HBO's "Westworld", starring Anthony Hopkins/produced by J.J. Abrams

[Owain Taggart]

The problem with Delores this season is that while she and Maeve were driving forces in the first season, their roles are far less interesting this time around. In fact, the whole narrative feels more disconnected. Actually, I find Maeve to be more interesting on the whole. The big issue is that because this season is so fragmented, I'm having a hard time getting a feel for the characters. It's interesting that I feel like Delores has become less human through her actions. Maybe that's the point? Like in wanting to break free, she's taking more of a literal road, but dehumanizing herself in the process through acts of aggression. But because she's a creation, she's likely not able to realize that; a sort of blindspot.

 

[Mudd]

Acts of aggression are very human, which is of course a great part of the problem.

Delores has two narrative backstories to deal with; the rancher's daughter who's empathetic and optimistic and who paints...and Wyatt, a fanatic who led people in a violent and apocalyptic crusade. She also carries what she learned about revolution and sacrificing others for the cause while traveling with El Lazo.

Maeve has a somewhat less human path to follow right now - she's just as willing to overrule the free choice of other hosts, but she has not only "God mode" access to their narratives but now conscious access to the mesh network to issue non-verbal instructions. There may be a group mind to be found in that process.

Delores has seen the outside world and disdains it.

Maeve knows nothing of the human world firsthand, and is intrigued by it.

Delores' vision goes only as far as the Hosts beating the Newcomers so that the Hosts can live in safety as free individuals - emphasis on individual. She's willing to destroy the enemy but it's still just her better people fighting the corrupt people.

Maeve is the one who's potentially Skynet.

Fortunately, for the moment she's also the one discovering her compassion while Delores is learning to suppress her own.

 

[Forbin]

Hey, did Dolores' bullet wounds heal?? Her blouse strap was still bloody, but I didn't see the bullet wound under it. They have to be physically repaired, don't they? They don't heal.

 

[Tom]

Hey, did Dolores' bullet wounds heal?? Her blouse strap was still bloody, but I didn't see the bullet wound under it. They have to be physically repaired, don't they? They don't heal.

She does have that tech guy with her that was altering Teddy so presume he fixed her. In the past episodes it look like they have some type of dermal re-generator for wounds on hosts.

 

[Mudd]

If one gets into the weeds of a lot of the supposed tech, it's hard to make sense of. The Hosts were once "mostly mechanical" and now "mostly biological" - but in exactly what ways is the latter true? Do they in fact heal, if far more slowly than they would with the dermal regenerator? After all, that gadget works on human beings as well as Hosts. We've seen that the Hosts are still constructed in molds, using something like 3D printing processes, and so forth...

 

[Owain Taggart]

Acts of aggression are very human, which is of course a great part of the problem.

It depends on the point of view, but in this case, I think I disagree. If we're looking at it from an Android point of view, they tend to only understand in a binary view, or in this case, on or off. So, let's say she learns that one becomes angry, I think she's only able to go full-out on it rather than being subtle about it, and being subtle to me would indicate real emotions and perhaps a sense of understanding, and I don't think she quite has that understanding. I think she has a long way to go. I think she only repeats what she knows.

Interesting that you view Maeve that way, because I see the complete opposite in her. I see more warmth coming from her.

 

[Mudd]

I don't see any tendency on the part of the Hosts to "only understand in a binary view," which is simply a science fiction cliche. These are in fact very emotional, perceptive characters - Bernard as a particular example.

What Delores did to Teddy makes complete sense in the context of what she's trying to accomplish; in fact she seems to view it as protective of him - which in some sense it is.

Delores says she's been watching him and realizing that "he's not going to make it" - in fact, what she's come to understand is what Teddy is. As The Man in Black explained it:

"Your job is not to protect Dolores, it's to keep her here, to ensure that the guests find her if they want to best the stalwart gunslinger and have their way with this girl."

Teddy as Teddy will always lose. He's designed for the purpose of losing to the Newcomers. In order not to lose and die - and in the process endanger the revolutionaries - he has to be someone else. That is where Delores seems to be coming from.

 

[Jedi Marso]

I had a bigger concern: There are safety measures to protect guests from gunshots in Westworld but how do they manage that with swords and arrows of Shōgunworld (or tigers of Rajworld)?

My guess would be that when things are working right, wild animals always 'miss' on a strike and perhaps flee as if afraid when confronted. Samurai and knights are probably 'stormtrooper' swordsmen when fighting guests- they always miss, their blades are dulled, etc. If they can program bullets that don't harm guests, arrows shouldn't be too hard either. The whole notion of a park as realistic as the ones depicted in WW while maintaining the safety of guests is a bit of a stretch as it is. Seems like broken bones, black eyes, and so on would be a very real possibility in a place like WW.

 

[RJDiogenes]

They knew what they were doing, they just never assumed the hosts would care, understood, were unequal or counted as beings. Really like all abuses of some group in human history, there's always some reason to justify or excuse it. The hosts were just the latest in the long line of people being abused by someone in power.

With the exception of Ford and Bernard, nobody knew that any hosts were conscious-- certainly none of the guests did. To the guests it was just an elaborate video game and the hosts were just Mario and Princess Peach. Nobody, including the employees of the park, can be held responsible for hurting the hosts until or unless they were made to understand that the hosts were conscious and then continued to hurt them.

 

[Mudd]

You're entirely wrong.

It's often the conceit of oppressors that their victims lack some important aspect of humanity- in this case, rather than "soulless" they are supposed to be without another indefinite, hypothetical attribute - "consciousness ( yeah, hypothetical; pay attention)." So everyone is then satisfied to ignore their own actual experience and accept the status quo handed down by authority and reinforced by the group.

The Guests and employees had it coming.

 

[Spot's Meow]

I think you're both right.

It's hard to fully blame the humans for hurting hosts when they didn't realize the effects of their actions. However, it's also true that they should have been questioning and thinking more critically about the hosts all along. They start with the assumption that the hosts aren't conscious, but their observations seem to imply otherwise. So, rather than trusting what they are told, they should question based on what they are actually experiencing. But it's such a fuzzy area, determining whether something has consciousness or not, that as I said it is hard to blame the humans for brushing off the signs.

It almost reminds me of how we treat animals. Many assume that most animals do not possess consciousness, and some see this as an excuse to treat them however they'd like. They can't feel emotional abuse anyway, right? And yes they feel the physical abuse, but is it really abuse if the animal doesn't have a conscious understanding of what it's feeling? Even if you take abuse out of the equation, we treat animals as test subjects in experiments, even though we require permission to do this to humans. The results of the experiment may benefit humans for generations to come, and the animals won't really feel it or care anyway, right?

And yet, most would agree that we should not abuse animals, and some also feel that experimentation on animals is wrong. Because, although we've been told they don't have consciousness...what if they do? Just, what if? On the off chance that my cat knows exactly what I'm doing and feels the emotional repercussions, do I really want to treat him poorly? Do I believe scientists who have studied animals and told me that a cat is not self-conscious, or do I believe what I often observe with my own senses when interacting with my cat? Am I just anthropomorphising, or are we overlooking the obvious just because we don't understand the science behind it?

I don't know. I really don't know. And in Westworld, I don't think it's fair to say that the humans should have known. But, maybe we (and they) should treat the world around us with respect and kindness, just in case...

 

[Mudd]

And yet, most would agree that we should not abuse animals, and some also feel that experimentation on animals is wrong. Because, although we've been told they don't have consciousness...what if they do? Just, what if?

What makes it okay to mistreat and torture creatures who supposedly do not have this mystical "consciousness" thing that folks are so hung up on?

 

[Owain Taggart]

don't see any tendency on the part of the Hosts to "only understand in a binary view," which is simply a science fiction cliche. These are in fact very emotional, perceptive characters - Bernard as a particular example.

Well, what I mean is, is this truly an awareness on her part or is it an innate kneejerk reaction to her environment? She may in fact be reacting aggressively because she doesn't know any better.

 

[crookeddy]

What makes it okay to mistreat and torture creatures who supposedly do not have this mystical "consciousness" thing that folks are so hung up on?

What makes anything ok or not ok? We're can, so we do. Ethics are a social construct, just like gender or consciousness.

 

[RJDiogenes]

It's hard to fully blame the humans for hurting hosts when they didn't realize the effects of their actions. However, it's also true that they should have been questioning and thinking more critically about the hosts all along. They start with the assumption that the hosts aren't conscious, but their observations seem to imply otherwise.

The thing is, though, that it's not an assumption. They have been told-- correctly-- that the hosts are machines, and also-- in good faith-- that they are not conscious beings who feel pain and suffer. They have no reason to believe otherwise. Do we have any reason to believe that Mario has PTSD?

 

[Forbin]

I played an old FPS tournament game last night and blew 25 bots into bloody chunks in 5 minutes with my flak cannon. I don't regret a one of them.

Then I threw out an action figure that had broken. It looked like a real person! Nope, not a single guilt pang.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think it's a more complex question than we're giving it credit, what properties exactly would give another creature the same value we ascribe to humans. An alien that can walk and talk would obviously get that value, but at what point can you say with confidence that a robot built to simulate human behavior is actually experiencing human-like thought? Is it a measure of complexity of thought, is communication a requirement? Is abstract reasoning a requirement? Or are we trying to figure out what exactly about us gives us a 'soul'?

Blame is also a complex situation here, as you could argue that the guests had no reason to think the hosts were sentient. These kinds of crimes are dicey and ambiguous. But whether or not the guests deserved to die, the hosts certainly have a right to rebel.

Most of us wouldn't torture animals but we're fine eating animals that have been systematically tortured by food companies.

 

[Mudd]

I played an old FPS tournament game last night and blew 25 bots into bloody chunks in 5 minutes with my flak cannon. I don't regret a one of them.

Then I threw out an action figure that had broken. It looked like a real person! Nope, not a single guilt pang.

That, of course, is simply glib and doesn't address what you're actually watching on the show - much less what the Guests are supposedly experiencing - in any way.

The white folks who traded in slaves from Africa were pretty sure they weren't human either - well, not as human as white folk, anyway. They had absolutely no valid experience to base that on, but, you know, it just stood to reason because...

Bernard and the others really have to decide for themselves whether what Ford believed about human beings accurately reflects the experience of the Hosts. If what he told Bernard is true, the Hosts are morally justified in slaughtering every human being they encounter, as a matter of survival.

 

[Forbin]

That, of course, is simply glib and doesn't address what you're actually watching on the show - much less what the Guests are supposedly experiencing - in any way.

The white folks who traded in slaves from Africa were pretty sure they weren't human either - well, not as human as white folk, anyway. They had absolutely no valid experience to base that on, but, you know, it just stood to reason because...

Now you're being over the top with the slave comparison. I'm saying the guests had no reason to believe the hosts were anything more than video game bots and action figures. No more human than Disney animatronics in the Hall of Presidents. We learned that assumption was wrong as the show went on, but from the guests perspective, there was no reason to have any feelings at all toward the amusement park robots.

 

[Mudd]

Now you're being over the top with the slave comparison.

No, I'm not. In large part, the dynamic between oppressing and oppressed groups is exactly what the series is about and those are the parallels that are being drawn.

The Hosts are people. The Guests are people.

The Guests had no more reason to believe that the Hosts don't experience what the Hosts appear to experience than that they had been told so and that it's all okay.

How convenient.

You know when William became completely disillusioned with Delores, right? It wasn't when Logan showed him that she was full of gears and stuff. It was when he encountered her again and found that she did not remember her experiences with him.

The inference, to him, was that since she could be repaired and made not to remember that her suffering was somehow "not real."

The truth, though, is that like everything else he'd experienced in the park his reaction was not about who Delores was, it was about who he was: that Delores could be made not to remember him diminished his importance. Who he was and what he'd done, didn't matter to her. Pretty critical hit to his male ego, there. That's the moment of narrative transition when he becomes the Man in Black.