An Odd Similarity

Published June 25, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hello,

I’ve been listening to your podcast throughout the entire season and have very much enjoyed your varying insights. I don’t have any broad sort of point to make about the total arc of the stories of any of the characters, but I couldn’t help but notice one particular similarity.

When Bernard and Dolores are in the forge together and they are interrogating Logan about the nature of the system, there comes a time when without much preamble at all Logan shows them what the creator’s of the show Westworld term to be the Sublime, or the valley beyond that Akechata and his tribe have long pursued. The image is one of a valley in golden light but not much else is revealed in this sequence besides the fact that the hosts are apparently uploading their consciousnesses to this reality by jumping through the rift and shedding their corporeal bodies.

The device that Dolores and Bernard use to enter the forge looks exactly the same as the grid used to enact the “large field data array.” When the drone host activates this array, we see a number of conduits funneling light to the array at the top of the forge, activating the rift. These two devices, the entrance to the forge and the emitter of the large field data array, are exactly the same shape.

I don’t know what this means. My assumption is that the reality we have come to know in Westworld thus far is a simulation in the same way the Forge simulated Delos’ lives. It dovetails nicely with the post-credit reveal of The Man in Black being tested for fidelity into perpetuity. I know that this is not an attractive outcome as far as fans are concerned, but it makes sense.

The long and short, I guess, of my takes besides the similarity of two objects is that the entirety of the simulation was to build an actual, independent AI. I have little support for this besides the fact that we’ve seen multiple simulations run in order to produce a desired result both with Daddy Delos and now with William. But we have to think of the instance where young William escorted Dolores to the forge and alluded to having come across a question that no one had ever considered asking before.

Is William the first emergent AI, trying to escape a simulation by building one of his own? If we truly render humans merely to an expression of code, that places them on the same level as hosts on a loop. The question Logan the Librarian asks of why humans do the things they do only to realize that humans themselves do not ask that question is similarly evocative. We all question our actions, our beliefs, our tendencies. We can never come up with a concrete answer because invariably another action, belief, or tendency will preclude full reflection. Is that obfuscatory programming or a true attribute of humankind? And though we cannot come up with an answer, we do question our drives in direct contradiction of Logan the Librarian.

Thanks very much for reading and I hope I haven’t wasted your time,
Scott Anderson
Madison, WI

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“In the land of truth, my friend, the man with one fact is king.” –Linton Barwick

“Jokes that injure others, waste time, hurt records….. are never jokes. LET’S THINK TWICE” –Motivational Clown Poster

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