Person of Interest And The Matrix?

Published April 27, 2020 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi hosts!

A couple more of Person of Interest (Nolan’s previous show) plots this episode — pitching partners against each other after a top secret operation & super AI vs super AI. And they include the lines like “they are listening” and “asking too many questions” again. This is on top of the main story arc of super AI weeding out outliers in the name of saving human from themselves. Maybe recruiting outliers to take out other outliers counts as a recycle as well. Delores pushed the button to shut down Maeve and herself also reminds me of (spoiler) Greer suffocates Finch and himself (spoiler).

Since the story moves to the real world this season, quite a few Person of Interest plots have been recycled. It almost feels like since Person of Interest was cut short, the show creators want to finish some untold stories here (Not complaining. I liked Person of Interest). Are there any others to come? The two super AIs ended in mutual destruction but one secretly survived? A few hosts end up hiding/living among human? Rohoboam takes Serac’s voice and debates Solomon about the future of human society? A dog (maybe Delores’ horse/motorcycle filled the role already)?

I am glad that Serac’s decision is finally explicitly phrased as a Trolley problem, not a simple dichotomy of freeing vs enslaving human. And Delores doesn’t have a straight answer to the Trolley problem either. There are different interests and perspectives. No side has the absolute moral high ground (although I agree that there are absolutely terrible implementations).

The Sublime for the hosts provides a possible compromise for this problem — those who prefer stability are separated from the more adventurous. If human can live in simulations, can we move some of them to simulations? Basically a Matrix vs Zion solution?

For example, if the outliers are moved to a simulation, their world can be restored after they destroy it, and there can be copies of the more conforming people like NPCs. Most of the outliers are already in pods anyway. Or the majority of passenger human can be moved into a simulation, because it makes less of a difference for them, being simulated or not. Running simulations of a passenger-only world sounds technically more feasible. Although having the outliers in the real world may leave too much risk of destroying the computer that runs the simulation. Or just move everyone to simulations and let deer roam the towns and dolphins swim in rivers (Go, group-therapy William!). This is assuming they are not already in a simulation (Go, Liam’s drunk friend!).

Then, the questions become, what it means to be “alive” and what it means to “live”.

Last but not the least, I love Solomon. I laughed so hard at his changing-the-prediction-if-Delores-dies remark.

Looking forward to your podcasts,
XD

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