bobinator said:

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So I'm listening to the recappables, and there's talk of this 'mirror universe' theory that I'm not following.

Is the theory that there's a 'mirror world' that's just a simulation, and there's a real world as well?

I'm not sure that I'm following the theory here.

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It's not so much a theory as Dolores literally told Caleb in episode three that Rehoboam is running a mirror world simulation of the real world. Kind of like what The Forge was for Westworld. And that simulation essentially predicts/shows the future, the same simulation that Serac has been monitoring to know that hosts eventually defeat humanity. Serac traced that eventual outcome back to Dolores' appearance in the real world, so now he's trying to stop her in order to save humanity. Remember how the simulation Maeve was in was running faster than the real world, and everything in the real world appeared in super slow motion to her? I imagine it's the same basic concept with the Rehoboam simulation, where it's running so fast that it's already years and years into the future. So that's likely how Serac knows what's coming.

The theory part is whether or not any of the scenes we've seen so far are taking place in the mirror world. Personally, I'm somewhat dubious, as it would be a challenge to go back and reveal to us what was real and what was simulation, but I *do* believe there is more than meets the eye in the regard - some way, some how - but it's just too early to tell.

https://www.theringer.com/2020/4/7/21212064/westworld-season-3-episode-4-theories-dolores-simulations

I guess I took that a lot differently than a lot of the theories. To me the simulation isn't some alternate reality, it's just the machine playing out possible futures based on specific decisions and guiding the real world the way it seems best.

Put another way, it's not a single mirror universe, it's all possible universes being simulated.

I've had a real hard time paying attention to this year, the show has kind of lost my interest.

They spent two seasons focusing on the maze. Is this supposed to be the maze? An alternate reality?

Idk - seems like they've jumped the shark a bit.

Damnit... the continuity error stuff is pretty convincing...

But man... making that make sense later would be a amazing. If that's the way this is going and they stick the landing it could be amazing.

bobinator said:

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I guess I took that a lot differently than a lot of the theories. To me the simulation isn't some alternate reality, it's just the machine playing out possible futures based on specific decisions and guiding the real world the way it seems best.

Put another way, it's not a single mirror universe, it's all possible universes being simulated.

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I probably should have worded my post better. I don't believe the simulation to be an alternative reality either. It's just a computer program playing out possible futures, like you said, allowing Serac to "see" into the "future." And the simulation is telling him there's a near certainty that humanity ends at hands of Dolores and the hosts, hence his response. But again, the "theory" of it all is whether or not some of the senes we're seeing are taking place in the simulation or not. That doesn't mean the simulation is a fully-realized alternative reality or anything like that, just that we might be seeing a few scenes play out as the simulation is predicting/showing them vs how things are actually playing out in the real world. For what purpose, I don't know, but yeah, all the little continuity "errors" are seemingly starting to add up.

Cy_Tolliver said:

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I've had a real hard time paying attention to this year, the show has kind of lost my interest.

They spent two seasons focusing on the maze. Is this supposed to be the maze? An alternate reality?

Idk - seems like they've jumped the shark a bit.

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We reached the end of the maze a while back, both plot-wise and thematically. I'm not sure why you're still expecting that to be a thing. It was device to bring Dolores and others to consciousness, which happened well over a season ago. Sure, there are still references to it from to time to time, but the show has pretty clearly moved on from all of that. If you're not into what's happened since, to each his own, but personally, I find this season to be just as interesting and engaging, if not more so. It's done the opposite of jump the shark, IMO - I feel like it's finally dialed in and reinvented itself in an even more profound and satisfying way.

I agree, the Dolores reveal was extremely well done. It was both surprising, but fit the clues and was done without the show obfuscating it by becoming insanely confusing like some episodes of season two.

TCTTS said:

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Cy_Tolliver said:

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I've had a real hard time paying attention to this year, the show has kind of lost my interest.

They spent two seasons focusing on the maze. Is this supposed to be the maze? An alternate reality?

Idk - seems like they've jumped the shark a bit.

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We reached the end of the maze a while back, both plot-wise and thematically. I'm not sure why you're still expecting that to be a thing. It was device to bring Dolores and others to consciousness, which happened well over a season ago. Sure, there are still references to it from to time to time, but the show has pretty clearly moved on from all of that. If you're not into what's happened since, to each his own, but personally, I find this season to be just as interesting and engaging, if not more so. It's done the opposite of jump the shark, IMO - I feel like it's finally dialed in and reinvented itself in an even more profound and satisfying way.

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I don't know - I still don't buy the concept that machines can have a "consciousness". Now machines may be programmed to analyze data and determine conclusions that aren't optimum - so, for instance, the Terminator series makes sense. The idea that a machine can independently decide that they are alive and have feelings of sadness and love is not possible and never will be possible. So this whole alternate reality has to have a master controller. Maybe it does and that's the show.

Good to know that, like Serac, you've seen the future.

Seriously, though, history is full of people who definitively claim what isn't possible, only to be proven wrong decades and centuries later. You can't possibly know that machines will never reach consciousness. I'm not saying they will, but the odds were far worse that the first cells on earth would one day evolve to achieve consciousness, yet here we are.

bobinator said:

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I mean if that's your issue how did you make it out of the first season? Why did you even start watching?

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Those seasons clearly stated that the additional code had been introduced that the park operators were not aware. The idea had been established that someone else was controlling what was happening.

TCTTS said:

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Good to know that, like Serac, you've seen the future.

Seriously, though, history is full of people who definitively claim what isn't possible, only to be proven wrong decades and centuries later. You can't possibly know that machines will never reach consciousness. I'm not saying they will, but the odds were far worse that the first cells on earth would one day evolve to achieve consciousness, yet here we are.

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The first cells always had consciousness, albeit at a level of intelligence that was extremely primitive.

yes it would be possible to create a machine so sophisticated and so capable of analyzing data that it could simulate human emotions. However, ultimately, it was programmed to do so. A machine cannot randomly act outside of parameters unless it was programmed to randomly act outside of parameters. What you are describing is artificial intelligence - a topic I know about because I"ve worked on the Watson team. It's not true intelligence. It's analyzing data and using intelligence we programmed to come to a conclusion. Yes, it's entirely possible that conclusion is not what was originally intended. But if a machine has emotion, it's because someone programmed it to react that way.

Ervin Burrell said:

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TCTTS said:

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Couple of random questions...

- I might have I just missed the reasoning, but why did Dolores need Liam's money after she already wiped out Jerry's bank account (the former Incite board member from episode one)? Obviously one can never have too much money in a situation like this, but as a plot point it felt a bit repetitive after bleeding Jerry dry.

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I viewed it as a way to get Liam to seek out Connels at the wh*re/drug gala. Also, $300 billion in the bank doesn't hurt

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He is the buyer to take Delos private so Serac can't take over.

Ah, good call.

That was a fantastic episode.

Maeve was absolutely ruthless and awesome, until of course she wasn't.

Are we absolutely sure all five pearls are Dolores copies? That seems like an obvious curveball with the bodyguard guy not revealing to Bernard the way the Yakuza guy and Charlotte did. I think he might actually still be another host.

Teddy Perkins said:

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Finally watched this. Incredibly insightful as always.

TCTTS said:

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https://www.theringer.com/2020/4/7/21212064/westworld-season-3-episode-4-theories-dolores-simulations

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That article is pretty convincing about the mirror world theory. But it seems like there would have to be more than one mirror world. Or, if it's not a true mirror world and is just simulations being run, then serac can somehow organize thes imitations and use them how he wants.

For instance, before he puts the glasses on and then kills the guy in Singapore, he says that he is showing him what happens if he helps them and what happens to his family if he doesn't. So he has the ability to view and show other people multiple simulations.

And that makes it seem like in the simulations sometimes the Singapore guy chooses to help them and sometimes he doesn't. So how can detach accurately predict the future as he seems to be able to do? I get being able to know what is more likely and less likely. But they have made it scene like he knows exactly what will happen in these early episodes, which isn't necessarily true if you have billions of simulations.

With enough data, an algo can be extremely accurate in predicting an outcome. The more data the better and new data is still data. If then.

It's why he wants the Delos data.

I will say that if you back and watch the 'inconsistencies,' they aren't nearly as convincing as the article makes them out to be. My wife and I watched the scenes last night and both of us were like 'eh...'

With the cow, he could have cut the wire off before the cut to the guy asking the problem, the sky could be as simple as just a wider shot and the people fighting/singing one we couldn't even tell for sure if those were the same people because the second shot is really wide shot.

Put another way, the "two timelines" theory in the first season was practically on billboards compared to this one.

That's not to say there isn't something else at work here, because there almost definitely is, we talked after the first episode about that circle thing from the computer's perspective possibly being in the future or something, but just that those particular clues aren't very convincing.

To make this work they'd basically have to show Serac watching a simulation of something and telling us it's a simulation. Like he and Maeve could watch her get killed by Samurai Delores, and then they could tweak the simulation and run it again.

That sounds like a really boring episode though.

It's just Serac watching film like a high school coach.

claym711 said:

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With enough data, an algo can be extremely accurate in predicting an outcome. The more data the better and new data is still data. If then.

It's why he wants the Delos data.

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Right, but typically an algorithm would give you a percentage that a certain outcome would happen and would not tell you that something is 100% to occur in the future. For instance, If I develop an algorithm for daily fantasy sports or sports gambling, the algorithm may tell me that Zeke Elliot has an 82.5% chance of rushing for over 100 yards on Sunday. I can then use that information to determine if I want to pick Zeke for my daily fantasy lineup or if I can profitably make a bet with a sportsbook that Zeke gets over 100 yards.

Obviously, the above algorithm is extremely valuable over the long run and will make me money. But in the Zeke example, I know that there is still a 17.5% chance that he rushes for under 100 yards and that I thus lose my bet. So the algorithm is not telling me what will happen in the future. It is just telling me the percentages for certain things happening and not happening.

In the show, it seems that Serac actually knows what is going to happen in the future. If that is the case, are we just assuming that his algorithm is so advanced that it is somehow able to determine exactly what is going to happen? That doesn't make sense to me because even if it is extremely advanced, and thus extremely accurate, it should still be dealing in percentages. Because it is comprised of billions of simulations, and in those simulations sometimes person A would do act X and sometimes person A would do act Y. So even if the algorithm knows for a fact that there is a 95.4759% chance that person A would do act X, how would Serac know that personal A would not do act Y (which there is a 4.5% chance of happening)?

Also, how would he be able to show the Singapore character multiple different outcomes of what happens to his family?

Sorry for all the rambling. Hope all of that makes sense.

So know we're arguing over mathematical probabilities in a world so advanced it can create robots so advanced they look, smell, feel, and fk like a real human?

The problem with your analogy is that your sports algorithm doesn't get to call the plays or set the lineups. In the show, it appears that Rehoboam can have a direct influence on events.

So, as a simple example, it might know there's going to be a car crash at 3:00 because it's going to cause a car crash at 3:00.

I guess i missed that part. How do we know that it can cause things like a car crash to happen? I haven't been following with all the episode recaps, so maybe I'm missing something.

And the example with the Singapore guy seemed to imply that the effects on his family were solely dependent on his choice, not anything that the AI would do.

RC_57 said:

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So know we're arguing over mathematical probabilities in a world so advanced it can create robots so advanced they look, smell, feel, and fk like a real human?

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Touche. But creating a robot that looks and fks like a human seems much easier than predicting the future with certainty.

mavsfan4ever said:

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I guess i missed that part. How do we know that it can cause things like a car crash to happen? I haven't been following with all the episode recaps, so maybe I'm missing something.

And the example with the Singapore guy seemed to imply that the effects on his family were solely dependent on his choice, not anything that the AI would do.

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It has been directly mentioned, by either Caleb or Dolores (I can't remember who), that Rehoboam controls traffic.

I was just using that as a hypothetical, but it's certainly implied that this AI has access to a lot of things. Don't they say it "saved the world" at one point?

TCTTS said:

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Great as always. I always like to compare Screen Crush to Alt Shift X.... seems like Screen Crush is catching a lot of what Alt Shift X us catching these days, and like 4 days sooner.

Posted late last night before watching, but will definitely be checking it out later today. Can't wait.

And yeah, I've noticed the Screen Crush comparisons. AltShiftX's videos are way better done, just in terms of quality and production, but Screen Crush's are more "fun" and obviously out days sooner. I know certain critics/sites got the first four episodes in advance from HBO, so I'm wondering if Screen Crush was able to start researching/editing sooner. It'll be interesting to see the timing next week, not having the fifth episode in advance, and see if they really are that fast, or if they had a head start.