Alien Earth
Seriously, is human consciousness possible outside the body?
I just needed something short to watch for a bit to fall asleep to. Then Hulu reminds me that Alien Earth premiered tonight.
They open by distinguishing how immortality has been achieved in the future: cyborgs, robots, and hybrids that are replicants with our consciousness.
Even before we meet the Aliens, how does this happen? Is it really our consciousness inside that hybrid or is it just AI that remembers our thoughts and memories and mimicking what they believe we would sound like? This bothers me because I remember watching that VR tv show as a kid where she would enter an alternate reality and she was alive there indefinitely. I was 11 and I just took it for gospel. Now, older, I’m skeptical.
Remember The Leftovers? They convinced her they had built a conduit to an alternate dimension that could reach her family and the story she told was so fantastical that had you been sitting across the dining room table from her you could believe she just passed out in that pod and dreamt it. Is the technology really in its infancy or these are just analogies?
I earmarked Alien Earth because I wanted to know if it would shed light on Predator: Badlands coming out later this year.
Let’s take a tally. In the future:
we have aliens that are weapons of mass destruction that were created in a lab by a superior humanoid that predates mankind on earth
Predators that travel through intergalactic space trophy hunting and looking for ways to continually upgrade their artillery and fighting techniques
Hybrid humans where we are either just robots or our consciousness has been removed from our decrepit bodies that are not strong enough to survive the larger universe and placed in a synthetic
Since the 80’s we have shown versions of our best selves, Ripley and Dutch, going up against these monsters that we can only defeat through luck and I don’t know who to root for any longer.
If we survive attacks from these species. Is it worth it? Yay, we survived. Now there are a handful of us alive on a desolate planet surrounded by animals and fauna that are all stronger than us. Where’s the fun in that?
Is our consciousness the only thing that matters and we’re sticking around to figure out what else is out there? If we learn it as hybrids, what does it do for us? Or does evolution include no longer looking at a synthetic as an alternate life, but the progression of life. Our human bodies are the baby teeth and the synthetic is our final destination?
The only questions unanswered in this universe, who are the humanoid elders and where do the predators fit in? At some point I would like the answers, but the world building is leading towards the answers being a moot point.
The answers will be learned by robots with our brains and predators. Let’s go full pessimist - what happens when the synthetic fails? When they reboot it, are you still there? Imagine being moments from the meaning of the universe and your battery is down to 1% without a charger. Just you and the origin and meaning of organic life at your fingertips when it’s lights out. An intergalactic Jacob’s ladder.
I think Aliens are like crustaceans. They live forever and they keep going, but it doesn’t matter because they don’t have a sense of self or a want for answers. While writing this rant, a cyborg just let an alien end one of his teammates. The alien is now entering his office, but he doesn’t care because he’s a cyborg.
Have we reached a point in this universe where the predators are the closest thing to protagonists we have?
Putting the sci-fi to the side, what are we learning from this series? Weyland corporation is behind it all. They created David, they created the research team that is searching the universe and it seems their initial journey was to find the higher beings?
Galactic Olympus? They created aliens as a WMD and they don’t explain themselves. Could their answers be anything deeper than they’re just a more advanced Weyland corporation? Why would a corporation care at this point? If they’re just one large AI, what do they care about what is out in the depths of the universe? Unless they can only grow and continue if they cover more space?
Do we get to a point where the AI we created grows so large they need to conquer more of the universe to simply sustain themselves? They need the knowledge of the galaxy elders to continue. But for what purpose?
No matter the answers we get, I have a feeling it’s all bleak.
This rant came out of left field. I didn’t know until the show started that they’re all synthetics. My empathy for them is close to non-existent because we’re watching a microwave walk the earth, and I’m not sold that we’re in there. I’m just tired and should have saved the premiere episode for the weekend.