Nth - Why is Data showing distate for Barclay's performance?

[Tom Riley]

I know it's not canon but there is an explanation that I think really fits that David Mack gives in his Star Trek: The Next Generation: Cold Equations trilogy...

Spoiler: Cold Equations

A certain character in the book describes how Data having no emotions is inaccurate and that he has "machine emotions" but not "human emotions." Machine emotions are described as Data's desire to learn, his desire to become more human, his curiosity, etc. as opposed to complex human emotions such as love, hate, sadness, fear, happiness, etc.

I think that explains how he could be confused by Barclay's performance and the audience's reaction to it and then have that situation prompt his response. I do think it was more confusion than irritation, it may have just not quite come across entirely clear. He was confused as to why the crowd was reacting in a way that he perceived to be an over-reaction.

From a production standpoint, if Data were to be truly emotionless the writers would be forced to make him essentially a boring, simple, dialogue delivery system. He would be able to provide ideas, facts, and information to the crew but little else. I don't see how he'd even be able to interact with the crew in any interesting manner. I think they wanted to make him still an interesting and compelling character so gave some leeway with his "emotional" range. Even his desire to become more human, his ability to be interested in anything at all shows that he has some level of "machine emotions" even if they aren't the full range of human emotions.

 

[Makarov]

A real life emotionless robot would not be as endearing as data for sure. However I see nothing wrong with Data grimacing at his performance. There doesn't have to be any emotion involved, he's simply reacting the way he calculated a human would react to a bad performance.

Why then cannot Data decide to like or dislike liquid beverages without his emotion chip?

He can analyze whether or not the drink is good based on it's composition. If everyone was enjoying something he analyzed as crap I'm sure he would have a confused face too.

 

[trekshark]

Data having some super basic emotions that aren't directly referred to as emotions doesn't bother me. Lore had some built in and although they caused issues and Soong left them out of Data it's believable to think that something of Lore's emotional code got left in Data's code and maybe just not enough to rise to the level of what people normally consider emotion.
There's also learned behavior at play. Like when he critiques Picard's art. He can tell without emotion that the skill level isn't there and his hesitation in stating so could easily be due to him learning from observation over the 20+ years he's been alive that humans don't react well so his CPU is in overdrive trying to find words less likely to upset his commanding officer

 

[DarthTom]

I know it's not canon but there is an explanation that I think really fits that David Mack gives in his Star Trek: The Next Generation: Cold Equations trilogy...

Spoiler: Cold Equations

A certain character in the book describes how Data having no emotions is inaccurate and that he has "machine emotions" but not "human emotions." Machine emotions are described as Data's desire to learn, his desire to become more human, his curiosity, etc. as opposed to complex human emotions such as love, hate, sadness, fear, happiness, etc.

I think that explains how he could be confused by Barclay's performance and the audience's reaction to it and then have that situation prompt his response. I do think it was more confusion than irritation, it may have just not quite come across entirely clear. He was confused as to why the crowd was reacting in a way that he perceived to be an over-reaction.

From a production standpoint, if Data were to be truly emotionless the writers would be forced to make him essentially a boring, simple, dialogue delivery system. He would be able to provide ideas, facts, and information to the crew but little else. I don't see how he'd even be able to interact with the crew in any interesting manner. I think they wanted to make him still an interesting and compelling character so gave some leeway with his "emotional" range. Even his desire to become more human, his ability to be interested in anything at all shows that he has some level of "machine emotions" even if they aren't the full range of human emotions.

Your explanation still fails to explain why Data needs his emotion chip to decide if he likes a liquid beverage or not.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Data's response wasn't emotional. He was confused by the audience response. He was judging Barclay's performance by standards he considered objective that he learned from his personal exploration of acting. Based on those standards, Barclay's performance was poor, yet the audience was applauding, which did not make sense to him.

He did not understand the social nuance that the audience response is not necessarily proportional to the quality of the performance. That is not emotional. That's just resolving an apparent contradiction.

Data does not experience emotion but he is able to formulate his own value algorithms based on his experience. Just like f(murder) = evil, but f(murder Fajo) = not evil.

Based on the algorithms Data had generated to judge acting:

f(Barclay's acting) = Bad.
g(Bad acting) = No appluse.

Yet, applause. Contradiction.

Possible reasons for contradiction, either f() is incorrect, or g() is incorrect. Solution: Inquire with human friends to obtain clarification.

 

[Iamnotspock]

Data's response wasn't emotional. He was confused by the audience response. He was judging Barclay's performance by standards he considered objective that he learned from his personal exploration of acting. Based on those standards, Barclay's performance was poor, yet the audience was applauding, which did not make sense to him.

This.

The quality of an acting performance can be judged on objective terms, such as clarity of diction, voice projection, intonation, ability to emote convincingly etc.

 

[Trekker4747]

So, here's another thing.

Isn't it sort of insulting to Barclay to give such an over-zealous reaction to his performance?

I was at my niece's band performance back in mid-May and for a bunch of 5th graders and younger they all actually did pretty good. When the program concluded people gave them a standing ovation. Not because we just listened to the New York Philharmonic of grade-school band performances, but because we wanted the kids to feel good about their performance, and they're hardly old enough yet to be cynical about standing ovations of this nature.

Barclay? He's a grown-ass middle-aged man. He knows his performance blew, he knows how his rehearsals went, that he stumbled over lines, that he forgot lines, that he didn't put much into the character. So he's not going to be fooled by the "Bravo! Bravo!" and standing ovation. He's going to know people are putting him on, which is kind of insulting.

Now, I'm not saying the audience should have booed and thrown rotten tomatoes at him, but don't insult the damn guy by giving such an over-reactionary response to his performance. A polite applause, probably would have been sufficient. Unless the standing ovation and "Bravo! Bravo!" was for their torment coming to and end.

 

[Timo]

Even accepting it your way, irritation is an emotional response. Machines/Computers without emotional chips in Data's case wouldn't become, 'irritated.'

Why would Data's case be special? The computer of the E-D became irritated with Data a couple of times - it's a reaction that could rather easily be programmed into the interface, in order to make the user in turn respond in a desired manner.

If a computer is capable of carrying a standard conversation, it is automatically capable of doing it without passion, with passion, angrily, lovingly, sarcastically, etc. Ability to express emotion is a necessary side product of Turing test competence.

Apparently, the role of the emotion chip is not to give Data the ability to express emotions - it is to give Data the ability to experience emotions, that is, get emotional satisfaction out of being so damn emotional all the time. Data is constantly emoting, sometimes because he wants to experiment (he also likes e.g. to sneeze), sometimes apparently because emoting is what he did to amuse Soong in his "childhood" and he doesn't know better. He's just not very good at regulating his emoting, and piss-poor at understanding the significance of emoting - and without the chip, he is incapable of accepting his emoting as the "emotion" thing he so covets.

For all we know, the chip only contains a single line of code that countermands the block in his original programming that prevents him from rationally accepting that he's emoting. It's his dad giving him the key to adulthood in a purely symbolical manner, much like turning eighteen gives you theoretical access to alcohol even if you have had practical access since you learned to open daddy's closet at one-and-a-half.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timewalker]

Data isn't un-emotional. Vulcans are.

Though, he has bad emotion circuits that play them wrong.

Vulcans are not unemotional. They have emotions, but are trained from early childhood to keep them under strict control.

 

[Timo]

Vulcans have such strong emotions that they supposedly would consistently surface and make their lives difficult if not for the strict self-control. Romulans lack the extreme Surakian self-control and still manage to have a society - but apparently one with lots of political backstabbing and revolting and assassinating constantly going on. (Perhaps the modern Romulan society is held together by everybody in the leading classes being a drably dressed monk, and only bluecollars like Nero are allowed true vulcanoid emotional freedom?)

Data... Well, Data hasn't actually confessed to trying to suppress his possible emotions, but "Datalore" already shows that Soongian androids can either let loose with very humanlike emotions, or then practice restraint and use formal language and whatnot. So Data probably is much like Vulcans: capable of much stronger emotions than your average human, and for that very reason the paragon of self-discipline.

It's just that Data's self-control may be something programmed into him by Soong when daddy found out how dangerous the emotionally uninhibited Lore was - without Data himself having much say, or perhaps even realizing that there were blocks in his programming. Although it may equally well be that Data consciously refrained from being Lore, even before finding out that Lore existed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tom Riley]

I know it's not canon but there is an explanation that I think really fits that David Mack gives in his Star Trek: The Next Generation: Cold Equations trilogy...

Spoiler: Cold Equations

A certain character in the book describes how Data having no emotions is inaccurate and that he has "machine emotions" but not "human emotions." Machine emotions are described as Data's desire to learn, his desire to become more human, his curiosity, etc. as opposed to complex human emotions such as love, hate, sadness, fear, happiness, etc.

I think that explains how he could be confused by Barclay's performance and the audience's reaction to it and then have that situation prompt his response. I do think it was more confusion than irritation, it may have just not quite come across entirely clear. He was confused as to why the crowd was reacting in a way that he perceived to be an over-reaction.

From a production standpoint, if Data were to be truly emotionless the writers would be forced to make him essentially a boring, simple, dialogue delivery system. He would be able to provide ideas, facts, and information to the crew but little else. I don't see how he'd even be able to interact with the crew in any interesting manner. I think they wanted to make him still an interesting and compelling character so gave some leeway with his "emotional" range. Even his desire to become more human, his ability to be interested in anything at all shows that he has some level of "machine emotions" even if they aren't the full range of human emotions.

Your explanation still fails to explain why Data needs his emotion chip to decide if he likes a liquid beverage or not.

Well that's because I was responding to Data's apparent confusion to the reaction to Barclay's performance.

But about the beverage... Let's see what I can throw out there off the top of my head.

As it's been stated here several times, Data could determine whether a performance was good or not based on comparisons to certain standards... It doesn't really work the same with beverages. I love unsweetened grapefruit juice, my boyfriend hates it. There is no standard there to compare to. There is simply the bitterness of the drink causing a disgusting reaction for my boyfriend but a completely different reaction for me. Taste is subjective. If something is more subjective like that, I can see why Data would need something like the emotion chip to find a reaction to it, whereas without it he would try grapefruit juice and simply identify that it was bitter. What more could he do with it? Is it good? I think so, my boyfriend doesn't. Data? How is he to decide? The facts are... it's bitter, tastes like grapefruit. How can he decide if a drink is "pleasing" to him or not? That's like asking him to pick a favorite color, would he be able to? How could he pick any one color over another to consider more "pleasing?" He would need the emotion chip.

It fits with the "machine emotions" idea from my first post because we saw that he *did* need the emotion chip to decide if he liked that drink. "Machine emotions" could be basic enough to not include something more complex like preference.

 

[FreddyE]

What strikes me as very strange is Datas comment "not rooted in The Method approach"...it sounds as if not using "the method"-way of acting is somehow "bad" in itself which is just nonsense. I guess whoever wrote that dialog has NO idea of acting techniques at all. Just because somebody isn´t using "the method" it does not mean his acting is bad.

 

[Trekker4747]

What strikes me as very strange is Datas comment "not rooted in The Method approach"...it sounds as if not using "the method"-way of acting is somehow "bad" in itself which is just nonsense. I guess whoever wrote that dialog has NO idea of acting techniques at all. Just because somebody isn´t using "the method" it does not mean his acting is bad.

Well, we already know that Data uses The Method for his own acting and performances, and when he tells Picard this Picard's response suggests The Method is an old technique that's not really used anymore. All the same, since Data prefers The Method he may use it critique other actors.