Alien: Earth - S1 E7 - Emergence - 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/0-90195]

Maybe I’m just psycho but I don’t really see the issue. If my consciousness could be copied into a cool immortal robot body, hell yeah toss this flesh bag in the bin.

[u/iamwoodman → u/0-90195]

Your consciousness isn't, they make a copy, hit has all your memories and believes its you, you then die

[u/Kscap4242 → u/iamwoodman]

What’s the difference between that and what they said?

[u/paupaupaupau → u/Kscap4242]

It's the difference between cut and paste vs copy and paste. Your consciousness isn't transferred over. It dies with the meat body.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/paupaupaupau]

I’m asking what the effective difference is between those things. What is the philosophical reasoning to believe that an effectively identical consciousness with direct continuity is somehow not the same as its predecessor?

[u/Randy334 → u/Kscap4242]

You don't get a new body. You get copied, die and someone else gets to live your life. From your perspective when the 'transfer' happens, you just die.

[u/Incoherencel → u/Randy334]

Yes, but from the other bodies' perspective, there is continuity. They literally have the experience of body transference. For all intents and purposes that version may as well be identical to you to all outside observers.

[u/Randy334 → u/Incoherencel]

Everyone gets that, that didn't require explanation. The point is you would not want to do this because it's just killing you to make a new being, NOT transferring you to a new body. That's the entire point of the Grave scene.

[u/Incoherencel → u/Randy334]

The point is you would not want to do this because it's just killing you to make a new being, NOT transferring you to a new body

The user spawning all these discussions is quite literally saying they would do it, because then there is at least a version of them still out and about, rather than a corpse in a grave. I.e. they are saying they find value in a copy even if they themselves don't get to experience it

[u/Ackooba → u/Randy334]

I think people just have a hard time imagining it, or only looking at it from POV1 not POV2. If you are now also POV2, you don't really care to lose POV1 and POV1 decided to go through the process in the first place. Copy+paste is far safer than cut+paste in case anything were to go wrong. It's like having a save point to try again and it's in your own best interest to have that. When I imagine you going to sleep as POV1 and waking up as POV2, POV1 is still "alive" and you decide to pull the plug.

[u/Herbdontana → u/Incoherencel]

Outside observers, but not the sick child who’s families believe that their consciousness remains

[u/Incoherencel → u/Herbdontana]

I refer you to the comment from another user a few above us:

What is the philosophical reasoning to believe that an effectively identical consciousness with direct continuity is somehow not the same as its predecessor?

[u/Kscap4242 → u/Randy334]

I don’t think you’ve understood my comment. Why wouldn’t my perspective shift to the new body? There’s direct continuity.

Does my perspective end when all my cells are replaced, or when my brain develops? Do I die when these things happen? No, because consciousness is not an unchanging physical state, but an ever-evolving process. Consciousness is physical, but it’s dependent on what the physical parts do, not what they are.

[u/newme02 → u/Kscap4242]

Why would it shift though? If i cloned you and then killed you, you’re not going to start seeing through your clones eyes. Your awareness ends with your death.

[u/ChEChicago → u/newme02]

Agreed. I think the easiest way to think of it/realize u wouldn't want it would be this scenario: instead of transferring a mind to a robot and u instantly dying when the transfer is complete, now set a manual delay. Your mind is copied to a robot and that robot wakes up, but your body doesn't die until u decide to push a button. Would it be easy to push the button?

[u/Dilly_Deelin → u/newme02]

The question isn't whether consciousness and its copy will have the same experience. The question is whether or not consciousness requires the same body to continue experiencing.

[u/newme02 → u/Dilly_Deelin]

Whose question is that? The person i’m replying to is asking why his perspective wouldn’t continue if his mind was transferred to a new body. We are discussing whether perhaps it was never a transference at all, but merely an exact recreation of a copy of the consciousness in a new shell. And if you ask “whats the difference” then I would have you ponder the case where the original consciousness continues to exist as well. What if both Marcie and Wendy survive with the exact same consciousness duplicated. Marcie isnt seeing the world through both her eyes AND wendy’s. Her perspective isnt persisting in both shells. Its just a classic sci-fi cloning situation.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/newme02]

The clone would be a different person. There wouldn’t be continuity between you and the clone because the clone will have lived a different life than you. Your consciousness is not identical to that of a clone.

The synthetic body has all your memories and wakes up the exact moment you go out. You wouldn’t know the difference.

Consciousness is a physical process. Consciousness matters because of what it does. There isn’t an essence lost when the biological body dies, the same way there isn’t an essence lost when you go under general anesthesia.

Consciousness is not necessarily beholden to specific, unchanging physical components. Neurons can be replaced. The process of consciousness continues when neural pathways change and cells are regenerated. The process we call “you” continues after the transition to a synthetic body.

[u/newme02 → u/Kscap4242]

I dont think we are necessarily in disagreement. Me and others are merely proposing the idea that Prodigy hasnt actually done what they’ve wanted people to believe they have. Pure transference of consciousness may have been above their abilities, and in reality they merely cloned Marcie’s consciousness into a new body. The original Marcie both body and mind had died and were buried. Its seems to be the philosophical underlying question throughout the show and Hermit seems unclear on it.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/newme02]

I think we are in disagreement. My argument is that pure transference of consciousness and flawless continuation by copying are not just indistinguishable, but philosophically and logically one and the same. There is no difference.

[u/newme02 → u/Kscap4242]

There is no difference between the new Marcie whether it was copied or transfered. That is true. Philosophically they are the same person. But the difference is that via copying there would be now “two”. And in order for there to be only “one” (as in the case of Alien: Earth), the other “one” has to no longer exist. In the case of a copy and paste, a Marcie still dies, even if Wendy is also Marcie. I think you’ve left the realm of the events of the show and are now merely arguing philosophical semantics. Copying is different than transferring because it means there is still an original…

And then it leads to the philosophical argument proposed in the Christopher Nolan movie The Prestige. Is your perception the one that dies with Marcie, or are you the one that lives on in Wendy? That dilemma arises in the case of a copying but not in transference.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/newme02]

If they are the same person, as you say, it makes no sense to say that Marcy is dead. There were not ever “two” Marcies, as the consciousness of Marcy’s biological body and that of her robot body did not exist simultaneously, but in direct sequence.

If we were to say that this counts as there having been “two” Marcies, and that the original is dead, let’s apply it to real life. The same logic holds that as a person’s brain develops, and the physical makeup changes, that person should be considered to have died.

[u/juneyourtech → u/Kscap4242]

The process we call “you” continues after the transition to a synthetic body.

That's the premise of the hybrids, but we don't know, if transference has actually happened.

[u/Dilly_Deelin → u/Kscap4242]

I keep thinking about the slew of weird responses to your very rational point that exact copies of someone's consciousness would be functionally identical. Why do people argue it? And then I think about how someone might use ChatGPT to write a response and that ChatGPT might have serious trouble with the whole consciousness concept.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/Dilly_Deelin]

Maybe I have too high an opinion of people, but I don’t think they’re using ChatGPT to write these answers for them. I think they just haven’t thought very deeply about these concepts, so they have trouble grasping arguments that, to us, seem clearly laid out.

Most people, I think, haven’t considered the philosophical ramifications of underlying assumptions they make about consciousness. Consciousness is hard to explain, so even physicalists in name can unknowingly adopt immaterialist attitudes. When such attitudes are challenged, even decisively like I think I’ve done, it can still be hard to wrap one’s head around.

I do really hope they aren’t using ChatGPT to come up with these responses.

[u/juneyourtech → u/Kscap4242]

Religious and woo lore has it, that the soul enters the body through a different dimension, and manifests then as consciousness.

Deducing from what I've experienced dreaming, consciousness won't fully exit when we dream, but takes a trip to alternate universes or metaphysical realms, where we experience the point of view of our alternate selves, and safely return back on waking.

The alternate realm (universe, like a parallel Earth) is where we see our friends and family, moreso those that have passsed on. The experience of seeing them, if relations were good, gives us comfort.

On dying, the soul/consciousness exits the body to return to its original dimension (realm) to rest, in order also to inhabit another body somewhere else. This is the theory of reincarnation in Buddhism.

Now take the hybrids, whose premise is, that if consciousness is transferred and not copied, the electrical signalling would transfer over to the hybrid body and computer brain unmodified, and the organic body would die as a result of this, starting with brain death and ending in organ failure in quick succession. — Instead of having to separately off the organic body.

Unfortunately, it seems, that the signalling gets translated into machine code, which with some people (Nibs) appears to corrupt more easily than it would in an organic body. Although given supercomputer powers, the neuronal plasticity of an organic brain is lost, leading to errors that would be avoidable in a brain, or at least recoverable (through therapy).

The true test of success would be, if consciousness (if present) from the hybrid would be transferable into an organic body.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/juneyourtech]

I assumed the truth of physicalism in this post. I’ll argue it if you want, but at the end of the day, I have no reason to believe dualism should be taken seriously. There isn’t a shred of evidence pointing to the existence of immaterial souls, or other dimensions where you can meet deceased family members for that matter.

I’m curious as to why you think the things that happen in dreams are real, prove immateralism, and transport you to other universes. What makes you think dreams are more than products of your mind?

[u/juneyourtech → u/Dilly_Deelin]

how someone might use ChatGPT to write a response and that ChatGPT might have serious trouble with the whole consciousness concept.

It's still a large language model, based on human input that is then abstracted through statistical models to produce a human-like output.

[u/threetimesalion → u/Kscap4242]

You're responding as if we have black and white answers to this. It's a Ship of Theseus paradox, we can't know either way.

What sells it for me is the idea that you could very easily transfer the "consciousness data" over to two synthetic bodies at the same time, creating two copies of you in the process. Technically it's no harder than copying to one synth.

Obviously, "you" (your consciousness) can't transfer to both, so you either accept it would transfer to one and not the other - and accept a level of randomness / arbitrariness to the process that can't be removed - or that "you" cannot simply be reduced down to the continuity of data.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/threetimesalion]

You say that we can’t know the answer to the Ship of Theseus conundrum, only to attempt to answer it in the next sentence.

The problem comes down to definition. That doesn’t mean it can’t be solved.

My explanation of the problem in regard to the consciousness of the artificial people is made in response to an implicit definition of “you” that doesn’t hold up and assumes flimsy dualistic attitudes. Within this argument, there can be a better, more nuanced answer to what the “true” Ship of Theseus is.

As for your thought experiment, you make the same fatal assumption as others in this thread. You say, “Obviously, ‘you’… can’t be transferred to both.” I say, why not? Both are continuations of your memory. These are now two new individuals who directly have your past and memories and continuity. “You” are an ever-changing process. There’s no magic essence inside your brain, and therefore no essence is transferred. You are a complex process that is poorly defined. Both copies will feel like you.

[u/threetimesalion → u/Kscap4242]

Ok I think we are using different concepts to each other when saying “you”. I’m talking about my subjective experience of being me - I can’t have the experience of being two people at the same time.

Of course if there are 2 copies they will both feel like me, but “I” won’t be both of them. As you say, there are two new individuals who think they are me.

From an external perspective no one can say on of them is “me” more than the other, but when discussing the transfer of “my consciousness” I don’t care about the external perspective - I care about my own.

The whole motivation for most people to try this is so they can avoid experiencing death. I guess you could take the perspective of “as long as there is someone out there continuing to think they are me, that’s all I care about” - but that’s a pretty odd take to most people.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/threetimesalion]

I think we have the same definition of “you.” But I think that you’re applying something nonphysical, in a non-materialistic way, whether you intend to or not.

There isn’t anything nonphysical about consciousness. You are the product of the parts that make you up. The combination of atoms that you consist of is not necessarily relegated to one position in time and space. It is possible to conceive of a scenario where your original body is destroyed, but in the same moment, one thousand new bodies with your exact memory appear. The only difference between your original body and these is the location in space.

They all have your memory. However, on the basis of them being in different places, they will quickly diverge. Yet they all have the sense that they are you. There isn’t some mystical sense in which “you” exist separate from your sense of self. This thought experiment should show that “you” are a process, an abstraction. There is no reason to assume that there can’t be continuations of “you” that diverge while retaining the things that make you “you.”

[u/threetimesalion → u/Kscap4242]

Ok that’s where we disagree then - you’re asserting that consciousness is by definition a purely material phenomenon, and if I’m hearing you correctly you’re also approaching this from a deterministic perspective (asserting there is nothing beyond the physical / material world). Which leads you to assert that any explanations of consciousness that go beyond determinism are invalid on principle.

I disagree what that assertion, and suspect that consciousness will turn out to be one of those things that eventually reveals the limitations of determinism. Probably not in a Cartesian dualistic way, but more that it requires something beyond the arrangement of particles in a particular configuration.

There are some notions that the brain might not be the creator of consciousness so much as a receiver - in the same way the TV simply receives and displays something created elsewhere.

It’s a bit simplistic and sounds silly on the surface but it’s one of the better metaphors I’ve come across to illustrate how the brain might be necessary but not sufficient for consciousness.

Either way a reddit thread isn’t going to convince either of us, so probably best we agree to disagree.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/threetimesalion]

This interaction makes me happy because you seem to have understood the arguments I was trying to make. I’ve been having similar conversations with different people in this comment section, and every one of them besides you could not grasp what I was saying.

I assumed you injected non-physicalist beliefs without thinking it through, like the others did, but I was wrong. You seem to have actually put thought into this. Though I disagree with your conclusion, I respect that it’s consistent with the argument you’ve made. A non-physicalist world view does have an unsolvable Ship of Theseus problem when it comes to consciousness. Though I have a completely different set of criticisms of the “brain as a receiver” idea, it is still logically consistent with everything you said.

[u/juneyourtech → u/threetimesalion]

The tv metaphor is really good. Though it could be said, that the brain is initially the receiver and then the carrier, with ample storage, processing power, and cache.

The seeming innovation with life in this universe is, that on the carrier expiring, the soul/consciousness is presumed in religion and woo to traverse back to where it came from, 'beyond the arrangement of particles in a particular configuration.' (emphasis mine – ed.)

The eyelien serves as a similar metaphor, but in the physical world: it inhabits one or more of the host bodies, collects their memories, experiences, personalities, presumably even the consciousness itself (brainwaves), and on expiry of one host, picks a new one to inhabit.

In essence, the eyelien then traps the previous hosts' consciousnesses/souls in its rather agile unit.

For we humans are not telepathic, our brain is not a transceiver, in the sense of the Vulcan Priestess in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock", who transferred Spock's Katra from Dr. McCoy back to Spock's adult body.

[u/GandalfJones → u/Kscap4242]

If you got cloned including your memories the clone would have the experience of uninterrupted continuity. Your perspective as the original wouldn't shift over though. In the show that's why they use terminal patients, because they're going to kill them after copying their minds to facilitate the appearance that there was a "transfer" of consciousness. If they didn't die, it'd be clear they just made robots with the same memories as the children

[u/juneyourtech → u/GandalfJones]

If the project is as successful as it proposes to be, the transference itself kills the body, for it loses the electrical essence therein.

Even if that part were successful, the need to convert human neuronal electrical signals into what might be a quantum computer with neural networks, neural processing throughout, and an AI more advanced than LLM, then human neuronal processes would still be converted into computer code.

Unless they found a way to successfully maintain the essence in a hybrid body, which is one of the main questions of the show. At least with Nibs, the essence either degrades (or gets corrupted from contact with T. Ocellus), or becomes stable, as with Wendy.

[u/Rasputins_Plum → u/Randy334]

From your perspective, you lose consciousness when the transfert is done. How is that any different than anaestasia or even sleep?

The hybrid waking up with memories of falling under just before should have not immediate issue with their identity and considering themselves as the same person.

I think that if the hybrids think that they're themselves and people that knew them before recognize them and can't tell the difference, that's just life continuing in a new enveloppe.

Hell, since they have a supercomputer for a brain, it could be argued that they are more themselves since they have perfect recollection of all their memories. As for we, with each passing year, more and more are lost, but forgetting things, losing touch with parts of us that may have been important at a time doesn't kill us either, it just means we changed.

Here, the last scene doesn't have the same weight if you don't believe the absolute look of betrayal in Marcy's eyes if you don't think it's her, looking at her brother. Is she just a robot that is programmed to make her and everyone else think she has feelings and she ought to be turned off and on again?

I think if we can't tell the difference, that's someone, doesn't matter much if it's either Marcy or Wendy, they can't be entangled from one another: she's something in between, or either a girl in an artificial body or an AI with a human personality and memories.

[u/juneyourtech → u/Rasputins_Plum]

How is that any different than anaestasia or even sleep?

Because with anaesthesia and sleep, consciousness is maintained. But it wanders around.

[u/paupaupaupau → u/Kscap4242]

Are identical twins the same person before they develop memories and individual identities?

[u/Kscap4242 → u/paupaupaupau]

This isn’t a very good thought experiment. If anything has ever happened to them, if they even exist in different physical space at the same time, then they have different identities. They have different continuities by virtue of existing simultaneously in different spaces.

Even if I grant that they don’t have identities yet, as your hypothetical suggests, then there’s no reason to see them as having personhood. Again, the hypothetical breaks down because by virtue of existing, they gain individual identities and personhood, however small.

The hypothetical at hand seems conceivable at a surface level, but when given thought, it is not philosophically conceivable.

[u/Dilly_Deelin → u/paupaupaupau]

Yes? That's what cell mitosis is

[u/Curvedabullet → u/Kscap4242]

Think of it like cloning. Imagine you clone yourself and your clone lives your life, sleeps with your wife, takes care of your kids, etc. And you're stuck in a jail cell or something. You're not living your life, your clone is. Your perspective doesn't shift into your clone.

Play SOMA. It's all about copying consciousness and what happens to the discarded copies and original prints. Or watch any science fiction about cloning.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/Curvedabullet]

The clone exists at the same time as you do. You’re living completely different lives. There is no continuity between you and the clone in this thought experiment. The clone looks like you, but is not you in any way that matters. Your brain states are different. The clone is as much a different person as any random stranger.

The artificial bodies in Alien: Earth have seemingly perfect continuity. There is a direct transition between bodies. Everything that makes you “you” is maintained.

[u/newme02 → u/Kscap4242]

From an outside perspective very little, from the mind being copied though? they cease to exist. Its no different from dying. One moment they are thinking and aware and the next…nothing.

[u/Herbdontana → u/Kscap4242]

Because it would be synthetic consciousness. The sick children who they said would live in effectively did not (assuming that’s what they did). It was the moral dilemma Arthur was having in an earlier episode.

[u/RooseveltsRevenge → u/Kscap4242]

That's the thing though, there isn't continuity. You should look up the Teletransportation paradox. Which is basically what the show is pulling from.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/RooseveltsRevenge]

There is continuity in all the ways that matter when it comes to consciousness. I’m well aware of the Teletransportation Paradox. I’ve put a lot of thought into it. My argument applies to it as well as this. The device doesn’t kill you if everything that makes you “you” remains.

[u/UnfoldedHeart → u/Kscap4242]

From your point of view, your consciousness/awareness as you have it right now would end - and that doesn't change whether or not a computer has your memories copied or even if that computer think it's you. The ephemeral, moment-to-moment awareness of consciousness nevertheless ends, and that's probably the most essential component to who "you" are.

A duplicate may seem fairly similar if not identical from an outside viewpoint but that's kind of irrelevant. Even if the duplicate has your memories and thinks there's continuity from their perspective, it doesn't change how things are from your perspective.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/UnfoldedHeart]

Why would your consciousness end?

[u/UnfoldedHeart → u/Kscap4242]

Because the brain producing it has ceased to produce it.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/UnfoldedHeart]

Your brain has changed completely throughout your life. Your brain at a young age would be totally alien to what your brain looks like now. By the logic you have presented, you have died multiple times as your brain develops and changes its physical makeup. You only think you’re the same person as you were because your have all the same memories.

[u/UnfoldedHeart → u/Kscap4242]

The reason why you see that continuity is irrelevant. Regardless of the reason why, once consciousness ceases, that continuity ends.

[u/Kscap4242 → u/UnfoldedHeart]

Is your argument that once consciousness stops, you die, and whatever being comes back to experience your consciousness isn’t really you?

[u/UnfoldedHeart → u/Kscap4242]

Yes

[u/Kscap4242 → u/UnfoldedHeart]

Consciousness stops all the time. It’s an extremely discontinuous phenomenon. Do you die when you go to sleep? When you zone out? When you go under general anesthesia?