What exactly was Soong trying to achieve?

[at Quark's]

So on the one hand, Data was built with certain limitations (inability to use contractions, no emotions originally, being very restricted originally in understanding informal communications and social interaction, etc). and it seems to have been the Soong's intention that he'd gradually acquire more such "human-like" abilities. It also seems he was built with the ability to emulate certain human peculiarities (e.g. dreaming, tear ducts to be able to cry), and possibly even with the ability to develop typically human imperfections (such as neuroses) to make him as close to human as possible.

On the other hand, Data had all kinds of superhuman abilities right from the start (for example strength, speed of computation, perfect memory, no need for life support, etc) that would never make him "as close to human as possible". Had that really been Soong's goal, why didn't he give Data (for example) a human-like imperfect memory? So, what exactly was it that Soong was actually aiming for? An superhuman android that wouldn't make humans around him feel uncomfortable? Something else?

 

[Alexander Corrino]

I’ve always felt that Soong was simply trying to build an android with super human abilities as a monument to himself (hence why all his androids look like him). I mean he only created Data once he realized that emotions were apparently an issue (Lore). Data wasn’t really supposed to be his big creation - Lore was. Which of course still raises the question of why give an andriod super human strength when you want for him to be as close to human as possible... which is why I’ve always thought Soong was basically writing one huge real life Gary Stu fic, only with androids.

 

[NCC-73515]

I think he wanted his androids to be as strong and able as possible, and it was Data himself who wanted to be Human

 

[Mojochi]

The intention was to achieve perfection in android cybernetics, & artificial intelligence, a synergy of design & form, the form being to artificially recreate the systems of a human being, & the design, to be as perfect a machine as possible. Why both those debatably contradictory goals?

Well, because if you're going to try to design an intelligent lifeform, it's sensible to make one that might bare similarity to us, so that we & it might better relate, for both our sakes, but also make one that is a better machine than us, that will live longer, be more durable, not suffer so easily the fallibility we face. Why the heck would anyone building an intelligent being choose to make it as fallible as us & invite unknown failure? It should only be relative, not a comparable duplicate.

However, when Lore came out wrong, it wasn't everything about him that was wrong. It was one aspect, & that aspect is specifically what Soong addressed in the next attempt, & it would've been monumentally wasteful & absurdly exhaustive to scrap everything & start from scratch. He took what worked, & tried again, but also tried to address what didn't work, hence no dream program right away, language fallibility, social barriers, withholding of the complete emotion program, limited access to his humanity.

I suspect Soong's main fix for 2.0 was just to have it learn how to be human, instead of giving it that default state, like he had done with the previous model... Sort of build its emotional state incrementally, so to avoid the previous pitfall. I actually think the problem with Lore might've been that his emotions, just like all his other designed abilities, were exaggerated. When he felt rage, his rage consumed him more than ours. His paranoia, his fear, his sorrow, his hubris all tugged at him in stronger ways than ours. At least that's what I get from Spiner's performance. (Especially in Brothers)

In making Lore to be more than a human, he ended up making a megalomaniac with bipolar disorder, because that's what exaggerated emotions will get you, but the original intention was to make a superhuman, & why would someone do that? Hubris... & it got him killed... before he got it right. Data's tale, just like Ira Graves' claim about him, is the Tin Man metaphor. He's Edward Scissorhands, the unfinished Pinocchio, whose maker is gone before he is fully realized.

 

[Mojochi]

You know, at no point should we be thinking that Noonien Soong is a good guy. His wife left him because of his singlemindedness & abandonment. Lore is not wrong about him in Brothers. His 1st obligation should've been to the intelligent being he brought into the universe, to suffer with an emotional disability, but instead, he just abandoned him, & moved on. He had no basis for assuming that his "Limit Data's emotions" scheme would work to make him any better off than Lore. Soong is a reckloose. He even has his own legit Bride of Frankenstein running around out there

 

[DonIago]

I'd like to think that when Soong grew older he was more aware of the mistakes he'd made. He seemed to have regrets over Juliana and Lore, at least.

I wouldn't necessarily say he was a "good guy", but he was human.

 

[Mojochi]

I'd like to think that when Soong grew older he was more aware of the mistakes he'd made. He seemed to have regrets over Juliana and Lore, at least.

I wouldn't necessarily say he was a "good guy", but he was human.

Fair enough, but I'd say from what we saw, his regret over Julianna was more about her having left him & his failed marriage to her... not about the Bride of Frankenstein business, which was again, a selfish act on his part.

And his regret about Lore wasn't so much that he'd abandoned him, but that Lore had somehow returned, & had to live with it, & he hadn't devoted any time to him, thinking he was all but forgotten.

Even at the end, he still seemed pretty adamant that the next step should be to construct Data, & not to attend to a malfunctioning Lore. Yeah... maybe it's the next logical step in the research, but it's not at all the next logical step in responsible care of a sapient being he created. It's actually pretty cruel

 

[at Quark's]

You know, at no point should we be thinking that Noonien Soong is a good guy. His wife left him because of his singlemindedness & abandonment. Lore is not wrong about him in Brothers. His 1st obligation should've been to the intelligent being he brought into the universe, to suffer with an emotional disability, but instead, he just abandoned him, & moved on. He had no basis for assuming that his "Limit Data's emotions" scheme would work to make him any better off than Lore. Soong is a reckloose. He even has his own legit Bride of Frankenstein running around out there

Well, let's not forget Soong actually comes from a pretty problematic lineage himself. The "mad genius" gene seems to have run in the family, according to other series, and judging from those, in Noonian Soong may have been comparatively mild, even.

I suspect Soong's main fix for 2.0 was just to have it learn how to be human, instead of giving it that default state, like he had done with the previous model... <.....>

That actually mirrors ideas in several religions, that gifts, character traits, moral convictions, won by hard work are worth more (and more reliable because proven in practice) than when these things are given from the get-go (either by design or hereditary gifts). Not saying I believe those ideas. but it's an interesting parallel.

 

[Timo]

I doubt Soong ever really set out to build an android.

I mean, Soong wasn't the android man. He was the positronics man, the laughing stock of the scientific community for his failure to create the positronic brain he promised. He went to self-exile for as long as it took to create the perfect demonstration and to exact his revenge with that.

It's just that androids are a pretty nifty way to demonstrate a brain. I mean, any stupid computer in the 24th century can be fully sentient and absolutely perfectly simulate a human life down to the smallest pore and obnoxiousest mannerism - but those computers tend to be the size of starships, and operate their human simulacra by proxy. Perhaps positronics held the promise of compactness? Having a human brain -sized device run a human being would not be bad going, and of course Soong could also have that same device then run superhuman computations for further showing off.

Nobody really seems to think androids are of any worth in the 24th century. Or that AIs would be. Those are sort of taken for granted, shrugged at, forced to take lousy jobs such as joining the army and then getting the short stick there careerwise. But they do make for splendid gimmicks. (Indeed, Data no doubt was recognized for a gimmick from the get-go: a machine with the face of Often Wrong Soong would be an obvious student prank! It's just that since nobody knew the first thing about positronics, nobody figured out he was Soong inside, too.)

Once Soong got to it, though, he couldn't avoid turning this into a project of building a son for himself. And of course any dad will wish to see his son take the right turns where dad himself took left - but just as self-evidently, no dad will ever stomach seeing son actually outdo dad. So for every superhuman ability, Soong would build in a failing; for the niftiest feature, there'd be a point of ridicule. "Colonists afraid", my inflatable ass - Soong himself was afraid his creations would be too good.

And yet not good enough - he never got around to publishing. Even his positronic wife didn't meet his standards for the thing that would rescue him from infamy; the ridiculous marionettes that preceded her would then never do. Soong's work was still very much ongoing, and ultimately he'd have to look back and accept that the only sons he ever got were two (or perhaps a dozen) freaky retards he'd much rather disown. Which he of course could, because there was no legal or biological yoke on him for owning them in the first place, but he would have grown somewhat attached to them - if not as offspring, then at least as pets or pet projects, ugly and faulty things but still his, and still (alas!) the best he could do.

Soong probably had very little idea of how to proceed with his vengeance, and only slowly drifted towards perfect simulations of humans. But he actually appeared to have gotten the positronics down pat on the first try. That is, after decades of trying, at which point he was too consumed by the project and the need to publish a 100% perfect thing that he got mired in the minutiae of the android marketing gimmick.

Which I guess is the big tragedy here: his positronics did make good. They now serve as brain prosthetics at least, and probably have plenty of other applications the world welcomes. But Soong is still remembered as the fool who never got it right, exactly because he let better override good.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[somebuddyX]

He also made Data into a boat or something, according to Insurrection at least.
I think Soong deep down was just this guy in this video.

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[NCC-73515]

He also made Data into a boat or something, according to Insurrection at least.

That must've been a later refit, cause he sunk to the bottom of a lake before.

 

[Timo]

Perhaps inflatable rear ends are like inner eyelids? Soong didn't quite provide his creation with an Owner's Manual - it seems Data himself didn't realize he had a positronic brain, say.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JirinPanthosa]

To Soong it was the same as parents desire to make children. He wanted to create a sentient being to pass a part of himself on to the future.

 

[Mudd]

He wanted a sexbot. Everybody trying to build androids just want sexbots.

 

[Herbert]

Soong was procreating. It's all right there in the TNG episode, Brothers. No need to overanalyze it.

 

[trekshark]

Soong was procreating. It's all right there in the TNG episode, Brothers. No need to overanalyze it.

And then Picard (the show)

Spoiler

retconned in a biological son who is probably older than Data

 

[Herbert]

And then Picard (the show)

Spoiler

retconned in a biological son who is probably older than Data

Retconners should be boiled in their own pudding.

 

[JesterFace]

If Soong had to build his offspring he must have not been very pround of his son.

 

[Timo]

I doubt he ever was particularly proud of his androids, either: unlike live ones, they were rather malleable, so he kept tinkering, and postponing any attempt at going public. He was hardly trying to pass on a heritage to one of his toasters; a caricature of his own face on even the most primitive of them was more like a placeholder, and something of a triviality when he could do perfect human faces just as well.

At some point, though, he'd have to settle for having a specific set of sons, and no time to build more, whether out of transtators or live cells. Assuming he isn't immortal, that is - we never really see him die or be declared dead in "Brothers" if we're to be exact.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

Well, he certainly didn't value any of his creations as though they were people he cared about. He pretty much abandoned them all in one way or another, some in worse conditions than others.

 

[Mister Spock]

He struck me as someone who, in the words of Dr. Ian Malcom, was more preoccupied with if he could rather than if he should.

What we learn of 'Often Wrong' Soong is that he had a bit of an ego and building Lore and Data was more about vindication against all those who laughed at him; rather than anything else.