So, my man (autistic) is into science fiction, me (ADHD) not so much, but anyway today my man decided he was going to watch Star Trek and I happen to be around (usually I’m not) and watch with him.
It was that episode when the ship goes to be desinfected (I don’t remember the name of the episode) and Data mentions he created a sub-routine (wtv that is) for small talk and decides to listen to every conversation happening in that room and at some point he and the other guy (already forgot the name) start to talk about everything possible and I think it was Troi and Riker ask how can someone talk about nothing for so long. I’m like wdym about nothing? Small talk is about nothing!! Someone need to rewrite that series and give a proper mentor to that computer ASAP.
I can imagine a conversation going something like this:
Data: I’m trying to understand humans ND character I just made up: good luck on that bruh tell me later how did it go. I have been trying to do that for insert character age here years and no success… Data: wait… but you are human, how can you not understand humans? ND Char: oh boy this is going to be a long talk, but long story short what you are trying to understand is neurotypical humans, neurodivergent humans like me, are a totally different story, everyday I wake up and wonder if I’m the same species as Neurotypicals… Anyway do you like to read? Here is a list of books about this subject…
Data after reading them all: holy shit, understanding humans was already complicated when I thought there was only one type of humans and now… this… I’m never going to understand humans! ND Char: I just gave up Data: but then how are you supposed to know what to say and when and how and…? ND Char: welcome to the ND side of humanity bro! Why do you think so many of us are into coding? It’s just ones and zeros, not gesticulates to neurotypical humans being neurotypical all that mess…. Are you sure you don’t want to go back to be just and android? Because I think you are about to short circuit …
... How would chemical mood stabilizers function ... in a computer brain?
Would you give lithium or abilify or haldol... to ChatGPT? To a boston dynamics robot?
The entire point is that Data... is an android, he is a machine, he is mechanical and robotic components made to outwardly resemble a human, but he doesn't have a human brain or human metabolic pathways/processes.
His... his 'daughter' is also an android, and part of the point of that plot line is to illustrate how... at the time, and still today, it is difficult to access useful parenting guides and advice or neurodivergent children, and how neurodivergent parents can also need their own approach to parenting in general.
In the case of Data and Lal, they are... basically wholly unique in the entire Star Trek universe... so there are no manuals or guides that apply to them.
Again, this mirrors, with some hyperbole, how difficult it is for ND parents and children to find actually effective, useful and not harmful advice, as they are a very small proportion of wider society and are widely misunderstood.
So who ever created Data had the technology to create a emotion chip but not a mood stabilizers chip? How the hell am I supposed to know how to make one? Use the same code he used for the emotion chip, it should work. Anyway, human emotions, are destructive, unpredictable and explosive in their wors form, who ever wrote that plot didn’t use much of the brain thinking it would be a good idea to just dump emotions into a machine without anything to stabilize them.
It's clear you don't have the necessary context to understand the plot. Data's character arc spans the entire show. The emotion chip is experimental, and something his original creator specifically didn't install at the time of his creation, because it wasn't ready. There's a prototype of Data as well, called Lore, who does have emotions, but become a violent psychopath. They can't just "make it work," and doing so would defeat the point of it as a plot device.
So there is another bot who experimented the emotion chip and he went batshit crazy???? How predictable 😹😹😹😹 it’s almost like if you dump emotions on people and no means to control them they snap (means to control emotions can be emotional inteligence teaching since childhood, medication, or anything in between)
Correct.
Data is very nearly one of a kind, the most advanced artificial lifeform created by humans in Star Trek and if memory serves, so is the emotion chip, basically.
The emotion chip is even more advanced, complex, and untested, unpredictable... hard to build a regulator for a thing that ... you have no idea if it will work, or what it will cause, and all previous versions of it have been... basically catastrophic failures.
( I am sure this is technically wrong in some way given the entitety of Star Trek lore/canon at this point but this is roughly accurate. )
You're not.
That is the point. It is far, far easier for humans to build a machine that can act as an encyclopedia, to even direct the motions of a humanoid robot... than it is to truly construct a machine analog for emotions and intuition.
In the Star Trek lore, there is basically a single, solitary uber genius who is basically solely or mostly responsible for all advanced android tech, and, surprise, he's an eccentric, elusive genius/madman... basically nobody else has anywhere near his level of 'expertise'.
No, it would not.
I don't know if you know much about actual AI research, but ... human emotions EDIT(and indeed, basically all other complex processes inside a human brain) do not operate according to the same kind of logic that computers excel at, extremely complex chains of extremely literal, black and white thinking.
They are better described as heuristics, fuzzy logic, or perhaps one day by a fully detailed, one to one, neuron to neuron, molecule to molecule simulation of a human brain... but we are nowhere near that currently.
The human brain is the most complicated thing us humans are aware of. It has more functional components than smaller galaxies have stars.
It is absurdly complex, and we do not have a detailed and accurate model of exactly how it works.
If... we did... then psychiatric medication would work perfectly, with no side effects.
Not sure if you are aware of this but uh, there is kind of a big scandal/controversy going on within the field of psychiatry, after numerous recent studies have found that... SSRIs often do not actually effectively treat the things they are prescribed for, long term, in a way that is substantially different from placebo.
They do definitely cause side effects and chemical dependency (addiction) though.
Many are calling into question the soundness of the entire theoretical approach used to design and prescribe many kinds of medications... there are hardly any long term studies on the efficacy of these meds, and almost all studies are done by or paid for by the companies that can make absurd amounts of money off of them.
Data himself seeks out the ability to have emotions... because that is the thing he lacks, that makes him ... only a fascimile of the people around him, but not truly the same, not truly able to be socially accepted.
Its... basically a more tech-centric Pinnochio. He wants to be a real boy, to better understand his colleagues and friends... and finds the experience totally alien to what his existence has been before.
The medication is not supposed to treat anything is supposed to stabilize people so they don’t off themselves or harm themselves and can function more os less trough life. It is done so because there is no treatment or cure for mental things, the medication is more of a patch rather than a fix, that’s why it if I drop my meds I go back to where I was when I started to take them.
And also you say Data wants emotions to be more like his friends (because that worked out so well with the other prototype, apparently) but his friends (the ones I saw at least) are all very neurotypical to me, there is no one around to tell him to chill and that humans are not all that way and that he should stop obcessing about mimiquing others (masking) because humans are not all the same anyway and sometimes we don’t understand our own species anyway and that it’s ok for him to process things the way he processes. But I guess it’s just a tv show, I just took that scene about “talking about nothing” way too personally being ND myself married to another ND and watching a character apparently ND also being portrayed as not having “humanity” or “emotions” when he just processes them differently, like ND people do. 🤷🏻♀️
The person who created the chip was deceived into installing it into the wrong android; it is entirely possible that if he had installed it himself into Data to begin with that there would have been fewer problems.
Nah I think Data would have gone batshit crazy also. From the comments I’ll understood the chip gets installed somewhere in the future and he still goes nuts anyways, he didn’t turn out psyco probably because he already had this whole “luggage” and life experience (if we can call that life idk), if the chip had been installed from the start he would have 🤯 like the other prototype