

I guess we could never really know what it’s like to be inside his head unless there happens to be an episode in the future from his perspective.

Well, what is his dream program but an inner dialog? The entire episode Birthright 1 is about his inner dialog, him telling himself something

 

[TribbleFeeder]

Well, what is his dream program but an inner dialog? The entire episode Birthright 1 is about his inner dialog, him telling himself something

I guess I have to do a rewatch now!

 

[Mojochi]

I guess I have to do a rewatch now!

Well, it's not outright inner dialog, but in a roundabout sense, that is what a dream is

But a rewatch is never a bad plan

 

[Timo]

The question is answered with the reference to Data dreaming, yes, but I must wonder about the "inner dialogue" in "Data's Day". We hear it in voiceover when we see Data doing stuff that doesn't involve his lips moving. But that's always true of Kirk dictating a Captain's Log, too. Isn't the default assumption then that Data is dictating a log at some other location, at some other time, when the camera shows him sitting at his station? And not going through things-to-dictate in his mind?

Also, nobody has inner dialogue apace with events in reality, either. If you thought of a phrase, you thought of it at a speed incompatible with verbal expression, and out of grammatical order, and you only parsed together the impression of having done it "in a speaking fashion" ex post facto and contrary to fact. So hearing a voiceover is poor proof of stream-of-consciousness in action as such - it's merely a theatrical conceit, much like the camera seeing a face in a mirror when such a thing actually proves there is no face in the mirror, by the relevant laws of optics.

This creates ambiguity. Is a voiceover a voiceover or a theatrical way of pretending there are inner thoughts in process? In "Data's Day", context rather favors the former.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

Is a voiceover a voiceover or a theatrical way of pretending there are inner thoughts in process? In "Data's Day", context rather favors the former.

Honestly, I don't think I could say one way or the other if it's provable to be either, & you're right that in most cases & probably Data's Day specifically, that it's a log of a kind & probably not meant to be taken as a literal thought he just had, right in front of us. For more frequently it's a theatrical conceit, as you say.

I have seen examples of characters on screen having a thought, we see them have before us, & simultaneously speaking of it in voice over, & in a lot of those cases it's spelled out so we know that's what we're seeing. Johnny Depp's Hunter S. Thompson literally remarking in his narrative "Did I just say that out loud?" lol

I concede Data's Day is not an example as clear cut as that, nor at all really, but that one scene is interesting, where he's at the console remarking about being nervous in voice over, right at the moment he is taking a literal pause from his actions to "Think" on screen, & then his fingers begin nervously drumming on the console (Reflecting he does have some apprehension)

It might be the closest we get, because Star Trek in general doesn't ever present a character's thoughts spoken internally as such, but that he's paused thinking about the relevant voice over topic (nervousness) & then does and action (Finger drumming) & THEN he notices himself doing that, & kind of throws an inquisitive look at his own fingers, suggests that he's thinking something about his own action & the topic of nervousness in the pantomime we're watching, & even though we don't hear that last thought, it's an internalized thought he's having too, & some of the voice over too was at least relevant to that moment.

It was just enough to lead me to thinking he has internalized thoughts

 

[Marynator]

Also, nobody has inner dialogue apace with events in reality, either. If you thought of a phrase, you thought of it at a speed incompatible with verbal expression, and out of grammatical order, and you only parsed together the impression of having done it "in a speaking fashion" ex post facto and contrary to fact. So hearing a voiceover is poor proof of stream-of-consciousness in action as such - it's merely a theatrical conceit, much like the camera seeing a face in a mirror when such a thing actually proves there is no face in the mirror, by the relevant laws of optics.

Oh dear, some of us do like to think before we speak, right?

 

[TribbleFeeder]

Oh dear, some of us do like to think before we speak, right?