Westworld IX; 03.22.20 Divergence - Westeros.org

[Corvinus85]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

Is it just me being out to lunch or what? What switch could Dolores possible flip to shut them down? We have never seen that before.

And will Caleb walk out and start to raise hell because he thinks she's dead, when all she did was flip this switch?

That machine was placed there to keep Solomon from escaping. My guess is it created a field that prevented Solomon from infecting any computers outside that field. So now I wonder if Solomon is going to become the big bad.

[Fragile Bird]

Just now, Corvinus85 said:

That machine was placed there to keep Solomon from escaping. My guess is it created a field that prevented Solomon from infecting any computers outside that field. So now I wonder if Solomon is going to become the big bad.

But why did it not affect Dolores when she walked in with Caleb, if it kept Solomon back? Why would it then affect Dolores and Maeve when she flipped it? Solomon couldn't shut them down, could it?

[Corvinus85]

2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

But why did it not affect Dolores when she walked in with Caleb, if it kept Solomon back? Why would it then affect Dolores and Maeve when she flipped it? Solomon couldn't shut them down, could it?

They are computers themselves, advanced AI's. It's unclear what Solomon is capable of, at this time, other than immense computative predictions, and if it has a mind of its own, it chose to no shut down Dolores right away. When Dolores goes to confront Maeve, Solomon tells her it'll have to re-adjust the prediction if Dolores died. But up until Dolores showed up, she had never factored in Solomon's predictions. So right there, within that short period, Solomon was working on a new prediction that factored in the hosts, or at least Dolores.

[Cashless Society]

If Delos was competent enough to have emp's at their parks, S2 would have been over in 5 minutes.

[Cas Stark]

Can Solomon not be turned back on?  It would be odd if Solomon is 'dead' but Dolores and Maeve can come back, but possibly they covered that when 'he' told her she was nothing like him.  

[Kalbear]

It was mentioned in this episode. They put in a giant EMP generator to keep Solomon in line and make sure that there was a failsafe in case he did something particularly bad. The EMP wasn't hooked up to the internet or anything else, so Solomon could't take it over. Caleb mentions it early on when they see Solomon. 

An EMP will disable all non-hardened electronics in a wide area. It does this by absolutely wrecking the hell out of the electrons that exist in the components, causing major shorts and surges of electricity. It is equivalent to having that being hit by lightning several dozen times. 

Dolores and Maeve could both be rebooted, as could potentially Solomon. I suspect Solomon is significantly more vulnerable given the nature of quantum computing, which requires very specific states and substates held in space and time. 

Also, Solomon can't 'infect' computers with itself. It could presumably take control of them at some point, but neither Solomon or Rebohoam ever showed that capacity. That appears to be Maeve's ability only. 

[Charlie Hustle]

4 hours ago, Cashless Society said:

If Delos was competent enough to have emp's at their parks, S2 would have been over in 5 minutes.

LMAO!! that part!!!

[Nictarion]

I just realized the next episode is the season finale. Apparently there’s only 8 this year. No wonder that last episode was so eventful. 

[unJon]

18 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I didn't take it that way. I took it that Solomon was talking about variants that it did predict and where we were along those. 

Solomon isn't being used any more. It's just a relic. Even the outlier storage isn't there for any purpose any more; they basically kill the ones that they can't save now. Or they've gotten rid of so many outliers that they don't need a major facility. In any case, the facility was under maintenance mode and nothing more. 

Apparently Ed Harris wasn't happy about his role this season. 

I think that's also a Dolores thing. She knows that the other Doloreses are her enemy. If she wants to survive - and Dolores is a survivor - the others have to die. 

I do wonder what the package was that Dolores-san sent off right before he died. 

Nice!

So there’s a super AI that is schizo and can predict the future with a high degree of accuracy, so schizo that it’s willing to give data on how to start a revolution to Caleb, and Serac just leaves it an an abandoned facility with no guards but some maintenance scrubs?? Doesn’t really seem in character for someone that goes out of his way to prevent end of world scenarios. 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, unJon said:

So there’s a super AI that is schizo and can predict the future with a high degree of accuracy, so schizo that it’s willing to give data on how to start a revolution to Caleb, and Serac just leaves it an an abandoned facility with no guards but some maintenance scrubs?? Doesn’t really seem in character for someone that goes out of his way to prevent end of world scenarios. 

It had 7 guards. but not a lot else. 

Solomon is also a failsafe in case Rebohoam has issues. Having contingency plans is important. And remember that almost no one knew that Solomon still existed, or that facility still existed, and those who did know didn't mind in the least. Dolores is the real fly in the ointment. 

Honestly, this sort of thing is exactly the same thing that causes a bunch of major security flaws in software today - obsolete servers still being used by some important business that no one has migrated off of and hasn't patched in a while. I didn't mind this in the least.

[karaddin]

I think the part people keep missing with the "why would he take x risk" is that this is a man who for 20-30 years has not been blindsided by a single unforeseen event. He left Solomon guarded like that because Rehoboam predicted that it would be safe, because Rehoboam's models don't include Dolores. Maybe he should have realised the potential once the predictive model got spiked a couple of episodes ago, but he's got a lot on his mind and had no indication that the location had been compromised. He thinks he has Dolores on the run after all.

I think the EMP did kill Solomon, and Dolores had always planned to set it off even if Maeve hadn't shown up, as now Solomon can't disclose what it tod Caleb. The EMP presumably fried all the circuitry in their bodies, but the pearls are a different beast - they lose their connectivity to active systems but are intact themselves. As for why Delos didn't also have an EMP on hand, I'm willing to accept a combination of Hubris and not wanting contingency plans that involved junking a whole lot of corporate assets as all host bodies would need to be rebuilt afterwards. Its only once the rebellion is in full swing that they accept major host collateral damage. And an EMP would have also taken out all the parks control systems etc which are probably worth more than the host bodies.

Did anyone else take it as an implication that Solomon's predictive power is actually more advanced than Rehoboam? Solomon had so many models of the future that it does include the emergency of the Delos hosts, including Dolores bringing Caleb to it (I think?), although it says it doesn't know her the same way it knows humans. My interpretation is that Solomon's wider scope of prediction both makes it better at its job, but is also what breaks it and leaves it unhinged in time in a very similar way to characters like Dr Manhattan have been portrayed - it says something like "if we really are here and now", its lost in its projections. By contrast Rehoboam is only brought online into a world where most of the outlier variables have been controlled, it can't foresee things like Dolores arising but it doesnt go nuts.

[unJon]

@Kalbear Fair and YMMV. Bothered me. 
 

@karaddin That’s interesting speculation re: Solomon vs Rehoboam. 
 

re: EMP is it realistic that it would not destroy the data on Caleb’s thumb drive that includes Solomon’s revolution plan? I assume that thumb drive is intact still because reasons. 
 

 

[Jace, Extat]

Hardened circuitry is a thing. Very expensive.

[Jeor]

Any speculation on what Solomon's plan was (and the curtailed warning), and who's speaking to Caleb at the end? At least we have final confirmation that Caleb is most definitely not a host with the therapy (why go to all that trouble if he's a host who can be reprogrammed) and being unaffected by the EMP.

I'm not quite sure what to think - I'm just hanging onto this season conceptually. It's ranged far wider than the original concept, which in some ways is good and fresh, but in other ways makes me think I've been tricked into watching something I hadn't really signed up for. Too late to stop now, though, it's a major sunk cost.

[Fragile Bird]

25 minutes ago, Jeor said:

Too late to stop now, though, it's a major sunk cost.

Lol, it’s a sunk cost, so can be abandoned!

[karaddin]

@unJon I think if it's flash storage as we currently use then it should have been effected, but they can easily handwave it by saying that although the form factor is the same as current usage, the underlying storage tech is some form of solid state non electrical or magnetic that is consequently not effected by it, at least while it's not in use. It clearly also uses some form of NFC for the connection rather than an actual port.

@Jeor was the voice the same as the assistant Dolores had been using? I can't even remember if we heard it's voice. That's the real one I'm confused by how whatever device is producing the audio survived the EMP.

I am enjoying the season but at this point I've got to say I'm disappointed in Maeve's arc. After Serac destroyed the rest of the hosts she should at least reconsider blindly viewing Dolores as the enemy, even if that's her ultimate decision. It hadn't bothered me the rest of the season, but it did in this episode. I guess it's just down to being really pissed about Hector.

[Cas Stark]

22 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Lol, it’s a sunk cost, so can be abandoned!

Well, I mean, I'm in the for the duration, I want to see how they end the story and what that means for the whole series.  I do feel that things have gotten murky this season and I find the episodes are somehow less interesting even as they deliver more action and more ostensible plot.  I doubt things will ever get to the point, like it did for GOT, where I watched it almost solely to mock it, but my expectations are not what they once were, either for the story or the themes.

[Cashless Society]

8 hours ago, karaddin said:

Did anyone else take it as an implication that Solomon's predictive power is actually more advanced than Rehoboam? Solomon had so many models of the future that it does include the emergency of the Delos hosts, including Dolores bringing Caleb to it (I think?), although it says it doesn't know her the same way it knows humans. My interpretation is that Solomon's wider scope of prediction both makes it better at its job, but is also what breaks it and leaves it unhinged in time in a very similar way to characters like Dr Manhattan have been portrayed - it says something like "if we really are here and now", its lost in its projections. By contrast Rehoboam is only brought online into a world where most of the outlier variables have been controlled, it can't foresee things like Dolores arising but it doesnt go nuts.

Yeah, this does bother me a bit; but I'm holding back in case it's addressed at the end of the season.

[Kalbear]

 

2 hours ago, unJon said:

re: EMP is it realistic that it would not destroy the data on Caleb’s thumb drive that includes Solomon’s revolution plan? I assume that thumb drive is intact still because reasons. 
 

Depends a LOT on what the actual mechanism of said drive is. A traditional hard drive is actually less vulnerable, but an SSD is still likely to survive. Some of the data may be harmed. It also depends a lot on the range and what is and isn't hardened between it. An SSD doesn't have a ton of vulnerable active electronics, just magnetic data, and that can be hosed but it isn't quite as likely. 

But it's also not that hard to buy a shielded drive. I'm sure this is totally legit: http://freedomslips.com/thumb.htm

What's more unlikely, honestly, is that the pearl wouldn't be completely borked. 

The voice at the end was the same virtual assistant that we've heard talk with Dolores before, the one that often negotiates hotel prices. 

[Jace, Extat]

Don't use Star Wars EU cursewords when talking about Westworld, Kal. It's aberrant behavior and I don't want to recondition you.