Star Trek (TOS): The Ultimate Computer

[Durandal_1707]

My big observation: How is McCoy a better ship's counselor than actual ship counselors from other Trek series?

I think it was largely to do with the one main example, Deanna Troi, was not well written. Instead of using her effectively they had her state what should be been obvious. It even became a joke:

Deanna Troi: I sense hostility
Captain Picard: (sarcastically) Oh that why they are firing at us. And here I thought it was their form of greeting.

To be fair to the actress it wasn't her fault as one can see with her portrayal of Demona in the Gargoyles series.

The thing that irritated me about Troi (especially since we're still in this AI-themed thread!) is that she never just told Data that he was pretty damn awesome as he was and didn't need to be human! If anyone ever needed a self-esteem boost, it was him. How many times would that ship have blown up if it hadn't been for his unique abilities? But no, he was always obsessed over trying to conform, to "fit in" with the group, instead of embracing his individuality. Data was already the smartest and the most lovable person on the ship, and he didn't need to change; the others should have accepted him as he was (and for the most part, they did). But he always had this weird self-loathing that Troi never said a damn thing about.

This really bugged me.

That was literally built into Data's code by Soong. Lots of people in the course of TNG told him that. I doubt Troi telling him would have done a thing.

Not instantly, no. But she could have helped him through it over the seven years the show was on. Convinced him of all the things he had to offer, of all the great qualities he possessed. Even demonstrating that he in fact had emotions; Data was constantly expressing affection, curiosity, desire, the ability to appreciate and even create art, poetry, and music. He just needed to realize it. Wanting to expand your experiences and grow as a person is positive; hating your basic nature isn't.

This would have been a great character arc for Data, and would have mirrored Spock's similar arc that culminated in his eventual acceptance of his human half. It also would have given Troi more to do, and probably would have resulted in her being a far better character. Anyway it'd easily have been a damn sight better than the thing we got with the magical Soong emotion chip that makes him act insane and crack inappropriate jokes about Mr. Tricorder in crisis situations.

[Beastro]

Then again I'm Canadian so I probably see things different, cause when I look at the US gun debate all I can think is "you motherfuckers literally cannot do a cost-benefit analysis to save you lives."

So am I, but I know enough about how tainted the well is that I can see why those against gun control are so paranoid when the other side continually abuses the situation to push for more than the country find acceptable.

All the effectively common sense measures are universally agreed upon as correct, the problem is implementation and the American politicians proclivity to shove shit into bills under the radar that makes people refuse even the most sensible of things wondering what else would be sneaked in under the radar.

The amusing thing is by and large, all Americans love guns across the political divide and the majority want gun them handled sensibly but the well is so poisoned they refuse to take any step given what a PITA it is to then change laws.

This is a bizarre position to take. Why would that be the case? These are machines, designed to do specific jobs! Why would such a machine care about anything other than its job?

Because humans have these funny ideas of push machines beyond being tool and love to toy with trying to create synthetic humans. Data is perfect example of that.

I have done a good bit of research about the state of, "Self Driving Vehicles: What Do They Mean" in the context of society. And yes, there are lots of social factors that go into the use of cars as a status symbol and as a right of passage. Self driving cars will be creeping in around the edges of society in the coming decades.

Taxi service, shipping, buses, and shuttles will all be self driving in 25 years. Some of the projections we did for our research to the state said that all cars will be self driving by 2060. It will happen slowly at first, and then the last 40% will be forced to change over in a very short period of time. The levels of safety and efficiency are so substantive that to not use the tech would be irresponsible.

That doesn't mean all other vehicles types will disappear, there will be self driving moving vans, flat beds, and rescue vehicles, but we'll live in a world in which car accidents are no longer a measurable percentage of deaths in America. And probably a world in which pollution from cars being stuck in traffic and traffic lights will be recalled in the way people remember pay phones.

And what I'm against given how much technology continually takes the human element out of things. We're reaching the point where we need to face the implications of automation removing almost all forms of works from human hands and how much of a debilitating thing that is to the human psyche. Much of the meaning of life is being in action, make it idle and people rot and helps grow the culture of dependency.

This problem isn't simply solving problems with automation, it's finding a balance between the costs of either side and I fear we're flinging off into the other extreme. Humans are good at overcoming things which kill us, the problem is so much of our nature is built around overcoming them that our species discipline in tolerating a measure of challenges we don't decisively smash is almost non-existent.

Not instantly, no. But she could have helped him through it over the seven years the show was on. Convinced him of all the things he had to offer, of all the great qualities he possessed. Even demonstrating that he in fact had emotions; Data was constantly expressing affection, curiosity, desire, the ability to appreciate and even create art, poetry, and music. He just needed to realize it. Wanting to expand your experiences and grow as a person is positive; hating your basic nature isn't.

I'd say that's reading into the show more than what the show wanted to present. All of what you described is the bleed through of making fiction and it's what we as the audience have to include in our suspension of disbelief.

Data is being played by a human actor. One really good at "playing" a robot, but one that is human nonetheless, and like any human he could not help but let his nature slip through the cracks. You could never present an actual Data in fiction because he'd be the creation of a emotional human mind, be it Brent Spiner's acting or someone writing one in a novel or game, the only way would be to effectively make a literal Data and then tell it it gets to play itself in a Sci-Fi show, which isn't really all the "Sci-Fi" if it became feasible to do.

[CareerKnight]

Am I the only person who doesn't anthropomorphize AI?
"Would you kill a child?" Is a massive begging of the question as far as "Is it alive?" and "If alive is it worth moral consideration?" or "If it is alive and worth moral consideration, can we still remove it from torpedo control until we are sure it won't lose its shit and murder a bunch of people?"

Not to mention that, unless the episode established that turning off M5 would destroy it (I haven't seen it yet so I don't know) its a flawed analogy. The question should have been "would you give a child a sedative?". The original analogy only works if he knows it sentient and with the stuff its pulled it will never be turned back on again.

None of those are going to kill us. Change climate will screw over civilization as know it but it will not kill us off.

Same goes with weapons of mass destruction with damage they can cause, like the fraud committed over Nuclear Winter by Sagan, being overblown by people wanting them to be more dangerous than they are.

About the only effective means of killing off Mankind would be to release series of global pandemics to not only cut the population down, but do so quickly enough that the survivors wouldn't have time to gather together and begin reproducing again. One pandemic wouldn't do it, you'd need at least three.

Climate change could definitely end humanity. All it would take is either it accelerating too fast for us to cope with or wars sparked by the reduction of resources it would cause preventing our efforts to adapt to it. As for other ways to end our existence there are quite a lot. A big enough asteroid hits the planet - gone (heck a big enough asteroid and there ain't no earth no more). A rogue object like a brown dwarf passing close enough to us on its way through our solar system and Earth is shot off into the void of space - we're no where near advanced enough to survive that.

[StrangeDevice]

Climate change could definitely end humanity. All it would take is either it accelerating too fast for us to cope with or wars sparked by the reduction of resources it would cause preventing our efforts to adapt to it. As for other ways to end our existence, there are quite a lot. A big enough asteroid hits the planet - gone (heck a big enough asteroid and there ain't no earth no more). A rogue object like a brown dwarf passing close enough to us on its way through our solar system and Earth is shot off into the void of space - were nowhere near advanced enough to survive that.

I think this is something that human beings tend to forget about en masse and it has a lot to do with each individual's cultural surroundings. We are not invincible. We have never been invincible. If something large enough comes our way and wipes us out, there won't be any last cavalry ride or eleventh-hour rescue. We're gone forever.

That said, it won't be any single thing. Nuclear war wouldn't destroy us in an instant, but the aftermath in relation to ecological and societal development would because people are programmed to respond a certain way by nature. Little problems have lesser problems and so infinitum. When all these little problems build up and the little consequences snowball into war, famine, disease, societal degradation, all the far off problems that the first world doesn't have to worry about then it will be over. It can happen, human beings are deceptively simple creatures when it comes down to it.

An analogy would be a man with his legs blown off, alone in the mud, he's alive certainly, but however long he remains that way depends not only upon himself but upon the reactions of his fellow man. If they simply laugh at him and turn away, he's dead. Nothing will prevent that.

[Durandal_1707]

Not instantly, no. But she could have helped him through it over the seven years the show was on. Convinced him of all the things he had to offer, of all the great qualities he possessed. Even demonstrating that he in fact had emotions; Data was constantly expressing affection, curiosity, desire, the ability to appreciate and even create art, poetry, and music. He just needed to realize it. Wanting to expand your experiences and grow as a person is positive; hating your basic nature isn't.

I'd say that's reading into the show more than what the show wanted to present. All of what you described is the bleed through of making fiction and it's what we as the audience have to include in our suspension of disbelief.

Data is being played by a human actor. One really good at "playing" a robot, but one that is human nonetheless, and like any human he could not help but let his nature slip through the cracks. You could never present an actual Data in fiction because he'd be the creation of a emotional human mind, be it Brent Spiner's acting or someone writing one in a novel or game, the only way would be to effectively make a literal Data and then tell it it gets to play itself in a Sci-Fi show, which isn't really all the "Sci-Fi" if it became feasible to do.

Well I'd argue that what we've been presented is what we have to work with, but regardless, it's not all from the acting. Data's affection for his friends and his cat, his curious nature, his desires (wanting to be human included), and his artistic and musical aptitude were all written in the script. That stuff all demonstrates emotional ability. And with episodes like "Measure of a Man", it's clear that Data was meant by the writers to be every bit as much a living being as you or I.

[Beastro]

Climate change could definitely end humanity. All it would take is either it accelerating too fast for us to cope with or wars sparked by the reduction of resources it would cause preventing our efforts to adapt to it. As for other ways to end our existence there are quite a lot. A big enough asteroid hits the planet - gone (heck a big enough asteroid and there ain't no earth no more). A rogue object like a brown dwarf passing close enough to us on its way through our solar system and Earth is shot off into the void of space - we're no where near advanced enough to survive that.

Too fast just results in civilization as we know it collapsing quicker along with the population. I think people do not realize how few people are needed for humanity to survive. The problem is gathering them together before our ignorance of what real survival is like kills too many off for them to start reproducing.

Modern war is based upon our advanced society and industry, without that its means of killing are drastically curtailed and today many modern weapons, especially the munitions they use, are simply too expensive to keep building to maintain a war. For the past 40 years its been expected that outside of a nuclear exchange, modern powers duking it would suddenly find themselves running out of things like PGMs and cruise missiles faster than they could build them.

Israel was already struggling with that in the late 70s/early 80s.

Yes, asteroids or gamma rays bursts might, but you're scrapping the bottom of the barrel of freak occurrences.

Nuclear war wouldn't destroy us in an instant, but the aftermath in relation to ecological and societal development would because people are programmed to respond a certain way by nature.

Just needs to be enough still around in the right concentrations to keep breeding against attrition. Ironically, in such a world, your average Islamist would fair better than almost anyone else.

Ecological damage? Outside of the burned out cities, there wouldn't be much. Nuclear Winter would not happen, it was a fraud created by Sagan when he got too zealous being in the anti-nuke crowd. His models failed to produce results until he modelled a world completely covered in dust that had nuclear devices initiated evenly across its entirety, then claimed his models were something approaching reality.

[RobbyB1982]

The main issue with Troi was no one that wrote her actually knew anything about counseling, and thus her advice was almost always plot based, and thus often bad or unhelpful.... add in that most of the main cast was "perfect" the first couple seasons and she didn't have much to do with them unless there was a particular stress going on. Outside of her other patients (which again, often gave bad advice to) there was just nothing plot related for her to DO, and they nerfed her telepathy from the outset to keep her mind reading powers from being abused. Add in that Betazed culture was basically human culture, filtered through her being half human, she wasn't even interesting in the "she's alien and different from us" sort of way. She was basically never able to actually help the ship during a crisis in any tangible way and so she was just sort of furniture, not helping anything and so was useless. Counceling is just not a useful trait the way she did it.

Had she instead been say, an alien culture expert and able to chime in on that sort of thing more often (Data could give facts, she could have given understanding) that might have been more helpful that the super vague "He's hiding something" she always had. A "species X tend to be agressive in reaction to Y stimulus" or "Species W is extremely open to flattery" would have helped maybe. She had some of that on diplomatic missions sometimes, but they never really embraced it in a way to make her seem like an expert, but just an extra who is helping Picard as a study aid.

Add in that she had no real chemistry or interaction with any of the main group (outside of Riker) and well... she just sort of sits on the sidelines until she's the plot tool of the day when she gets possessed or her annoying mother shows up. There's a reason the later episodes put her in a real uniform and tried having her date Worf, they had to do SOMETHING with her.

She pretty much was best used with Barclay and his issues, but as fun and recurring as he was, he wasn't around nearly enough to balance Troi out.

Even demonstrating that he in fact had emotions; Data was constantly expressing affection, curiosity, desire, the ability to appreciate and even create art, poetry, and music. He just needed to realize it. Wanting to expand your experiences and grow as a person is positive; hating your basic nature isn't.

Data displayed personality and had preferences. That was not the same as *feeling* and understanding emotion, as seen when Q allowed him to laugh, or when the Lor/Borg situation came up, or in the movies. He never got jokes outside of understanding that yes, they were joke.

[CareerKnight]

Yes, asteroids or gamma rays bursts might, but you're scrapping the bottom of the barrel of freak occurrences.

Nothing freak about it. The Earth will be hit by large asteroids again in the future. Its not a question of if, just when.

Too fast just results in civilization as we know it collapsing quicker along with the population. I think people do not realize how few people are needed for humanity to survive. The problem is gathering them together before our ignorance of what real survival is like kills too many off for them to start reproducing.

The Great Dying was the largest mass extinction the Earth has ever seen, with over 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species going extinct. While the cause isn't certain (likely volcanic), the result was the planet warming very rapidly in a short amount of time. hopefully we stop before it gets anywhere near that bad in the present but if the the methane deposits go... At the end of the day people need a lot of food to live
and if climate change were to speed up that rapidly we would be hard pressed just to keep enough other things alive for us to survive.

[Crowley]

Am I the only person who doesn't anthropomorphize AI?
"Would you kill a child?" Is a massive begging of the question as far as "Is it alive?" and "If alive is it worth moral consideration?" or "If it is alive and worth moral consideration, can we still remove it from torpedo control until we are sure it won't lose its shit and murder a bunch of people?"

Not to mention that, unless the episode established that turning off M5 would destroy it (I haven't seen it yet so I don't know) its a flawed analogy. The question should have been "would you give a child a sedative?". The original analogy only works if he knows it sentient and with the stuff its pulled it will never be turned back on again.

Or from another angle: "Would you kill a child who is waving around a loaded gun in the middle of innocent people, already shot one person and defusing the situation by talking is not working?"

[Durandal_1707]

Even demonstrating that he in fact had emotions; Data was constantly expressing affection, curiosity, desire, the ability to appreciate and even create art, poetry, and music. He just needed to realize it. Wanting to expand your experiences and grow as a person is positive; hating your basic nature isn't.

Data displayed personality and had preferences. That was not the same as *feeling* and understanding emotion, as seen when Q allowed him to laugh, or when the Lor/Borg situation came up, or in the movies. He never got jokes outside of understanding that yes, they were joke.

I dunno, this may be subjective. To me, that seems to demonstrate that Data doesn't have certain kinds of emotions, rather than that he doesn't have any at all. The things I described involve, to me, emotion. There's no logical or pragmatic reason, for instance, that Data has to have a cat, nor that he has to display the obvious affection he has toward it.

There are lots of people who don't have a sense of humor (I'm sure you've met some ), but that doesn't mean they don't have emotions.