In Philosophy Lecture we watched the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back," and in the episode it discussed the topic of whether a person can be replaced by a robot, and whether or not your online self is your true self. During the course of the episode, the male in the show named Ash dies and his wife orders a sort of "replacement" Ash who gets his attitudes from his social media and private emails.
Overtime Martha, the wife, began to see discrepancies in how robot Ash acted compared to how the original Ash acted. What caused this was the little things he did or did not do such as not eating or sleeping or how he did not act on emotion. This overtime began to get under Martha's skin until she finally snapped. She then stuck robot Ash in the attic for the occasional visit.
This plot line begs several questions and also shows us many different things. For instance, what makes humans unique is our ability to make random decisions that a lot of times do not make much sense. This can not be replicated by robots who react to situations through calculations or programming. Robots only have the ability to do what we say they can do, and we can not program something to act absurdly. Another thing robots can not take into account is how people change over time. Experiences and events change people and can make them act a different way; the only way robots can change on the other hand is if someone programs them that way. Another thing is that robots also do not plan, but only react to situations.
The other thing that this episode discusses is what your true self actually is. Is it your online self? Is it when you are by yourself? When you are with your friends? Or when you are with family? This is portrayed by Ash when he said he never expressed feelings of self harm online. Now I do not believe the real Ash ever thought about suicide, but theres no way for sure for fake Ash to know whether real Ash did or not. Thus, the argument can be made that our real self comes from the conglomeration of everything. How we act online, with family/friends, and by yourself combined is how we actually are. But at the same time the argument can be made that how we act online and around people is actually an act, and our real self is how we are by ourself.
This is a scary thought because if this is true, how do we know if anyone we know is actually who they say they are and not an act. Do we really know anyone at all? Like really know them?
3 comments:
I completely agree. Do we actually know anyone? People are just showing us what we want to see. We never actually see all sides of a person.And that is terrifying because we truly do not know anyone not even our closest family members or friends.
Are these decisions we make everyday merely random or calculated ones? We choose things based on consequences and rewards not solely on chance.
I agree with what you say about our online selves for the most part. I think that many of us put a front on for social media to make us seem happier than we are in reality though. If we all have perfect lives when we are recreated then what makes anything exciting at all? If nothing is ever wrong or no one goes through a struggle, then how would we even experience true happiness, because I think you can only know what true happiness is once you've known true sadness.
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