"Ex-Machina," Deep AI Exploration or Classic Gothic Horror?

I will define human will as the capacity and motivational state to change the immediate environment to match the mind's conception of what should be ('should" is a value judgement, in the realm of human will: the ability to imagine a reality as it "should" be). The ability to conceptualize a reality other than the immediate environment, that creativity is what makes the Will "Free."


Is the publication of "The Origin of Species" an inevitable consequence of the Big Bang? How far back does the determinism go? How rigid is it?

There is no radical discontinuity between biologic and historical evolutionary processes. The emergence of a socio-historical evolutionary track is subsequent to the same physical laws and cause and effect processes that drive biological evolution. With enough time, a mammalian nervous system will, by natural selection be driven to an adequate level of complexity and integrative capacity to result in self consciousness and properties of the human mind (which for me include the concept of will and for you may not). The fact that (most) humans are adapted to survive by social behaviors including written language (an emergent socio-historical property), then HISTORY inevitably emerges via the SAME deterministic cause and effect processes that led to the development of the human brain to begin with.



But once history emerges, humanity's relationship with the natural world changes in a fundamental way. Before the emergence of the will, humans were subjects of the natural forces of natural selection. After the emergence of will, humans were able to perceive the natural forces and then learned how to manipulate them.


It is all a sequential ontogeny founded on cause and effect processes of the universe.



Free Will is not contra-causal any more than quantum mechanics is contra causal. Sometimes the photon passes through the mirrored glass and sometimes it does not. We can predict the probabilities, but for each individual incidence, you cannot predict the path the photon takes with certainty. There is wiggle room in that natural world. There is precedence. Not sure WHY you link so concretely the idea of determinism and CERTAINTY. Not every field of study is Newtonian Mechanics. Why apply those rules to every other discipline? Why apply it to cognitive science.


If there never was a prior concept of free will until quantum physicists ascribed the property of photons to sometimes pass through the mirrored glass and sometime not as the Free Will of Photons, similar to the spin or color of subatomic particles, would you object?


But, the idea of a fantastically complicated, multi-layered integrative system of the human mind can't have the same property of uncertainty as a fundamental subatomic particle/wave? You lost me.



The concept that humans are able to generate their own reality by the acts of Will, seeing the natural world as mere inert clay for the human will to mold IS the fundamental premise of the romantic mind. And while they are annoying, their influence on the power elite should not be be dismissed. Romantic thought is everywhere and few perceive its influence.







" socio-historical evolution... It's not a defeater of the scientific worldview."

The competition between the two is an artifice.


A universal human perception of free will is dismissed as a universal human delusion makes no sense from a Darwinian perspective. What is the adaptive advantage of the evolution of a nervous system that has a hard-wired delusion built in?

This is pretty good, but what about one's will to change one's internal states? For example, my "will" to "forgive" someone who wronged me?
There are simple computers with no assumed inner life which have the capacity for form plans and to act on them (e.g., bots which stack boxes and which figure out how to move across rooms). So long as we're clear that this is a "thin" definition of freedom, then I suppose this is OK, as far as it goes. My preferred definition is a bit different, but I don't want to add to the drag coefficient. All that matters is that this definition is compatible with a deterministic universe.
Inevitable in the sense that it had to happen exactly that way? Probably not. We have to consider the role of quantum fluctuations in producing the occasional classical effect and if quantum fluctuations are truly random. Most quantum effects cancel out at the classical level, but some quantum events result in classical-level results (e.g., if you go to the "true random number" service on line those numbers are generated via quantum noise). There are still some theorists who hold out for hidden determinism in the realm of the quantum, so the dominant interpretation of quantum physics would have to turn out to be correct. Assuming, however, that there were random events which got amplified (to have classical effects) before the writing of the Origin of the Species, it is possible that one of those random events was causally relevant in the writing of that book (as it was written).

Inevitable in the sense of there being "evitability" in the sense that humans could have avoided it? In this sense, the writing was inevitable. Darwin was caused to write the book. Whether causal chain be that of an unbroken chain of classical event or whether there were a few wild-card quantum events which broke Darwin's way (causally), Darwin had no say (in terms of "could have done otherwise") in writing the book. Given the exact same state of the universe replayed, Darwin writes the exact same book. Inevitable.
In which case, we may have compatibilist freedom, but we cannot use these as resources for vaulting ourselves over cause-and-effect to have a metaphysical ability to have done otherwise.
Not necessarily. We have "will," but evolution does not. Evolution does NOT select for complexity, but rather fitness. We have seen organisms adapt for flight, but then become flightless. We have seen organisms that adapted for the land, and then readapted to return to the seas. We have seen organisms with sight lose the ability to see. It may seem that nature cannot make up her mind, but she doesn't have a mind to make up. When a simpler organism is more fit for an environment, the more complex organisms whither. We're not on an inexorable path towards consciousness or will or freedom. We just "are."
Sure.
We never escape Darwin's game. If we are not fit, we will die off - culture or no culture, history or no history. We're still subject to natural selection.
What is the nature of this wiggle room in reality? What is the cash value of this wiggle room? You can't predict whether the photon will be spun up or spun down. And again, there are still die-hards who maintain that there is determinism buried under all the randomness although the determinism has to "keep it's head down." But again, what does this do for any of us?
Of... ...what?
Only certainty for a creature like a LaPlacean demon.

As for cognitive science, this field doesn't have anything to say about the free will problem that philosophers did not explore centuries prior. Knowing more about microstructures does not change the fundamental context of organisms which are subject to cause and effect as surely is a pool ball.
Yes. Photons don't have will and randomness is not freedom.
We should hope that it does not! What a nightmare.

Let's suppose that your decisions were the result of randomness. In this sense, you behavior would be impossible to predict. On the other hand, you would not really be in control as your actions would be detached from your memory, plans, and attitudes (i.e., your "will"). So, you can have freedom or you can have will, but you can't really have both.
OK, people who are wrong are sometimes also influential.
It might be a Spandrel. Nature develops some complicated creatures with bigger brains that respond to environment beyond brute instinct. They observe and plan in relation to a stimulus. The experience of the stimulus is what moves the organism to act. However, the organism now also experiences awareness of observations and plans. It becomes aware of "a desire to X." The brain cannot perfectly introspect itself and the mind only experience "a desire to X" as if it came from "nowhere" as if the perceiver will X (from nothing, uncaused cause). with the development of language comes the development of folk psychology and this misapprehension of reality is given a name - "free will."

Free will is a romantic delusion...wishful thinking. We can only perceive what our senses evolved to see and hear. Just try to see colors out of our range or hear like a bat. As for the willful part of us, it's constrained by our wetware, a few pounds of neurons inside our skulls. Again, try to accomplish calculations like a computer. While we invented calculations, our abilities there are limited by our "hardware"...again, we can only do what we can do. Behaviorally, we tend to do what we're trained to do or what we're accustomed to doing, or what our culture tells us to do. We are constrained by all of these limits, which are painfully obvious. I can't say that I think "Free Will" extends very far beyond choosing to have or not have pepperoni on our pizza. I'm actually not all that sure about that, at least in part because I don't think that we have any means of discovering what would be an outcome of Free Will.

When it comes to "AI" those limits are also clear. A computer runs code, executes commands and makes "decisions" based on program branches. Sometimes things go wrong (is that free will?) because program logic has problems, but so far, no computer has gone beyond what it's programmed to do; they've just run into program problems that created unanticipated outcomes.

A computer can go beyond it's programming in the sense of introducing true randomness into the system, right? Make a decision for a computer dependent upon an unpredictable measurement event at the quantum level and we will have an unpredictable outcome at the classical level. In this way, a computer might be configured to re-write itself in ways that we can neither predict in principle or in practice. But so what? Randomization is not freedom. Our computer will not have vaulted over external causality, but mere exchanged deterministic causality for moments of random causality. Our computer is still subject to forces beyond its control (in the ultimate sense demanded by free will traditionalists).



I think we have the kind of free that is will worth wanting (to borrow a phrase from Dan Dennett), but I don't begrudge people who hold out for free will in terms of origination (magical free will), so long as we understand that this is a sort of mystical/religious belief.


At any rate, I don't think we can fairly make "free will" a bar that Ava would have to meet if we can't even meet that bar ourselves. "Hey, Ava function as an uncaused cause unto yourself and will will see you as a person."

"This is pretty good, but what about one's will to change one's internal states? For example, my "will" to "forgive" someone who wronged me?"


Heh, is forgiveness a feeling or a pattern of learned overt behavior? Is love (you choose the definition) a feeling or a pattern of behavior that reflects a global state of mind (multiple parts of the brain chiming in to one's state of consciousness at the same time)?


Wait, are you (YOU?) going to chip-in with subjective phenomenological states??? My response? Cogito ergo sum" baby! And while we're at it, why not, "I forgive, therefore I am"?


If we accept subjective phenomenological states of mind, what is the big leap to the Free Will? Poets sing about them both, but I posit "Will I (who is "I"?) forgive?" is an extant reality as a subjective phenomenological state but having the choice of whether or not we forgive is out of bounds?



For you , there can be no choices. Or, the experience of decision making is a mental delusion to pass the time before we do the inevitable.


Darwin was fated to pen "Origins." (Do you know a little of the history of its publication? Darwin was reluctant to publish his work because he knew it would create a fecal tornado, so he dilly-dallied for a full decade. it was only after it came to his attention that another was preparing to publish the same ideas that he got his butt in gear).


Have you ever sweated a really important life decision, the kind that takes time to ruminate over, the kind that you go back and forth over, talk to friends and family, seek expert advice? Is this process mere mechanism and determined?



I have been giving thought to your arguments, trying to figure out how you think so I can more efficiently communicate with you. I note a heavy predisposition for taxonomic classification. Read a thought, label it as coming from this school of thought or that school of thought and then make conclusions that theirs and mine are identical and you carry through with the long reaching implications of those academic debates.



But, I am not from those schools and the context of those academic debates are not identical to this discussion even if they touch on common themes. And I do not know how to avoid those open man-holes so that you do not ascribe to points I make some far reaching conclusions due to some recognizable similarity to some tangentially relevant academic work. Thus, I can't talk about Hume without being a skeptic, I can't mention Kuhn without being accused of relativism. I can't echo the reasoning of romantic thinkers without being a romantic. And then you seem to have a playbook: when faced with relativism, say this, when faced with a romantic, say that. In the end, I am The Man Who Wasn't There in the discussion, and it puts up a barrier to understanding and I am a mere amalgam of positions with whom you have debated or books you have read in the past.



A common argument against Darwinian Evolution is that given the rate of genetic mutation and the age of the Earth, there has not been enough time for the level of complexity to have evolved based on the posited mechanism. I'm not sure how those critics have done their calculations and I don't care to follow-up. But I gather you and I both don't buy the criticism and that ~3 Billion years is not enough?


What about the 13.7 Billion years of accumulated quantum fluctuations. The Big Bang was followed by a rapidly expanding phase where the subatomic particles were distributed homogeneously. And out of this homogeneity (which is symmetrical, mirror images in all directions are identical) emerges matter in asymmetrical clumps. Galaxies are distributed in irregular clusters. How does this happen if natural law is consistent, universal and necessary, factors that are required for a deterministic universe.



REMEMBER, we are talking about physics here, not Hegel nor fundamentalist theology. Resist going into your fixed action pattern of argumentation.



Think about this: subatomic particles from which emerge matter are distributed homogeneously. And out of homogeneity, perfect symmetry, and with natural laws applied consistently, universally there emerges asymmetrical clumps.


Why? Because reality operates based on probabilities. Uncertainty is built into the system at the most fundamental levels and the effects of that mechanism of variability accrue over the 13.7 Billion years since the big bang. Chance and variability are part of the original mechanisms of the universe and began as soon as the Universe became transparent.


But in a perfectly deterministic universe, the symmetry and homogeneity would never have been lost, there would be no mechanism or cause and effect process to create asymmetry from symmetry.



So how does rigid absolute determinism fit into a universe that has uncertainty built-in to the physical laws at the most fundamental levels? And take super-complex and organized aggregates of this uncertain stuff, which has accrued and stewed the effects of this uncertainty over 13.7 Billion years with 3 Billion years of Natural Selection pressure towards functional organization of living things on this planet.



Why would this being be expected to exhibit more mechanistic rigidity than the subatomic stuff on which it is all based?


Yet, you state that it was more certain that Darwin would publish "The Origins" at the moment of the Big Bang than it is that a photon bounces off the surface of the water or penetrates it. You may be arguing for that, but I am skeptical that you really believe in the soundness of your own argument.


Uncertainty is normal in the expression of the mechanism of the Universe. There are rules but the machine analogy is poor. It is not rigid, repetitive, cyclical, binary. There is cause and effect, but is blunted by the bald fact of probablistic variability. Einstein was wrong, God DOES play dice. The result, limited predictability.



We know that the firing of neurons is not binary. They are not "on-off" gates. In fact, Neurons operate on dimmer-switches and the intensity of the stimuli effect the output in a graded fashion which modulates the down-stream response of other cells. Not only that, the intensity and frequency of the firing will alter the intensity of future firings as well as the connectivity to other neurons and support cells which is beyond complex. All of this changes over time. We can't conceptualize the brain without keeping the notion of pasticity at the very front of our minds.



What are the practical limits of predictability? A multi-layered integrative system involving billions of modulated information gates representing trillions of plastic and adjustable connections: We both know it is physiologic mechanism, but how predictable is it? When does the word "predictability" start to lose meaning when the ability to predict complex behaviors? One in ten to the negative tenth power? Ten to the negative 20th, ten to the negative 30th?



Is there a threshold of complexity that makes prediction mere "science fiction" and that the idea of Free Will becomes the much more tenable, practical conception. Take Occam's Razor: What is the more insightful/meaningful explanation for the behavior of humanity: we are a collection of physiological processes that in theory can be predicted but that there is no significant statistical differentiation between the probability of successful prediction and impossibility, or that we call this practical unpredictability "Free Will."?



Now, let's fast forward our ontogeny to where natural selection is relevant (interesting how the rules of natural selection are dependent on the physical laws that governed matter at the time of the Big Bang, yet have rules that would have been irrelevant at the birth of the universe. A perfect example of an emergent property in our ontogeny of existence).


The Horseshoe Crab has not changed much in 750 Million years because it has been well adapted to its environment for that long. But the word "Evolution" means, literally, 'Change Over Time." So change is deep in the essence of Evolution. How can an organism adapt? We accept that genetic variability is the 'clay" on which the sculptor 'Natural Selection' works.



The fossil record suggests that early life was simple, in genetic and phenotypic structure. This is one enormous manner in which change manifests over time is biologic complexity. We can have simple organisms that have superior fitness and we can have complex organisms that have superior fitness. But early life was simple. So it follows that over time natural selection has resulted in organisms with greater complexity because they were not there early.



Why the trend towards complexity? As per formula, the genetic changes are random. However, the fitness rendered from those changes originates from the ability of complex organisms to adapt to more diverse environmental conditions than a simple organism.





Did you ever see that (original) Star Trek episode where a landing party beams down to a seemingly abandoned city and the party hears insect like buzzing, that turns out to be a small party of marauding aliens that want to take over the Enterprise and are invisible to the crew only because they our out of temporal phase and are existing in a more rapid time phase, too fast for Kirk, et. al. to perceive outside of the buzzing they hear. Both sets of people are regular material beings, people, existing concurrently, but in different time phases. This is the story.



This is my analogy to describe the relationship between Darwinian Evolution and Socio-historical Evolution. Both are based on the same natural stuff of the universe, but the emergent properties of the human mind results in a social evolutionary process that is distinct, concurrent and temporally out of phase with natural selection. The rate of change in the human capacity to manipulate their environment is far faster than natural selection combined with genetic mutation. Now, this hypersonic development of ability to manipulate the environment has some obvious short-term fitness advantages, but it isn't looking too good long term right now.



Anyway, we are not immune to the effects of Natural Selection, but it is tantamount to a frozen captain Kirk who is actually moving at his normal speed, but is so slow as to be imperceptible compared to the rate of socio-historical change as we experience it.

We generally think of it as a mental state. The "proof" of forgiveness is that our behavior is no longer punitive.

As you state, a lot depends on the definition. However, it seems to me that we sometimes will private/internal acts (e.g., a mental act of computation) which are not simply "actions."

OK?

Depends on the definition of free will.

A Delorean has the "ability" to go 88 MPH, but will only do so if Marty McFly determines the system to travel at that speed by depressing the gas pedal. Likewise, you have the "ability" to forgive, but will only do so if you are determined to do so by various threads of nature and nurture. We're talking about a non-magical ability (e.g., the "ability" of a thermostat to control temperature).

Depends on your definition of choice. If choice requires magical abilities, then "no."

It's only inevitable in the sense of not being able to change/defy the preceding states of the universe such that you are caused/self-caused to something else.



That stated, if you did not decide to act, you would not act. It is NOT a delusion that your choice has causal properties. Rather, the delusion is to see you choice as itself being uncaused.

Fated? No. Fatalism is a big mistake and we're using terms of art, so I will clarify that fate is out of it.



Determined? Yes.



Yes, I am.

Determination is not always simple and is frequently complex, involving an innumerable set of fault lines with tensions pushing in one direction or another, like the counterbalancing forces in a clockwork, or Rube-Goldberg machine. But at bottom, causality is causality is causality. Complicated causality is still causality.

Yes.

If the scientific perspective is correct, yes. Full stop.

Uh oh! I am on the analyst's couch. And the irony. You are trying to figure out how I am determined so as to dislodge me from determinism.

You are always welcome to clarify your meaning. Like anyone else, I approach a conversation with a particular idiolect and set of "facts" in my commitment store.

And that is why we have dialogue -- so that we may come to know each other better.



You seem to be looking for some strange land which allows for freedom, but which does not deny the basic tenets of physics and biology. Sadly, I do not believe that there is any such place, unless you reframe freedom under the definition of compatibilism.

I can appreciate the frustration. You're trying to make a subtle point without being committed to the most radical implications of any particular thinker. At the same time, to grab the attention, you kind of have to trumpet the disruptive aspects of these thinkers for people who are complacent true-believers (the thoughtless Jessie Pinkmans of the world who just yell, "Yeah, science!")



Even so, I think you're hunting after that something that doesn't exist and that you cannot square the circle as you seem to want to do. And believe me, I would LOVE to have a robust argument to put hard determinists on the back foot.

I have been at this particular debate for a long time.

And by my lights, you're a bit of an equivocator. At some moments, you acknowledge that there are biological limits set in the foundations of our actions. At other moments, on the other hand, you want to articulate the substance of choice and agency in terms that seemed to have disavowed. Dan Dennett on "Deepities" discusses the frustrations of trying to pin down such a position. Or see Shackel on "Troll's Truisms."


It may be the case that I do not yet perceive the substance of your position. Or, it may be the case, that you don't quite see fatal flaws with your position.

Sure.
OK.

Perhaps. However, I seem to recall evidence suggesting asymmetry in this initial expansion.

I dunno. The boundary conditions of the universe appear to have played by slightly different rules. I wasn't there, so I can't really say.


At any rate, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics already asserts a probabilistic universe underneath our classical deterministic picture of the world.



However, establishing that we have free will requires doing more than defeating determinism and substituting randomness in it's place. This point is discussed upthread. "Free" and "will" is a contradictory conjunction of terms.

OK?

Hmm, you seem to think you're on to something here. If determinism is true (all-the-way-down), however, then there is a deterministic explanation for this pattern which we do not possess. If determinism is not true (all-the-way-down), then we might attribute this to quantum fluctuations which created winners/losers in terms of clumps of matter and energy.

Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't. And yet there is nothing here which would establishes the probability, plausibility, or even possibility of free will (in terms of origination).



And again, if we commit to the scientific worldview, there are no resources available for building such a story. If you want to talk about Gods and souls and so on, OK. But in the frame materialism/naturalism, you have resources for "bootstrapping" the prospect of being an "uncaused cause."

Again, it might be, it might not be. However, there is nothing you will find in a scientific account that will vault you over being an effect of prior causes.

We don't know what preceded the Big Bang. That which caused the Big Bang, if it was itself asymmetrical in its causation may have had asymmetrical effects. Who knows?
Assuming that there is not hidden determinism lurking behind quantum phenomena, we don't like in a universe governed by a perfect chain of cause and effect. However, everything is still determined--either by chance or by the classical (deterministic) route.

OK?
I expect material at the classical level to be subject to deterministic forces. By and large, and in the ways that matters, yes, we're determined by classical forces.
I am arguing that if you rerun the history of the universe exactly as it played out the first time (with the same deterministic force and will all the random events bouncing the same way--into the rim or out of the rime--you will arrive at exactly the same universe. Create a different universe with different events and you will get different results. There is no universe, however, in which Darwin could have done other than he did (in a metaphysical sense). He was either caused to do so (by both direct determinism and a little percolating randomness) or he was not. There is no Universe where Darwin stands above these forces to do other than he did, to choose other than he chose.

I suppose you'll have to remain skeptical.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Ultimate questions like these aren't really open to us.

Why? Because there is a little noise that accompanies the signal? A little friction? What could be more machine like?

OK, let's assume that quantum randomness is truly (ontologically, not just epistemically) random. So what? Where does the free will come in? You think that an Epicurean Swerve = free will? A little chaos in the system somehow liberates us from being caused? You have two masters, a pair of dice and clockwork, where is the fancy bread?

So what? Complicated does not mean undetermined. A complicated determinism via a network of "dimmer-switches" is no more free than a computer with logic gates. Also, we've already built fuzzy logic processors and no one has attributed choice to these systems on grounds of complexity.

Sure. Complexity and determinism are friends. This is what everyone gets wrong about Chaos Theory.

Who cares? Determinism is bigger than "practicality." Determinism is complicated beyond our ability to compute outcomes, but it is not for all that complexity, undetermined.

If you think that determinism only holds insofar that we clever monkeys can compute cause and effect, then I suppose you will find that determinism is very limited indeed. But determinism is not "practical" nor dependent on our ability to make predictions.
I'm going to stop you right there an say "No." Complex causality layered on complex causality layered on complex causality is still causality. There's no secret sauce in complexity (please send Chris Nolan the memo ).

Just look up the word "compatibilism." If you can live with being a compatibilist, then we're good. If not, you've still got miles to go.

Well, you might as well argue that we cannot really say what "dark energy" and "dark matter" are yet, so we might as well "practically" refer to this as "God."


The human-of-the-gaps argument no longer bears scrutiny, because we know, in principle, that there is no room for it in the scientific paradigm (either in the old Newtonian sense, or within our contemporary probabilistic view of micro-physics).

OK.

We have seen evolution go in both directions. Evolution seeks to optimize fitness, not to maximize complexity.

The reason why we did not have complex organisms early on is because it takes time to have the opportunity to evolve in the direction of complexity. It's not as if mother nature has a complexity vector.

See above.

Not in the ontological sense of the term, no. Genetic changes result from deterministic shuffling which is epistemically veiled or inscrutable to our eyes, but which is as determined as anything else.

Fitness is nothing more than survivability. What is fit in one context is unfit in another.

Yes, I hear that buzzing every time you type the word ontogeny or capitalize the word "will" as if stretching the "w" will make it taller in dignity.

A determined system moving fast is no less determined than another system moving slow.

Nature evolved these abilities and the abilities which made these constructs possible. It's all part of Darwin's game. We symbol-users just play it faster.

And nature selected for this. And our own fitness to live in our environment (which we are damaging) is now under the shadow of serious doubt. We might very well "flame out" as a species, but Darwin wins, either way.

Bingo.

Driving fast doesn't make the car any less a car.

What percentage of this discussion is about film, at this point?

The question that's posed in the OP's title was answered in the link below but no one seemed to take notice.
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...18#post2264018

I'd already offered my answer to the genre question in the post above that one. The Rodent was offering a response to my own idea of Noir and HerbertWest's take that it is Gothic Horror. I didn't see anything to gainsay about that post, so I didn't respond. We should also note that Skizzerflake also has some good responses in this thread and compares the film to the book version of Frankenstein which is good stuff, I think.

HerbertWest didn't like the idea of Ex Machina being a Noir (more on this in a minute), which is fine, so rebuttal was offered and so off we went as conversations sometimes do.

Genre is a tricky thing. We can approach it as a rule (an artwork in genre W must have properties X,Y, and Z!) or a tool (a set of family resemblances which help describe). My contention about genre is that they offer paradigms, or ways of seeing the world which run deeper than clothing, music, and lighting. One can make a "science fiction" dragon movie, for example, (e.g., Reign of Fire, 2002), however, such a film will have to offer a "realistic" account of the existence of dragons (Reign of Fire reveals that dragons breath fire by combining two separate reservoirs of fluid held in the throat). Blade (1998), on the other hand, identifies vampirism as a blood disease, but then also includes a "blood god" (it slides out of science fiction into science fantasy - the genre shifts). Event Horizon is noteworthy in that it is one of the few cases of "overlapping magesteria" (seemingly incompatible worldviews held in equal respect) via the device of a singularity which literally rips a hole in reality, letting an irrational hell flood in. It is the most successful example of the genre of the fantastic I have ever seen. Most "fantastic" films resolve the ambiguity in the third act (either a "Scooby Doo" where the supernatural is deflated by the mundane or a dive into madness as the monster under the bed turns out to be real).

At any rate, the worldview contained within a genre lets us know what we can expect. HerbertWest, for example, objected to my characterization of "noir" because this poster appears to hold the genre in rather low regard (arguing that all people are evil in this genre and that characters can have no depth). I don't agree with the particular assessment, however, I do agree with the idea that genre isn't just a mere case of "let's play dress up," but that genre work by importing a worldview with them.

I saw Ex Machina twice over the years and I never understood what the ending was going for.

The movie isn't just about the ending... the entire premise is about the inherent dangers of creating what is a new lifeform.
Read my previous post.

__________________

Oh okay thank you very much!



Also, was it the filmmakers intention to make a modern day Frankenstein, or are people just comparing it to that. It seems that the only similiary is a scientist creating a lifeform but that's it. It seems you can compare many things to Frankenstein if that's the only similarity.

I haven't posted my two cents:

Ex Machina is not at all a sci-fi film in the typical sense. The film's focus is on drama, mystery and even romance....It focuses on three individuals who are alone in a remote country setting. But beyond that this is an existential film that explores what it means to be a human and and what it means to be sentient. A story about when is it wrong to treat a creation as property.

The film requires that the viewer cares about the A.I. creation 'Ava' and feels for her plight. If you only view her as an 'it', or as a machine then the movie failed. But I bet anyone who watches this will care about Ava and view her as alive. This then allows the film to focus on the implications of creating a sentient A.I. machine.

What is the typical sense? Seems like a sci-fi film to me and as much as I love it, this isn't exactly breaking new ground. It's quite conventional in terms of themes and conclusions.

It invites us to care. It seduces us unto caring. Caleb is our surrogate and Ava seems to have interest in Caleb and, therefore, us.

A better movie would leave us with the open question. However, we get "Ava's smile" at the end (an affect display which is only there for the benefit of us, the audience). The movie fails not because we view Ava as having genuine emotions, but because it forces closure what should remain an open question.



Yes. She's a person with emotions. This is not surprise. List as many films as you can that raise the question of the personhood of machines which do NOT conclude that "Yep, they're people just like us!" Even the T-800 becomes a person in Terminator 2! There all people. They're always people. This is so common a conclusion of sci-fi thought experiments that we have a generation of viewers who will prematurely conclude that the first machine which has pretty eyes and can maintain a plausible conversation is definitely human. Humanity has been pre-defeated by the universal conclusion that "machines are people too" (in large part because the machines are a stand in for marginalized minority groups).

Don't trust a big bot and a smile! This girl is poison.

We can explore these questions without the closure of the question.