5 ms·

I like this article and like this kind of thoughtful analysis of film. But I don’t like that scene and don’t think it’s a job of good writing. I think it’s coo

I like this article and like this kind of thoughtful analysis of film. But I don’t like that scene and don’t think it’s a job of good writing. I think it’s cool that Ryan Gosling wrote the scene and that he was able to collaborate with the author and director in that way, but it kind of explains the frailness of the scene. The problem I have with the scene is that while it looks cool, it seems like the dumbest, most ineffective way of detecting if an android is off baseline. It would be simple for a trained android or human to fake the test just like a polygraph and seems easier for an android to control expression of emotion and just match the expectation. I expect a real test would just dump data via a port like our cars’ diagnostic port and quickly run against a trained model for what is conformant behavior vs aberrant (of course testing for manipulation, deletion, or unusual data). This scene replicates the biggest flaw of the movie, it all looks cool but makes no logical sense. And it’s about societal systems and robots so there should be logic or at least attempts at logic. Corporations and fascist governments and religions at least seem to attempt order. The movie seems like an artists attempt to write about robots without really thinking about how things would work. PKD did this so much in the source material. But it looks cool and I enjoy watching so I don’t get hung up on it, but wouldn’t call it out as great writing. I’ve got problems with the original as well but still enjoy it (and it has Daryl Hannah and Sean Young so that’s awesome).

BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
I can also calmly explain I didn't turn the turtle on its back, but then again, I'm not a replicant. So maybe judging a test humans are SUPPOSED to pass, but for replicants it's viable baseline test is not a good measure. Also a realistic test would be terrible cinematic experience. Long, technical, boring, trite... The scene is meant to be accepted symbolically, not literally.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Right. It's visually jarring, kind of stressful. It's part of a long sequence of shots of crappy things the replicant has to deal with. It may not be a reasonable test, but it's meant to show submission and mental coherence in the face of all the horrible treatment he endures. Later, he doesn't do very well and we get to see Ryan act out some cognitive dissonance.
- cfiggers 4y ago
  > The scene is meant to be accepted symbolically, not literally. This is key. The purpose of the scene is to establish within 30 seconds what K's relationship is to the agency he works for, and by some extension, to the rest of the society he lives in. And the scene is brilliantly effective at accomplishing that task.
- technothrasher 4y ago
  > The scene is meant to be accepted symbolically, not literally. The entire story...
jallasprit 4y ago
I suppose some of it mirrors the way «government testing» such as polygraphs, etc often are just designed to filter out non conforming personalities, even if the tests lack any scientific backing of their effectiveness
__alexs 4y ago
> I expect a real test would just dump data via a port like our cars’ diagnostic port and quickly run against a trained model for what is conformant behavior vs aberrant (of course testing for manipulation, deletion, or unusual data). Replicants are not robots. They do not have ports. > The movie seems like an artists attempt to write about robots without really thinking about how things would work. Neither the source material or the movies are about robots in the mechanical sense. They are somewhat about the original meaning of the word though: https://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-robot https://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the...
- EliRivers 4y ago
  Exactly. They're biological. They're genetically human. If they were robots the VK test in the first film would have been a quick x-ray to see if the subject is made out of metal.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    Maybe not robots as we understand them today... but the robots in Karel Čapek's R.U.R. were the same: artificially created, but biological, humanoids.
  - prepend 4y ago
    Robots don’t have to be made of metal. I’m using the term in that they are artificial humanoids that are created and programmed. I think these are distinct from some purely biological humanoid that is the result of genetic engineering where it was evolved and gene hacked toward some purpose. I am calling replicants robots in that they are manufactured out of their goopsacks or whatever and the designers have a lot of precise leeway over what and how they design them vs what biology forces them to do. They are etching codes on their eyeballs so I figured they could have some memory audit function and a way to extract that memory and thus a way to analyze a segment of time for aberration.
    - darkerside 4y ago
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
The point of that test was to evaluate the replicants in the axis of emotional awareness, to see if they are aware of all the things they are missing. This short video explains it better [1]. It really isn't easy for humans to fake such kind of tests, and if you know a person long enough, you can read their emotions, you can catch subtle changes in vocal tone, spacing between words, changes in the language they use, and even micro-expressions. [1] https://youtu.be/6JP3Rv-x3uI?t=170 https://youtu.be/6JP3Rv-x3uI?t=170
- gear54rus 4y ago
  Not to mention that the evaluation went deeper than a simple camera as evidenced by the screen madam was looking at at the time of the failed test. It clearly showed something inside K like biological markers of emotions?
Fraterkes 4y ago
Do androids in the bladerunner universe even have "ports"? I thought the point was that they are essentially biological robots. If they weren't you wouldn't even need a voight campf test, the fact that they had a port would signify their inhumanity.
- prepend 4y ago
  They do not have ports. I could have written my comment better as I meant not that the androids had ports that weren’t being used, but that androids are likely to be designed with some port. So if testing like this was necessary, their design would have reflected a better way. Replicants were not accidental discoveries nor gifted by aliens, they were invented by Tyrell.
thereddaikon 4y ago
Replicants aren't robots. They are artificial humans.
- prepend 4y ago
  That’s interesting. What’s the difference between robots and artificial humans?
  - Trasmatta 4y ago
    Probably that the replicants are fully biological (even if they were created artificially), and physiologically almost impossible to differentiate from a human. Robots in fiction don't typically follow that pattern.
  - thereddaikon 4y ago
    Artificial humans as in they are flesh and blood like biological humans but are engineered. More like the clone troopers from star wars but they are designed to do all sorts of jobs not just soldiers and they aren't direct clones of real people. Rutger Hauer's character Roy Batty is a soldier replicant. He was made for combat and even talks about it in his tears in the rain speech at the end. Because he's a soldier model he has greater physical features than biological humans. Stronger, tougher etc. He deals with Deckard without trouble. Another replicant in the film named Pris is described as a "basic pleasure model". I think you can figure that out. Replicants form a slave underclass in the world of Blade Runner and the Tyrell corp markets and sells them. The replicants in the movie are part of the latest "nexus 6" line. Sounds like smartphones but they were going for a consumer product feel.
jvanderbot 4y ago
Why do we believe replicants have a core of data that can be dumped? Or a debugging port? Everything I've seen in the movies shows them to be bioengineered, not computer-based. Perhaps even then, reading out the contents of a mind is a destructive process.
- prepend 4y ago
  They can have memories implanted, and deleted, and changed. So it seemed possible to me to have some form of neural scanning that doesn’t destroy the replicant. Today there are humans who can train to beat polygraphs. It seems like replicants can train on this much more easily so this test more likely measures if the replicant wants to be found out than is actually off. I like how the author brings up this is more a flaw in how society is measuring. There’s a fun game called Inhuman Conditions [0] where players pretend to be an inspector and either a human, passive robot, or angry robot that explorers how to measure this. In our world there’s brain imaging and it seems likely that in the future there’s going to be some form of non-destructive memory reading. [0] https://robots.management/ https://robots.management/
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    Replicants are not genetically human. Its within canon, I think, to have the process of creating a replicants be somewhat open loop. Perhaps they encode the beginning neural structure as a virus that's implanted in developing bodies, but otherwise don't have clean ways of interacting directly with brains and minds (that are not destructive - destructive or even expensive reads are also in scope for canon but not likely to be casually used)
lucideer 4y ago
> it seems like the dumbest, most ineffective way of detecting if an android is off baseline. It would be simple for a trained android or human to fake the test just like a polygraph and seems easier for an android to control expression of emotion and just match the expectation. This seems to me like a misunderstanding of the idea behind both films. The baseline test in this scene seems to be set up as a test of one's ability to control emotion. > It would be simple for a trained android or human to fake the test just like a polygraph IFF the android or human is organised/prepared/together/emotionally settled. i.e. "at baseline". Which is the whole point. The test is testing whether you're in the type of state of mind one would need to do things in a controlled & calculated manner: if you can fake it you're at baseline. > seems easier for an android to control expression of emotion And if you think this, you didn't get the general message behind the films*. --- * Fwiw I have not read Philip K. Dick so I can't say whether the same is true of Do Androids Dream...
- prepend 4y ago
  > And if you think this, you didn't get the general message behind the films*. Perhaps. Of course I think, I get it, I just don’t agree with it, or think it’s poorly formed. I’m glad lots of people enjoy it in a variety of ways and am certainly glad the films were made and hope there are more like them made in the future.
  - gs17 4y ago
    > Perhaps. Of course I think, I get it, I just don’t agree with it, or think it’s poorly formed. Sounds like every time I've tried to discuss these movies online. If you notice the setting has issues, for some reason a lot of people jump on that as you "just not getting it" and you absolutely hating the movies.
    - lucideer 4y ago
      It's definitely a thing online for people to roll out the "you just don't get it" line in response to a negative review of a piece of media, but I thought it a little more applicable here in discussing whether 1 scene - written by one person - fits thematically with the rest of the film(s) written by other people. As in: the issue raised with Gosling's writing is that it's portrayal of androids' emotionality is not in line with the rest of the film(s). But to me that's one of the primary themes of both films.
sebastianconcpt 4y ago
Yes but it's more than challenging to do it technically correctly and not lose 99.9999% of the non-ML experts audience wondering what was all that about and why done in that way.
theshrike79 4y ago
The whole thing in the Blade Runner world is that you can't tell the difference between a human and a replicant with a physical examination. That's the whole point why they have the Voight-Kampff in the first movie instead of just checking if Rachael has a DATA PORT. In 2049 they _know_ that K is a replicant, but they need to detect whether he is getting too emotional to be reliable. Again, no data port. He's biologically human, but not mentally.
- the_af 4y ago
  > The whole thing in the Blade Runner world is that you can't tell the difference between a human and a replicant with a physical examination. You can, but only through a very intrusive bone marrow analysis. It's mentioned (in either the movie or the novel) that they were hours into an autopsy before they realized it was a replicant. VK is the alternative when you don't want to subject a suspect to dangerous and intrusive surgery.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    > bone marrow Just a serial on the bone in the film https://youtu.be/jXuJi-kFTOg?t=168 https://youtu.be/jXuJi-kFTOg?t=168
    - the_af 4y ago
      Ah, true... for the sequel. To be honest I was referring to the original Blade Runner and PKD's novel. I didn't like the sequel much (and I didn't think it needed to be made to begin with). Though I suppose it applies even to the sequel; unless the serial shows up in x-rays you probably need to do surgery to find out!
- prepend 4y ago
  Again, I understand the logic of the movie, but that’s what I don’t really like that much. Wouldn’t it be more likely that as part of this synthetic org that they include some simple market like setting a specific gene so you just test a skin cell. Of course picking apart movies leads to cinematic anhedonia, but this is sort of my point. This test exists, in the movie, for REASONS that are a macguffin for cool acting and scenes.
ralusek 4y ago
While I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense even if you understand what's going on, and that what's going on isn't actually very clearly communicated to begin with, I still like it. I like that it's odd and off putting. It's just one of those things, like the door mugger with the hat in The Fifth Element, (or everything else in The Fifth Element), that just stand out and make the whole thing feel a little less paint by numbers. Sometimes I just think "between cells," "interlinked," for no reason. I only think about it because it's weird.
pavlov 4y ago
> “It would be simple for a trained android or human to fake the test just like a polygraph” This seems like a massive assumption about how the android brain works. In contemporary terms, it’s like asking: “Surely you can ask ChatGPT to only tell the truth? It’s a computer, it can’t lie.” — when the reality is that it’s exactly the opposite (it’s a computer which only knows how to lie and most of the time it happens to be exactly right).
- krapp 4y ago
  It seems like a massive assumption to extrapolate the limitations of ChatGPT to the AGI of androids. ChatGPT neither lies (which requires intent) nor tells the truth (which requires knowledge) because it doesn't retain state, and cannot learn from the outside world beyond whatever is provided in a prompt stack. One can assume an android in the hypothetical future with fully sentient AGI has a mind capable of retaining state and working senses, and thus is complex enough to be capable of willing deception.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    I’m not saying the future android would be based on ChatGPT. I’m suggesting it could be based on a model of computation whose capabilities and limitations could be unforeseen and unintuitive to us, in the same way as ChatGPT is something completely different compared to the symbolic fact-based AI systems of decades past. Someone from the past whose idea of AI is Prolog would have a hard time understanding ChatGPT only based on interactions with it.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      > ChatGPT is something completely different compared to the symbolic fact-based AI systems of decades past. thank you for recognizing this and writing it down clearly.
- 0_____0 4y ago
  I never thought of ChatGPT like that but by Gods that makes a ton of sense
bart_spoon 4y ago
Seems like your criticisms are due to your misunderstanding. In the movies replicants aren’t robots. They human constricts but biological. They are closer to lab grown individuals than to mechanical robots with ports and data caches to dump.

BulgarianIdiot 4y ago

I can also calmly explain I didn't turn the turtle on its back, but then again, I'm not a replicant. So maybe judging a test humans are SUPPOSED to pass, but for replicants it's viable baseline test is not a good measure. Also a realistic test would be terrible cinematic experience. Long, technical, boring, trite... The scene is meant to be accepted symbolically, not literally.

jvanderbot 4y ago
Right. It's visually jarring, kind of stressful. It's part of a long sequence of shots of crappy things the replicant has to deal with. It may not be a reasonable test, but it's meant to show submission and mental coherence in the face of all the horrible treatment he endures. Later, he doesn't do very well and we get to see Ryan act out some cognitive dissonance.
cfiggers 4y ago
> The scene is meant to be accepted symbolically, not literally. This is key. The purpose of the scene is to establish within 30 seconds what K's relationship is to the agency he works for, and by some extension, to the rest of the society he lives in. And the scene is brilliantly effective at accomplishing that task.
technothrasher 4y ago
> The scene is meant to be accepted symbolically, not literally. The entire story...

jallasprit 4y ago

I suppose some of it mirrors the way «government testing» such as polygraphs, etc often are just designed to filter out non conforming personalities, even if the tests lack any scientific backing of their effectiveness

__alexs 4y ago

> I expect a real test would just dump data via a port like our cars’ diagnostic port and quickly run against a trained model for what is conformant behavior vs aberrant (of course testing for manipulation, deletion, or unusual data). Replicants are not robots. They do not have ports. > The movie seems like an artists attempt to write about robots without really thinking about how things would work. Neither the source material or the movies are about robots in the mechanical sense. They are somewhat about the original meaning of the word though: https://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-robot https://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the...

EliRivers 4y ago
Exactly. They're biological. They're genetically human. If they were robots the VK test in the first film would have been a quick x-ray to see if the subject is made out of metal.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Maybe not robots as we understand them today... but the robots in Karel Čapek's R.U.R. were the same: artificially created, but biological, humanoids.
- prepend 4y ago
  Robots don’t have to be made of metal. I’m using the term in that they are artificial humanoids that are created and programmed. I think these are distinct from some purely biological humanoid that is the result of genetic engineering where it was evolved and gene hacked toward some purpose. I am calling replicants robots in that they are manufactured out of their goopsacks or whatever and the designers have a lot of precise leeway over what and how they design them vs what biology forces them to do. They are etching codes on their eyeballs so I figured they could have some memory audit function and a way to extract that memory and thus a way to analyze a segment of time for aberration.
  - darkerside 4y ago

PartiallyTyped 4y ago

The point of that test was to evaluate the replicants in the axis of emotional awareness, to see if they are aware of all the things they are missing. This short video explains it better [1]. It really isn't easy for humans to fake such kind of tests, and if you know a person long enough, you can read their emotions, you can catch subtle changes in vocal tone, spacing between words, changes in the language they use, and even micro-expressions. [1] https://youtu.be/6JP3Rv-x3uI?t=170 https://youtu.be/6JP3Rv-x3uI?t=170

gear54rus 4y ago
Not to mention that the evaluation went deeper than a simple camera as evidenced by the screen madam was looking at at the time of the failed test. It clearly showed something inside K like biological markers of emotions?

Fraterkes 4y ago

Do androids in the bladerunner universe even have "ports"? I thought the point was that they are essentially biological robots. If they weren't you wouldn't even need a voight campf test, the fact that they had a port would signify their inhumanity.

prepend 4y ago
They do not have ports. I could have written my comment better as I meant not that the androids had ports that weren’t being used, but that androids are likely to be designed with some port. So if testing like this was necessary, their design would have reflected a better way. Replicants were not accidental discoveries nor gifted by aliens, they were invented by Tyrell.

thereddaikon 4y ago

Replicants aren't robots. They are artificial humans.

prepend 4y ago
That’s interesting. What’s the difference between robots and artificial humans?
- Trasmatta 4y ago
  Probably that the replicants are fully biological (even if they were created artificially), and physiologically almost impossible to differentiate from a human. Robots in fiction don't typically follow that pattern.
- thereddaikon 4y ago
  Artificial humans as in they are flesh and blood like biological humans but are engineered. More like the clone troopers from star wars but they are designed to do all sorts of jobs not just soldiers and they aren't direct clones of real people. Rutger Hauer's character Roy Batty is a soldier replicant. He was made for combat and even talks about it in his tears in the rain speech at the end. Because he's a soldier model he has greater physical features than biological humans. Stronger, tougher etc. He deals with Deckard without trouble. Another replicant in the film named Pris is described as a "basic pleasure model". I think you can figure that out. Replicants form a slave underclass in the world of Blade Runner and the Tyrell corp markets and sells them. The replicants in the movie are part of the latest "nexus 6" line. Sounds like smartphones but they were going for a consumer product feel.

jvanderbot 4y ago

Why do we believe replicants have a core of data that can be dumped? Or a debugging port? Everything I've seen in the movies shows them to be bioengineered, not computer-based. Perhaps even then, reading out the contents of a mind is a destructive process.

prepend 4y ago
They can have memories implanted, and deleted, and changed. So it seemed possible to me to have some form of neural scanning that doesn’t destroy the replicant. Today there are humans who can train to beat polygraphs. It seems like replicants can train on this much more easily so this test more likely measures if the replicant wants to be found out than is actually off. I like how the author brings up this is more a flaw in how society is measuring. There’s a fun game called Inhuman Conditions [0] where players pretend to be an inspector and either a human, passive robot, or angry robot that explorers how to measure this. In our world there’s brain imaging and it seems likely that in the future there’s going to be some form of non-destructive memory reading. [0] https://robots.management/ https://robots.management/
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  Replicants are not genetically human. Its within canon, I think, to have the process of creating a replicants be somewhat open loop. Perhaps they encode the beginning neural structure as a virus that's implanted in developing bodies, but otherwise don't have clean ways of interacting directly with brains and minds (that are not destructive - destructive or even expensive reads are also in scope for canon but not likely to be casually used)

lucideer 4y ago

> it seems like the dumbest, most ineffective way of detecting if an android is off baseline. It would be simple for a trained android or human to fake the test just like a polygraph and seems easier for an android to control expression of emotion and just match the expectation. This seems to me like a misunderstanding of the idea behind both films. The baseline test in this scene seems to be set up as a test of one's ability to control emotion. > It would be simple for a trained android or human to fake the test just like a polygraph IFF the android or human is organised/prepared/together/emotionally settled. i.e. "at baseline". Which is the whole point. The test is testing whether you're in the type of state of mind one would need to do things in a controlled & calculated manner: if you can fake it you're at baseline. > seems easier for an android to control expression of emotion And if you think this, you didn't get the general message behind the films*. --- * Fwiw I have not read Philip K. Dick so I can't say whether the same is true of Do Androids Dream...

prepend 4y ago
> And if you think this, you didn't get the general message behind the films*. Perhaps. Of course I think, I get it, I just don’t agree with it, or think it’s poorly formed. I’m glad lots of people enjoy it in a variety of ways and am certainly glad the films were made and hope there are more like them made in the future.
- gs17 4y ago
  > Perhaps. Of course I think, I get it, I just don’t agree with it, or think it’s poorly formed. Sounds like every time I've tried to discuss these movies online. If you notice the setting has issues, for some reason a lot of people jump on that as you "just not getting it" and you absolutely hating the movies.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    It's definitely a thing online for people to roll out the "you just don't get it" line in response to a negative review of a piece of media, but I thought it a little more applicable here in discussing whether 1 scene - written by one person - fits thematically with the rest of the film(s) written by other people. As in: the issue raised with Gosling's writing is that it's portrayal of androids' emotionality is not in line with the rest of the film(s). But to me that's one of the primary themes of both films.

sebastianconcpt 4y ago

Yes but it's more than challenging to do it technically correctly and not lose 99.9999% of the non-ML experts audience wondering what was all that about and why done in that way.

theshrike79 4y ago

The whole thing in the Blade Runner world is that you can't tell the difference between a human and a replicant with a physical examination. That's the whole point why they have the Voight-Kampff in the first movie instead of just checking if Rachael has a DATA PORT. In 2049 they _know_ that K is a replicant, but they need to detect whether he is getting too emotional to be reliable. Again, no data port. He's biologically human, but not mentally.

the_af 4y ago
> The whole thing in the Blade Runner world is that you can't tell the difference between a human and a replicant with a physical examination. You can, but only through a very intrusive bone marrow analysis. It's mentioned (in either the movie or the novel) that they were hours into an autopsy before they realized it was a replicant. VK is the alternative when you don't want to subject a suspect to dangerous and intrusive surgery.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > bone marrow Just a serial on the bone in the film https://youtu.be/jXuJi-kFTOg?t=168 https://youtu.be/jXuJi-kFTOg?t=168
  - the_af 4y ago
    Ah, true... for the sequel. To be honest I was referring to the original Blade Runner and PKD's novel. I didn't like the sequel much (and I didn't think it needed to be made to begin with). Though I suppose it applies even to the sequel; unless the serial shows up in x-rays you probably need to do surgery to find out!
prepend 4y ago
Again, I understand the logic of the movie, but that’s what I don’t really like that much. Wouldn’t it be more likely that as part of this synthetic org that they include some simple market like setting a specific gene so you just test a skin cell. Of course picking apart movies leads to cinematic anhedonia, but this is sort of my point. This test exists, in the movie, for REASONS that are a macguffin for cool acting and scenes.

ralusek 4y ago

While I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense even if you understand what's going on, and that what's going on isn't actually very clearly communicated to begin with, I still like it. I like that it's odd and off putting. It's just one of those things, like the door mugger with the hat in The Fifth Element, (or everything else in The Fifth Element), that just stand out and make the whole thing feel a little less paint by numbers. Sometimes I just think "between cells," "interlinked," for no reason. I only think about it because it's weird.

pavlov 4y ago

> “It would be simple for a trained android or human to fake the test just like a polygraph” This seems like a massive assumption about how the android brain works. In contemporary terms, it’s like asking: “Surely you can ask ChatGPT to only tell the truth? It’s a computer, it can’t lie.” — when the reality is that it’s exactly the opposite (it’s a computer which only knows how to lie and most of the time it happens to be exactly right).

krapp 4y ago
It seems like a massive assumption to extrapolate the limitations of ChatGPT to the AGI of androids. ChatGPT neither lies (which requires intent) nor tells the truth (which requires knowledge) because it doesn't retain state, and cannot learn from the outside world beyond whatever is provided in a prompt stack. One can assume an android in the hypothetical future with fully sentient AGI has a mind capable of retaining state and working senses, and thus is complex enough to be capable of willing deception.
- pavlov 4y ago
  I’m not saying the future android would be based on ChatGPT. I’m suggesting it could be based on a model of computation whose capabilities and limitations could be unforeseen and unintuitive to us, in the same way as ChatGPT is something completely different compared to the symbolic fact-based AI systems of decades past. Someone from the past whose idea of AI is Prolog would have a hard time understanding ChatGPT only based on interactions with it.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    > ChatGPT is something completely different compared to the symbolic fact-based AI systems of decades past. thank you for recognizing this and writing it down clearly.
0_____0 4y ago
I never thought of ChatGPT like that but by Gods that makes a ton of sense

bart_spoon 4y ago

Seems like your criticisms are due to your misunderstanding. In the movies replicants aren’t robots. They human constricts but biological. They are closer to lab grown individuals than to mechanical robots with ports and data caches to dump.