Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica used to be one of my favorite series. In season three, it has completely lost its way in the first two episodes. intends to continue watching, but I have lost interest.
The mysteriousness of the Cylons concealed their motivations. This allowed the luxury of assuming that their motivations, if revealed, would make sense. I extended this trust despite the mystical gibberish of the Cylons-- which barely even held together as a series of coherent statements-- because I believed they were good at playing with the minds of humans and did not seriously mean what they said. This was ruined by revealing their internal politics. The writers seem to have not considered some of the issues raised by the possibility of human-AI relations, as suggested in the "AI Political Science" page of Orion's Arm. Instead the Cylons possess the instinctive motivational system that results from mammalian sexually-dimorphic tribal hunter-gatherer hominids. They actually demonstrate worse ability to question these instincts than do humans. As Eliezer Yudkowski said in the Meaning Of Life FAQ, "If you were to program a rational AI with the proposition that the sky was green, the delusion would only last until it got a good look at the sky." They're so insane as to be civilizationally non-functional and the writers don't seem to realize it. I don't want to watch conversations full of non-sequitors.
What we have here is called an "idiot plot". As it is said on Everything2.com, "The idiot plot creates an empty conflict, a problem which is not real. The audience will sense this, and will feel cheated. Knowing that the conflict could easily be resolved, the reader feels no suspense and no involvement with the story." "The idiot plot does not allow the audience to empathize with the characters."
Comments
Anonymous on Jul. 7, 2007 9:45 PM
I think you're forgetting that humanoid Cylons actually are sexually dimorphic mammals whose physiology and neurology are riffs off of the human evolutionary paradigm, not from-scratch AIs. They were also, supposedly, created out of a plan to reconcile with or replace humanity, which they believe was created by "God" just as they were. I think you're right that full-fledged AIs might end up with completely different motivations; humanoid Cylons can operate as infiltrators or liaisons in human society because they actually possess real humanoid motivations. Without this, the premise of Cylon infiltrators would've been an "idiot plot."
The breakdown of their consensus-based politics due to a few models having experiences at odds with the beliefs of Cylon society makes a lot of sense to me, actually. Consensus works well when the perspectives of the group are closely aligned, which ceased to be the case among the Cylons being used as long-term infiltrators.
"If you were to program a rational AI with the proposition that the sky was green, the delusion would only last until it got a good look at the sky."
Humanoid Cylons aren't completely "programmed" beings, and this is the fundamental point.
Anonymous on Jul. 7, 2007 9:50 PM
In fact, you might see the divergence of perspectives that emerges among the Cylons who actually have experienced human society as an example of "having a good look at the sky."
matt-arnold on Jul. 11, 2007 4:10 AM
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