A Philosophical Question
- Thread starter Sheliak
- Start date
A slug who records the living memories of it's host, and by making them available to each succeeding host connects many lifetimes of experience.
But among all those personalities of the hosts...is there also a Dax personality? Is there something separate from the hosts that the intelligence of Dax brings to the table?
Hello Dolly, my favorite faded replicant.
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My personal hypothesis is no. That Dax is essentially an organic removable hard drive.
From the way the show highlighted her, I always imagined that the writers thought that Dax was a clever comment on the human condition - the way Spock's battle with his emotions was essentially human, or the way Odo's struggle to fit in was essentially human, or Keylehr's struggle with her temper...
... but I still have no idea what Dax is meant to say about people? that deep down, we all struggle with our thousands of years worth of memories? that we don't know if we're us, or some really old previous life version of ourselves? I have never identified with the character at all - until Ezri, which seemed to comment that sometimes we are thrust into roles we aren't really prepared for?
What was Dax supposed to say about humanity?
... but I still have no idea what Dax is meant to say about people? that deep down, we all struggle with our thousands of years worth of memories? that we don't know if we're us, or some really old previous life version of ourselves? I have never identified with the character at all - until Ezri, which seemed to comment that sometimes we are thrust into roles we aren't really prepared for?
What was Dax supposed to say about humanity?
I feel the Trill definately could have been a better defined race. I enjoyed the episodes we did get that gave us a bit of insight into Trill customs and beliefs, but I felt that Jadzia's characterisation was never right. Who was Jadzia, really? I understood how in a way she was a combination of all of her previous hosts - she carried out Curzon's blood oath, and still had feelings for her ex-wife.
Does that mean then, that her/Jadzia's personality had been rewritten upon joining? Does Jadzia exist as a seperate, new host, different from all the other hosts that previously had Dax? It's all complicated because we never knew Jadzia without Dax inside her. Ezri coming along helped things a little, or possibly confused them more; I haven't decided.
Ezri wasn't prepared for joining, it was all done on the fly, so when she runs into Sisko she's still somewhat schizophrenic - not sure which host she is when she wakes up, not knowing if something she's done is in her past or someone else's etc. It is established that before she was joined, Ezri was much less scatty. We meet her family and understand what type of life she may have had pre-joining (not that that was a brilliant episode or anything!)
Of course alongside the development, Ezri pretty much slid back into Jadzia's old life. Living onboard DS9, she struck up relationships with all of Jadzia's old friends. So does that mean Ezri's personality has been supplanted by Dax's previous memories?
Does that mean then, that her/Jadzia's personality had been rewritten upon joining? Does Jadzia exist as a seperate, new host, different from all the other hosts that previously had Dax? It's all complicated because we never knew Jadzia without Dax inside her. Ezri coming along helped things a little, or possibly confused them more; I haven't decided.
Ezri wasn't prepared for joining, it was all done on the fly, so when she runs into Sisko she's still somewhat schizophrenic - not sure which host she is when she wakes up, not knowing if something she's done is in her past or someone else's etc. It is established that before she was joined, Ezri was much less scatty. We meet her family and understand what type of life she may have had pre-joining (not that that was a brilliant episode or anything!)
Of course alongside the development, Ezri pretty much slid back into Jadzia's old life. Living onboard DS9, she struck up relationships with all of Jadzia's old friends. So does that mean Ezri's personality has been supplanted by Dax's previous memories?
Have you actually watched the show? It's stated over and over again that it's a joining - that the symbiont's personality blends with the host's personality. If either one of them overwhelms the other, then it's not working right.
Dax's primary personality characteristic seems to be the desire to break the rules. As Sisko once said, "She's a Dax - sometime they don't think, they just do." He also said that Curzon wasn't the "usual socially acceptable Trill," implying that being a rule-breaker is not a general characteristic of all symbionts, just of Dax itself.
Jadzia was a nerdy, booksmart girl before joining. After joining, Dax's fun-loving, rule-breaking personality gradually blended with Jadzia's (notice that there's not much evidence of fun in season 1 - in fact she takes umbrage when Bashir's dream-Dax calls her a "cold fish"). But she didn't lose the scientific interests she had before.
Dax's primary personality characteristic seems to be the desire to break the rules. As Sisko once said, "She's a Dax - sometime they don't think, they just do." He also said that Curzon wasn't the "usual socially acceptable Trill," implying that being a rule-breaker is not a general characteristic of all symbionts, just of Dax itself.
Jadzia was a nerdy, booksmart girl before joining. After joining, Dax's fun-loving, rule-breaking personality gradually blended with Jadzia's (notice that there's not much evidence of fun in season 1 - in fact she takes umbrage when Bashir's dream-Dax calls her a "cold fish"). But she didn't lose the scientific interests she had before.
So are you saying that Dax itself has it's own personality? By your definition, if the original blank-slate Dax has it's own personality, it would have but a fractional affect on subsequent host(s) at best, if each new host comprises 50% of the new total. Seems to me that if there were an original personality, it would only be a technicality at some point.
So far, I'm still in the "organic removable hard drive faction"...
It's probably not 50%, at least not from the initial period of joining - perhaps later there might be a more obvious blending of the host personality and those in the symbiont. I forget the ep where Jadzia was training the initiate, but I recall her warning him that the training was a necessity, because otherwise the symbiont would dominate his personality. Something to that effect.
There's no question that the symbionts are intelligent, if not sentient. That's mentioned at least in "Facets" and probably some other eps as well. There's more to them than just a sort of living hard drive, although TNG seemed to give that impression in their original concept of the Trill.
There's no question that the symbionts are intelligent, if not sentient. That's mentioned at least in "Facets" and probably some other eps as well. There's more to them than just a sort of living hard drive, although TNG seemed to give that impression in their original concept of the Trill.
So the end result is 50%? Actually, any fraction would spark the dilution effect, making this discussion somewhat moot.
I'm still leaned the other way. I can't speak to TNG as I only forced myself to watch the entire series once (between watching seasons 3 & 4 of DS9, and only so I could get the complete backstory on Worf).
Well it's definably a joining. Possibly akin to an Ipod that has X amount set aside for "music" and y amount for hard drive space. The symbiont is alive. We see them communicating in "Equilibrium".
TIMOR
Just making sure they're comfortable. Checking the ion
concentration, the temperature, the viscosity...
They get very cranky if everything isn't perfect.
You don't want them to get cranky.
BASHIR
No... of course not.
TIMOR
They're very demanding, you know. Sometimes I don't know why
I put up with it.
That's definitely not how i understand it.
To me, yes, the symbiont absolutely has its own personality. Why wouldn't it? It's a living creature. Even a cat has a distinct personality from another cat, so why wouldn't a symbiont have distinct personality traits from another symbiont?
To stick with the computer analogy, think of the symbiont and the host as two computers networked together. For the period of their joining, they have access to the same memories, the same data files. Any experiences the joined being has during that period are recorded to both hard drives simultaneously. The programs pre-installed on the two computers have to find a way to work together for the period of their joining. But that doesn't mean that those programs spontaneously migrate from one computer to the other. They're still two separate computers, just working together for the moment.
When the host dies, the symbiont goes back to being just the symbiont. It's not still symbiont+host. Sure, it has memories of what it was like to be that person, but that doesn't mean it still is that person.
Granted, some habits may be picked up from the time the two were joined. For example, Jadzia held her hands behind her back like Lela did, and she picked up Curzon's taste for raktajino. But who's to say those are Lela and Curzon's habits, and not "Lela+Dax" and "Curzon+Dax" 's? And those habits are clearly not immutable traits from then on, since Ezri hated the taste of raktajino.
Ezri is not Jadzia. Ezri joins with Dax, not with Dax+Jadzia+Curzon+Tobin+Audrid...... etc. Each new joining is a new person, not a collection of old people. Again, having memories of being a person does not equal being that person, any more than a 2008 Vista PC containing a file originally recorded on a ZX-81 makes it a ZX-81, or B-4 having Data's memories makes him Data.
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