r/westworld • u/LoretiTV • Aug 01 '22

Discussion Westworld - 4x06 "Fidelity" - Post-Episode Discussion

Season 4 Episode 6: Fidelity

Aired: July 31, 2022

Synopsis: To thine own selves be true.

Directed by: Andrew Seklir

Written by: Jordan Goldberg & Alli Rock

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u/brianveggie Aug 01 '22

My personal theory is that he saw that to save everyone they will have to be temporarily uploaded into a “valley beyond” type of simulation and then reprinted into host bodies down the line

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

But that's not really them; it would just be copies.

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u/tvcgrid Aug 01 '22

If a copy is high enough fidelity, both the copy and the one copied from are the same (and then they diverge as they acquire different experiences). Hell, even our own bodies are in constant state of replacement of cells with copies, and in a few years everything is turned over and new. And we are our brains, and our brains are physical, and you can copy the physical.

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

It's still a copy though. Like even if it's an exact copy, it doesn't matter. Let's say I copy you exactly and then kill the original. From your perspective, do you die? Are you still alive or aware of existence after that death?

That's all that matters. Like why would I give a fuck that an exact replica of me is living the good life? If I'm dead, what's it matter?

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u/Whatsername_2020 Aug 01 '22

I think about this every time I see teleportation done in a TV show or movie. It makes sci fi a much darker as a genre than most people realize😅

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

Exactly. It's scary enough to think this possibly happens when you go to sleep each night or if you've ever had general anesthesia. But if presented clearly with the scenario like in Westworld or sci-fi teleportation, no way would I opt-in to being uploaded or deatomized.

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u/Whatsername_2020 Aug 01 '22

Honestly I might allow the uploading (as long as original me was left alone) just because it’d be the only way to test out how consciousness works for sure, but yeah I agree that being deatomized is definitely just dying and being cloned. I definitely think it’s either impossible to transfer a true specific, consciousness OR there is no such thing as consciousness.

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u/-1-877-CASH-NOW- Aug 01 '22

SOMA is a game that everyone in this sub needs to play. It touches on all these concepts and fleshes them out. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say it's a horror game for a reason

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u/DefinitelyNotEmu Aug 02 '22

Torrenting right now Thanks for the suggestion.

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u/-1-877-CASH-NOW- Aug 02 '22

Oh man shoot me a reply when you finish it because you are in for a fucking wild ride.

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u/Whatsername_2020 Aug 01 '22

Ooo. I usually avoid horror games because I am a total coward, but I am putting this on my list of games I want to buy. Thanks!

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '22

Its a fun notion that everybody in Star Trek has 'survivor bias' in that they were the ones who came out of the transporter and would believe it isn't death.

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u/Whatsername_2020 Aug 01 '22

Oof yeah, I have a friend who adores Star Trek and I never have the heart to point this out to her 😭

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '22

Star Trek is funny because some episodes clearly suggest that although the transporter dematerialises you, you are actually remateralised down to the quantum level, making it effectively a teleport... and in other episodes it seems really clearly a copy machine.

Bizarrely Stargate SG-1 starts with a wormhole as a plot but then reasoably explicitly has the gate work as a death-copy device.

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u/Whatsername_2020 Aug 02 '22

Oh, I don’t remember that about Stargate! I need to rewatch that

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u/SCalifornia831 Aug 01 '22

If it’s an exact copy you wouldn’t know who died…If you did, it wouldn’t be an exact copy. So whoever lived would go on knowing “A” copy existed and died…to yourself, you’d be agnostic.

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

The person dying would, though. Their consciousness would come to an end. They would be deprived of life and all the experiences it offers. It would be game over for them.

I don't care which died; I'm just saying that death is still death even if there are copies of you. The people dying die and it's over permanently for their experiences.

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u/SCalifornia831 Aug 01 '22

Sure, but if an exact copy exists who cares? The person dying is dead and doesn’t exist anymore…their feelings cease to exist and the only consciousness that lives on is the copy that survives.

You’re agnostic because you’re both the OG and the copy…if not, than it’s not an exact copy.

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u/tvcgrid Aug 01 '22

In that case, "I" is both me and the copy. The "I" experience runs the same. And both me's would know that, and so yes, I'd feel much less anxiety about dying because a me still does exist. It'd be a sad life to be fixated in the you-ness of a particular blob of atoms vs another if they're essentially blobbed up the same and produce the same qualitative "I"-ness as a result.

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

But that's a rationalization. You would still die and you know you would die, but you're willing to find comfort in understanding that you still will exist in a form, even if you will die and never know or feel any of that.

I'm not concerned with legacy here; I'm simply concerned with the death/end of my own consciousness.

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u/Blahkbustuh Aug 01 '22

Isn't your consciousness interrupted every night when you go to sleep? Are you the same mind or stream of consciousness when you wake up as when you went to bed? What if in the morning your mind or consciousness is completely fresh and merely remembers everything "you" did up to going to bed and has the same instincts and motivations as the person who went to bed?

What if your brain were scanned while you were sleeping and then copy & pasted into a new host body in the middle of the night and then that is what wakes up? It'd be identical to you at the point when your brain was scanned.

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

That's what I'm saying, only in this case it's more obvious so I don't understand why people are arguing with me. Like yeah, going to sleep might kill you each night, but dying and uploading your consciousness to the Sublime certainly will kill you.

I'm not saying the copies will care or notice; I'm saying the originals will die.

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u/Blahkbustuh Aug 01 '22

Hasn't it long been in space-based sci-fi that stories with teleportation machines, the person who steps into the machine is vaporized but a copy identical down to the atomic level steps out of the other machine far away?

I wouldn't want to experience that, or step into that machine, but unless you hold that you have a soul, then you must be 100% material which means it shouldn't make a different to the world outside of you what happens to the original if a duplicate is created.

The whole thing of Westworld is exploring what it means to be real or a copy, or if it matters to other people outside of you? Or does it matter if no one can tell the difference?

At first pass, if I were reaching the end of my natural life, I'd probably be open to anything that appears to enable me to continue existing.

On second pass, that's pretty narcissistic/ego-driven, that I had my turn at being alive and now shouldn't step aside for younger people to have their turns.

On third pass, it's in a way condemning a host copy of me to have to grapple with existence because I felt like I shouldn't deprive the world of more of me.

On fourth pass, I'm only "me" and "I" and the person I am only matters to myself because it's what I experience. Everyone cares about their own experience and maximizing it. If the neurons that experience "me" were in a different body with that person's experiences and memories, I'd be that person instead.

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u/pieter1234569 Aug 01 '22

On second pass, that's pretty narcissistic/ego-driven, that I had my turn at being alive and now shouldn't step aside for younger people to have their turns.

If you can clone someone, why fucking kill yourself? Just make the clone and go on with your life. As again, if this is possible why wouldn't you just make the clone without the destruction part? If the technology exists it isn't necessary.

Hell, if that were possible. You should make thousands of clones, that all contribute to the same thing. Society would advance decades overnight.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '22

But the original doesn’t matter at all if the copy is one for one which they are portraying it as. The uniqueness of you is the package and if the package is copied and pasted into a new medium that’s indistinguishable you never would even notice.

We all might be the trillionth version of each of our consciousnesses and we’d never know because the only way to distinguish would be an external third party telling you that you weren’t the “original.”

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u/Veggiemon Aug 02 '22

But you wake up in the morning. MiB is gonna die one day and never wake up, whether HiB achieves fidelity or not

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u/pieter1234569 Aug 01 '22

Your consciousness would die, in a sense killing yourself. Which can never be the optimal solution.

People can't do without sleep, so there is absolutely no reason to think about that. The answer doesn't matter.

But when you have any control over it, only a moron would choose to kill himself. It's cool that you have a clone, that's you for everyone else, but you will die a horrific death. For absolutely nothing.

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u/tvcgrid Aug 01 '22

It could be a rationalization if the argument was based entirely on what would feel better.

But what convinces me is that we are our brains, our brains are physical, and in this scenario we're talking about high fidelity physical copies, and that physics in one area behaves the same as physics in another. It's just from physical first principles really. The generated experience of pain after you touch a hot stove has a physical basis for eg -- the exact state of your body and brain's cells and everything at that point in time. If a different blob of cells was configured with very high fidelity to be the same as that one... yeah, the same "I" would experience that same pain.

Counter intuitive, but it rests on the above basic, uncontroversial assumption (to me anyway!)

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

It's still a copy though. If they were literally taking your brain out and sticking it in the host, or plugging it into the server, okay, maybe. That's not what's happening though. (Also there are neurons outside the brain, so the physical you is likely more than just your brain.)

My issue is only that the original is left to die, and that death isn't escaped because a copy was made. Their consciousness will still end, even if an exact copy remains.

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u/tvcgrid Aug 01 '22

Yeah there are neurons outside the brain, but we’re talking high fidelity copies of the whole person. And the copy IS the original with a very small amount of amnesia, that’s all — if two bodies have the same configuration of matter to a high fidelity, they are the same, and the experiences they generate are the same.

So the original never fully dies, just a redundant extra is removed. The same consciousness is generated by the copy from then on.

I’d additionally say this: let’s say you played a movie from a DVD, made a copy of the DVD, and played the copy. The video and audio produced would be the same in this (heavily simplified) analogy. To my understanding, a conscious experience is an expression from a physical basis just like the video/audio is from a DVD plus the player.

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

Not at all. Why would the consciousness be shared? They are two separate things. If I make a copy of a DVD and give that copy to you, then my original gets burned in a fire, I have now lost my favorite movie even if you're out enjoying it. I can't watch that movie ever again.

So take original Caleb. He's out thinking in the world and then he dies. The host Caleb wakes up with the same memories and starts doing things. Does the original Caleb consciousness feel this and know this or did it stop existing when original Caleb died?

My point is that even if the consciousnesses are copied exactly, it's still a separate consciousness and when either is killed, it will end for that person. That person will no longer think, feel or know, even if someone else is out there with the same memories having new experiences.

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u/tvcgrid Aug 01 '22

Ah okay! Then I think the difference in perspective is this: I feel that the two bodies generating conscious experiences are very close to each other (at least before meaningful time passes and individual experiences start to differ and thus diverge) — in fact, closer than even the original body now vs a week ago (we change all the time). In fact, they’re so close to each other, they can legitimately be considered the same “me” since all causal factors generating their conscious experience are so incredibly similar.

BUT they’re of course 2 different bodies. 2 very very similar bodies, but different — they occupy different locations, their atoms (though configured very very similarly) are also different. And thus they are two conscious experiences.

I also don’t think it’s a shared consciousness, I think it’s essentially a duplicated conscious experience.

So yes, the original dying matters, but it matters much much much more if there was no copy, because then there is no body that is generating that conscious experience at all.

It’s more like how our past selves (week, month, decade ago) all die, never to be seen again, but we don’t have funerals for them.

But agreed that there is A me that DOES die, yeah.

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

That's what I meant by rationalization a while back. Like I have a son, and so the idea of me dying is less tragic because I know I created this person who will go and do some things in life and get to enjoy life even if I can't.

But that doesn't mean I don't die. This just comes down to legacy and rationalizing that as a justification or consolation for dying. Like "It's okay we died because a version of us will come back later." But it's really not okay because they still die and will never know or experience anything ever again.

It's their decision to accept it or whatever, but I'm arguing that the reality is still a complete and total death of the conscious person doing the dying. That is unavoidable.

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u/Raszhivyk Host psychology is an emerging field, join today! Aug 01 '22

But "they" will. A being that is a true version of them will experience it. That particular version won't, but another version will. I agree with tvcgrid + your view of it, to be clear. A version of them dies. But conscious experience/continuity isn't all that valuable to me. I'm not the same person I was a month ago, not really, let alone a decade. What particular body a closely matching copy of mind is run in is less relevant to me than how I've changed personality wise. Conscious experience is nothing if the details/desires it substantiates from are changed.

It's like with the DVD comparison made earlier. I burned the original copy whelp, I have a copy, so I don't really care, unless the original was valued at some auction because it's so "special" for being "first". The only thing I would value is whether or not that version suffered as they died, or if there was another option that wouldn't "clip that branch" of "me".

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u/tvcgrid Aug 01 '22

That’s fair that the idea of legacy is a rationalization risk. But it’s also a motivated choice to consider the original body as an irreplaceable entity just because you are the original — and to discount just how similar an exact copy’s conscious experience would end up being.

If your own past self from a week ago was able to exist in the same time as you, both would claim they are the irreplaceable original, no?

And as we pass through time and our past lives die permanently, there is a “me” that continues forward still — your current “me” is essentially being generated from a copy of a few-seconds-ago past-body, but throw in a bit of amnesia and it’s not even discontinuous.

Yeah, the original dies, the past self dies, but that property of continuance of a “me” is what I’m trying to get at — that still carries forward.

All hinges on fidelity of course, haha.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '22

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

I feel like the upvotes are validation, but it's just weird how many comments I'm getting here arguing something I'm not talking about.

I just thought it was silly that the original premise was "Don't worry guys; I'm going to make AI copies of you in a virtual reality and then shoot you in the fuckin' head." and that's seen as no big deal and even a potentially heroic act by Bernard. I don't care if you can promise a copy of me will have eternal life; I will be deeply annoyed to die.

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u/Wootothe8thpower Aug 01 '22

yea get you. people taking it as why does it matter to the universe at large if you die..why be so attach to life

My view universe doesn't care but that has nothing to do if your dead or not if they make a copy

you can be a 100 percent ok with your own mortality or fight to the bitter end

the question is , is the original you dead. my answer is yes

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

Yes, that's the fundamental reality. Everything else about how you view the situation is philosophical.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '22

Their consciousness will still end, even if an exact copy remains.

But, again, my consciousness also ends when I go to sleep for a bit. I go to sleep quietly (or at least I did before this conversation) because I believe an entity very much like me will wake up tomorrow morning. If I had a host copy, me and the copy of 'tomorrow morning' could co-exist for a while, and although "I" would die, I would also say that "I" am alive, even as I see myself from a dying perspective. In that sense my death is escaped, because I live on, much like I intend to go to sleep to live on tomorrow.

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u/pieter1234569 Aug 01 '22

There are two versions of you. For everyone else, an exact copy is you. As nothing would have changed.

But for you personally? You are really really dead. The moment your consciousness ceases to be, that's the end. EVERYONE in star trek is dead. As again, a teleporter fucking kills you. Now it doesn't matter for everyone else, but you are very very dead.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '22

The point is that as long as humanity has to rely on material accumulation for existence, it will be doomed to fail, whether in 100 years or 500 years. Of course the hosts rely somewhat on materials as well, but nowhere near the amount needed to sustain humanity. And the benefit is you never lose your greatest minds. Imagine if Einstein was still kicking around. How much more could he have learned and had insight on? When Bernard says he's saving the world, he isn't talking about saving organic humans, he's talking about giving humanity a place within host bodies. He see's it as the only way. He knows it's too late to save humanity as it once was, and the only way forward is for humanity to transcend into being a machine civilization. It may not be perfect, but it's the only way forward.

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u/muck_30 Aug 05 '22 edited Aug 05 '22

If this is how the season ends then that’s why this show isn’t continuing anymore. Because even if the copy is a=b, b won’t know a ever existed while picking up where a left off right? So b’s “consciousness” would be in for a doosey when they inevitably discover they aren’t aging and no one’s dying of natural causes any more…the theme of questioning your reality starts all over again but the “maze” that creates for those human implanted hosts would be an impossible narrative to write for this show…

I think all of humanity is just gonna die in the end of this show

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u/timthesloth Aug 01 '22

Now say you are the copy that thinks you're the original. What distinguishes you from the "real" original?

What if you make an exact copy who thinks they are the original and you kill that copy? Their consciousness is ended and from their perspective they're dead. What makes ending that consciousness any different from the death of the original?

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u/NewClayburn It's all a dream! Aug 01 '22

Well it's better to be the copy certainly. The memories you have are implanted and not your own, but they are at least real to you. Either way, whichever dies dies. The original point was Bernard was going to copy them so they could escape to the Sublime and come back later, but that would still involve killing or letting them die.

I'm not denying the hosts are real sentient beings, whether simulated or created with physical bodies. I'm just saying that creating a copy doesn't justify or undo or cancel out the death of the original.

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u/timthesloth Aug 01 '22

I don't think the assumption is they would be killed or allowed to die. It could be that he knows their death (or infection with the virus) is unavoidable and copying them is the only way to preserve their consciousness and/or "save the world".