Sphere Blog Post 2: Subtle Condescension

Plot twist! The alien entity that had been conjuring sea monsters to attack the scientists is not what it seems. When Harry went into the sphere, he gained the power to make his thoughts - including fears of giant squid - come to life. Beth and Norman knock him out, but then Beth herself goes into the sphere and gets the power. Norman is forced to do so later to protect himself from Beth. Eventually they blow up the underwater spaceship, escape to the surface, are picked up by the Navy, and then intentionally lose their powers for the sake of mankind.

Harry is the only important African-American character in the book. Crichton characterizes Harry as a cold, calculating man who has a superior attitude towards others. Norman, the psychologist character, explains Harry’s behavior in the following way. As a child, Harry was a mathematical prodigy who was learning math equations while the other kids were learning how to play basketball (27). As an adult, he feels the need to compensate for his background by presenting himself as “Mr. Arrogant Know-It-All Black Man” (26).

Let’s say that Harry was a real person. In that case, Norman’s psychoanalysis may be correct. However, Crichton’s use of Harry’s back story promotes the stereotype that black people societally value sports more than school/learning.

Beth is the only important female character in Sphere. She works out and acts tough - she is described as Amazonian. However, Norman psychoanalyzes that Beth feels oppressed by the patriarchy and lusts for the power that she feels is denied to her because she is a woman. This psychoanalysis implies that when Beth gets the power from the sphere and acts manipulatively and irrationally towards Norman, it is due to her underlying anti-patriarchy views. Again, if Beth was a real person Norman’s psychoanalysis might be correct, but the characterization of Beth as a man-hater who acts aggressively and irrationally because of her feminism condemns the real people who have the viewpoint of feeling oppressed by the patriarchy.

I am a white male myself who has never felt outcast or oppressed by my society. It is natural for someone such as myself to want to understand the struggle of women or African-Americans and empathize with them. The honest way to attempt this understanding of a person is to talk to them, to ask them about their experiences, how they feel. The dishonest way is to take your own biases and stereotypes - such as the stereotype that African Americans don’t value education, or a bias against feminists - and draw conclusions based on your own limited perspective. That’s exactly what Michael Crichton did. Through the guise of a psychologist character, Crichton made characters that are themselves stereotypes and pseudo-psychoanalyzed them. Attempting to understand a person or group of people through fabrication is inevitably condescending.

Sphere Blog Post 1: Everybody Hurts, Everybody Cries (Including Aliens)

I've been reading Sphere by Michael Crichton. I've read most of the book. A massive underwater spaceship is found; a group of scientists go down to make contact; they realize it's a US space ship from the future, but there is an alien ship on board; the alien is released and turns out to be a sentimental yet immensely powerful being that can conjure animals to kill the crew members. An important plot point is that the alien (named Jerry) is childlike and emotional, with the caveat that it kills some of the underwater scientists to amuse itself with their terrified reactions. This brings up the question; if humans land on a planet and meet intelligent aliens (or the aliens land on Earth), would they have emotions?

I think every creature has a survival instinct and the urge to reproduce. Also, many intelligent and semi-intelligent animals on Earth have been scientifically shown to exhibit emotion, though they are unlikely to be aware of their emotions, so emotions are not exclusive to humans.

If you look at BRAIN SCIENCE, the reason that people are motivated to do things besides basic survival instincts is the stress response produced by elevated cortisol levels; if you accomplish a task your cortisol level will return to normal and you will receive a reward in the form of dopamine, which will make you happy. When you think about all the tasks that would need to be accomplished to form an intelligent civilization, I would argue that some sort of motivating chemicals would be necessary. This means that at least those basic emotions of stress and pleasure will be involved in any advanced alien society that humans might meet.

This is a fairly strong argument for the general presence of emotion in aliens, but as we know from my man Spock, aliens might find a way to control their emotions. Maybe there are some collective conscious aliens that have something totally different going on. I might delve into that in a later blog post.

Craphound and one of Humanity's Fatal Flaws

In class we read Craphound by a dude named Cory Doctorow. Long story short: Jerry, a thrift-shopper or “craphound” runs into some friendship issues with his fellow craphound, an alien. These aliens have come onto Earth and are trading their trinkets -incredibly advanced technology to humans- for our thrift objects, and at the end of the story they leave Earth.

There is the implication at the end of the story that the aliens are like tourists, trading objects of little worth to them for objects of little worth to humans. The catch is that their chotchkies are a big deal to us, and we can’t understands the logic of their trades. The takeaway is that the value of some objects lies in the memories and emotions attached to them rather than the material value of the objects themselves - for example, your beat-up teddy bear from forever ago. So... at the end of the day what’s important is happy memories.

I’m down with happy memories, but with the caveat that they shouldn’t take precedent over the present. I subscribe to the pursuit of happiness, so if you’re obsessing over the past you’re missing out on the present moment - or if your present moment sucks, missing out on the chance to improve it. It’s also ironic that you might pay lots of money for a “vintage” object which has some sort of emotional value to you.

I’d say that obsessing about the past or the unknown future is one of humankind’s fatal flaws. I know that when I’m in a stressed out mood I like to think about my childhood and idealize it as a carefree, playful time removed from my current responsibilities. Well, that’s not really true - I had a great childhood, but I was more sensitive and prone to negative feelings than I am now, having matured emotionally. Also, when I’m feeling unfulfilled, I idealize the future, imagining how much more free and adventurous and relaxed I believe I will be in college (hopefully this will come true). Idealizing the future or the past comes from present negative emotions, and often creates more negative emotions about the present.

Firefly and its Rampant Stereotypes

Westerns always have tons of stereotypes, and it seems that space Westerns are no exception. I watched “Out of Gas” and “Jaynestown” from the series Firefly. In these episodes, the main character are Mal, Inara, Jayne, Kaylee, Simon, and Derrial. Mal is the stereotype of a captain; handsome, hot blooded when necessary, loyal to his crew mates, with the gaff worthy of Kirk to say “just fix it”. Jayne is the strong-man of the group, imposing in muscle far more than in intelligence. Inara is a “companion”, aka a classy prostitute who is the sexual goddess/priestess character. Kaylee is the ship mechanic, fulfilling the sweet little Southern girl role. Simon, the ship’s doctor, is the respectful, respectable gentleman of the group that’s always picked on for his good manners. Derrial is a pastor - the guy who has lots of quotes with deep religious morals.

Yay! Lots of stereotypical characters already! Then of course there is the pervading romantic tension between the characters and the morals laid out nice and simple, with no subtlety, in glossy one-liners throughout the dialogue. To top this stale supermarket cake with a rotten cherry, the cheesy fake Southern dialogue does the trick. Maybe this is just some stick-it-to-the-man angst of mine, but I laughed multiple times at how simplified and stereotypical the characters, plot and morals were.

This is not an isolated issue. While there are many incredible movies (I don’t know about TV shows) that are legitimately intellectually stimulating, this practice of force feeding morals to the audience is present in lots of mainstream TV and movie dramas. It’s frustrating to me because these over-simplifications of theological concepts and clumsy attempts to answer life’s questions miss the point; they can’t be answered by any one person from any one perspective. Ah well, I guess I’ll have to turn to more boring adult stuff for my intellectual stimulation (sigh).

Thoughts on Red Mars

Can a society be utopian? Aboard the Ares, the first hundred live in comfort, not having to worry about food or danger or other physical needs (most of the time). However, we see that the social aspect evolves from cooperative and somewhat utopian to everyone clustering into exclusive groups, losing unity.

We see the nature of a huge undertaking like going to Mars. During the first few months on the Ares and the first few months on Mars, the crew are most happy and most unified; as they settle into their routines on the Ares and on Mars, they become less happy, even though they have less to do or worry about. As a wise man once said, once you get used to doing something that you’ve been anticipating and planning for, it gets boring. Constant change is the spice of life.

On a side note, Arkady is the Socrates of the voyage: always questioning the status quo and sticking it to the man, whether that be NASA or his fellow crew members. He does a valuable service to the first hundred by challenging them to be more creative and think about the implications of colonizing a new planet for society, whereas Ann does the same in terms of the environment.

I’m interested in the implications about the environment in Red Mars. Ann points out to Nadia that the colonizers will ruin the natural beauty of Mars and replace it to suit their needs. This is the idea of the unspoiled paradise - land before humans get there. Ironically, we go to new lands often because it is beautiful and untouched, like the American West, but our presence there ruins that. In a way humans are to nature as the Borg to alien civilizations: we consume it, often without a second thought. The colonizers on Mars take it to a whole new level with terraforming. I think this is more morale than humans causing the extinction of tons of Earth’s species, but Ann does still have an argument.

The Giant Baby: a story written by yours truly

Zenith Jackson, captain of the Conquistador, paced back and forth as his first mate, Datt Mamon, explained the situation.

“The environment is friendly enough to humans in our suits. There’s little danger to the recon party. Well, we did pick up some large heat signatures dotted around the planet, but those are probably geysers or-”

“I want this planet, Datt!” interrupted Zenith. “Even though we can synthesize any other particle in the universe, this is the only place where we can find Hardtofindium. Do you know how much the crystals will be worth on the Interplanetary Black Market? Yeah, a lot! Prepare the team!”

Half an hour later, the four crew members shot out of the gleaming spaceship in the small shuttle craft.

“One hour until landing,” said Ella, a newbie shuttle pilot.

“Wake me up when we get there,” yawned Greg as he settled into one of the bunks.

Nicole, a robot maintenance specialist, glanced over as the figure began to snore. “How can anyone sleep so much?” she asked.

“Because he’s a security officer. I would know,” replied Joe.

Waking up Greg when the shuttle arrived, the recon crew stepped into the steaming air. Geysers shot up around them as they squelched into the bubbling soil. Joe pulled out his knowitalleter and scanned the surroundings. After a few moments he exclaimed, “I’m picking up a cluster of Hardtofindium over there!” pointing to a mound of soil a hundred yards away. The team trudged to the mound. Joe murmured, “The Hardtofindium is still here, but I’m picking up some sort of heat signature... it almost looks like-” The mound began to shake. Soil slid off on all sides as something rose, rose, two meters, three, four. Suddenly, the figure shook and sprayed the crew with soil.

“What the hell?”

“It looks like...”

“A baby!” Ella exclaimed. Albeit a baby four meters tall, with trees for legs and a head like a beach ball about to pop.

“But it’s green...”

A deep sound emanated from the figure, “Ahhh iizzz binn longg tyymme sinss I’ve talked. Hello, creatures. Why have you disturbed my sleep?”

“And it speaks English??!!” gasped Greg.

“Of course I speak English, you nitwit!” cried the giant baby.

Having slightly recovered her common sense, Nicole addressed the giant baby. “Excuse us for bothering you, but do you know where any Hardtofindium is?”

“Hardtofindium?” roared the creature, convulsing and making what seemed like choking sounds. “Why, it’s me! It’s in my skin! My skin is made from hardtofindium!”

“And there’s no other Hardtofindium, like in the ground?” asked Greg timidly.

“No, there’s none in the ground. We Bigcuties are able to biologically synthesize the crystals. It can’t be artificially made!”

Zenith, who had been listening and watching the scene through the hidden cameras in Joe’s knowitalleter, spoke a command into Joe’s earpiece: “Kill it.” Joe rapidly signaled to the other crew members. As the creature watched in confusion, the four pulled out their laser pistols and shot blinding high energy beams at the giant baby. After three seconds of shooting Joe stopped, expecting to see the massive baby topple to the ground, boiled from the inside.

“Oh crap,” he whispered as the creature towered overhead, unperturbed. It turned its head towards Joe, saying, “Well, that was rude of you.”

With remarkable swiftness the Bigcutie reached down and plucked Joe off of the ground. Joe’s screams for help were quickly cut off as the giant baby stuffed him in its mouth.

Onboard the Conquistador, Zenith spun towards his first mate. “What’s happening to the others?”

“They’re running away, back towards the ship, but the life-form is following them, and...” Datt trailed off as, one by one, the little red dots on the screen blinked out. “Oh my god,” he whispered, slumping into a chair.

A stunned silence filled the room. After a minute Zenith spoke, “Well, at least we didn’t go, like we’d planned on originally”.

“That’s true,” agreed Datt. Sighing, he shook his head and got up determinedly. “So what’s the plan? How are we gonna kill this damn thing?”

“How did it resist the laser beams?”

“It must be the Hardtofindium. From the scan Hoe ran, it completely dissipates huge amounts of energy, making laser beams useless.”

“Would rockets work?”

“No, Hardtofindium would absorb the impact.”

“The shrapnel too?”

Shaking his head, Datt said, “It would just glance off. This stuff is harder than diamonds.”

“So what you’re saying,” said Zenith, “is that we don’t have any weapons that can kill this thing?”

“... No.”

Narrowing his eyes and pretending to think about it, Zenith finally shrugged. “I guess we should just... leave... then.”

“Umm... I guess so.”

“Well... replicate some coffins, and um, we’ll hold a ceremony in a few days.”

Star Trek and Morals (say what?)

The Q Who and Emergence episodes from Star Trek: Next Generation explore the value of a sentient life. In Emergence, the Enterprise begins to form a “self-determining intelligence”. At first the Enterprise officers attempt to get rid of this intelligence, whose creation is threatening the crew mates. After this approach doesn’t work, they try to understanding it. The officers realize that inhibiting this new-found life-form from being born would essentially kill a sentient being, which runs contrary to the Enterprise mission of learning to understand different life forms even if that inconveniences you. The officers decide to help the Enterprise achieve the birth of the sentience.

Q Who shows a scarier type of life form: the Borg. The Borg look like thousands of biological bodies with an artificial intelligence and some artificial upgrades. However, they function more like the parts in a human body than individual beings; they are able to communicate instantly, work together seamlessly and adapt from the experience of the whole. The Borg make up one sentience. And the only thing the Borg really do is adapt technology from alien civilizations and destroy the civilizations.

On one hand, the Enterprise is supposed to make contact with and learn about new life forms in a peaceful way. On the other hand, the Borg are insanely dangerous to get anywhere near to, especially if the collective feels threatened, and they killed some Enterprise crew mates. Whatever should Picard do?

In my opinion... try to destroy the Borg. Though quantifying the value of a life at all is sketchy, the rule that the life of each sentient (self-aware) being is equal seems fair to me. By that rule, the Borg collective is one sentient being. Considering that they have the potential to kill all humans, it is justifiable from a moral and evolutionary perspective to kill one sentient life to prevent that from happening.

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

In class we read Bloodchild by Octavia Butler - not the cheeriest of stories.  To start with, we have children, probably teenagers, being fed drug-like eggs by an alien. Then we have our protagonist lying against (hanging out with) a massive slug-like alien. The alien, T’Gatoi, has a motherly attitude towards the brothers and sisters (who I’m assuming are teenagers) and authority over them. Then we have a man being sliced open and worms being pulled out of him - they’re the babies of the big slugs. That’s fun. We learn that humans are kept around on this alien planet to “host” the babes of the T’lic, meaning having slugs grow in their body (and risking the slugs eating the host if the extraction doesn’t happen soon enough). T’Gatoi has been raising our protagonist, Gan, to host her babies, and though there is some sort of love between the two, this is not a healthy relationship.

Bloodchild, in my opinion, explores the idea of the velvet cage. These humans came to the world of the T’lic under desperate circumstances. Gan and his family live in comfort provided by the T’lic (I don’t know if they have to work). Humans in the Preserve are treated well, as second-class citizens but appreciated nonetheless. On the other hand, some humans like Gan have to be implanted and host the eggs of the T’lic. They don’t have control over their own bodies. Even getting past the grossness of it all, this is by our standards a violation of human rights. They can’t even escape from the Preserve, and the outside world of the T’lic is even harsher to humans.

Furthermore, the relationship between T’Gatoi and Gan is insidious. T’Gatoi raised Gan for a purpose, and her love for Gan is under the stipulation that Gan will fulfill that purpose. Gan becomes alienated from T’Gatoi once she sees the extraction gone wrong, realizing that the babies of the T’lic will always be first priority over humans.

Neuromancer: Not Your Typical Story

Neuromancer is contrary to typical adventure novels in many ways. First, the characters do not fit the modified hero cycle stereotypes of sci fi and noir. Instead of the naive young protagonist who will grow into adulthood, we have Case, a suicidal druggie ex-hacker who makes his living off of dangerous street jobs. Our love interest (more of a femme fatale) is Molly, a lethal, closed off and deeply traumatized woman who has more of a business and casual sex relationship than emotional attachment with Case. We have flawed characters such as Wintermute that do terrible things but are not simple villains.

Another way in which Neuromancer differs from most stories is that the characters are hard to empathize with and understand. On one hand, as a reader I am constantly inside Case’s head, knowing what he thinks. In the scene where he is captured by the Turing cops, he realizes that Pierre would play the Bad Cop and Roland would be the Good Cop, seeing through the attempted manipulation and in turn manipulating the cops by concealing information. Though we get up close and personal with Case throughout the book, I still feel as if I don’t know him. I don’t know what he does in his spare time, much of his background, or what he would make small talk about. I don’t really root for him as I would with most protagonists. This is much the same with Molly, who I understand to an extent but have a hard time empathizing with.

Gibson intentionally made the characters of Neuromancer non-stereotypical and hard to understand and empathize with. I believe he did this to draw emphasis away from the characters. He wanted instead to focus on the implications of hyper-advanced technology: the cyber world of the Matrix, the body transplants, the super-intelligent AI’s. He also wanted to make the world of Neuromancer as realistic as possible by setting it in the backdrop of modern day places and cultures, as opposed to a fantasy world convenient to the plot of his story. Gibson used the characters of the book as a medium for portraying all of his ideas about the implications of a technologically based future.

What Did We Miss? Happy Pills

I’ve become very interested in my mood recently. Recognizing my current emotions and accepting them makes it easier to deal with unhappy thoughts, tiredness, boredom and other negative emotions. Everyone on the planet experiences these emotions daily, and many people are discontented on a daily basis. There are certainly strategies for dealing with normal, everyday unhappiness... but what if you didn’t need to deal with it?

Scientists are already using technology to read emotions in the brain, and many of the hormones that affect emotion are already known. Much as people use recreational drugs to feel good, it makes sense that some of the hormones that invoke happiness could become commercially available in pill form.

If it was legal and socially acceptable to take these pills, everyone who could afford them would buy them. The most common pill would be happy pills, which might be made of dopamine, which does invoke such emotions but is common in illegal drugs and could be addictive. The happy pills might be addictive but if enough people were hooked it could be acceptable to be constantly taking these pills. If the pills were widespread and seen as the norm, it could become socially unacceptable to be sad, and if you shared sad emotions with other people they would just tell you to pop a dopamine pill. Also, it could lead to higher rates of depression or bi-polarity and people would be unsatisfied in between taking the pills, unless it got so extreme that people were constantly high on happiness.

Another possible pill might be norepinephrine, a type of adrenaline that makes people more alert and focused. Made into pill form, it could be used for aerobic exercises like running, biking, and swimming to increase performance. With how advanced science is already becoming, there are assuredly other hormones and neurochemicals that will be developed that could affect one’s emotions.

I don’t know if being able to alter how you feel at will is a good idea. It would definitely be enjoyable to an extent, but I imagine that it would be abused by many people. I can’t imagine that easy access to happiness drugs wouldn’t pose health problems, and I don’t think this would be a beneficial thing. Happiness should be found in the things one does, interpersonal connections, love, creativity, from inside sources. If someone (excluding those with clinical depression) need drugs to be happy then they should change how they see the world or their lifestyle rather than rely on self-medication. Happiness pills would just be an advancement of the recreational drugs of today, and I doubt they would be beneficial to mankind.

If It Walks Like A Human and Talks Like A Human...

We watched Blade Runner: The Director's Cut in class. Going straight to the point, I think that the most important message of the movie is that a machine that looks like a human, walks like a human, talks like a human, and thinks like a human it is a human. Humans are machines made by evolution: the materials may be different, but our construction is essentially the same. A machine made to have the same (or greater) mental capacities should be treated as a sentient human. You shouldn’t make such a machine and expect it to be any less inventive and unpredictable and free-thinking as a human. If you make such a machine also almost physically invincible, you better make sure to keep it in check (unlike that sucker Tyrell). Obviously he never watched any sci-fi, which makes it quite obvious that he had it coming.

What would be the purpose of such a machine anyway? Mining in other planets? Companionship? Sex? All of these tasks could be more cheaply fulfilled by people, especially in an overpopulated planet like Blade Runner’s Earth is where labor is probably cheap. It seems silly to me to go to the massive, mind boggling expense of building a machine that’s as complex as a human for almost any task.

It would be unethical to make such a machine as well. It would be deprived of many of life’s pleasures, i.e. sex, drugs, rock and roll, and food. Unless you limited its lifespan, it would be close to immortal, which probably sucks. If you limited it and restricted it for its whole life, that would be slavery. Of course, in sci fi the theme is usually “ethics, who cares?”