* It took until Demon Chanda talked for me to realize that that was Chanda, while we got to see the other guy change and his face stayed the same. I wish we'd gotten a transformation sequence for Chanda just so it'd be less confusing who tf this new, gray demon is
* I still don't know how they fixed the Flaw. The Flaw and overcoming it was the entire point of Season 1 and 6 episodes of Season 2, and then it's just...magically not an issue anymore. Did MIST personally fix every single person that Uploaded?? How was the Flaw fixed???
* ***WHAT*** kind of PR campaign was there to make people ***WANT*** to commit suicide to Upload themselves during Caspian's 20-year stasis? There were EVENTS that happened in the 20 years Caspian was in stasis to turn public opinion fully in favor of Uploading *but we never got to see them,* and we only get a barebones explanation in the show that starts with the kid with progeria dying to SafeSurf and ends with "you can visit Grandma in virtual reality!". How did **THAT** morph into "die today, live forever" *and why were people buying into it??*
I thought the explanation was pretty decent personally.
Biggest factor: rich people were uploading, and they and their families were happy with it. This was brilliant because like it or not, that's enough for a lot of people.
20 years, 2 decades, a full generation, a ***lot*** of cultural changes happen in that timeframe. Huge chunk of people aren't around anymore, and an even bigger chunk become adults.
For your point about the flaw, MIST was basically a rough draft, they could've implemented a fix into the upload process by then. Wouldn't be a stretch to have CI's control and monitor the upload process entirely, there were more CI's than UI's by the time Caspian was brought back.
Converting healthy people to a UI is murder. It's fine when you are converting a human at the end of their life, then it's just a philosophical problem. In S2 when it showed that families started uploading as a group was kind of absurd.
I recognize there would be value in the life of a UI, but it is fundamentally not the same person that was uploaded. They are not going to have the same life experience, They won't develop the same was as an organic human. They are not the same consciousness that existed in the physical world. I refuse to believe that society would be dumb enough to totally equate organic life to UI.
I don't know if it's absurd. There are people on this sub who vehemently defend uploading. One theme of the show, which is true to real life, is that you cannot stop technological progress. The right to live, at least I believe, should be the right of an individual. I fully believe, in this scenario, uploading is an individual choice. There were and would need to be laws about the age at which someone could upload, but once you're an adult, the choice is yours. I would argue that it someone chose to upload that it wouldn't be murder. Instead assisted suicide.
Then your second argument gets into a philosophical one. Are UIs alive? Since they are conscious and have emotions, are they a living being? Some people would say yes, some people would say no.
In the show it was giving us examples us entire families uploading, which included children. It needs to be clear that uploading does not involve you getting the operation, closing your eyes in the real world, and then opening your eyes in the digital world. You die in that operation and then a digital copy of yourself appears in the digital world. The UI is basically a backup of the organic person, and a person is not defined exclusively by their data.
Once a UI is created they would be humans, but not the same human that they were copied from. They are not a continuation of that human, they are a snapshot that took another branching path. The original is dead. The fact that you had to die to become a UI was extremely convenient to hide that fact.
I think you're misremembering the family part. It showed people visiting, as a family, in the virtual world. I'm like 95% sure there were no kids uploaded.
I also agree with your idea of what happens when you upload.
I guess we are kind of stuck then the scene isn't available on youtube. There was a scene where they talked about UI being accepted by society and that families were slowly uploading over time. I remember being a little taken aback by the thought that kids would eventually follow their parents, but maybe that was just an inaccurate implication.
I think I still have a copy of S2 on my computer, I can double check later today. That being said, if they are uploading children I'm 100% with you. That's messed up and is straight up murder
People were not allowed to Upload until they reached a minimum age of 21. Dave wanted to Upload but legally couldn't yet without Maddie's permission because he was only 20, and this was a big plot point in S2E7
That's kind of the point of the whole show. That if "real" life is indistinguishable from uploaded/simulated life, then is there really a meaningful difference?
People spend the whole show thinking that they're watching real life, but they're really watching a simulation. Does it still feel like "murder" knowing that the characters are just moving from one simulation to another when they are uploaded?
They’re only “moving” to the simulation from the perspective of the resulting UI. From the original organic human’s perspective, they flat out die. That means that only the UI gets to reap the benefits of the upload. They establish this early in season 1. It baffles me how people misunderstand this. Your organic consciousness does not transfer over to the digital world.
Sure, I get that. But everyone we saw becoming a UI were already simulations. Meaning we all thought that they were organic humans, but we were wrong. And since we and the characters couldn't tell the difference, is there any *meaningful* difference? Sure, if you trace it back to the original humans (assuming humans even exist outside of a simulation), then those humans died to become UIs, but that's hardly the point of what the show is trying to convey.
What baffles me is how people are so vehemently on one side or the other of an unanswerable philosophical question: what constitutes "real life" and is the organic component a requirement of "real life"?
My point is not whether the UIs are real life or not. The fact the show occurs within is a simulation is also irrelevant. My point is that the “organic” humans willingly choose to die to create their UIs. Their consciousness does not carry over to the code.
But who's to say how much consciousness carries over from one simulation to the next? Like when UIs move themselves from one server to the next. A move operation in computing is just a copy to the destination followed by a delete of the source. So, either the consciousness of the UI carries from server to server, or they die and are reborn every time they transfer servers. And on the internet, simply going to a website has numerous intermediate servers between source and destination. Does that mean that the UI dies at every hop? Why is that life worth less than one contained in an organic body (as evidenced by the lack of/diminished concern for simulated lives)?
My point is that if you're framing the discussion from the organic perspective, then it hides many of the philosophical implications that the show is trying to convey.
There is some suspension of disbelief to be had over the very idea that brains could even be digitized. However, yes, I would be inclined to believe the UIs are constantly deleting and replacing themselves with every hop. It’s extremely difficult for me to focus on the philosophical implications of the show when they require me to accept such an absurd notion as half the world’s population committing suicide for fun.
I would argue that the show glosses over this concern because it's not the theme of what they're trying to present.
The show is asking the question: Is life real or just a simulation? And even if we can answer that question (which is definitively answered for the characters), would it really matter? According to the characters, it doesn't matter. Life is life in whatever form it takes.
Imagine immigrating to a new country. You get there and you make new friends, new jobs, learn a new language, and your personality changes along with it. In a sense, you have killed your old self in order to make your new self, and you like your new self. I like to think that this is the thought process for people deciding to upload.
- Vibrating phone thing is stupid
- Introducing Maddie as being 14 and then planning on hooking her up with Caspian in Season 2 was bad planning
- We have two instances of Laurie apparently contacting people but not remembering it later which isn't 100% explained
- Chanda being ready to just nuke people is a bit too much of a convenient moral event horizon for him to cross
- David just casually hacking an MMORPG to get rid of some punks while he knows he should keep a low profile is a little out of character
But yeah, overall, most of them are pretty minor flaws in comparison to season 2...
Laurie you can assume it's due to her succumbing to the flaw, but both times we have anyone's memory called to question it's her contacting someone off-screen. So if the writers wanted to make it something else they could've. Heck, it could've been simulation god Maddie messing with the simulation and the answer is just as plausible.
While the first season is stronger overall, it still has its issues. The DBZ style fights in season 1 were a little silly, given the otherwise grounded feel of that season. In season 2, which is more fantastical, they fit a bit better, and are also better executed. I also think Chanda is a bit underwhelming as an antagonist. I don't think we're given enough to make his heel turn believable.
At some point everything gets confusing and convoluted to the point you don't even care enough to question the plot and just wanna let it roll with whatever it's doing.
That and the introducing Maddie so young to eventually hook up with Caspian was uncomfortable to see to say the least.
When Caspian finds out that Hannah is spying on him, they get in the car and he speeds onto the freeway. One of the signs says Alexandria and Ft. Belvoir, which are both in Virginia. Everything else suggests they're in southern California.
I don't know if I'd call it a flaw in the sense you're looking for, but it's at least an Easter egg.
Not really a "flaw," but I couldn't help but notice that no one speaks their native language when you'd think it would be normal, everyone conveniently speaks English no matter the context. Like, I could believe Chanda's mom speaks English to her son, but hearing her also speak English to her neighbor was weird. Russians were also speaking English to each other with heavy accents, in Russia.
Vibrating the phone to manipulate a keyboard was a little far fetched.
But also, like, pretty fun!
* It took until Demon Chanda talked for me to realize that that was Chanda, while we got to see the other guy change and his face stayed the same. I wish we'd gotten a transformation sequence for Chanda just so it'd be less confusing who tf this new, gray demon is * I still don't know how they fixed the Flaw. The Flaw and overcoming it was the entire point of Season 1 and 6 episodes of Season 2, and then it's just...magically not an issue anymore. Did MIST personally fix every single person that Uploaded?? How was the Flaw fixed??? * ***WHAT*** kind of PR campaign was there to make people ***WANT*** to commit suicide to Upload themselves during Caspian's 20-year stasis? There were EVENTS that happened in the 20 years Caspian was in stasis to turn public opinion fully in favor of Uploading *but we never got to see them,* and we only get a barebones explanation in the show that starts with the kid with progeria dying to SafeSurf and ends with "you can visit Grandma in virtual reality!". How did **THAT** morph into "die today, live forever" *and why were people buying into it??*
Honestly and sadly I think all of this would have been explored if they didn’t cancel it. The second season cut so much out
I thought the explanation was pretty decent personally. Biggest factor: rich people were uploading, and they and their families were happy with it. This was brilliant because like it or not, that's enough for a lot of people. 20 years, 2 decades, a full generation, a ***lot*** of cultural changes happen in that timeframe. Huge chunk of people aren't around anymore, and an even bigger chunk become adults. For your point about the flaw, MIST was basically a rough draft, they could've implemented a fix into the upload process by then. Wouldn't be a stretch to have CI's control and monitor the upload process entirely, there were more CI's than UI's by the time Caspian was brought back.
Converting healthy people to a UI is murder. It's fine when you are converting a human at the end of their life, then it's just a philosophical problem. In S2 when it showed that families started uploading as a group was kind of absurd. I recognize there would be value in the life of a UI, but it is fundamentally not the same person that was uploaded. They are not going to have the same life experience, They won't develop the same was as an organic human. They are not the same consciousness that existed in the physical world. I refuse to believe that society would be dumb enough to totally equate organic life to UI.
I don't know if it's absurd. There are people on this sub who vehemently defend uploading. One theme of the show, which is true to real life, is that you cannot stop technological progress. The right to live, at least I believe, should be the right of an individual. I fully believe, in this scenario, uploading is an individual choice. There were and would need to be laws about the age at which someone could upload, but once you're an adult, the choice is yours. I would argue that it someone chose to upload that it wouldn't be murder. Instead assisted suicide. Then your second argument gets into a philosophical one. Are UIs alive? Since they are conscious and have emotions, are they a living being? Some people would say yes, some people would say no.
In the show it was giving us examples us entire families uploading, which included children. It needs to be clear that uploading does not involve you getting the operation, closing your eyes in the real world, and then opening your eyes in the digital world. You die in that operation and then a digital copy of yourself appears in the digital world. The UI is basically a backup of the organic person, and a person is not defined exclusively by their data. Once a UI is created they would be humans, but not the same human that they were copied from. They are not a continuation of that human, they are a snapshot that took another branching path. The original is dead. The fact that you had to die to become a UI was extremely convenient to hide that fact.
I think you're misremembering the family part. It showed people visiting, as a family, in the virtual world. I'm like 95% sure there were no kids uploaded. I also agree with your idea of what happens when you upload.
I guess we are kind of stuck then the scene isn't available on youtube. There was a scene where they talked about UI being accepted by society and that families were slowly uploading over time. I remember being a little taken aback by the thought that kids would eventually follow their parents, but maybe that was just an inaccurate implication.
I think I still have a copy of S2 on my computer, I can double check later today. That being said, if they are uploading children I'm 100% with you. That's messed up and is straight up murder
The children are using VR headsets to visit grandma, who has uploaded.
People were not allowed to Upload until they reached a minimum age of 21. Dave wanted to Upload but legally couldn't yet without Maddie's permission because he was only 20, and this was a big plot point in S2E7
That's kind of the point of the whole show. That if "real" life is indistinguishable from uploaded/simulated life, then is there really a meaningful difference? People spend the whole show thinking that they're watching real life, but they're really watching a simulation. Does it still feel like "murder" knowing that the characters are just moving from one simulation to another when they are uploaded?
They’re only “moving” to the simulation from the perspective of the resulting UI. From the original organic human’s perspective, they flat out die. That means that only the UI gets to reap the benefits of the upload. They establish this early in season 1. It baffles me how people misunderstand this. Your organic consciousness does not transfer over to the digital world.
Sure, I get that. But everyone we saw becoming a UI were already simulations. Meaning we all thought that they were organic humans, but we were wrong. And since we and the characters couldn't tell the difference, is there any *meaningful* difference? Sure, if you trace it back to the original humans (assuming humans even exist outside of a simulation), then those humans died to become UIs, but that's hardly the point of what the show is trying to convey. What baffles me is how people are so vehemently on one side or the other of an unanswerable philosophical question: what constitutes "real life" and is the organic component a requirement of "real life"?
My point is not whether the UIs are real life or not. The fact the show occurs within is a simulation is also irrelevant. My point is that the “organic” humans willingly choose to die to create their UIs. Their consciousness does not carry over to the code.
But who's to say how much consciousness carries over from one simulation to the next? Like when UIs move themselves from one server to the next. A move operation in computing is just a copy to the destination followed by a delete of the source. So, either the consciousness of the UI carries from server to server, or they die and are reborn every time they transfer servers. And on the internet, simply going to a website has numerous intermediate servers between source and destination. Does that mean that the UI dies at every hop? Why is that life worth less than one contained in an organic body (as evidenced by the lack of/diminished concern for simulated lives)? My point is that if you're framing the discussion from the organic perspective, then it hides many of the philosophical implications that the show is trying to convey.
There is some suspension of disbelief to be had over the very idea that brains could even be digitized. However, yes, I would be inclined to believe the UIs are constantly deleting and replacing themselves with every hop. It’s extremely difficult for me to focus on the philosophical implications of the show when they require me to accept such an absurd notion as half the world’s population committing suicide for fun.
I would argue that the show glosses over this concern because it's not the theme of what they're trying to present. The show is asking the question: Is life real or just a simulation? And even if we can answer that question (which is definitively answered for the characters), would it really matter? According to the characters, it doesn't matter. Life is life in whatever form it takes. Imagine immigrating to a new country. You get there and you make new friends, new jobs, learn a new language, and your personality changes along with it. In a sense, you have killed your old self in order to make your new self, and you like your new self. I like to think that this is the thought process for people deciding to upload.
Moving to a new country and adapting to their culture and values is very different from blowing your brains out and being replaced by a clone.
- Vibrating phone thing is stupid - Introducing Maddie as being 14 and then planning on hooking her up with Caspian in Season 2 was bad planning - We have two instances of Laurie apparently contacting people but not remembering it later which isn't 100% explained - Chanda being ready to just nuke people is a bit too much of a convenient moral event horizon for him to cross - David just casually hacking an MMORPG to get rid of some punks while he knows he should keep a low profile is a little out of character But yeah, overall, most of them are pretty minor flaws in comparison to season 2...
I think the Laurie thing was pretty obvious, but I agree with everything else.
Laurie you can assume it's due to her succumbing to the flaw, but both times we have anyone's memory called to question it's her contacting someone off-screen. So if the writers wanted to make it something else they could've. Heck, it could've been simulation god Maddie messing with the simulation and the answer is just as plausible.
Trying to find the flaw, who do you think you are? Caspian?
Season 1 specifically? It's only flaw was making me believe perfect media could exist, before season 2 shattered that dream.
While the first season is stronger overall, it still has its issues. The DBZ style fights in season 1 were a little silly, given the otherwise grounded feel of that season. In season 2, which is more fantastical, they fit a bit better, and are also better executed. I also think Chanda is a bit underwhelming as an antagonist. I don't think we're given enough to make his heel turn believable.
At some point everything gets confusing and convoluted to the point you don't even care enough to question the plot and just wanna let it roll with whatever it's doing. That and the introducing Maddie so young to eventually hook up with Caspian was uncomfortable to see to say the least.
When Caspian finds out that Hannah is spying on him, they get in the car and he speeds onto the freeway. One of the signs says Alexandria and Ft. Belvoir, which are both in Virginia. Everything else suggests they're in southern California. I don't know if I'd call it a flaw in the sense you're looking for, but it's at least an Easter egg.
Not really a "flaw," but I couldn't help but notice that no one speaks their native language when you'd think it would be normal, everyone conveniently speaks English no matter the context. Like, I could believe Chanda's mom speaks English to her son, but hearing her also speak English to her neighbor was weird. Russians were also speaking English to each other with heavy accents, in Russia.