Difference Between Hosts And Humans

Thank you! I am very happy to hear my thoughts are well received by a podcast I enjoy so much. Still somewhat new to Shat but you guys are definitely the podcast that spoke to me the most as I searched around for insightful views on Westworld. I always love diving deep into shows but Westworld REALLY grabbed me. I felt a lot like the man in black in season one haha. “This has to mean something. There is a deeper meaning to this. I will spend tons of time just trying to figure it out because there is SOMETHING important here.” Looking forward to the deep dive on that killer finale! I loved it.

Speaking of the finale, I had a quick thought about Bernard seeing Ford. This might be stretching beyond the text, but, if you can put a backup of a host in a computer and it can live there and interact. And if that backup is just code, of course. And if you are a host and you know a person with such detail that you have a huge amount of data in your host brain that constitutes your “knowledge” of who that person is from your experience with him. Then maybe, in a sense at least, that person “lives” in your host brain.

If a host can recall a person so well that she can imagine what the person would say in a situation and be correct, then in a sense, this “memory” in the host brain is no different than a backup in the cradle. The host’s mental image of the person is, or is at least very close to, the code that constitutes that person. And we know that code+digital environment (like a host’s mind)=a consciousness existing and “living” inside that digital environment. If you put a coded consciousness into a virtual system, it doesn’t just sit there it is conscious in there.

So, if you put the code that equals “John Smith” inside a computer, he is alive inside of that computer in a sense and walks around “being” John Smith inside this virtual world. It isn’t just data sitting there, as we saw. The data is conscious inside the system. And I am saying that maybe the same thing happens, “organically,” and less perfectly, when a host learns a person well enough to have “coded” in his or her brain a memory version that essentially constitutes that person’s actual code.

So like, the brain is “forming” this memory in code language, as the host learns about the person, and at a certain point that memory language will be pretty close to the actual code of that person. And once it gets complete enough, maybe helped along by the introduction and removal of an actual downloaded copy like when Ford entered Bernard’s brain deliberately, then that person is conscious and awake inside the host brain. Or, at least when the host tries to conjure the person like Bernard did by thinking long and hard about what Ford would say or do in this situation. It is like Bernard’s collection of data on who Ford is is so vast and his host brain so sophisticated (not anymore than other hosts) that when he tries to imagine him and think about him it is like running Ford.exe and boom he is talking to Ford. Not hallucinating Ford really. But talking to the more or less complete coded version of Ford that exists in his host brain after all those years of learning enough about Ford to have such a complete picture of him. Code+digital environment=conscious code inside environment, and host memory of person=detailed code that explains who that person is. I don’t mean every host can constantly conjure people, but that the connection is so strong that this at least could be what is happening with Bernard and Ford.

I feel like what I am saying sounds insane and yet then it seems to make perfect sense if you account for how host brains work and what the show has taught us about code and being reduced to it and all that. They practice witchcraft, and you can live as long as the last person who remembers you . . .