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Do Terminators have emotions?

^ It was never there. It was a program designed for that exact situation by Cameron and John based upon how he would have reacted to her at that age. There have been traces of it (in Season One Cameron goes into an innocent school girl mode when confronted by a teacher), but the actual program would not be of help as it was supposed to be unique to their situation.
 
so how come cameron shut her "normal girl" program off? we all know she's capable of it and she has that program since she blended in well at the school. but after that it's like she completely dropped it. hmmmm
The producers have said that Cameron was operating on a 'script' given to her by John Connor.

still that program to act normal is within her ability, but when the present john or others tell her to act normally, she still doesn't. as if she's lost the ability.


I got a theory on her acting normal. In "Alice from Palmdale" we saw her act normal yet she didn't know she was a Terminator. My theory is that if she turns on the program that allows her to act normal it infereres with her ability to function as Terminator and thus is useless as a protector of John Connor.

Jason
 
Or she doesn't see the point of using it. It'd be like staying with a foreigner and imitating their accent. It'd be weird, creepy and pointless. Her personality is what it is. What we saw in the pilot was just an act.

As for emotions, I've often thought that most emotional responses are born out of the bio-chemical nature of our bodies, glands and hormones, compounded by millions of years of built up instinct and race memory. None of these things effect a machine, so even if they do develop emotions, their emotional responce patterns won't be quite the same as ours. I think Asimov and Clarke wrote about this to some extent, even including the possibility of computer psychologists (thats experts in computer psychology, not computers that are psychologists) like Dr Chandra.

Regardless, as far as Terminator canon goes, it's already been established that Skynet got "angry" and that the Turk is quite possibly bored with math, so I'd say yes they can be emotional, in their way.
 
Regardless, as far as Terminator canon goes, it's already been established that Skynet got "angry" and that the Turk is quite possibly bored with math, so I'd say yes they can be emotional, in their way.

My laptop has good and bad days, it sometimes "sighs" or "hiccups" and at times becomes somewhat stubborn, almost as if it had good and bad moods.

Machines can vary from their programmed norm for any number of reasons, normally just variations from heat, pressure, age, dust, wearing down of parts. Hard drives accumulate errors over time in the code that cause odd program glitches. These aren't personality traits, just the manifestation of errors or variations in the machine that we 'humanise' as if they were.

Maybe the Turk's repeated computations created temporary files or errors that impeded the ability for it to perform more to the same level of proficiency. Skynet determined Humans were a considerable threat, being a tactical defensive and offensive control program, it reacted in the manner it thought most logical and ended the threat.
 
When Weaver first reveals herself in 2x01, she says "Sorry I piss you off... the feeling's mutual." So we have a Terminator expressing regret and frustration in the same sentence. Also, Cromartie's pimp slap on Jodie from 2x07 is a good indicator that Terminators experience frustration at the very least.
 
"I register the information of being shot....you could call that "pain"..."
 
When Weaver first reveals herself in 2x01, she says "Sorry I piss you off... the feeling's mutual." So we have a Terminator expressing regret and frustration in the same sentence. Also, Cromartie's pimp slap on Jodie from 2x07 is a good indicator that Terminators experience frustration at the very least.

Good points.

There is a portion of this novel where a feminine based I-950 Unit Terminator is rerouting circuits in her neural network processor so that she can experience emotions during sex with the human she's supposed to be guarding.
 
Cameron appears to have shown much more subtle clues that maybe she does have something resembling emotions though - not the unsubtle, and fake, emotions when she was trapped and still "bad", but little things. Like recently, reading the suicide-prevention pamphlet while looking thoughtfully at the ruined chip (of the self-terminated contortionist terminator) in her hand. Or when she was asking Sarah about religion, or asking John if she had a birthday, or when she was looking at the bar of Coltan she saved; or when staring at the primitive robots at the chess tournaments. She seems to be fascinated by her own origins, judging by this, and by getting some understanding about creation and life and death. Remember when she wrote the "goodbye note" (we don't know to who), after she had seen others do it for the girl at school?

And the satisfied smile on her face after she had been able to beat the nuclear plant guards at snooker (getting their money, and the info she needed about their ID cards)? She didn't need to fool anyone with that. Her performance as Allison, admittedly probably caused by some deep infiltration mode running by accident, was also extremely convincing, tears and all. And there is also the matter of her ballet performance, after the mission need for it was long over. Why did she do it, if she didn't get some satisfaction from it, which implies emotions?

Cameron appears to be such an advanced model, especially made to simulate or perhaps even experience human emotions (so she could work as an infiltrator), that I don't think it's entirely out of the question she does have something that approaches emotions - much like Data did (even before the emotion chip he seemed to show emotion at time, like in the episode with the "collector" who abducted him, for example).

Two other possible places where she may have showed some emotion: assuming the interrogation-Cameron in "Allison of Palmdale" is the Cameron we know, than the killing of Allison may have been inspired by emotions about the "lie" (it would mirror what she almost did to Jody, in the present, also seemingly on emotion). Purely rational, I don't the killing was needed - Allison lying was to be expected, and she had her uses still for study, to observe on and practice human behaviour, or simply to be "preserved' like the animals and people in the cages.
The other is when she reacted to Sarah's desperate question about cancer in "Automatic for the people": there she wondered if she was a timebomb to go off (this was a short while after she went bad), with some passion behind it.

Well stated. :techman: And there's enough ambiguity in Cameron's HAL 9000 moment from 2x01, that I'm not so sure it was all fake.

Mansonator also shows wry humor when she quips "I'll be that's never happened before either" after tongue-killing the nuclear plant operator after his make-out session and premature ejaculation. Man, that guy just couldn't catch a break, could he?
 
Emotion in Terminators is going to be coming more into play as this season continues. That's all the more that I'm saying (sorry this is a spoiler).
 
I like to hear that, it's certainly consistent with what they have shown so far.

TimM; thanks for your comment!
 
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