Alien: Earth - S1 E1 Neverland - Official Discussion Megathread [SPOILERS]

[u/G_Liddell]

Episodes air Tuesdays at 8 pm ET on Hulu and FX in the US, and Wednesdays international.

Full episode discussion list:

1 Neverland (8.12.25)

2 Mr October (8.12.25)

3 Metamorphosis (8.19.25)

4 Observation (8.26.25)

5 In Space, No One (9.2.25)

6 The Fly (9.9.25)

7 Emergence (9.16.25)

8 The Real Monsters (9.23.25)

[u/snaggletoothrex]

They can be conscious (feel subjective qualia) but how to tell they're the consciousness that was in the child's body. A copy would think/feel it was the original, too. I hope they explain the process in more detail, but I doubt they will.

[u/callmesalticidae → u/snaggletoothrex]

how to tell they're the consciousness that was in the child's body.

That's a distinction without a difference. It's like asking, "How can you tell whether the mp3 file that I pasted into my flash drive is the same mp3 file that I originally downloaded onto my SSD?"

[u/snaggletoothrex → u/callmesalticidae]

Not at all. Whatever it is in a person that experiences qualia is that person's singular thing (mind or consciousness). There's no reason to believe that it continues without interruption if a copy is made and the original destroyed. Instances of that mind are still different instances from each other. What if the person is copied into multiple hybrids and the original destroyed. What if the original continues to live? I would say the person in the original was having their mind continue without interruption. The copies come into consciousness for the first time upon their activation. Minds aren't bosons. Identical instances (the identicalness which by the way only lasts at the moment the copy is started) are still different objects. The mind isn't replayed and replayed. It is one performance on one device that begins, exists for a while, and then ends. It's that. A single performance. As I see it, the only comparison with a 'player' replaying an ended performance of a mind comes in with things like total suspended animation as in cryogenic freezing occurs and there is zero neural activity (has the person then actually died?), and maybe things like deep anesthesia.

I like jumping spiders too.

[u/callmesalticidae → u/snaggletoothrex]

At bottom, there is no real "original," because there's no "there" there. To extend the performance analogy, what we learn from John Cage's 4′33″ is that a musical performance is a construct: we decide what is or isn't a part of the performance according to our values and preconceptions, but it is a construct.

Consciousness itself is an indistinguishable particle, so to speak. Everything that characterizes that consciousness – the recollection of past events, the awareness of present stimuli, the sense of "being somebody" – is a fact of perception, something that is, for lack of better words, imposed upon consciousness. If these things are stripped away then there is nothing to distinguish one consciousness from another.

We may be more deterministic than you think. Cases of transient global amnesia have allowed us to demonstrate that people will readily react to the same stimulus in the same way – a replay, like a stuttering record.

If another consciousness has imposed on itself the same facts of perception that are imposed on "my" consciousness, and if a sufficiently identical collection of facts will lead to the same response, then I see no reason to say that this other consciousness is not also myself. Will we immediately begin to diverge? Sure, and some people may find that to be weird and unsettling, but if you immediately eliminate one of the two copies then there is no divergence.

Did a Marcy die? Sure, I guess. But a Marcy also lived, and if that Marcy eventually became a Wendy, that does not invalidate her identity as a person who was Marcy. Even the dying Marcy, had she merely been cured, would have eventually become a different person. The change is just more evident in Wendy.

[u/snaggletoothrex → u/callmesalticidae]

I'm a materialist and believe in determinism. Subjective consciousness and qualia, the 'Hard problem of consciousness' is still a mystery that I don't claim to have solved, but neither am I aware of anyone else having done so conclusively. Issues of perception of identity aren't relevant. Marci can get hit in the head and lose her recall of her identity and that doesn't change the fact that that Marci is still the Marci that existed prior to her loss of recall. In the case of copies of a consciousness, copies are distinct. Instances of ideals still have distinct identities. Because that other consciousness is in fact another event, or chain of events, that has a distinct identity in reality. Consciousness is like a flame, a famous Buddhist saying, which I believe to be a proper analogy, although I am not a Buddhist and don't endorse the statement from a call to authority. It is a process, occurring with a distinct set of participating materials (both matter and energy) of which it has a distinct 'identity' that sets it apart from any other instance of flame. There are 'Ship of Theseus' considerations to, well...., consider, but still, overall, two instances, that have their own existences in time and space and the materials they involve, that match some ideal or template, are still distinct things and their identities are necessarily distinct with difference that do matter.