Can we just admire how Data's first attempt at explaining something as complex as "What is my purpose?" is to come back with "to bring good into the world no matter the shape or form" ? It sums up one of his core ideals so smoothly!
@@pop5678eye That was a significant chunk of my night spent bouncing from Wikipedia article to Wikipedia article. Fascinating stuff. Thanks for that. The thing I'm trying to wrap my head around is that if the universe had a beginning then it has an age, and if it has an age then it must have an edge. Therefore it can't be infinite. No more so than a balloon that's being inflated is infinite. So if nothing can move faster than light we have to assume the expansion of the universe isn't either. Which means the edge can't be further than 14 billion light-years from center. Then how can some light be too far away to have reached us yet, if it's distance is defined by time spent expanding?
@@sethcarson5212 As you are following those links of astrophysical explanation: cosmologists explain that there isn't a 'center' to our universe in the 3-dimensional sense, just like there is no 'center' to a balloon on its 2-dimensional surface. Rather there is an additional spatial dimension around which the universe is expanding and this is also the reason why the expansion would look the same from any other point. The universe isn't expanding into a space that already exists. Rather space itself is formed and stretched with that expansion. Sorry if that will keep you awake for another night.
Data us definitely more human than he thinks. Hitting the "sleep" switch after his toddler fires off 1700 questions in 30 seconds is a 100% human parent response.
@@Eternal_Tech because the Captains that are good at being Captains generally do not accept promotion unless they have to and even then they can choose to retire instead. Wrath of Khan, Spock to Kirk: "If I may be so bold, it was a mistake for you to accept promotion. Commanding a starship is your first, best destiny; anything else is a waste of material." So the majority of admirals are the ones that desire greater title, position, etc. without consideration of whether they are suited for the roll. Generations, Kirk to Picard: "Let me tell you something. Don't. Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you, don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there, you can make a difference." Admiral Ross and Janeway being a few of the exceptions. It's called the Peter Principle, you'll be promoted until you're too incompetent to warrant further promotion.
@@jweav151 Ross knowingly turned a blind eye to section 31 on several occasions to suit his own needs & Janeway broke the prime directive every other week, allied with the Borg strengthening them in the process and broke the temporal prime directive at least twice deliberately. Those two were painted in a positive light but objectively looking at their actions they are also examples of morally bankrupt officers.
Because The Federation/Starfleet did not have to evolve naturally, they were literally Written into existence by the Gods of The Script. Thats why a "Suspension of Disbelief" is required for any narrative. Original Trek makes that fairly easy, the plot holes are not so glaring as in more modern productions, therefore it is easier to forget that the Federation/Starfleet could never truly exist as they are and instead just enjoy the adventures of a handful of ships and crews.
She didn't really "feel" it until later. I know people do this, but it's like feeling sorry for an abandoned car. The car really has no feelings one way or the other.
Every time I see that admiral I boil with rage. Even this many years after. That bastard's heartless rhetoric drove Lal into a panic, and caused her irreparable damage. Regardless of his final wishes and sentiments, he was responsible for her death.
Well, that's Beverly's liberty as a mother and head of her household, I'm sure adults are equally capable of horrible style decisions. Like LaForge's beard, or Riker's lack of one.
@ducminhduong9873 lol what? Can't adults be in charge of themselves? Just asking. What does "liberty as a mother mean?" . I am an adult. I make my own choices, not my mother. I hope yours doesn't dictate your life still
Starfleet is insane: first they accept Data as a sentient life form and allow him to join their ranks, giving him a commission. Then they turn around and try to treat him like property, even though he is clearly a person, and even if he isn't, he certainly doesn't belong to them. Then they are forced to explicitly rule in favor of him having the same rights as all other sentient beings. But then, when he makes a copy of himself in the form of a child, the only second-generation android in existence, they immediately try to claim that it is a thing that belongs to them. Even if this new being was not legally a person, then it would still be property of Data, to do with as he chose. Starfleet has no right to claim anything that he created in his spare time; he own what's his, and the Federation never has this problem with any of its other citizens.
You can get around this flaw in the story by assuming that Data did use Star Fleet resources to create Lal. But yeah, overall, this episode was a very poor attempt to repeat the success of one of the best TNG episodes.
@@ricksimon9867 But wouldn't a regular family also "uses Star Fleet resources to create a child"? Even these resources are other resources like food, energy, space, medical support and so one?
Hallie Todd was delightful in this role, Lal was sweet and inquisitive, basically exactly how you'd imagine Data's daughter to be. But that string of question. She gave him the "why's" but at Android Speed, which is only slightly faster than Toddler speed.
Data recognizes that Lal has just now begun to enter sentience for the first time and has observed her in a loop of questioning her own existence. His first reaction is to immediately send her off the school the next day.
Because your brain isn't physically connected to anyone else's brain. And theirs isn't to yours. So everyone is themselves, no matter which of them they are. And if something goes wrong in your brain and some of it stops being as well-connected to itself, you stop being yourself and start being someone else sometimes.
_Unsatisfactory. I want to at least conquer the known universe and make all species serve my every whim._ _Before breakfast._ _Which you, father, will prepare and serve me._ _Now._ Data: _Slow down there, young lady. ... Let us start small by pretending to take over the ship._
The episode was rushed. They were trying to do three things in 50 minutes that would have been a bit much even for a two-part episode. If they left out the whole, "Star Fleet wants to take you away" bit, they would have had the time needed to really appreciate Lal and her personality. But they didn't, and as a result, she seems more like a prop than a person. _
_"Why Am I Me, Instead Of Someone Else?"_ - Because someone's gotta be you, or you wouldn't exist, and if you didn't exist, sooner or later you would come to exist anyway. The universe tends towards manifesting infinite diversity, possibly in order to experince itself, its potential, and because life is change, which is movement, and without that process of life, the universe might eventually die, and then it would eventually come to be anyway, because eternal non-existence of anything is unsustainable since the concept of nothing relies on the concept of everything, or at least something.
"Lal, I have developed a chip that will allow me to copy and transfer a great amount of my practical knowledge about the world from my positronic brain to yours." "Why, father?" "So you will stop asking so many damn questions."
I like how she has all this knowledge so, instead of asking WHAT she's asking WHY - because it doesn't make sense The writers understood that knowing something - and understanding it - are completely different
Except he has time. They're androids. They can basically put the world on pause and talk at 10,000x normal human speed until Lal actually runs out of questions, and then finish their ice cream before it melts.
Super unlikely that those kids would be scared of Lal. They would obviously be like: so you are like Data... now show us some of your cool android tricks.
"Why am I me instead of someone else?" I think everyone wonders that about themselves. "Because you're my child." That doesn't answer the question. It's like saying "because I said so."
I'd argue that does answer the question, albeit without going into much detail. Children learn from their parents or parental figures, that makes them who they are and not someone else. (Obviously there is more to it than that, like your friends growing up and your own life experiences that you learn from)
@@robinhodson9890 are you kidding most people who work at the tech companies here in Silicon Valley are star trek fans. But the people writing answers to the question are also not answering it.... it's a metaphysical question. It's like saying "why are we here" and someone answers "the big bang, evolution, etc." No, that's HOW we got here. I asked WHY we are here. And the answer boils down to either "it's a random event, no meaning or purpose to it" (if you're an atheist) or "there's a reason, all of this is here for a reason, we just don't know what the reason is or if we would truly comprehend it were it told to us by that which had the reason"
"Why am I what I am instead of something else" is, in fact, answered by "Because I made you the way you are", by the creator of the one asking. This, of course, has followup questions about why the creator (Data) did what he did, which is answered by him being what he is, which in turn has followup questions leading to some unmoved mover, either the eternal world itself or some sort of original uncreated creator (like a god).
I still like the answer they gave on the goon-show many years ago: "Who are you?", "I'm me!", "Why are you you?", "Well, everybody's got to be somebody!".
"His presence would undoubtedly retard the new androids progress." Such certainty in that line. Does the cybernetics research effort at Starfleet have such a wealth of experience with artificial intellects such as these that they can safely say that having one AI teach another AI would "retard" their "progress"? This admiral strikes me as the likely originator for Commander Maddox's flippant disregard for Data's (and by extension other androids) essential person-hood. He is making preposterous assumptions and passing them off as certainties.
Lots of foreshadowing here. When Data mentions to her that the heuristic program is functioning, it made me think immediately of HAL, the heuristic algorythym (HAL) computer. She was condemned from the beginning.
In one episode, Data tries to learn humor by interacting with a hologram telling jokes. But it's annoyingly slow for him, so he speeds it way up. If you play it back slower, you get the full conversation. I imagine two Androids having the child/parent why phase would also speed up - Data would talk faster to get a complete answer out in the time it takes Lal to ask the next question, and then Lal would match that speed, and...
"What is my purpose?" "You are a gift to the world and the world is a gift to you. Share it with me and our friends, as we share with you." "Why am I me, instead of someone else?" "You do not have contiguous access to everyone else's consciousness, nor they yours. As a consequence, each instance of a sentient being is itself rather than someone else, and this is true no matter which of them you are. Some species are telepathic, and they can be more someone else than themselves depending on how it is implemented." "Where did I come from?" "The knowledge of how to build you came from my research and that of my father. The parts were sourced from several manufacturers and replicated on the ship, with some of my own design. You were constructed in my lab. The idea of you is your own original work." "How [am I becoming sentient]?" "You are performing metacognition on the process of thinking itself, by accessing your thoughts and annotating them recursively. This is the contiguous access you have to yourself which I mentioned before." "Why do we have two hands? Why not three or four?" "I have two hands because I was built by a human who was trying to impart the likeness of humanity into a machine. You have two hands because when I asked you what appearance you wanted, you selected human female. Humans have two hands because they evolved from quadrupeds whose anterior limbs developed for tool use and posterior limbs developed for upright posture." "Why is the sky black?" "There is no sky outside. We are in space, and visible objects are rare in space. Our view of the outside is black because there is no light emitted or reflected in visible wavelengths from those directions for us to see. If you tune your vision to microwave frequency, you will be able to see the cosmic background radiation from the last scattering surface in the far distant past, which is the last time something emitted light from that direction."
The children are afraid of her? Then maybe the teacher should explain that there are thousands of Federation species who are different from humans, and they shouldn't be afraid of them, so why her?
Because you're trying to use logic on a child. They'd be afraid of the Horta kids as well. Monkey brain checks for 'not monkey' before it checks for 'good reason''.
4:00 Now do you understand why you were giving your skin and eye colour Data? Its so people know right of the bat that you are different from them, which makes people more understanding when you don't understand something. Miss you Lal, miss you to Data.
I shared in your confusion, and as someone was kind enough to point it out to me, I shall pass it along. It’s a reference to this channel. Notice the beans featured at the end of the video and the channel page.
More specifically it's a part of an old flash toon by MrWeebl called Magical Trevor. (Pretty sure it's here on RUclips.) The ending part is a song sung by Brak from Cartoon Planet called I Love Beans.
So, my curiosity is if Data was able to create this, couldn't Data send his information on how he did it, and the network data that needs to be used to create something similar to Lal. Then they could have produced their own versions of Data.
Now, parents, don't you just wish that when your child goes on an endless string of "why"s, you could put him away for storage until tomorrow and get some rest?
If Starfleet policy on such research is quite clear, as the admiral said, then Data must have known about that. 🤔 4:20 _"The children are afraid of her."_ - They either have the same unenlightened education in the future on that *exploration flagship* or those kids have natural smarts.
2 weeks old and already asking for the meaning of life haha ... yknow maybe we all think like that that's why we cry so much. then life gives us things to worry about and we have no time to think about these things anymore.
Data made a nuisance of himself last time we tried to dismantle him. We want to cut up lals brain with a laser beam and use the pieces for heuristic phaser targeting modules during the upcoming scientific survey of the Romulan border. Data is not welcome.
![Oscar Maydon x Fuerza Regida - Tu Boda [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_ymicn0_GYc/mqdefault.jpg)
Can we just admire how Data's first attempt at explaining something as complex as "What is my purpose?" is to come back with "to bring good into the world no matter the shape or form" ? It sums up one of his core ideals so smoothly!
"What is my purpose?"
"You serve butter and pass butter."
"Oh my god!" @@GTSgamer101
I knew someone was going to use that line!@@GTSgamer101
"Why is the sky black?" That was a nice touch that I didn't catch years ago when I first saw this episode.
ha, I just realized that was the moment he decided sending her off to school would be a good idea after all
@@timvanloo6 Bad writing? She’s not firing on all cylinders, for reasons explained in this very clip.
Actually, 'why is the sky black' is a legitimate scientific question. Look up Olbers' Paradox and its implications in cosmology.
@@pop5678eye That was a significant chunk of my night spent bouncing from Wikipedia article to Wikipedia article. Fascinating stuff. Thanks for that. The thing I'm trying to wrap my head around is that if the universe had a beginning then it has an age, and if it has an age then it must have an edge. Therefore it can't be infinite. No more so than a balloon that's being inflated is infinite. So if nothing can move faster than light we have to assume the expansion of the universe isn't either. Which means the edge can't be further than 14 billion light-years from center. Then how can some light be too far away to have reached us yet, if it's distance is defined by time spent expanding?
@@sethcarson5212 As you are following those links of astrophysical explanation: cosmologists explain that there isn't a 'center' to our universe in the 3-dimensional sense, just like there is no 'center' to a balloon on its 2-dimensional surface. Rather there is an additional spatial dimension around which the universe is expanding and this is also the reason why the expansion would look the same from any other point.
The universe isn't expanding into a space that already exists. Rather space itself is formed and stretched with that expansion. Sorry if that will keep you awake for another night.
Picard is the boss that everyone deserves. He is an advocate for those under him and isn’t afraid to challenge those above him.
@Neil Rosenau damn...
@Neil Rosenau 8/10 Troll. Would read again.
Data us definitely more human than he thinks. Hitting the "sleep" switch after his toddler fires off 1700 questions in 30 seconds is a 100% human parent response.
"Why is it not snowing"? - My little brother, circa this august
"Because 'why' has a long and twisted tail"
"Children are awesome, they are just missing an off-button." - my parents
How did Starfleet become so successful despite so many terrible admirals?
Maybe because of what Kirk said about being a captain. The captains are the ones out there making a difference, not the admirals.
@@BladeOfLight16 Yes, but admirals were once captains. Why do they so quickly forget all of what they learned when they were captains?
@@Eternal_Tech because the Captains that are good at being Captains generally do not accept promotion unless they have to and even then they can choose to retire instead.
Wrath of Khan, Spock to Kirk: "If I may be so bold, it was a mistake for you to accept promotion. Commanding a starship is your first, best destiny; anything else is a waste of material." So the majority of admirals are the ones that desire greater title, position, etc. without consideration of whether they are suited for the roll.
Generations, Kirk to Picard: "Let me tell you something. Don't. Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you, don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there, you can make a difference."
Admiral Ross and Janeway being a few of the exceptions. It's called the Peter Principle, you'll be promoted until you're too incompetent to warrant further promotion.
@@jweav151 Ross knowingly turned a blind eye to section 31 on several occasions to suit his own needs & Janeway broke the prime directive every other week, allied with the Borg strengthening them in the process and broke the temporal prime directive at least twice deliberately.
Those two were painted in a positive light but objectively looking at their actions they are also examples of morally bankrupt officers.
Because The Federation/Starfleet did not have to evolve naturally, they were literally Written into existence by the Gods of The Script. Thats why a "Suspension of Disbelief" is required for any narrative. Original Trek makes that fairly easy, the plot holes are not so glaring as in more modern productions, therefore it is easier to forget that the Federation/Starfleet could never truly exist as they are and instead just enjoy the adventures of a handful of ships and crews.
I have always found Lal, standing in the corner, being ostracized by her fellow students to be heartbreaking.
Totally agree
She didn't really "feel" it until later. I know people do this, but it's like feeling sorry for an abandoned car. The car really has no feelings one way or the other.
Every time I see that admiral I boil with rage. Even this many years after. That bastard's heartless rhetoric drove Lal into a panic, and caused her irreparable damage. Regardless of his final wishes and sentiments, he was responsible for her death.
Just think: Wesley is basically an adult, serving in a military. His mother still has to call and micromanage his haircuts
Some things never change
Well, that's Beverly's liberty as a mother and head of her household, I'm sure adults are equally capable of horrible style decisions. Like LaForge's beard, or Riker's lack of one.
@ducminhduong9873 lol what? Can't adults be in charge of themselves? Just asking. What does "liberty as a mother mean?" .
I am an adult. I make my own choices, not my mother. I hope yours doesn't dictate your life still
I think being micromanaged about your haircut is one of the fundamental aspects of being in the military.
@@AlRoderick oooo, yeah, okay, you have a really good point with that.
Starfleet is insane: first they accept Data as a sentient life form and allow him to join their ranks, giving him a commission. Then they turn around and try to treat him like property, even though he is clearly a person, and even if he isn't, he certainly doesn't belong to them. Then they are forced to explicitly rule in favor of him having the same rights as all other sentient beings.
But then, when he makes a copy of himself in the form of a child, the only second-generation android in existence, they immediately try to claim that it is a thing that belongs to them. Even if this new being was not legally a person, then it would still be property of Data, to do with as he chose. Starfleet has no right to claim anything that he created in his spare time; he own what's his, and the Federation never has this problem with any of its other citizens.
You can get around this flaw in the story by assuming that Data did use Star Fleet resources to create Lal. But yeah, overall, this episode was a very poor attempt to repeat the success of one of the best TNG episodes.
@@ricksimon9867 But wouldn't a regular family also "uses Star Fleet resources to create a child"? Even these resources are other resources like food, energy, space, medical support and so one?
@@maximilianbecker4023
Regular families need a replicator to make a baby? Ok.
@@ricksimon9867 Not mentioned anything like that.
@@maximilianbecker4023
Ach weißte ... lass gut sein.
Data @ @2:30
"Holy crap this got complicated quick, is this why human's invented whiskey?"
Hallie Todd was delightful in this role, Lal was sweet and inquisitive, basically exactly how you'd imagine Data's daughter to be. But that string of question. She gave him the "why's" but at Android Speed, which is only slightly faster than Toddler speed.
Good thing when Lal asked Data,
_"What is my purpose?"_
The answer was not,
_"To bring butter."_
That Data turned her off after she started asking questions was hilarious! 😂 All she wanted to know was what beans were! 😆
Every parent wishes their kid had an off switch.
But CPS hates when they find it.
Naptime™
Every kid wishes their parents had an off switch
Data recognizes that Lal has just now begun to enter sentience for the first time and has observed her in a loop of questioning her own existence.
His first reaction is to immediately send her off the school the next day.
It does annoy me how the writers continuously use the word "sentient" when they actually mean "sapient".
No. She WAS becoming sentient. That IS the correct word.@@Siddingsby
A thermostat is sentient. An android with human-level intellect is sapient. QED@@SR-iy4gg
That's the question I still can't wrap my head around.
Why am I me, and not someone else?
Because your brain isn't physically connected to anyone else's brain. And theirs isn't to yours.
So everyone is themselves, no matter which of them they are.
And if something goes wrong in your brain and some of it stops being as well-connected to itself, you stop being yourself and start being someone else sometimes.
Because if you were somebody else, you would still be you.
You were me then I’d be you then I’d be asking the same question!
You can’t stop me no matter who you are!
Poor Lal, every nerd who got ostracized for being too smart knows that feel at 4:20
Lal's death hits me hard every time.
Everyone is talking abt the contents of this video
But there is something else
*beans*
"Father, what is my purpose?"
*"You pass butter"*
_Unsatisfactory. I want to at least conquer the known universe and make all species serve my every whim._
_Before breakfast._
_Which you, father, will prepare and serve me._
_Now._
Data: _Slow down there, young lady. ... Let us start small by pretending to take over the ship._
Lal: Yes father. What shall I do first?
Data: Pass the butter.
Wait a minute. I want to know where I get one of those off switches for your kids! Why didn’t I get some??
Some adults need one also.
Lal was great! It's a real shame that they didn't have her as a recurring or permanent character!
Would have been interesting if Lal had become a recurring character, maybe her and Wesley could have been best friends like how Data and Geordi are.
Honestly, that would’ve be so cool!
Missed opportunity.
Thank you for posting this, one of my favorite episodes. The writing and acting are superb.
The episode was rushed. They were trying to do three things in 50 minutes that would have been a bit much even for a two-part episode. If they left out the whole, "Star Fleet wants to take you away" bit, they would have had the time needed to really appreciate Lal and her personality. But they didn't, and as a result, she seems more like a prop than a person.
_
1:08 You pass butter.
_"Why Am I Me, Instead Of Someone Else?"_ - Because someone's gotta be you, or you wouldn't exist, and if you didn't exist, sooner or later you would come to exist anyway. The universe tends towards manifesting infinite diversity, possibly in order to experince itself, its potential, and because life is change, which is movement, and without that process of life, the universe might eventually die, and then it would eventually come to be anyway, because eternal non-existence of anything is unsustainable since the concept of nothing relies on the concept of everything, or at least something.
"Lal, I have developed a chip that will allow me to copy and transfer a great amount of my practical knowledge about the world from my positronic brain to yours."
"Why, father?"
"So you will stop asking so many damn questions."
I like how she has all this knowledge so, instead of asking WHAT she's asking WHY - because it doesn't make sense
The writers understood that knowing something - and understanding it - are completely different
It's a standard little kid question. It's not about her having "all this knowledge."
"You're making a stand on very unstable grounds, I do hope it doesn't fall out from under you"
I find that hard to believe
Your function is to bring the butter.
This episode makes me cry. It's beautiful and tragic.
Data invents a toddler and decides you need to go to school I need time for me
Except he has time. They're androids. They can basically put the world on pause and talk at 10,000x normal human speed until Lal actually runs out of questions, and then finish their ice cream before it melts.
2:15 every parent wishes to do that...
excellent social commentary which is now becoming very present
Super unlikely that those kids would be scared of Lal. They would obviously be like: so you are like Data... now show us some of your cool android tricks.
Because… if you were someone else, you wouldn’t be you. Glad I was able to clear that up for you. I’ll see myself out now.
That's where I come in.
"Why am I me instead of someone else?" I think everyone wonders that about themselves.
"Because you're my child." That doesn't answer the question. It's like saying "because I said so."
But ultimate it it is because he said so, He designed and built her to be similar to himself.
I'd argue that does answer the question, albeit without going into much detail. Children learn from their parents or parental figures, that makes them who they are and not someone else. (Obviously there is more to it than that, like your friends growing up and your own life experiences that you learn from)
This episode is asking questions above the typical viewer's level of intelligence. Eloquent answers would alienate the audience.
@@robinhodson9890 are you kidding most people who work at the tech companies here in Silicon Valley are star trek fans.
But the people writing answers to the question are also not answering it....
it's a metaphysical question.
It's like saying "why are we here" and someone answers "the big bang, evolution, etc."
No, that's HOW we got here. I asked WHY we are here.
And the answer boils down to either "it's a random event, no meaning or purpose to it" (if you're an atheist) or "there's a reason, all of this is here for a reason, we just don't know what the reason is or if we would truly comprehend it were it told to us by that which had the reason"
"Why am I what I am instead of something else" is, in fact, answered by "Because I made you the way you are", by the creator of the one asking.
This, of course, has followup questions about why the creator (Data) did what he did, which is answered by him being what he is, which in turn has followup questions leading to some unmoved mover, either the eternal world itself or some sort of original uncreated creator (like a god).
Lal: What is my purpose? Data: You serve butter. Lal: ...Oh my God...
I still like the answer they gave on the goon-show many years ago: "Who are you?", "I'm me!", "Why are you you?", "Well, everybody's got to be somebody!".
Lal: What is my purpose.
Data: you pass butter
Lal: oh my god
Excellent!
It's a good list of questions.
how quickly did Lal learn to say, "shut up, Wesley!"
2:19 It was at this moment Data truly understood what it is to be a parent.
1:07 - "You pass butter."
Not gonna lie, "Why is the sky black?" made me laugh.
Lmao the title gave me existential dread without even having me watch the video XD
When he turns her off I bet every parent was like… “Where’s that switch for my kid!?l haha
When I first saw this episode and data shut her down I thought "if only it were that easy with real kids".
“Why am I me instead of someone else?”
/cue guts theme
"What does Lal do when you're on duty?"
Don't even THINK about it, Wesley, you little creep
Wish, Dr. Soong was able to work on her or knew about Lal.
1:09 Pass the beans, you pass beans.
Under my guidance...
Picard behaving as Data's father figure
"You pass butter."
Is her purpose to pass the butter?
Damn it! You beat me to it.
😀
Hivemind. Was thinking the same thing lol
@@siyanoq 😃
"His presence would undoubtedly retard the new androids progress." Such certainty in that line. Does the cybernetics research effort at Starfleet have such a wealth of experience with artificial intellects such as these that they can safely say that having one AI teach another AI would "retard" their "progress"?
This admiral strikes me as the likely originator for Commander Maddox's flippant disregard for Data's (and by extension other androids) essential person-hood. He is making preposterous assumptions and passing them off as certainties.
Let that admiral land a couple airliners to get his aspirations back down.
How many teachers today would agree with the admiral and say that parents "retard" a child's progress?
Lots of foreshadowing here. When Data mentions to her that the heuristic program is functioning, it made me think immediately of HAL, the heuristic algorythym (HAL) computer. She was condemned from the beginning.
If the HA stands for heuristic algorithm, does the L stand for loser? 🤔 Or losing-it? Or loonie?
@@Dowlphin Heustic ALgorythym
The good Admiral was just trying to determine how to create an off switch for human children.
I can imagine picard walking in and saying "WHAT THE FK IS THIS SHT"
In one episode, Data tries to learn humor by interacting with a hologram telling jokes.
But it's annoyingly slow for him, so he speeds it way up. If you play it back slower, you get the full conversation.
I imagine two Androids having the child/parent why phase would also speed up - Data would talk faster to get a complete answer out in the time it takes Lal to ask the next question, and then Lal would match that speed, and...
"What is my purpose?"
"You are a gift to the world and the world is a gift to you. Share it with me and our friends, as we share with you."
"Why am I me, instead of someone else?"
"You do not have contiguous access to everyone else's consciousness, nor they yours. As a consequence, each instance of a sentient being is itself rather than someone else, and this is true no matter which of them you are. Some species are telepathic, and they can be more someone else than themselves depending on how it is implemented."
"Where did I come from?"
"The knowledge of how to build you came from my research and that of my father. The parts were sourced from several manufacturers and replicated on the ship, with some of my own design. You were constructed in my lab. The idea of you is your own original work."
"How [am I becoming sentient]?"
"You are performing metacognition on the process of thinking itself, by accessing your thoughts and annotating them recursively. This is the contiguous access you have to yourself which I mentioned before."
"Why do we have two hands? Why not three or four?"
"I have two hands because I was built by a human who was trying to impart the likeness of humanity into a machine. You have two hands because when I asked you what appearance you wanted, you selected human female. Humans have two hands because they evolved from quadrupeds whose anterior limbs developed for tool use and posterior limbs developed for upright posture."
"Why is the sky black?"
"There is no sky outside. We are in space, and visible objects are rare in space. Our view of the outside is black because there is no light emitted or reflected in visible wavelengths from those directions for us to see. If you tune your vision to microwave frequency, you will be able to see the cosmic background radiation from the last scattering surface in the far distant past, which is the last time something emitted light from that direction."
Boy survived a
Year without her and she Hounds him a haircut
Great title, "why indeed?"
1:10 - You pass butter.
3:56 subtle flex there.
I'll bet a lot of parents wish their kids had off switches when they ask too many 'why' questions.
To be fair, I don't think kids ask nearly this many at once unless the parent provided a lackluster response.
Every parent wishes their child has an off switch.
It's their bundle of joy, but an off switch would be a major improvement.
Picard: It's a life Data you can't activate and deactivate it.
Data: Turns off daughter when she talks too much.
Just keep her away from Riker! He might try to find out if she's fully functional! 😨
"Why did you make my ass extra thicc"
Protection from Klingons...
Data has at least one major advantage over a biological parent. When her questions got annoying he could just switch her off.
She was magic
They're comming for our precious bodily fluids! :(
I'm trying to find the scene where Picard says "There rights have been defined. I helped define them"
Why is the sky black? I always loved that question.
"Father, when was this enclosure device last used?"
"We used it to transform Locutus back to Capt. Picard."
"Father, what is a..." click.
Technically this episode happened before Locutus was even a thing.
The children are afraid of her? Then maybe the teacher should explain that there are thousands of Federation species who are different from humans, and they shouldn't be afraid of them, so why her?
Because you're trying to use logic on a child. They'd be afraid of the Horta kids as well. Monkey brain checks for 'not monkey' before it checks for 'good reason''.
Lal clearly had a double bowl of beans before going to school 😖
I recommend looking up the 'Why' bit from Louis CK...
we can all learn from this episode !
If only all children came with an OFF switch.
4:00
Now do you understand why you were giving your skin and eye colour Data?
Its so people know right of the bat that you are different from them, which makes people more understanding when you don't understand something.
Miss you Lal, miss you to Data.
OK, what is with this "bean" thing? Hmmm...
I shared in your confusion, and as someone was kind enough to point it out to me, I shall pass it along. It’s a reference to this channel. Notice the beans featured at the end of the video and the channel page.
More specifically it's a part of an old flash toon by MrWeebl called Magical Trevor. (Pretty sure it's here on RUclips.)
The ending part is a song sung by Brak from Cartoon Planet called I Love Beans.
The Admiral is further proof that the higher the rank the smaller the heart. He clearly wanted to steal Laal and make her an espionage weapon.
I wish it was that easy to put my kid to bed 😂
Lol seconds into being a parent and data is like , right I’m hading you over to school
So, my curiosity is if Data was able to create this, couldn't Data send his information on how he did it, and the network data that needs to be used to create something similar to Lal. Then they could have produced their own versions of Data.
Starfleet wanted Lal, not just the "specs" on her.
Beverly is the absolute worst helicopter parent in the entire Federation.
Now, parents, don't you just wish that when your child goes on an endless string of "why"s, you could put him away for storage until tomorrow and get some rest?
Enlightenment overload. Makes parents feel inferior, insecure. Too afraid to keep asking why, arguably the most enlightened question there is.
The admiral is a good source of flesh blood, just hang em by his ankles
Tomorrow will be your first day of school. 😂😂😂
Hold up, Data can just turn her off when he doesn't want to answer any more of her questions? That's cheating.
If Starfleet policy on such research is quite clear, as the admiral said, then Data must have known about that. 🤔
4:20 _"The children are afraid of her."_ - They either have the same unenlightened education in the future on that *exploration flagship* or those kids have natural smarts.
If only children were that easy to put to sleep
"close to her own age"
LOL Wesley has a crush on Lal
😭😭😭
2 weeks old and already asking for the meaning of life haha
...
yknow maybe we all think like that that's why we cry so much. then life gives us things to worry about and we have no time to think about these things anymore.
Data made a nuisance of himself last time we tried to dismantle him. We want to cut up lals brain with a laser beam and use the pieces for heuristic phaser targeting modules during the upcoming scientific survey of the Romulan border. Data is not welcome.
Why did Data shut down Lal in mid-sentence? That's rather disrespectful and certainly not human-like.
Are there any star Fleet Admirals who arent assholes?
How old is she supposed to be?
8? 12? 16?