Dollhouse: "Haunted" (1x10)

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Imagine going to these weekly brain scans and it's just like any other week, only THIS time when you re-open your eyes someone tells you it's 5 days later and your funeral is scheduled for 6PM....
How messed up is that?

 

[Lumen]

Enjoyable episode, but I'm slightly annoyed at it being a stand-alone. I agree with the comments that Ballard is the most compelling character on the show.

A couple takeaways -- Ballard's got someone he can trust on the inside now, sort of, and he's getting more and more tortured about Millie; the dead woman's son said something about a Dollhouse in Manhattan, but I'm fairly certain the show is set in LA, which means we now have the location of another Dollhouse. Seem to be situated in areas where there is a lot of money.

The "life after death" angle was great though. Not much to add that hasn't been said, and I'm not really keen on giving it a lot of thought right now.

You die and someone else wakes up thinking they're you. That's basically the issue. There's no continuity of consciousness.

That's just semantics though. You lose say, five minutes of awareness, you could have been asleep... it's still everything that makes you you, alive and well, in an identical body. I don't really understand what makes the new person "someone else." but I suppose its a question of what you believe, so I won't ever understand.

It's more than semantics -- it has to do with the problem of identity. If you think what makes you you has nothing to do with your body or your brain, then this isn't a real problem. But if what makes the person who will go to my job tomorrow the same as the person who is writing this post is just that we have the same brain, then when this body is destroyed, I am dead and it doesn't matter what exists external to that. In the case of this episode, the person who died did not have any experiences after death. She just died, to experience nothing else.

If she hadn't died, the Dollhouse could have created an active of her personality, anyway, and we certainly wouldn't say that this new thing is just the same person and deserves to be treated as such. I wouldn't have any of their experiences, and if I were to die after the Doll was activated, I don't see why that should suddenly make us believe that I am the Doll.

 

[Lindley]

Good example.....the Dollhouse could activate second-me now, and it would think it was me even though I'm still alive. And second-me could even then come and kill first-me if it wanted to!

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

That's just semantics though. You lose say, five minutes of awareness, you could have been asleep... it's still everything that makes you you, alive and well, in an identical body. I don't really understand what makes the new person "someone else."

Bullshit. I'll try to make this simpler:

Someone identical to you walks up to you on the street one day. You converse, and they seem to know everything about you, including things you've told no one.

This person then points a gun at you and says they are going to kill you.

And you're all right with that, because as far as you know everything that makes "you, you" will be "alive in an identical body."

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

Whoa...

 

[Hermiod]

[
Some people would accept a copy as "immorality," or as much as they're ever going to get, the way people see their children or the work they accomplish in life (publish a book, design a building) as a form of immorality as long as it survives them.

What are you ? Temis #6 or #7 now ?

 

[Cartoonist]

The fact that this is a one-off, stand-alone story prevented them from making more of the ramifications of the whole "we can bring you back to life." She went too easily and conveniently into that good night. If it was necessary for them to do this story this way, they would have been better off clearly establishing at the outset that she could be shut down against her will by a trigger of some kind.

I thought this whole episode was foreshadowing for a future arc where we'd find out the people behind it all are after immortality, among other things. The lack of a shutdown switch convinced me of that. If tptb were body-hopping immortals, they wouldn't want a shutdown switch to exist.

 

[hyzmarca]

That's just semantics though. You lose say, five minutes of awareness, you could have been asleep... it's still everything that makes you you, alive and well, in an identical body. I don't really understand what makes the new person "someone else."

Bullshit. I'll try to make this simpler:

Someone identical to you walks up to you on the street one day. You converse, and they seem to know everything about you, including things you've told no one.

This person then points a gun at you and says they are going to kill you.

And you're all right with that, because as far as you know everything that makes "you, you" will be "alive in an identical body."

The issue is substantially more complex than that. Once the experiences of the two diverge, they are no longer identical. In this case, the woman in question did have some experiences that the Active does not, but when experience is identical, can the two be said to be different? Realtime and postmortum downloading certainly muddy the waters.

In the end, you always have the Ship of Theseus problem and the issue of being unable to stand in the same river twice. Taken to the logical end, it leads us to the conclusion that we die far more often than we care to consider. It takes about 7 years for every cell in your body to die and be relaced. Most people wouldn't consider that the person you were seven years ago is dead, but that is very much the case in the strictest sense. All that matters is how loose you want to play the issue for the sake of practicality.

 

[Ryan]

I thought this whole episode was foreshadowing for a future arc where we'd find out the people behind it all are after immortality, among other things. The lack of a shutdown switch convinced me of that. If tptb were body-hopping immortals, they wouldn't want a shutdown switch to exist.

We don't know there wasn't a switch. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't put one in. They just didn't need to use it this time since the doll was self-aware.

I look at the whole thing not as immortality but as a sort of insurance policy; on the event of your death there's a doll who will come take care of any unfinished business the way you would.

 

[Ryan]

It takes about 7 years for every cell in your body to die and be relaced.

Neurons aren't replaced.

 

[Lindley]

Even if they were, that isn't the point. I'm not sure why people seem to be missing the obvious here.

Even if the Active can be said to be "you" in every way possible, even if it believes itself to be you, the person who died is still dead. They don't "become" the Active, because the becoming does not work both ways.

It's not Farscape's "Out of Our Minds", it's SG1's "Tin Man".

 

[Evil_Kirkneivel]

Margaret said she felt alive again, although Dewitt told her she was dead, so I suppose everyone having this argument is right - or wrong. She's both dead and alive. It's a unique situation that doesn't fit the confines of current language.

Anyway, I thought the episode was above average. I think those viewers patient enough to stick with the show are reaping the benefits of the very open-ended concept it is based upon. And it's a good sign that people are debating the concepts explored on the show.

Here's a link to my review of 'Haunted'

 

[Forbin]

Margaret is dead. What was implanted in Echo was a BACKUP COPY of Margaret from three weeks ago.

Margaret still died, and never came back. She experienced death, and that original is gone forever. The original wil have no experience of living again, since the "new" Margaret is nothing more than a backup copy. It's not continuity, it's replacement.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Taken to the logical end, it leads us to the conclusion that we die far more often than we care to consider.

Identity and consciousness aren't matters of logic. They're experience itself. Logic is a process that yields conclusions based on initial premises, and any premise - or conclusion - that contradicts my experience is meaningless to me with respect to this particular matter.

Or, as Johnson said when he kicked the rock, "I refute it thus."

 

[Mr Light]

I do think this episode shows what the TRUE purpose of the Dollhouse is. This is just a work in progress. They're working on technology that will let you download your actual consciousness into the body and not just a cyber copy of it, so that you actually can live forever.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Actually, DeWitt seems to be most interested in what Echo is becoming as a personality without personal history.

 

[Roger Wilco]

Enjoyable episode, but I'm slightly annoyed at it being a stand-alone. I agree with the comments that Ballard is the most compelling character on the show.

Well, that's not surprising - after all he's the only character on the show who's not either a braindead zombie or a ruthless slave-owner.

 

[Ryan]

Enjoyable episode, but I'm slightly annoyed at it being a stand-alone. I agree with the comments that Ballard is the most compelling character on the show.

Well, that's not surprising - after all he's the only character on the show who's not either a braindead zombie or a ruthless slave-owner.

Boyd's actually my favorite character. Even though he's working in the dollhouse he feels like a more morally balanced person.

Ballard feels very obsessive to the point where he has an almost stalker-ish vibe. I was hoping they'd ballance that out by having Echo be a relation or old friendship rather than a girl he was lusting after (old girlfriend maybe?) but that got blown out of the water in Needs.

 

[Bishbot]

The issue is substantially more complex than that. Once the experiences of the two diverge, they are no longer identical. In this case, the woman in question did have some experiences that the Active does not, but when experience is identical, can the two be said to be different? Realtime and postmortum downloading certainly muddy the waters.

In the end, you always have the Ship of Theseus problem and the issue of being unable to stand in the same river twice. Taken to the logical end, it leads us to the conclusion that we die far more often than we care to consider. It takes about 7 years for every cell in your body to die and be relaced. Most people wouldn't consider that the person you were seven years ago is dead, but that is very much the case in the strictest sense. All that matters is how loose you want to play the issue for the sake of practicality.

This is exactly what I mean - what happens if you're having an operation and you die on the table but get saved? Is the person that wakes up still you? Of course it is. What if that operation was to replace several of your major organs? Are you still you after transplants - of course you are. This is just the ultimate transplant.

The scenario with two copies of the same person is moving the goalposts on the issue, because obviously they become different people the instant that one starts having experiences the other does not have. That's not the same as just having a brief interruption in your consciousness.

 

[Ryan]

This is exactly what I mean - what happens if you're having an operation and you die on the table but get saved? Is the person that wakes up still you? Of course it is. What if that operation was to replace several of your major organs? Are you still you after transplants - of course you are. This is just the ultimate transplant.

But it's not a transplant. A transplant implies you're moving something from one entity to another; someone loses a kidney while someone else gains one.

This is a duplication. From my perspective nothing's changed. From Joe Transplant's perspective he's got my kidney.