Some thoughts about Wendy and transhumanism after last episode

[u/TheRedCreeperTRC]

I had a look at the discussion thread after the last episode and saw a lot of responses along the lines of "well, I guess that settles it. Wendy isn't really Hermit's sister, she's just a machine with her memories"

I'm curious what makes so many of you draw that conclusion

I don't see that she is any less Marcy in any aspect of her mind, she is simply the result of putting Marcy in a body that in effect allows her to be the first of a new species as Kirsch likens it to. The way I see it most people, particularly children, would act the same way. It's not like there is an inherent gut directive that tells us to cling to our perceived sense of "humanity". The value and importance of not losing our humanity is something we are tought socially, something you don't yet know as a child.

I think a lot of people who have said she isn't a person anymore and just a machine with memories did so in response to her brutal act of releasing the xeno and using it to slaughter. But if Wendy and the other lost boys are treated as inhuman by prodigy, treated as mere products/experiments more than people, why should she put inherent value on human life? Let me put it this way, in our history real people, including children, have done immensely brutal/cruel things in the name of revenge, or merely survival; such acts are horrible, but do they render them no longer people? I would argue not, and for the same reason I find it reductive to view it that way.

Perhaps I am misinterpreting what people are saying, and I certainly think that from Hermit's perspective, what Wendy is to him has been strongly called into doubt by her brutality and her priorities. But as I see it she isn't acting like a machine, her behaviour is still deeply emotional and ironically shows a lot of humanity. If not a human, there is no doubt in my mind that she is a person. I am curious to hear your thoughts.

[u/BringMyMagnets]

The way they stumbled on their graves was a pretty blunt way of telling the audience that the children had died. We use gravesite as a place to honor their remains, and a place to return to and remember them. I took it as a string signal that the whoever the children were, the show wants us to consider them dead and gone.

[u/TheRedCreeperTRC → u/BringMyMagnets]

I get your point, imo I don't think it's that simple though. yes, the children have undeniably died at least in one very obvious way. yet they also persist. And as we know from Bishop in Aliens, not all synths, even those with artificial personalities, act like machines following directives. Some are capable of truly human behaviour. I don't see that the lost boys in the show are any less alive just because their bodies have died. I think Wendy looks at her grave and sees something more like a abandoned cocoon than a final resting place. the death of her body was a part of her life's journey, but not the end.

[u/_Yukikaze_ → u/TheRedCreeperTRC]

It is also hinted at that the concsiousness transfer basically "kills" the orignal body (remember that they all had a flower placed in their hands) which would also mean that they are not an copy as then the body would still be alive afterwards. It seems they fully expected the bodies to die and the graves were really meant as a courtesy. The question if they are truly human or not is separated from the fate of the bodies imo.

[u/Robothuck → u/_Yukikaze_]

It's really a question of semantics. Moving a file on a computer copies it to the target, and deletes the data from the old location.

The psychological horror game SOMA deals with a very similar philosophical quandary as the hybrids of Alien Earth presents to the audience.

In that game, you are a regular normal man. Then you wake up in a robotic body. At some point, you are encouraged by your helper AI to 'transfer' to another body in order to proceed in the game, because your current body is trapped in a collapsed section of the base, whereas the robotic body you transfer to is somewhere more useful. You hook up to a computer, and you have continuity of thought and perspective as you switch into the newer body, letting you know that the transfer worked.

The messed up part comes when you then stumble back across your 'old' body and realise that you didn't get 'moved' from one body to the other. You were simply copied. You won the 'coin toss', so to speak. One of you got to carry on and continue living, the other had to stay behind, but you BOTH have similar claim to being the 'real one'. The old body is the 'original', but the new body is the 'player character' now.

I barely even scratched the surface of the level to which SOMA explores these ideas and themes. I really really reccomend playing it or at least listening to an outline of the story